LANDSCAPE. stpoŝajnjakajakki skakali #sky? nitɛje, P. HAMERTON. ND 134-0 +21 1885 La AMERIKA Mi WOHNUNGSANTRON DOKUMEND INDON IMUOLIULISHO ARTES LIBRARY 1817 VERITAS UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN WITTY ARAMIAI MOMUNI TUEROR ཀ་་ ོན་ AQUARIS PENINSULAM AMI to je ) CIRCUMSPICE KERTYLLIILEIELUMBUMULATIMIILI!! FROM THE LIBRARY OF SCOTT TURNER JOC SCIENTIA OF THE مے کی سمجھے AGAS SU SV. THE GIFT OF SCOTT TURNER IMILIHIHINK MICHIGAN A.B. 1902; D. ENG. 1930 λ SUJUMIN ETWEENMELITAUTINEILA ERKUMIHINALALATA MUUNILLEESY BOLATO JETTUAG When 21 $ from THE LIBRARY OF SCOTT TURNER calf BAG The Turnin whic Liitem. 4189) plem 8 FROM THE LIBRARY of SCOTT TURNER : Hamarten, Philip Gilbert Roster, Kat LANDSCAPE. * Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures While the landscape round it measures: Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains, on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim, with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes. MILTON (L' Allegro). t ! I • gift Scott Turner 10-1656 PREFACE. IT T may be well to say a few words in this place about the intention of the present work. It is not in- tended to be a treatise on landscape-painting, either from the technical or the aesthetic side, nor is it by any means exclusively a treatise on landscape in Nature. My domi- nant idea has been the influence of natural landscape upon man; and I may without much presumption suppose myself to be in- some degree fitted to write a book on such a theme, because the influence of natural landscape upon myself has always been extremely powerful, and I have always been deeply interested in observing how it affected others. I perceive, for example, that one very intelligent and cultivated person looks upon mountain scenery with an indifference that would certainly pass into dislike if he were compelled to live in the midst of it; while another lives in a perpetual state of lively interest in a mountainous country, and feels dull only in the plains. The effect of the sea upon some minds is extremely depressing; others find it to be a tonic and a stimulant. I remember a story of a woman who worked in a cotton factory in one of the great manufacturing towns of Lancashire, and who went in an excursion to the coast. When she first saw the expanse of the Irish 3 iv PREFACE. Ĭ Sea, which looks as unlimited as the ocean, she exclaimed, "At last here is something that there is enough of!" She had suffered from restriction, confinement, insuffi- ciency, all her days; but there, at last, she could feel the greatness of Nature. It may have been in her constitu- tion, as in that of the painter Fromentin, to delight in boundlessness. His passion was for the African desert. Others have a dislike for large spaces, and shelter themselves against what seems to them the oppressive greatness of the world in little protected nooks. You see both tendencies unconsciously revealed in the selec- tion of sites for houses. One builder sets his dwelling. upon a hill and says that he likes the view; another builds. down in the bottom of some hollow and says that he likes a shelter from the wind. In reality, the reasons lie far deeper than any mere preference for a particular landscape or love of stagnant air. Two very powerful opposites are the desire for wild- ness and the desire for the evidence of human labor. The first finds its satisfaction on Highland moors, among rocks and heather and free streams; the second in the highly cultivated fields of southern England, or, still better, in lawns and garden walks. The lover of wildness always feels confined among the evidences of a minutely careful civilization; the lover of high artificial finish feels out of place in wild landscape, and as if he were deprived of his usual comforts and conveniences. Another contrast, which is evidently connected with feelings that lie in the depths of human nature, is that between the love of changeful and often stormy weather, with strong transient effects of the most varied character, and the love of placid sunshine, bright from day to day, with an assured yet monotonous brightness. S PREFACE. These slight indications may help the reader to enter into the leading idea of the book. In writing it I have been guided by two principal considerations. Well knowing that the impressions we receive from landscape are always the result of our own idiosyncrasy as much as of the external Nature that affects it, I felt bound to let personal preferences be frequently though not obtru- sively visible. On the other hand, as I had to do with the influence of landscape on minds of the most various orders, it was necessary that I should enter into feelings very different from my own, at least enough to under- stand them; and therefore my book could not be sim- ply an expression of personal thoughts and affections, as, for example, was the "Painter's Camp," which owed its success to the personal element exclusively. I have noticed in some reviewers, both in England and America, but principally in the United States, a tendency to compare my writings with those of a much more celebrated author who preceded me in the same field. This is sometimes done with an intention friendly to myself, and sometimes as a means of depreciating what I have written. It is not difficult to foresee that the present volume is likely to recall "Modern Painters" by its subject; so that it may be well that I should ex- plain, in a few words, what has been the influence of Mr. Ruskin on my work. So far as the study of Nature is concerned, it has always been, and still is, a powerful and a delightful influence. Mr. Ruskin has always united, in his study of Nature, affectionate insight with intimate knowledge to a degree hardly ever found except among painters, and in them, although the affection may be as great, the knowledge is not exactly of the same kind. With regard to art, I find myself more frequently in vi PREFACE. sympathy with artists than with Mr. Ruskin, especially on technical matters, which I have treated elsewhere and need not enter into here. I need only say that if he had influenced me I should have excluded all etch- ings from the illustrated edition of this volume and all engravings in which light and shade is attempted. Mr. Ruskin's perception of the beauty of Nature is so deli- cate, and his love of Nature so strong, that he is often offended by what appears to him coarseness in human work, when artists only see in it a convenient and ac- cepted means of expression.¹ 1 It can hardly be necessary to add that a single volume on landscape can have no pretension to be exhaustive. Anything like an exhaustive treatise on so vast a sub- ject would have to be a large and formally divided En- cyclopedia, written throughout in an expository scientific style, very carefully and steadily maintained. Nobody would read such a book, but it might be valuable for reference. I have simply attempted to express a part of what I know and feel about landscape, without troubling myself about what must remain unexpressed. We can never enclose all the land within our fences, nor cast our nets over all the oceans. I have not even given a set description of our old friends the Four Seasons, though I see four decorative paintings of them every week, and have possessed, these forty years, a poem concerning them by James Thomson. 1 The existence of " Modern Painters " has sometimes caused me to treat a subject very briefly. For example, I have not said much about the landscape descriptions in Scott, because Mr. Ruskin had said nearly all that was necessary on the subject and said it well. I have simply added, in this instance, the remark, that since Scott's time a new development of description has taken place in consequence of a recent culture derived from the art of painting. I have not thought it necessary, for the same reason, to go much into the subject of mediaeval landscape, having done little more than show how the landscape of Ariosto is derived from it. CHAPTER CONTENTS. I. A DEFINITION ATTEMPTED II. ILLUSIONS III. OUR FEELINGS OF AFFECTION FOR NATURE IV. THE EFFECTS OF OUR PHYSICAL CONDITION ON THE LOVE OF NATURE V. THE POWER OF NATURE OVER US VI. LANDSCAPE AS A REFLECTION OF THE MOODS • OF MAN VII. THE Art of deSCRIBING LANDSCAPE VIII. LAND AND SEA IN THE ODYSSEY IX. THE VIRGILIAN LANDSCAPES X. THE LANDSCAPES OF ARIOSTO XI. WORDSWORTH XII. LAMARTINE. XIII. LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS XIV. THE SCENERY OF GREAT BRITAIN XV. THE SCENERY OF FRANCE XVI. THE GEOGRAPHY OF BEAUTY AND ART XVII. MOUNTAINS, FOR AND AGAINST XVIII. GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE XIX. OF HIGH PLACES XX. MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN XXI. ON SCALE IN LAKE SCENERY XXII. Lake Shores • • • • • • • • • • • PAGE 9 13 21 30 36 3333 43 48 65 72 77 85 94 102 120 126 134 152 159 177 197 220 228 M ་་ ▸ viii CONTENTS.、 CHAPTER XXIII. LAKE ISLANDS XXIV. LAKE SURFACES XXV. LAKE SCENERY IN PAINTING XXVI. RIVULETS XXVII. BROOKS XXVIII. CANOE RIVERS XXIX. NAVigable Rivers XXX. MAN'S WORK ON RIVERS XXXI. RIVERS IN ART…. XXXII. TREES IN NATURE. XXXIII. TREES UNDER THE CONTROL OF MAN. XXXIV. TREES IN ART • • · PAGE • 235 242 256 263 268 XXXVII. ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE . XXXVIII. THE TWO IMMENSITIES • • • XXXV. THE EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURE ON LANDSCAPE XXXVI. FIGURES AND ANIMALS IN LANDSCAPE . • 276 289 308 324 336 353 358 375 380 388 400 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER I. A DEFINITION ATTEMPTED. IT might readily be imagined that "landscape" was a word of mongrel derivation, the first half obviously the English. land; the second half perhaps a corrupted form of scope, from σκοπή or σκόπησις and σκέπτομαι, like the second half of “tele- scope " and "microscope." In fact, however, it appears that both parts of the word "landscape" are of Northern origin, and are to be found in the Anglo-Saxon landscipe, of which the old English form "landskip" has preserved the vowel. It appears, too, that scipe or skip is the same as ship in “friendship," and means the state or condition of being, like the German termi- nation schaft in landschaft and a multitude of other words. So it happens that "landskip" with its letter i recalls the Anglo- Saxon form, while our present "landscape" with its letter a ap- proaches more nearly to the German and Swedish, neither of them having anything to do with scope or "view." view." Possibly, however, some learned etymologist may trace an ultimate con- nection between the Swedish skap and the Greek σкоý; but I do not pretend to go so far back. It is enough for our present purpose to know that "landscape" is a good, sound, Northern word in both its parts, and that our forefathers, who used the now obsolete form "landskip," were not guilty of any fault of spelling, but kept more closely than we do to the ancient scipe. "Land- skip" has been revived by Tennyson both in verse and prose. In the present volume the prevalent form, "landscape," will be adhered to, both because we moderns are more accustomed to it, and because it finishes less abruptly. G 10 LANDSCAPE. N We use the word in two distinct senses, a general and a par- ticular. In the general sense, the word "landscape" without the article means the visible material world, all that can be seen on the surface of the earth by a man who is himself upon the sur- face; and in the special sense, a landscape" means a piece of the earth's surface that can be seen at once; and it is always understood that this piece will have a certain artistic unity or suggestion of unity in itself. 66 Although the word refers to the natural land, it does not exclude any human works that are upon the land. A landscape-painter is not confined to the works of Nature. If he paints a river, he may also represent the bridges that span it, and the castles or cities that are erected on its banks. In its general sense, "land- scape" is also understood to include lakes, and even the sea, be- cause land and water are often visible at the same time. Strictly speaking, a view of the open sea, far out of sight of any shore, can hardly be called a landscape, it is a waterscape; but for the sake of convenience the generic term "landscape" is supposed to include everything that is seen upon the surface of the globe. Views from the summits of lofty mountains or from a balloon may come under the term "landscape ; landscape;" but they are hardly landscapes, they are panoramas. Even in the flattest country, or in the midst of the ocean, we may see mountain scenery of the greatest magnificence when there is a full moon; but as the lunar mountains and valleys are only visible to us from above (if there are such relations as above and below between planet and planet), we are, as it were, up in a balloon at a tremendous height, whence we look down into the lunar valleys; and we see them in such a way that not one of the great circuses Tycho, Tacitus, Abulfeda-constitutes, for us, a landscape. When- ever an attempt has been made to represent the landscapes of the moon, the draughtsman has supposed himself there with his stool, and drawing the clear sharp details of the cloudless moun- tains in the unbreathable ether. A landscape always supposes. the personal presence of a human observer. When Milton's Raphael wings his flight between the "angelic quires" and out through the open gate of heaven, he first sees Earth as a distant star; then her lands appear All Malag "As when by night the glass Of Galileo, less assured, observes Imagined lands and regions in the moon." G A G A DEFINITION ATTEMPTED. II This is not landscape yet, but astronomy. The next com- parison brings us nearer to landscape : "Or pilot, from amidst the Cyclades, Delos or Samos first appearing, kens A cloudy spot.” Gradually the flying angel comes "within soar Of towering eagles." After that we have the real terrestrial landscape, when (6 on the eastern cliff of Paradise He lights, and now is come Into the blissful field, through groves of myrrh, And flowering odors, cassia, nard, and balm; A wilderness of sweets." This, at last, is the landscape that we know, a place where there is a cliff, and a field, and odorous groves. Here our human spirit, after the strain of effort in following the far flight of Raphael as he "sails between worlds and worlds,” alights with profound contentment. We are on the earth as it is known to us, the dear land we were born upon and where all our years have passed. Not that it is all a paradise, but there are para- dises in it still. By the help of our modern knowledge we may imagine the approach to the earth as it would appear to one of us if he were permitted to fly like Raphael through interstellar space. It would first become visible as a mere point of light, then as a remote planet appears to us; after that it would shine and daz- zle like Venus; then we should begin to see its geography as we do that of the moon; and at last, when we come within three terrestrial diameters, or about twenty thousand miles, we should distinguish the white icy poles, the vast blue oceans, the continents and larger islands glistening like gold in the sun- shine, and the silver-bright wandering fields of cloud. Nearer still, we should see the fresh green of Britain and Ireland, the dark greens of Norwegian and Siberian forests, the grayer and browner hues of countries parched by the sun, the shining courses of the great rivers. All this would be intensely, incon- 12 LANDSCAPE. • › M ་ ceivably interesting; it would be an unparalleled experience in the study of physical geography, but it would not yet be land- scape. On a still nearer approach we should see the earth as from a balloon, and the land would seem to hollow itself be- neath us like a great round dish, but the hills would be scarcely perceptible. We should still say, "It is not landscape yet." At length, after touching the solid earth, and looking round us, and seeing trees near us, fields spread out before, and blue hills far away, we should say, "This, at last, is landscape. It is not the world as the angels may see it from the midst of space, but as mẹn see it who dwell in it, and cultivate it, and love it.” There is a passage in Emerson where he ingeniously observes that although fields and farms belong to this man or that, the landscape is nobody's private property. Even on those vast estates in the Highlands of Scotland where all that the eye em- even to the distant mountains may belong to a single owner, you have never the feeling that he possesses the land- scape; and probably he has not that feeling himself, but looks upon the landscape as something distinct from acreage, and lordship, and rent. The land appertains to its lord, but the landscape belongs to him who, for the time being, enjoys it. As the aspect of Nature is continually changing, it might even be maintained that what we call one landscape is, in fact, a suc- cession of landscapes; and that those which we miss out of the endless series are lost to us irrecoverably, like the dead whom we have never known. M Gagg ILLUSIONS. 13 CHAPTER II. ILLUSIONS. TH HE whole subject of landscape is a world of illusions, the only thing about it that is certainly not an illusion being the effect upon the mind of each particular human being who fancies that he sees something, and knows that he feels some- thing, when he stands in the presence of Nature. His feelings are a reality, but with regard to that which causes them it is hard to say how much is reality and how much a phantom of the mind. Color, like sound, is a sensation caused by vibrations, the most obvious difference being that the vibrations producing color are in the thin ether and those conveying sound in heavier and denser media, as air, or water, or aqueous vapors. Where there is no eye there is no color, and in the absence of an ear there cannot be what we call sound. With the decline of light color changes, hues take different relative values, and in the ab- sence of light they altogether cease to exist. The farmer fan- cies that a carrot retains its carroty hues in the dark, only that he is unable to see them for want of light; but in reality the carrot is colorless in the dark, and even in the light it has only the property of exciting in certain eyes, not in all, the chromatic sensations of red and yellow. If we go a little farther in observing what the color-sensations really amount to, we find that they vary to infinity with different human idiosyncrasies; whence we are driven to the inevitable conclusion that no human being has risen to any fixed standard of color outside of himself. All that a man knows about it is, that in the presence of certain natural objects or effects he ex- periences certain sensations, and beyond this he cannot go. What is called the cultivation of the color-faculty appears to be simply the artificial inducement of a higher degree of nervous 14 LANDSCAPE. susceptibility, by which those nerves that act in such a man- ner as to produce the sensation we call color arrive at an artificial state, in which they can be set in motion by a more feeble stimulus. But the cultivation of a bundle of nerves does not prove that external Nature is delicately colored; it only proves that the cultivated nerves are capable of acting in a cer- tain way under a stimulus too slight to affect nerves in a natural condition. What the real nature of that stimulus is we cannot tell; we only know that it conveys the sensation of a colored world but this sensation is so far from being a reliable report of some positive reality that critics and painters who have been. cultivating the color-sense assiduously ever since they were boys arrive at the most contradictory conclusions, some of them af- firming that certain pictures are charming and true to nature, while others say that the very same pictures are vinegar to the eyes and set the teeth on edge. Nothing is more common in the mutual criticisms of artists than the accusation of a natural incapacity for seeing color. The evidence that we possess, in the Homeric poems and elsewhere, of a degree of color-perception very inferior in deli- cacy to our own, points to the inevitable conclusion that we ourselves may be still very far from having attained the ultimate development of this faculty. In some future time the human race may reach such a high degree of sensitiveness that it may be aware of distinctions in sensation at present beyond our ex- perience, and words may be invented for shades and varieties of hue that would have no meaning for us if we heard them with the fullest explanation. Our descriptions of natural color- ing would be alike unintelligible to an ancient Greek and a Scottish Highlander, for both of whom, alike, anything rather dark was "black." It is only in modern times, in consequence of analytical habits that we have acquired from our interest in painting, that we have become able to distinguish between the nature of a hue and the intensity of light. The poverty of color in Homer has become one of the commonplaces of criticism. In comparison with Scott, Homer is almost destitute of color, but the evolution of the color-sense did not by any means end with the author of "Waverley." It is still progressing. Compare William Black in this respect with Sir Walter. In consequence of modern culture by means of painting (practically, or by the ob- servation of what others do in painting and that interest in such ILLUSIONS. 15 doings which is a new characteristic of modern life) William Black has reached a power of feeling color-sensations and de- scribing them which is evidently a great advance on the com- paratively insensitive work of his great predecessor. Not that Scott's coloring seems untrue to us, so far as it goes, but it was simple and elementary. Tennyson, again, is a much richer color- ist than Wordsworth. I shall have more to say upon this subject later. For the present it is enough to note that we must be continually ex- posed to illusions about color, both because we differ from our own contemporaries and because there is every reason to be- lieve that our degree of nervous sensitiveness is not the highest to which the human race may be slowly advancing. Besides these reasons it is certain that we continually fall into the error of attributing to inanimate objects chromatic qualities that are merely sensations in ourselves, and there is absolutely no reason for supposing that if we reached the highest development of which our optical nerves may be capable we should, even then, be able to appreciate the full range of natural coloring, if there were such a thing as natural coloring at ali. Let us now examine something more positively ascertainable. If the reader will consult his own recollections of what he has seen in Nature he will recognize the curious truth that very much of the impressiveness of natural scenery depends upon the degree in which mass appears to predominate over detail. An extremely detailed view of anything is rarely, if ever, im- pressive. In perfectly clear weather a mountain does not look nearly so grand as when its parts are detached by mist and its nearer details only partially revealed amidst broad spaces of shade. So it is with the other elements of landscape; they lose in impressiveness as the details become more visible. But the visibility of detail depends in a great measure upon the con- dition of our own eyesight. A man with very clear, penetrating vision, sees thousands of details that are quite invisible to an- other, whence the strange but inevitable conclusion that the possession of very good eyesight may be a hindrance to those feelings of sublimity that exalt the poetic imagination. We may go farther in the direction of this thought, and ask our- selves how much of the landscape is in Nature and how much in ourselves, when a conceivable increase of visual power be- yond that possessed by the most penetrating human eyes would ! 16 LANDSCAPE. reveal millions of other details in Nature. Nay, we may even try the experiment by means of artificial aids to vision, and give ourselves, with the help of an optician, the eyes of an eagle, to the total destruction of that breadth of effect which is so much valued by artists, and which really does make Nature better than if we saw more of it. The degrees of darkness and light may seem to be more positive and ascertainable than the varieties of hue. They attracted attention earlier; they can be perceived by less educated organs and by a more primitive mind. But are we quite sure that we see light and dark in the same way? Are we sure that what each of us perceives in Nature as obscurity is really obscure in itself? May there not be an illusion here due to our own organs? A vessel is sailing near the shore in the deepening twilight, and a passenger, who has very good eyes, affirms that there is not light enough to see the rocks. Not light enough? There is plenty of light still, but there is not eye enough. The captain takes his night-glass to supply this defi- ciency, and it is as if the day had become younger by an hour. He sees the rocks plainly, and the cottages in the little fishing- village, and reads the sign over the inn-door. The nocturnal animals see sufficiently even when it is darker still. They bear witness to the existence of light in Nature when man denies it. Even among human beings there are the widest differences in the power of adaptation to low degrees of light. The prudent old mother reproves her daughter for spoiling her eyes by read- ing in the twilight. 'My dear," she says, "I am sure you can- not possibly see, and will ruin your sight by straining and trying." The daughter answers that she sees quite well. Which of the two is right as to the legibility of the book at that hour? Each is right for herself, but neither of them could tell us how much or how little illumination Nature had really afforded. (( If color and light are doubtful it may be presumed that we are on safe ground when we come to form; but even here it may easily be shown that idiosyncrasy plays its part, and that people do not see the same forms in the same objects. If ten different landscape-painters were set to draw the same moun- tain from the same place they would produce ten different forms. One of them would unintentionally exaggerate its rug- gedness, another its height; one of them would be struck by a certain feature, and give it disproportionate prominence; -- ILLUSIONS. 17 another would scarcely notice it, and mark it only by a slight indication. An infinite variety of sentiments and preferences affect our estimate of the shapes of things. Custom has an enormous influence upon that estimate, as we see by fashion in dress, which makes us believe that the fashions of ten years ago were ludicrously out of shape. Even certain peculiarities of structure in the human body rise into fashion for a time and af- fect our estimates of the natural figure itself. It is at one time the fashion to be slim, and then a thin person has a good chance of being thought elegant. At another time plumpness is in fashion, and then the same person would look, not elegant, but meagre. Are we sure that with these varying estimates of the same form we really see the same form at different times? Do we not, rather, see different forms with the eyes of imagi- nation? The effect of experience upon our estimate of grandeur in the permanent features of landscape is enough to convince us how much of that grandeur must be in our own temporary way of looking at things, and in the preparation for seeing that we have undergone. Some hill in the north of England that im- pressed us forcibly with the ideas of size and sublimity in boy- hood, seems tame and bare in mature life when we have learned from the Alps what Nature is in her magnificence. Even the very lines of the minor hill appear to have altered in the mean while. They are not so steep as they used to be, they rise with less audacity, the crags are no longer the awful precipices of our youth. We may retain feelings of affection towards the scenes that were connected with our earlier years, but they are accompanied by a feeling of disenchantment akin to that we reluctantly acknowledge when some human mind that once seemed to us almost august in its greatness is seen to shrink to very ordinary dimensions. The mere effect of perspective is a powerful cause of illusion. Sometimes in the course of travel we have seen a romantic cas- tle or a little medieval city with walls and towers perched far away in the hazy distance on its own rocky height. The temp- tation to go out of our settled itinerary and visit the castle or city is at times all but irresistible; but it is better not to yield, better to carry the beautiful and romantic vision away with us like a dream, or like a description in the pages of a poet, than to go close to it and see the far less inspiring reality. Some- 2 18 LANDSCAPE. times we take a middle course, we resist the temptation and carry away the poetic impression; but we say, "I must visit that land again and go to that wonderful castle." During the years that intervene it is well; we have the glamour of the vis- ion and a hope, but in an evil day we go to the place again and have leisure to see it near, and then it becomes impossible to conjure up the mysterious distance any more. A reality has taken its place, a reality of hard stone walls and a hundred architectural defects that obtrude themselves importunately on the memory. It is with the perspective of landscape as with historical per- spective. If the life of ancient Athens could be made acces- sible to us and visible in all its details as that of Paris is to-day, we should see the meanness and folly of small intellects where now we admire the majesty of great ones. The masterpieces of architecture in marble would not conceal from us the narrow and wretched tenements of the common people; the mobility of their political passions, the ferocity of their hatreds, the un- reasonableness of their expectations, would all be as apparent to us as are the same faults in our Parisian neighbors; and the strong disapproval with which sinless London now looks upon sinful Paris might be in part diverted to the vices practised in the City of the Violet Crown. Of all the illusions connected with landscape, there is not one so prevalent among sentimental persons as the transference of their own tender feelings to the natural world. The scenes that make them melancholy are spoken of and written about in prose and poetry as if they were melancholy in themselves, while those that awaken cheerful feelings are described as merry, and even "laughing: " "There mildly dimpling, Ocean's cheek Reflects the tints of many a peak Caught by the laughing tides that lave Those Edens of the eastern wave." Islands and waters are compared to beauties who smile charm- ingly in their sleep : "'Tis moonlight over Oman's sea, Her banks of pearl and palmy isles Bask in the night-beams beauteously, And her blue waters sleep in smiles.” · ILLUSIONS. 19 There is no limit to the number of these expressions in litera- ture; not that poets and other imaginative writers really believe that inanimate Nature either mourns or rejoices, "Not that, in sooth, o'er mortal urn Those things inanimate can mourn; "" but that men find it a heightening of human pleasure and a deepening of human sorrow to associate external Nature with both, and that there really are in Nature certain moods which seem to reflect the moods of the human mind, and may easily be confounded with them when there is an artistic reason for doing so. This anthropomorphism exists in great force in sim- ple minds that have a strong affection for Nature, or for their native country (when it is country and not some hideous over- populated town), and it is not always easy for more analytical minds to divest themselves of it. It is not a false sentiment in simple people, but it may be fostered till it becomes a false sen- timent in the intellectual, and it is better for them to be rid of it. There is no valid reason for supposing any sympathy with human sorrow or any participation in human happiness among the objects that compose natural landscape, or the effects of light and gloom by which they are made to appear so different at different times. There is, no doubt, a remarkably close anal- ogy between the moods of changeful Nature and the caprices of human passion, or between the steady brightness of a fine cli- mate and the serenity of an equal temper joined to a clear in- telligence, but there is nothing more than an analogy. There is not even any great educating power in the appearances of Nature, for we do not find, on investigating the subject, that the populations of those countries where Nature is most cheerful and most beautiful lead always cheerful or beautiful lives. They are often far more dull and far less capable of elevating them- selves to moral and intellectual beauty than the inhabitants of less favored lands. This contrast between man and Nature has been felt by travellers in beautiful regions where "all, save the spirit of man, is divine." The opposite contrast, between steadi- ness in human character and an unreliability in climate that im- perils every harvest, may be seen in the northern parts of our own island. When all illusions are brushed away the truth still remains that for some minds the natural world of landscape has a perpetual 20 LANDSCAPE. interest and charm, either as a reflection of their own moods or as a stimulus that induces them. Though philosophy may have done its worst, and conclusively proved that Nature is destitute alike of melancholy and cheerful feelings, it is still true that for some of us an effect of light may be the suggestion of bright imaginings, and an effect of gloom the cause of a vague and tender melancholy or a gravity descending to depression. These consequences are indeed, and must ever remain, independent of the existence of sentiment in hills and clouds or of real anger in the unconscious waves of the sea. It is enough that in the presence of certain objects or effects of Nature we feel certain influences on the mind. The writer of this volume is and has always been only too sensitive to these influences, too sensi- tive, because it is not desirable that inanimate Nature should gain an excessive influence over us; but however great it may have been in his own case, he has no remnant of a belief that inani- mate Nature is either kindly disposed towards him in fair weather or angry at him in foul. He has been in a storm at sea when a mast was carried away; he has seen a whirlwind strong enough to lift up stones; and he has been within a few yards of a tree when it was riven and killed by a thunderbolt: but these natural occurrences did not appear to indicate hostility to man. The explosions of the natural world are not dynamite outrages. our feelings of AFFECTION FOR NATURE. 21 CHAPTER III. OUR FEELINGS OF AFFECTION FOR NATURE. A 66 FTER what has been said on the subject of illusions, it may seem almost superfluous to occupy time in consider- ing such a question as the reasonableness of our affection for Nature. Evidently," it may be said," such affectionate feel- ings towards that which cannot return affection must be one of those illusions to which the imaginative temperament is so fre- quently exposed." When, however, we observe closely the condition of mind which is accompanied by the affection for landscape, we dis- cover that it is compatible with a very sceptical and illusion- destroying habit of investigation. A man may be perfectly convinced that rocks and trees have no affection for him, and still he may be affectionately attached to certain places. We give to some animals, especially to horses, a degree of affection far exceeding any that they are able to return, and there is even a pathetic interest for ourselves in being clearly aware that the lower nature knows not how thoughtfully it is cared for. With the single exception of the dog, all our pets among the lower animals are in this position relatively to ourselves. They appre- ciate our kindness a little, but have no conception of the extent of it. The old horse can never be aware that his master has put himself to inconvenience rather than impose upon him an effort beyond his strength. He does not know that his food costs more than he is able to earn. We do not expect any gratitude for these kindnesses, and we are capable of feeling attachment for animals even less capable of returning it than the horse. I remember feeling a sort of pathetic affection for a toad. I had found out a sort of whistling that he seemed to like, and he would slowly move towards me in my garden, when he became a patient if not an intelligent auditor. He was not 22 LANDSCAPE. beautiful, yet I looked upon him with a friendly feeling as an humble fellow-creature situated physically and intellectually at some distance below the human level, but not absolutely with- out sympathy for what is musical in humanity. My poor, hid- eous little friend got crushed by accident, and I mourned for him. The garden-seat where I had sat and whistled for him was no longer quite the same for me. Others have established inti- macies with mice and spiders, and we constantly see lovers of plants who take almost as much interest in their health and wel- fare as if they were children. We acquire such a fondness for old trees that we are hurt and offended if the landowner cuts them down. Nobody supposes that there can be any reci- procity here. There is no illusion, as there may be with regard to animals. From the tree to the ground it grows upon, the transition is not difficult, so we love anything in Nature that has some distinguishing feature of its own. It would be impossible, I suppose, to love one square mile in the middle of the Atlantic better than the square mile next to it; and it might be difficult to have any particular affection for a spot in the midst of the desert; but the two deserts of land and water have inspired the most passionate, the most enthusiastic attachments. Here the affections attach themselves, not to a small place, but to great, dominant characteristics such as the sublimity of bound- lessness, the absence of restriction. In narrower and more con- fined scenery the smaller the features the better chance they have of fixing themselves permanently in our hearts. A little stream like the Duddon, a little lake like Grasmere or Rydal Water, wins the affections of a poet more surely than the Mis- sissippi or Lake Superior. It is observed, in the same way, that London rarely inspires that intense sentiment of local patriot- ism which has been the pride of inferior cities. To understand with accuracy the nature of our affection for places, we have to distinguish between that affection which is due to association with persons whom we have loved, with the recollections of childhood and youth, and that other affection for places which exists entirely by itself. The very existence of the latter may be doubted. It may be affirmed that in all cases our love of Nature is closely connected with our love for human be- ings, and that we never really attach ourselves to scenes that do not remind us of people who have been dear to us. No one denies the immense power of such associations. They have OUR FEELINGS OF AFFECTION FOR NATURE. 23 often been employed by the poets, and never more beautifully than by Tennyson when he heard again, after a long interval, the sound of a waterfall at Cauteretz and he thought of the dead friend who had heard it with him long ago: K "All along the valley while I walked to-day, The two-and-thirty years were a mist that rolls away; For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead; And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree The voice of the dead was a living voice to me. "" In this case a certain affection for the waterfall would be a natural sentiment G "Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead." One might love a waterfall for less than that; but what is to be said of those cases of sudden attachment to landscapes, or objects in landscape, that we see for the first time? It has probably happened to the reader, as it has happened to me, to fall in love with spots that had absolutely no association with his previous existence. We travel half listlessly, wearied by the repetition of many scenes that we have not the slightest desire to revisit, when all at once we come upon some spot from which it is difficult to tear ourselves away, and the longer we remain there the greater the difficulty of leaving. My first and most durable attachment of that kind was for Loch Awe, and to this day my passion is not easily explicable. It was hardly sug- gested by literature, for Scott would have sent me rather to Loch Katrine, Wordsworth to the English lakes, Byron to Geneva. It can scarcely have been suggested by art, for I had seen few pictures of the lake except the usual studies of Kilchurn; and it was entirely disengaged from personal associations, as none of my friends at that time had ever lived in Argyllshire. As for historical associations, which often give us a first inducement to interest ourselves in a place, the few legends about Highland chiefs and clansmen that are connected with Loch Awe are far inferior in authenticity and interest to the history of Craven. However, it so happened that I loved Loch Awe, and do still, most unreasonably. 'T is an unrequited affection! The peat- stained waters of that gloomy pool would drown me with the most complete indifference. I have not even the consolation of Voltaire, who could be proud of his lake and say, “Mon lac est le • 24 LANDSCAPE. premier!" My lake is not the first, nor is it even the most beau- tiful. Lucerne is incomparably grander, Leman far more spa- cious and cerulean; but they are nothing to me in comparison with the waters that surround Fraoch Elan, and Ardhonnel, and Inishail ! The affection for landscape may be confounded with the pa- triotic sentiment that afflicts us with nostalgia when we are away from our own home. That sentiment includes, no doubt, strong feelings of attachment to local features of landscape, but it is distinct from the true landscape passion which, as we have just seen, may be independent of personal associations. The two may be independent, or they may exist together, and the dou- ble power of them may be brought to bear upon a single scene. Scott had a very strong affection for landscape, especially when associated with romantic histories and ruins; and we have it on his own evidence that he had this sentiment in connection with places outside the range of his local affections. "The romantic feelings," he said, "which I have described as predominating in my mind gradually rested upon and associated themselves with the grand features of the landscape around me; and the historical incidents or traditional legends connected with many of them gave to my admiration a sort of intense impression of reverence, which at times made my heart feel too big for its bosom. From this time the love of natural beauty, more espe- cially when combined with ancient ruins, or remains of our fathers' piety or splendor, became with me an insatiable pas- sion, which I would willingly have gratified by travelling over half the globe." In these last words we have clear evidence that Scott's passion for romantic landscape was not confined to his own country; but he had in addition to it a powerful local passion also; and when the two were focussed together on one object, their combined intensity produced a fire of enthusiasm whereof cooler and more indifferent natures cannot have any adequate conception. The country around Abbotsford usually disappoints the ordinary tourist, who rather wonders that Scott should have selected it. The tourist does not think much of the Tweed, nor of the Eildon Hills; but Scott loved them doubly, both as landscape with romantic associations, and as the scenery around his home. Who does not remember that pathetic return from Italy when Scott came home to die, and especially that awakening from a state of apparent insensibility OUR FEELINGS OF AFFECTION FOR NATURE. 25 in his carriage? "As we descended the vale of Gala he began to gaze about him, and by degrees it was obvious that he was recognizing the features of that familiar landscape. Presently he murmured a name or two,- Gala Water, surely, Buckholm, Torwoodlee. As we rounded the hill, and the outline of the Eildons burst on him, he became greatly excited; and when, turning himself on the couch, the eye caught at length his own towers, at the distance of a mile, he sprang up with a cry of delight." Nor was his affection for places that of the eye only. Sounds were sweet to his ear if connected with what he loved in Nature; and the sweetest of them all was "the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles," distinctly audible through the open window of that chamber at Abbotsford on the sunny day of September when Sir Walter breathed his last. Endless quotations might be collected from the poets in evidence of their affection for streams and hills, and for particu- lar valleys, often of small account in the physical geography of the world. Men of colder nature may believe that these poetical professions are not more than half sincere, a trick of the poet's craft; but the truth seems rather to be that affection can scarcely allow itself public expression in prose, while, on the contrary, it is quite free to utter itself with the most passion- ate force in poetry, so that a poet may describe his feelings adequately, when a prose-writer would either avoid alluding to them, or else pass them over with slight and inadequate men- tion. In prose we have something of the reserve about matters of feeling that regulates the expression of them in conversation ; or if we express our feelings in all their strength we are com- pelled to do so through fictitious characters. There is a certain modesty that prevents a prose-writer from laying his heart open to the public gaze. In poetry the case is different. There the use of metre and the assumption of poetic style are held to be in themselves a sufficient disguise, so that the private man utters his feelings behind that mask with a frankness that would be impossible without it. It is only necessary to mention "Childe Harold" and "In Memoriam as conspicuous examples of this absence of reticence in verse. I should say, then, that instead of being clever actors, who assume feelings for the occasion, the poets who have expressed a great love for Nature were men who spoke truly and from the heart, by the privilege of their order, what others have often felt but dared not venture to "" 26 LANDSCAPE.' express; and the proof that this must be the true view of the case is that this poetic affectionateness finds an echo among a multitude of readers. The permanent popularity of the familiar ode of Horace, "Ad Fontem Bandusiae," is due to the affection for a natural scene which is expressed in it, and which has ex- cited such tender sympathy in later times with reference to other fountains and rivulets that the proud, affectionate prophecy was not made in vain : M "Fies nobilium tu quoque fontium, Me dicente cavis impositam ilicem Saxis; unde loquaces Lymphae desiliunt tuae." In our own times the poet who for the finish of his workman- ship may best be compared with Horace (while he excels him in imaginative power) has said his farewell to a "cold rivulet" in verses that may be read as long as it shall flow: "But here will sigh thine alder tree. And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, For ever and for ever. "A thousand suns will stream on thee, A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever." But however truly Tennyson may have loved this nameless rivulet, or Burns the Nith and the Doon, or Wordsworth the Duddon, there can be no affection among the poets so heroic in its constancy as that of a hard-working landscape-painter. The poets feel, no doubt, deeply and sincerely, but their pas- sion expresses itself with little effort, a few laconic verses here and there in Virgil, an ode or two of Horace, an occasional stanza by Burns. The landscape-painter works for months and years to express the strength and intensity of his affection, and often forgets that Nature cares less for him than he for her, gathering seeds of death in long sittings by river and mere. There was a French landscape-painter in our time, Chintreuil, who was not a great artist (as his gifts were not of a very high order, though his admirers have made a place for him,) but in simple affection for Nature he has had few equals. There is a little river called the Bièvre that flows towards Paris, and Chin- treuil loved it so that he would go and sit by it at dawn, when S OUR FEELINGS OF AFFECTION FOR NATURE. 27 the grass was wet with dew, and stay there till the late twilight, insufficiently clad, and unconscious of his danger, passing through a hundred changes of temperature. At length he was taken ill with pleurisy, and never had any real health afterwards. Hundreds of obscure workers run the same risk every year, lov- ing their nooks and corners of the great globe, and leaving comfort to bake themselves in the noonday sun or be chilled by the evening dew. . Their toils increase their affection. The more they work on a spot the more beauty they perceive in it ; and every little place that they have painted becomes in a manner their own, like a field that some hardy emigrant has fenced off for himself in the wilderness. It is very difficult to give any satisfactory reason for these strong attachments to certain scenes, attachments strong enough in some cases to affect men even to tears. After trying to get to the bottom of the matter if possible, I have arrived at the following theory, which is not a complete explanation. Each of us is constituted with a special idiosyncrasy related in some mysterious way to a certain class of natural scenery ; and when we find ourselves in a scene answering to our idiosyn- crasy, the mind feels itself at home there and rapidly attaches itself by affection. We may go a step farther, and ascertain how certain tendencies in the mind lead us to certain pref- erences. There is, for example, on one side the love of liberty and on the other the desire for shelter and protection. The love of liberty would lead us to enjoy great spaces; the desire for shelter would cause us to seek rather for enclosures, and for large natural objects that cast shadows. The lovers of liberty feel a delight in the vast horizons of the ocean and the desert. Give us a ship, and we will merrily sail "O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, Our thoughts as boundless and our souls as free." There, at last, we shall have done with these walls and hedges that hem us in on every side! It is something to be sure that we have space enough. "We know the merry world is round, And we may sail for evermore." To other minds the idea of unlimited space is oppressive. They would prefer something like the Happy Valley of " Rasselas," 28 LANDSCAPE. separated from the vast outer world by a defence of mountains, and containing within itself all that is necessary to a peaceful and protected existence. Here, then, we have a difference of feeling at the outset that must lead to a wide difference of choice, but in the love of limited scenery there may be many varieties. The lover of sublimity would desire a valley or a plain surrounded by mountains of noble form and magnificent elevation; the lover of tranquillity would. prefer more modest hills rising without ruggedness, and covered either with green pastures or rich woods. The lover of size would like his hori- zon, though limited, to be vast like the lake-ward prospect from Lausanne; but the lover of snugness would prefer a well-shel- tered corner in some beautiful Derbyshire valley. There are people without any strong passion for the sublime, who have a natural preference for confined and unexciting scenery on a small scale; and there are others who are so constituted that the melancholy, bleak, and inhospitable aspects of wild scenery seem to answer to some need in their own minds. These gen- eral tastes and tendencies must in a great measure determine at least the direction in which we go to seek the landscape of our ideal affection. The differences of taste are endless. How often are we surprised by them when some rich man has the most perfect liberty of choice, and goes to spend months of every year in a place that seems to us unattractive! This sur- prise is continually excited by the way in which landscape- painters fall in love with strange little out-of-the-way places that nobody but painters would examine. In that kind of travel- the only rational kind which per- mits the wanderer to pause and look about him, we come upon certain places that belong to us by a mysterious natural kinship. It is almost as if one could be cousin to a place. After the first introduction the intimacy is soon formed, and the spot will be remembered for ever. Now, however deeply and inextri- cably we may be plunged in illusions, however we may be sur- rounded by them on every side, I hold that there can be no illusion about the affinities that we feel. If we are conscious of a certain suitableness, whether in persons or places, the suit- ableness must be a real relation, whether we are able to account for it or not; and if there is incompatibility, and our natural instincts warn us of its existence, it is assuredly useless to strive against it, however unreasonable it may seem. * our feeLINGS OF AFFECTION FOR NATURE. 29 I hold it to be one of the greatest elements in happiness to live, as Wordsworth did, in the midst of scenes that are exactly adapted to our needs; or at least, if that cannot be, to live with- in a traversable distance from them. Among the minor mis- fortunes for which nobody is much pitied, and which are far heavier than they seem to others, may be included that com- mon one of being compelled to remain (generally for reasons of poverty or occupation) in a country that we naturally dislike. The influence of landscape upon happiness is far greater than is generally believed. There is a nostalgia which is not exactly a longing for one's birthplace, but a weary dissatisfaction with the Nature that lies around us, and a hopeless desire for the Nature that we were born to enjoy. 30 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER IV. THE EFFECTS OF OUR PHYSICAL CONDITION ON THE LOVE OF NATURE. A N association of ideas over which we have little control establishes itself between our own physical condition and the external world, affecting an appreciation of natural sublimity and beauty, while it mingles more or less unconsciously with all our recollections of Nature. I have a friend who has the instincts of a traveller in an ex- traordinary degree, and he tells me that the ideal state for him would be that of a pure intelligence disengaged from physical conditions like a ghost, and able to transport itself at will to any sublime or beautiful scene in Nature. Such a being would not have to think about luncheon and dinner; he would not have to make compromises with human weakness; but might visit with equal independence both "Greenland's icy mountains" and (6 India's coral strand." The idea is tempting, and my friend has the satisfaction of believing that it will be realized in a future state. His travel- ling instincts are so predominant, that his idea of heaven is sim- ply the liberty to visit suns and planets as a disembodied spirit. We were looking at the stars together on a clear evening, when he affirmed positively that he would explore them all in the course of that happy eternity of cosmic travelling which was to succeed to his imprisonment on earth. To descend once more to our present condition, I should say that the natural landscape is a bundle of relations, not only to our minds, but to our bodies also. Our notion of the grandeur of a mountain is closely connected with the fatigue and difficulty of the ascent. The awfulness of a space of desert is due to our knowledge that if travellers suc- cumb to fatigue or thirst while crossing it they must meet their doom; there is nothing for them but death on the burning sands. OUR PHYSICAL CONDITION AND LOVE OF NATURE. 31 The sublimity of great spaces on the planet has been sensibly diminished by our increased mechanical facilities for crossing them. The Atlantic is hardly sublime to passengers in a float- ing hotel that crosses it in a week, but it regains all its old terror and sublimity for a shipwrecked crew in a boat. Yet the ocean itself is the same in both cases, the difference being between man helped by the superhuman strength of steam and man left to his own resources. If we borrow for a moment the imagination of Rabelais, and suppose the existence of a giant a thousand feet high, it is evi- dent that the Lake of Geneva would be to him nothing more than a beautiful swimming-bath, in most parts rather incon- veniently shallow, and seldom deep enough to put him in any danger of drowning. The idea of the enormous depth of the clear water, which is to our minds one of the greatest elements of sublimity connected with the lake, would for him be simply an idea of convenience quite destitute of sublimity. There is no physical power, denied to us by Nature, which we desire so much as that of flight; but the immediate effect of such a power if it were bestowed upon us would be to annihi- late the sublimity of all mountains. With an eagle's power of flight we should ascend Mont Blanc in ten minutes; and as we should be in no danger of falling down crevasses or over preci- pices, such things would hardly attract our attention. If the power of flight were gained by the human race in some future time, the feelings of awe with which we still regard a lofty mountain would become almost unintelligible to our posterity. From these imaginary differences, let us now descend to those which really exist. Man is not a very strong animal, but there is an immense difference between a strong man and a weak one, so that it is not possible for the two to think about Nature in the same way. Each inevitably makes, more or less, unconscious reference to his own feelings of pleasure or fatigue. The strong and hardy man thinks of wild and desolate scenery as a capital region for sport, the weak man inevitably associates with it the idea of dreaded over-exertion. The first is exhila- rated, the other depressed, by the same scenery. The notion of the Highlands of Scotland entertained by strong young Englishmen is that of a huge playground. What can be more delightful than a walk, with gun and dog, and a flask of whiskey in one's pocket, over picturesque miles of moor • 32 LANDSCAPE. in the keen mountain air? What rest is comparable to that of the strong man who has tired himself without exhaustion? He dines heartily in his shooting-lodge at night, and then smokes and rests deliciously till bedtime. Meanwhile, perhaps, there is some weak old Highland woman who has attempted to cross the moor from one wretched tenement in a desolate glen to another wretched tenement in another desolate glen, but the distance has proved too much for her; and while the strong man is talking over the details of his sport, she, poor soul! has given up an effort beyond her strength, and, with a head whirl- ing with giddiness, has lain down on the bleak moorland to clie.¹ What a very different impression those two human beings must receive from the same stretch of Highland heath! The two desires for character in landscape most closely asso- ciated with physical conditions are the desire for wild grandeur, associated with hardihood, or at least with energy, and the desire for softness and amenity associated either with indolence or weak- ness. It is curious that among the classical landscape-painters the two who were most famous and most often referred to in lit- erature should have represented these two great divisions of the physical feelings with extreme distinctness. Salvator Rosa for our grandfathers represented the energetic side of the love of landscape, and Claude the peaceful side. Salvator had the ten- dencies of a powerful physical nature; Claude had the tastes of a gentler and probably weaker nature softened still farther by civilization. The indolence of Horace, the sweet amenity of Virgil, made them in literature the remote ancestors of Claude. It has often suited the designs of poets and novelists to asso- ciate the physical strength and energy of barbarous men with the rude sublimities of Nature, while they as frequently contrive to give delicate and amiable heroines a background of pleasing landscape, often cultivated, and watered by streams that are just strong enough to supply the needs of ladies, and birds, and flowers. When the contrary association is made it is for the sake of contrast. Then the more delicate nature is brought into rude surroundings where the features of the landscape are hard, unsympathetic, and almost cruel, like the fastness of some robber-chief. In landscape-painting it has been the common custom to put the figures of athletic soldiers or brigands in rocky defiles, while 1 This description is not imaginary. OUR PHYSICAL CONDITION AND LOVE OF NATURE. 33 luxuriously dressed ladies and gentlemen are made to walk on softly undulating lawns under the shade of umbrageous trees. A skilful French painter of this century,Compte Calix, invented a sort of earthly paradise in which graceful idlers of both sexes lounged through the hours of sunshine in delightful gardens and groves. The same man may have known in his own person the two kinds of desire in landscape. He may have desired sublime landscape in his strength and a softer landscape when age or illness had taken his strength away. This is one of the advan- tages that may be derived from a varied experience in health. If we were always athletic we should imperfectly understand the merits of low hills, green fields, and restful waters. I think we never appreciate these quiet gifts of Nature until we have en- joyed them during recovery from some exhausting illness. At such times we do not desire tempests and Alpine peaks, but it is delicious to sit on a garden-seat and look across summer meadows. If there are to be mountains at all in such a scene, they ought to be far away, that their cold snows and pitiless precipices may be like a dream of an unreal world.¹ The contrast between what may be called the strong man's landscape and the weak man's landscape has never been more marked than in the difference between the authors of " Manfred" and “The Task." Byron, the strong man, half sailor, half sol- dier, a pugilist, a marksman, and the best swimmer of his time, delighted in every manifestation of strength in Nature. He "made him friends of mountains," he rejoiced in the power of winds and waters. From early youth the love of wild scenery had implanted itself in his mind, and his boyish verses, however poor in comparison with the riper fruits of his genius, expressed in the clearest terms not only the delight in grandeur but an impatience of tameness. (c England! thy beauties are tame and domestic To one who has roamed o'er the mountains afar: Oh for the crags that are wild and majestic! The steep frowning glories of dark Loch na Garr!" The passion for sublime scenery that took possession of Byron in early boyhood remained with him to the last, and he 1 I have seen it stated lately that George Eliot was afraid of mountain scenery, and we know that she was fond of the English Midlands. Her health was not ro- bust, and her mental work often exhausted her; she would therefore probably lack the physical power which is necessary to the full enjoyment of mountains. 3 34 LANDSCAPE. always traced the origin of it to boyish rambles in the land of his maternal ancestors: "He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue, Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace. Long have I roamed through lands which are not mine, Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine, Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep: But 't was not all long ages' lore, nor all Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall; The infant rapture still survived the boy, And Loch na Garr with Ida looked o'er Troy, Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount." Not only did Byron love mountains as the expression of the energy of the earth, but he had the same sympathy with every other expression of energy in Nature. I need not quote the well-known passage about the ocean at the close of "Childe Harold,” but in an earlier stanza there is a brief expression which includes far more of Nature, and perfectly shows the ef- fect of the natural forces on a heart vigorous enough to respond to the mighty pulses of the universe :- C "Ye Elements !-in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted." From this to the physically feeble Cowper the transition is great indeed. The very scenery that Byron disliked as "tame and domestic" is what Cowper describes with mildly observant affection. One does not doubt his sincerity. He spoke truly in the lines: "Thou know'st my praise of Nature most sincere, And that my raptures are not conjured up To serve occasions of poetic pomp But genuine." The raptures are genuine enough, no doubt, but not very ex- citing. The poet describes the Ouse "slow winding through a level plain of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er." He feels "The grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear, Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote." OUR PHYSICAL CONDITION and love oF NATURE. 35 Finally, he argues that these quiet scenes must be beautiful because they please him every day :— "Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years: Praise justly due to those that I describe." The inspiration, we perceive, has been of a nature so little exalting that it does not save the poet from falling into plain prose in the concluding verse. In "The Garden” the opening lines reveal the author's taste for a smooth and civilized tran- quillity, his dislike to adventure. He compares himself to a horseman who, after wandering "in thickets and in brakes," feels his spirits rise when he discovers "A greensward smooth, And winds his way with pleasure and with ease.” After an allusion to the indulgence of a satiric tendency comes the exact expression of his physical tastes, that are made typical of intellectual prudence. Observe how precisely they are the tastes of a weak man, how the same weakness that makes him appreciate the sofa leads him to gentle and seques- tered scenes in Nature: "'T were wiser far For me, enamoured of sequestered scenes And charmed with rural beauty, to repose Where chance may throw me, beneath elm or vine, My languid limbs, when summer sears the plains; Or, when rough winter rages, on the soft And sheltered Sofa, while the nitrous air Feeds a blue flame and makes a cheerful hearth.” 36 LANDSCAPE. March 1./98 (6 CHAPTER V. THE POWer of NATURE OVER US. IN N one of Lacordaire's bursts of eloquence he exclaimed, J'ai dit adieu à l'océan, aux fleuves, et aux montagnes." The passage has produced a widely different effect on dif- ferent hearers or readers. To some it appears a melancholy abandonment of the world, to others it may take the more culpable aspect of a wilful closing of the mind against Divine influences acting upon us through God's creation, and it is likely in all cases to shock or sadden the hearer just at first. We can imagine the adieu to Nature from the lips of a dying man on the eve of the inevitable separation from everything terrestrial; but it is more difficult to realize without pain the idea of a bright and vigorous intellect deliberately turning away from the perennial freshness of the natural world, and entering some gloomy prison-house from which the beauty of all things was to be excluded. Lacordaire's own idea was not that of imprisonment, but emancipation. After the release from the influences of material beauty, he was to be freer for the pursuit of that moral beauty which he regarded as by far the more excellent of the two. His renunciation of Nature was at the same time an asceticism and an escape. We may have no personal sympathy with either of these impulses. We may feel no desire to bid adieu to sea, rivers, or mountains, and yet understand Lacordaire's sentiment without sharing it. The natural universe has a certain influence over us which may become a predominant power, and it is in- telligible that some minds may find this power an interference with what seem to them higher or more important avocations. A landscape-painter is a person over whose existence the power of natural beauty is so strong that he is enslaved by it, often in opposition to manifest worldly interests. A young man THE POWER OF NATURE OVER us. 37 who renounces a lucrative business poverty and landscape- painting is the victim of natural beauty, and even in this pursuit there are degrees in the completeness of slavery. Those for whom Art is first and Nature only a mine of materials, are much less the slaves of Nature than those others who are fasci- nated by her perfection till they pass toilsome years in the sim- ple copyism of matter. Imagination half emancipates the artist, admiration without imagination enslaves him. Many readers will remember with what rebellious energy Blake made his declaration of independence. He would not be enslaved by the natural world. He did not bid adieu to it like Lacordaire; but looked at it, and through it to something else which was the mirror of his mental existence. Blake re- proached Wordsworth with almost deifying Nature; and thought he was often in his works an atheist with regard to the true God.¹ According to Blake, atheism consisted in worshipping the natural world; "which same natural world, properly speak- ing, is nothing real, but a mere illusion produced by Satan." Everything," he said, "is atheism which assumes the reality of the natural and unspiritual world." It may readily be supposed how cordially Blake would have approved the determination of Lacordaire to turn his back on the scenes of earth and his face towards a religious ideal. Even from the artistic point of view Blake hated and avoided Nature. "Natural objects," he said, "always did, and now do, weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me. Wordsworth must know that what he writes valuable is not to be found in Nature." 66 The antagonism between the natural world and certain orders of minds in search of an ideal has been very completely stated by Victor de Laprade in his interesting volume on "Le Senti- ment de la Nature avant le Christianisme." His views are not always mine, but he has met the difficulties of the problem in his own way, and has clearly seen the antagonism that separates many good and able men from that Nature which seemed to Wordsworth so desirable a friend for man. Victor de Laprade did not disapprove of the early feeling about Nature which first took possession of the awakening human mind. That feeling seemed to him both poetical and pious. The astonishment of the infantine man in the presence of · 1 These sayings of Blake are quoted from Crabbe Robinson's “Diary,” chaps. xxix.-xxxi. 38 • LANDSCAPE. natural phenomena "betame upon his lips poetry and in his heart a religion." On the contrary, in its modern development, the interest in Nature has turned to a multitude of details by which he enslaves his soul: "Petty and unnecessary branches of industry, artificial wants, little notions without philosophy, arts without an ideal, establish more and more over the human heart the dominion of all that is not man and of all that is not God; the empire, in a word, of matter. "The external world under all the names which it bears, that of Nature, of matter, or of flesh, is not impure and corrupting in itself; it only becomes so by its revolt against the spirit, by the ascendency that man permits it over his own liberty. That which vitiates art, science, and even modern politics, is the trium- phant revolt of the exterior and material element against the moral principle." Elsewhere M. de Laprade stated in its full force the objection to the study of the natural world which has been felt by many of his religion : "If Nature is corrupt, if the flesh and the external world are an opportunity and a cause of sin for man, the human intelligence cannot apply itself to the study of the natural sciences without incurring serious risks. It is to be feared that Nature may hide God from us instead of revealing Him. Since the Fall the veil of creation has become thicker, the universe is no longer transparent, and God no longer shows himself therein. The Almighty Father has taken His presence farther away from us. God is in a sense withdrawn from Nature. Without the soul and God Nature is a corpse. Science has applied herself to work upon the universe as upon a dead body." This is the kind of objection which is felt to the power of the natural world, and the reasons for it are still more apparent than they were at the date of M. de Laprade's book.¹ There can be no doubt that the power of the inanimate universe over man has prodigiously increased of late years on account of his increasing interest in it. He believes that he is becoming the master of Nature, but Nature is becoming mistress of him. He is like the driver of a railway-engine, who looks as if he were lord of the power of Steam, yet the Steam is so completely his 1 The second edition was published in 1866. THE POWer of NATURE OVER US. 39 master that he has to be constantly thinking about it and devoting his labor to its service. So it is with our love of land- scape. Wordsworth's intellectual liberty was in great part sacri- ficed to his interest in the English Lake District. Constable devoted his mind to the scenery about Flatford, and as the whole intellect of a superior man may spend itself in grappling with any one of the great problems that Nature presents to us, there is no reason why the whole of a life should not be spent, as Etty's was, in the struggle to paint flesh-color. These men, and others like them, may have been happy in their chosen studies, but they were absorbed by them and sacrificed to them, slaves of that external world from which Lacordaire desired to be emancipated, and which St. Bernard passed through with indifference. The sacrifice of scientific men to Nature is beyond my prov- ince in this volume, but I may so far digress as to make the observation that it is even more complete than the sacrifice of artists. That which saves an artist is the ideal element in his mental action which gives him some independence of the actual world. The less he has of this ideal element the more nearly he approaches to the purely scientific character, and he may even completely attain it and be a simple student, dis- sector, and copyist of matter. Then he becomes closely related to our physiologists, who are as much sacrificed on the altar of natural science in one way as the miserable victim of vivisection, nailed to the dissecting-table, is in another. It seems as if man, after living and moving with an apparent and illusory freedom in the world of Nature, were now rapidly becoming the student and slave of matter, and aware of his own servitude to that which once allured him by false promises of mastery. All this looks discouraging, but there is something to be said in mitigation. Man has never been really free, and would not be happy if he were. He devotes himself to something outside of himself, and has not yet discovered any subject of study comparable in extent and interest to the world of Nature. The farther he goes in natural studies the more the interest in- creases; nor is there any apparent reason to believe that it can ever, even in the remotest future, be exhausted. If Nature gains a great power over us, we may be the better for having submitted our intellects to the action of that myste- rious power. I need not go into the religious question farther 40 LANDSCAPE. than one point, on which we are all agreed, that there is order in the natural universe, and that this order is due to the pres- ence of a mysterious energy that is always working through- out Nature with an absolutely unfailing regularity. This has been stated by Herbert Spencer in terms from which nobody dissents: G "Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he (Man) is ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." It cannot be a superstition to regard landscape as one of the expressions of that Energy. Even when everything that can possibly be thought superstitious has been surrendered, enough. remains to give landscape the eternal interest which must belong to every manifestation of the omnipresent Power. Lacordaire himself, after bidding adieu to ocean, rivers, and mountains, would have admitted that they were so much; but he would have gone on to say that they were a lower manifestation than the lives of the saints, and that he dreaded their power as inter- fering with the action of a higher Power upon him. It would be a vain waste of time to enter into any controversy about experiences so personal as these. The only rational way of treating them is to admit that Lacordaire's renunciation was right for him if he felt his soul the better for it, but at the same time to remain loyal to our own intuitions. For me landscape is a perpetual interest and refreshment, and to renounce its benefits would be an unnecessary asceti- cism. Even if a pleasure were simply innocent, that would be a sufficient reason for not rejecting it when such rejection dimin- ished the charm of existence and involved some degree of ingratitude. Still more would it be an error to deny oneself a pleasure like this, which has more than the negative recom- mendation of being harmless. The love of landscape includes what is grand and terrible as well as what is beautiful and allur- ing in Nature. It is often an incomparable tonic, giving the strongest interest to energetic travel and a healthy stimulus that puts an end both to physical and mental indolence. Without it a man of easy fortune and studious habits like De Saussure might have lounged life away in his library; with it he led an existence as favorable to bodily health as that of a chamois- THE POWER OF NATURE OVER US. 41 hunter, with an infinitely finer mental stimulus. The extremely healthy nature of Alexander Humboldt found in the active study of landscape (in his own way and from his own point of view) an outlet for his physical and mental vigor. If you com- pare the lives of Wordsworth and Alfred de Musset, you cannot but perceive what a close connection there was between the superior sanity of Wordsworth and his passionate love of pedes- trian excursions in the Lake District. If the love of Nature increases the health of the healthy, it has often had a beneficial and even a curative effect in disease. The humble and homely kind of landscape that Cowper was able to enjoy was a solace to him. The power that Nature exercises over landscape-painters has this further beneficial effect, that it is a stimulus to work. Those landscape-painters who have delighted most in natural beauty or sublimity have usually been the hardest workers, though it has sometimes happened that the superior perfection of Nature has discouraged the artist and disgusted him with his own attempts, leaving him to dream of what he felt unable to realize. It is possible that the power of natural landscape over a human mind might become dangerously excessive in this way, by paralyzing its action. The best safeguard against this great and serious evil is an interest in humanity and in human art as distinct from the natural universe. Wordsworth had the interest in humanity which saved him from being entirely conquered by natural landscape; but his emancipation would have been more com- plete if he had understood the art of painting. In the case of Turner, notwithstanding a profound knowledge of the natural world, there was such a strong art-faculty, and such a disposition to refer to preceding art, that he was never enslaved to Nature. The mere fact that, having the choice of town or country, he could live in London, is in itself sufficient evidence that his mind had never been overwhelmed by Nature to the point of sacrificing its human liberty and individuality. To sum up the considerations in this chapter, it may be said that for most of us, and setting aside exceptional cases of de- votion to other ideas like that of Lacordaire, natural landscape offers a very desirable refreshment and a pleasure favorable to health of body and mind, but that there is some risk of its power over us becoming excessive, so as to take from our hu- . man activity by plunging us in helpless and endless admiration. · 42 LANDSCAPE. Against this danger we have other resources, especially in the human studies (both in real life and in literature), and also in art as a distinct thing from Nature. These other studies may become absolutely necessary to us as a contrepoids if we allow ourselves to live much within the mighty influence of the exter- nal world. 11 LANDSCAPE as a reflecTION OF MOODS OF MAN. 43 CHAPTER VI Munch1098 LANDSCAPE AS A REFLECTION OF THE MOODS OF MAN. Ε VERY one who is acquainted with modern literature knows the common artifice of making landscape inter- esting by associating it with human feelings. This is distinct from the illusion that inanimate Nature really has feelings or can sympathize with our own. We may be perfectly rational, per- fectly free from superstition of every kind, and still associate the phenomena of Nature with our own feelings by perceiving an apparent analogy. The analogy is, indeed, so apparent, that it has generally the defect of being too obvious. Everybody can perceive that calm and beautiful weather is like the serenity of a happy dispo- sition, that gloom in landscape resembles human melancholy, and that rain is a sort of weeping, and that the breezes sigh. The consequence of this extreme obviousness is, that those comparisons which were at first abundantly employed in litera- ture have now become so trite as to be hardly admissible, unless stated with novel forms of language or a quite exceptional force; and it is necessary for poets and prose-writers to exercise their ingenuity in discovering new analogies. The degree of interest that people take in such analogies is clearly proved by the great popularity of writers who state them cleverly. The sudden fame of Alexander Smith was due to an abundance of similes, taken principally from the sea, and exhibiting the analogy be- tween natural phenomena and human experiences in a man- ner which the public of 1853 felt to be novel and attractive. Simply to say that the ocean raged in tempest would have had no novelty; but this was new: "His part is worst that touches this base world; Although the ocean's inmost heart be pure, Yet the salt fringe that daily licks the shore Is gross with sand." 44 LANDSCAPE. If the shore is pure also, then the simile may be used for another purpose: "Thy spirit on another breaks in joy, Like the pleased sea on a white-breasted shore." A young child is described as a "Silver stream, Breaking with laughter from the lake divine, Whence all things flow." On due occasion, however, the stream may be made to con- vey the idea of sorrowful loneliness : "A week the boy Dwelt in his sorrow, like a cataract Unseen, yet sounding through its shrouding mists." It was to the abundance of such comparisons as these, which were really novel and well done, that the "Life Drama" owed its astonishing popularity, a curious evidence of the tendency to feel interested in such analogies that must have prevailed among the public in the middle of the nineteenth century. They are to be found in almost all modern poets; but other examples would not be so valuable as this, because in the "Life Drama" there was hardly any other element of vitality. Many of the critics of those days seemed to be under the im- pression that similes which connected landscape with the experi- ences of man were poetry in themselves, and almost the whole of poetry. They quoted them with enthusiastic delight, and it did not seem to occur to them that a closer study of human joys and sorrows might have supplied richer and more valuable material to a creative mind than the fanciful comparison of them with a waterfall or a sea-beach.¹ If however, it is an exercise of fanciful ingenuity to connect human feelings with inanimate Nature by an active search for new and striking similes, the truth still remains that Nature con- stantly acts upon our minds by suggestion, and that the moods 1 Such comparisons occur rarely and occasionally in the great works of poetry. Here is one in "The Idylls of the King" which is not unlike Alexander Smith's work, the difference being that in Tennyson these similes are not of so much impor- tance relatively to the main substance of poetic invention: Gda "He was mute; So dark a forethought rolled about his brain, As on a dull day in an ocean cave The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall In silence." Merlin and Vivien. LANDSCAPE as a reflecTION OF MOODS OF MAN. 45 of landscape do really answer with surprising exactness to our human moods, so that it is natural for us to see in it a reflection of ourselves. We ought, nevertheless, if we desire to think accurately, to be well on our guard against a very prevalent error. It so hap- pens that English landscape, especially that of the south of England, does very fairly and adequately represent the moods of our own English minds, which are as cheerful as the kind of sunshine we possess, and melancholy in the same moderate degree as our dull yet not unpleasant weather. Hence we are exposed to a great delusion. We are likely to imagine that landscape, all the world over, answers to human nature as nearly as it does in our own island; but if we take into con- sideration the landscape of the whole world, we shall find in different countries such great excesses of a single characteristic that the landscape of one locality, or even of one region, is no more adequately representative of human moods and sentiments than the cry of one wild animal is representative of human mu- sic. I pass by this subject for the present only to deal with it more at length in another chapter. The way we really act with regard to the sympathetic appear- ances of landscape is the following. We go through the world in various moods of our own determined for us by many differ- ent causes, more by the state of our health than by any other, and so long as the moods of the natural landscape are not in harmony with our own feelings we pay very little attention to them; but when they come so near as to seem to reflect our feelings, the coincidence attracts our attention, and we exclaim, "How gay and pleasant the scenery is!" or "How melan- choly it is!" as the case may be. I am not, just now, alluding to poets and painters, but to the common world. Poets and painters have very mobile feelings, and are constantly on the lookout for suggestions, so that they may often attune them- selves purposely to the natural landscape as they would to varia- tions of sentiment in music. But as for le commun des mortels, the way they do is to notice landscape expression in Nature. when it happens to coincide with their own feelings. If they walk out in a garden with friends after a good dinner in sum- mer, and notice the dying light behind the purple hills, they may say it is a bit of fine color that reminds them of Titian, but they will not be saddened by it. A lonely widow who has t n 46 LANDSCAPE. dined by herself, and goes out to walk on her terrace to muse, and ponder, and remember, shall see the same effect, and be so touched by it that her eyes will be filled with tears. So with the brightness and cheerfulness of Nature; there is absolutely no degree of gayety in the appearances of the natural world that can bring joy to the sufferer from recent and acute misfortune; but if you are cheerful already there is no doubt that a beauti- ful sunny landscape in spring or summer will itself seem cheer- ful to you, and bring you increase of cheerfulness. Man brings into the natural world the light of his own soul as we take a candle into a room at night, and when the natural world hap- pens to be bright and beautiful it sends back to us from every side the light that we ourselves bring with us. The best proof that Nature is but accidentally a reflection of the moods of man is that human beings are able to live cheer- fully, and even merrily, in the midst of dreary and gloomy land- scape. It may have occurred to the reader, in the course of his travels, to pass through many places which seemed to him so depressing that he felt it would be impossible to live there without falling into low spirits, and yet on observing the inhabi- tants he perceived that they were as cheerful as people are in the loveliest scenery. The plain truth is, that the cheerfulness of people depends upon the healthiness of the place they live in far more than on the pleasantness of its appearance. Certainly there are regions which have a most depressing effect on their inhabitants; but if you inquire carefully into the causes of such depression you will always find that they are either connected with positive diseases or with a lowered condition of vitality. The plain of La Bresse, in the east of France, is one of these regions. It is cheerful enough in appearance, with its plentiful sunshine and wide horizons bounded by blue mountains in the remote distance, and it is a rich country, with ample supplies of excellent provisions; but in spite of these advantages it is de- pressing because it is insalubrious.¹ At some distance to the northwest lies the hilly region called the Morvan, which is not more cheerful in appearance, as the horizons are generally lim- ited by near hills or woods, and there is more rain; but the population is brighter and more lively because the region is 1 The region is not quite so unhealthy as it used to be, now that many of its ponds have been done away with. There were formerly between two and three thou- sand of them, and much malaria from marshy places. • LANDSCAPE as a reflection of MOODS OF MAN. 47 extremely healthy. Those parts of the Alps where the peasan- try are dull, and seem as if life were a burden to them, are always the unhealthy parts; it is not the scenery that oppresses, but either the air is bad or there is an insufficiency of light. This leads us to the unexpected conclusion that a dismal and dreary country may be productive of sufficient cheerfulness by its salubrity quite to overcome the effects of its dismal appear- ance on the mind, so that its aspects will not reflect the human minds that dwell in it; while, on the other hand, regions of open space and sunshine, like La Bresse, or of beautiful moun- tain forms, like the Valais, may fail equally to reflect the human sadness which is due to invisible causes. It may happen, even, that the natural landscape which has all the elements of melancholy in itself produces pleasurable feelings that the gayer and brighter landscape somehow fails to arouse. Dreary and desolate landscape is not saddening to every one, and there are those to whom the very melancholy of it is sweeter than brightness and gayety. For me, I love “gray boulder and black tarn," and shreds of rain-cloud flying on the northern wind better than that island valley of Avilion "Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea. "" 48 LANDSCAPE. Musch CHAPTER VII. THE ART OF DESCRIBING LANDSCAPE. M² ANY years ago the writer of this volume composed a sort of essay on a subject related to this, which he entitled, "Word Painting and Color Painting." It has been preserved in subsequent editions of "Thoughts about Art," but after severe abridgment. The existence of that early essay does not appear to preclude a chapter on the same subject in the present volume, as more than twenty years have elapsed be- tween the two, and the author's ideas upon the subject may be supposed to have gained some clearness from increase of experi- ence during such an interval. (6 The admirers of that uncouth and ungracious genius, Thomas Carlyle, appear to think that the art of describing landscape was extinguished by his much-quoted sneer, "Come, let us make a description!" Could not the same invitation to set to work be addressed to the maker of anything whatever? Might not a wheelwright say to his partner, Come, let us make a cart- wheel!" and would the wheel be the less likely to answer its purpose for having been planned beforehand, and not produced by the fortuitous concourse of ash-wood and iron? A description that is well done is a product of human skill; and I propose to show in the present chapter, first, that a good description is worth the trouble and industry that it costs, and secondly, how the labor may be most intelligently applied. The external world is always around us and always exercising some kind of influence upon us. Sometimes it is beautiful and charms us, sometimes it is terrible and oppresses us. It may weary us by its monotony, or be so varied and interesting as to compensate for the lack of other variety and excitement. Whatever the nature of it, the landscape that surrounds us, even during the most temporary residence, even for a day when THE ART of describing LANDSCAPE. 49 we are travelling, can never be without some degree of influ- ence upon us whether we are conscious of that influence or not. The subject, therefore, is one of universal importance, though the importance of it varies considerably in degree. Sometimes a few words of landscape description may be enough, but those few require to be chosen carefully; at other times a page is not too much, but the page must be written with some art or else the labor which the author ought to have under- taken will be cast upon the innocent reader. It is assumed by the enemies of landscape art in literature that it is an elaborate affectation. It need not be either affected or elaborate. It may be at the same time one of the most sin- cere forms of literary art and one of the most simple. The sincerity of it is assured when the writer is naturally observant and sets down just what he sees; the simplicity of it is partly the result of straightforwardness and partly the achievement of skill. The almost complete absence of landscape description in some authors is a serious literary defect. It is so in some ancient historians, and particularly in Caesar. Nothing is more vexatious, in reading Caesar, than the frequent absence of assistance from the author when we desire to picture to our- selves the marches of his army and the positions occupied or abandoned by the enemy. His mind appears to have acted quite mechanically, as if it had been of itself a sort of military calculating machine full of figures representing the strength of forces and the distances that had to be traversed, but taking small account of the wants of a reader who had not seen the country with his own eyes. I have no desire to imply that a general should describe countries with the affectionate enthu- siasm of an amateur of landscape beauty; that is not his affair ; but it can hardly be too much to expect that a military writer should give a clear account of important topographic facts, however briefly, and Caesar only does this sometimes. The description of Vesontio, in the First Book, with the Dubis almost surrounding it, is truthful; Lake Leman is mentioned as flowing into the Rhone (Lib. I. cap. viii.), and he notices the extreme slowness of the current of the Saône, that river Arar which "in- fluit incredibili lenitate, ita ut oculis in utram partem fluit judi- cari non possit." He tells us, too, that the Rhine is very wide and deep (Lib. I. cap. ii.) and that the Jura is high. The 4 50 LANDSCAPE. general, and to us very interesting, description of the British Isl- ands (Lib. I. cap. xiii.) is a most acceptable bit of ancient geogra- phy, but it cannot be called landscape. There is a short description of the remarkable situation of Alesia on a lofty hill, at the foot of which two rivers flowed, while before it extended a plain about three miles long, and everywhere else there were other hills at a little distance from the first, and of the same height. This is a piece of sufficient military description. That of Avari- cum is so far clear that the nature of the surrounding country is in some degree intelligible; but what shall we say of the total and disappointing absence of landscape description with regard to so important a city as Bibracte? Caesar does not even tell us whether Bibracte stood on an isolated hill or was situated on the banks of a river, which would have settled the question for all time whether the site of Augustodunum, or the summit of Mount Beuvray, was the real position of the Aeduan capital. There are now good reasons for believing that it was a hill oppi- dum like Alesia, and situated on the Beuvray, a lofty hill de- tached from others and well supplied with water-springs near its summit, round which exists a line of strong Gaulish fortification enclosing the remains of many Gaulish and Gallo-Roman dwell- ings. It has, however, been uniformly taught for centuries that Bibracte was on the site of Augustodunum, also a place very strongly marked by Nature, and which a word of description would have made recognizable by all posterity. It might be argued that when Caesar pursued the Swiss and turned aside to go to Bibracte for provisions, he was eighteen miles from the city and could not be expected to describe it, especially as the great battle occurred before he could get there. Yes, but as he afterwards wintered at Bibracte he must have known the place; yet he thinks the mere name of it is enough. "Ipse Bibracte hiemare constituit." The absence of landscape description also prevents us from knowing exactly at what place he crossed the Saône, and what was his itinerary from the right bank of the Saône to the place where he fought the Swiss. 1 Let me not be misunderstood as desiring to advocate either a picturesque or a sentimental style of landscape description in military writers. They have something else to think of than the 1 To prevent a possible disappointment to some antiquarian tourist, I ought to add that the dwellings have been carefully buried again after each annual exca- vation. THE ART OF DESCRIBING LANDSCAPE. 51 rose of dawn or the melancholy of autumnal twilight; they have nothing to do with the artistic or the poetical side of landscape. But although a military writer is neither painter nor poet, he ought to be a perfectly clear topographer; he ought always to let the reader know exactly in what kind of country every battle is fought, every march undertaken, and he ought to de- scribe the natural defences of every fortress. This is understood by modern war correspondents, who always attempt, with various degrees of ability, to describe for us the scenes of military operations. Notwithstanding the literary merits of Caesar's simple style, it may safely be asserted that if the narrative of his campaigns had been written by a good newspaper man of the present day we should have known more about the aspect of the country. If we expect some information from military writers, still more is it natural to count upon it from the larger leisure of a civilian who undertakes to narrate his wanderings. The modern traveller knows this, and cultivates his descriptive powers, the danger being rather on the side of unintelligent forcing than neglect. It will not be a waste of time to inquire what are the qualities that a traveller ought to seek for in his descriptions. He should never waste valuable space in empty expressions of impotence never say that anything is so astonishing as to be indescribable. Everything in Nature can be described if only the writer has a proper command of language. If he is determined not to shirk his duty he can make everything in- telligible by comparisons, but he must avoid the two forms of untruth, falsehood by inadequacy and falsehood by exaggera- tion. Nay, even a certain deviation from the exact truth is permissible if the traveller allows his personal preferences to be so visible that there can be no mistake about his partiality. Dickens was not exactly a truthful describer, but he was so candid about his own feelings that the reader could easily make the proper allowance for them. It was also a perfectly well- known characteristic of his to let his fancy play very freely on what he saw, therefore, as coming from him, a very fanciful description could hardly be called a false description, because every intelligent reader would be sure to make allowances. Dickens was so constituted that when once his fancy had begun to be lively it ran away with him like an excited horse. Here 52 LANDSCAPE. is an example of what I mean in the description of stumps of trees seen on some wild land in America : —-- "These stumps of trees are a curious feature in American travelling. The varying illusions they present to the unaccustomed eye as it grows dark are quite astonishing in their number and reality. Now there is a Grecian urn erected in the centre of a lonely field; now there is a woman weeping at a tomb; now a very commonplace old gentleman in a white waistcoat, with a thumb thrust into each armhole of his coat; now a student poring on a book; now a crouching negro; now a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man, a hunchback throwing off his cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were often as entertaining to me as so many glasses in a magic lantern, and never took their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force themselves upon me whether I would or no; and, strange to say, I sometimes recognized in them counter- parts of figures once familiar to me in pictures attached to childish books forgotten long ago.” 1 This description is fanciful in the extreme; but as the writer frankly lets his own personality be visible from beginning to end, and as the reader knows that the fancy was a faculty extremely active in Dickens, there is no falsehood, even though, to a landscape-painter, not one of the trees would have seemed like the "very commonplace old gentleman in a white waistcoat, with a thumb thrust into each armhole of his coat," an image that rose like a Cockney ghost in the brain of the novelist of the London middle classes. The case is far otherwise when an inferior writer attempts to palm off a poor invention as the product of the higher imagination. Here is an attempt at sylvan description by Disraeli which is intended to be striking and magnificent. The passage occurs in "Coningsby": 'The wind howled, the branches of the forest stirred, and sent forth sounds like an incantation. Soon might be distinguished the various voices of the mighty trees, as they expressed their terror or their agony. The oak roared, the beech shrieked, the elm sent forth its deep and long-drawn groan, while ever and anon, amid a momentary pause, the passion of the ash was heard in moans of thrilling anguish." All this is mere pinchbeck. It is neither the record of ob- served facts, like a sound bit of honest work from Nature, nor a truthful description of strange fancies that really occurred to 1 American Notes, chap. xiv. THE ART OF DESCRIBING LANDSCAPE. 53 the author in the presence of Nature, as those fancies got into the head of Dickens when he was jolted in the coach in the twilight over the horrible corduroy road. The distinction established between the voices of the trees is an absurdly unreal distinction. No real student of Nature would have made it. What really happens in a storm is a great confused noise caused by the friction of innumerable leaves and the whipping of twigs, with the occasional rough creaking rub of a branch against another that happens to be near enough, and perhaps (but this is rarer) the fracture of a broken bough or the crash of a falling trunk; but even these last would not be distinctly audible in the hubbub of tempest unless they were near at hand. If the reader cares for a true account of sylvan noises, I have no doubt that the following by Charles Kingsley may be relied upon. He is speaking of the "High Woods," in the West Indies: "Here, when the forest giant falls, as some tell me that they have heard him fall, on silent nights, when the cracking of the roots below and the lianes aloft rattles like musketry through the woods, till the great trunk comes down, with a boom as of a heavy gun, re-echoing on from mountain-side to mountain-side; then, 16 Nothing in him that doth fade, But doth suffer an air-change Into something rich and strange." This is good, but it is not direct observation, it is only hear- say. Now let us see what Kingsley could tell us about some- thing that he had seen with his own eyes. A less intelligent traveller would have attempted to convey the idea in general terms by telling us that the trees were high and bright with various kinds of flowers. Kingsley takes the trouble to make us understand how and in what way the tropical forest is magnifi- cent: "You catch sight, it may be, of the head of a tree aloft, blazing with golden trumpet-flowers, which is a poui, and of another lower one covered with hoar-frost, perhaps a croton; and of another, a giant covered with purple tassels: that is an angelim. Another giant overtops even him. His dark, glossy leaves toss off sheets of silver light as they flicker in the breeze, for it blows hard aloft outside while you are in stifling calm: that is a balata. And what is that on high? Twenty or thirty square yards of rich crimson a hundred feet above the ground. The flowers may belong to the tree itself. It may be a mountain mangrove, which I have never seen in flower; but take the glasses and decide. No. The flowers 54 LANDSCAPE. belong to a liane. The wonderful Prince of Wales's feather has taken possession of the head of a huge mombin, and tiled it all over with crimson combs, which crawl out to the ends of the branches, and dangle twenty or thirty feet down, waving and leaping in the breeze. And over all blazes the cloudless blue." This seems to me an excellent example of description. It does not fail on the side of inadequacy like a lazy attempt in which the author falls short from sheer want of energy, and on the other hand it does not weary by exaggeration. There are light, color, life, and motion, all combined, as it seems to me, in one passage of moderate length with almost perfect art. I hardly know what to point to as the most effective touch where every syllable tells, but these few words contain the elements of light, color, life, and motion in themselves, ending with an excel- lent contrast. “His dark, glossy leaves toss off sheets of silver light as they flicker in the breeze; for it blows hard aloft outside while you are in stifling calm.” When Kingsley visited the West Indies he was just in that condition of mind which is most favorable to success in descrip- tion. He had long desired to see that wonderful tropical Na- ture with his own eyes, and when he found himself among it the perfect freshness of his sensations, combined with strong excitement of the mind, gave great vigor to his pen. He was at a time of life, too, when a writer who has lived wisely is at his best, because he has gained mastery over language without having lost the power of enjoyment. A traveller who did not set out with the intention of word- painting, but to see how men of English race fared wherever they had settled, said that “travellers soon learn, when making estimates of a country's value, to despise no feature of the land- scape." If Sir Charles Dilke wrote that rather from the politi- cal than the artistic point of view, it is not the less accurate in any case; for the landscape, however uninteresting it may seem, or even ugly, is never without its great influence on human happiness and destiny. The interest in human affairs which Sir Charles Dilke has in common with most men of any con- spicuous ability does not prevent him from seeing landscape- nature as well as if his travels had no other object. His description of the Great Plains of Colorado is an excellent ex- ample of that valuable kind of description which is not merely an artful arrangement of sonorous words, but perfectly conveys THE ART of descrIBING LANDSCAPE. 55 the character of the landscape and makes you feel as if you had been there. the "Now great roaring uplands of enormous sweep, now boundless grassy plains; there is all the grandeur of monotony and yet con- tinual change. Sometimes the distances are broken by blue buties or rugged bluffs. Over all there is a sparkling atmosphere and never-failing breeze; the air is bracing cven when most hot; sky is cloudless and no rain falls. A solitude which no words can paint and the boundless prairie swell convey an idea of vastness which is the overpowering feature of the Plains. The im- pression is not merely one of size. There is perfect beauty, won- drous fertility, in the lonely steppe; no patriotism, no love of home, can prevent the traveller wishing here to end his days. "To those who love the sea, there is a double charm. Not only is the roll of the prairie as grand as that of the Atlantic, but the crispness of the wind, the absence of trees, the multitude of tiny blooms upon the sod, all conspire to give a feeling of nearness to the ocean, the effect of which is that we are always expecting to hail it from the top of the next hillock. 66 • The color of the landscape is, in summer, green and flowers; in fall-time yellow and flowers, but flowers ever. » If the reader will take the trouble to analyze this description he will perceive that, although powerful, it is extremely simple and sober. The traveller does not call in the aid of poetical comparisons (the only comparison indulged in is the obvious one of the Atlantic), and the effect of the description on the mind is due to the extreme care with which the writer has put together in a short space the special and peculiar characteristics of the scenery, not forgetting to tell us everything that we, of ourselves, would naturally fail to imagine. He corrects, one after another, all our erroneous notions, and substitutes a true idea for our false ones. The describer has been thoroughly alive, he has travelled with his eyes open, so that every epithet tells. The reader feels under a real obligation; he has not been put off with mere phrases, but is enriched with a novel and interesting landscape experience. In a good prose description, such as these by Kingsley and Sir Charles Dilke, the author has nothing to do but to convey, as nearly as he can, a true impression of what he has actually seen. The greatest difficulties that he has to contend against are the ignorance and the previous misconceptions of his readers. 1 Greater Britain, chap. xii. 56 LANDSCAPE: : He must give information without appearing didactic, and cor- rect what he foresees as probable false conceptions without ostentatiously pretending to know better. His language must be as concise as possible, or else important sentences will be skipped, and yet at the same time it must flow easily enough to be pleasantly readable. It is not easy to fulfil these conditions all at once, and therefore we meet with many books of travel in which attempted descriptions frequently occur which fail, never- theless, to convey a clear idea of the country. A weak writer wastes precious space in sentimental phrases or in vague adjec- tives that would be equally applicable to many other places, and forgets to note what is peculiarly and especially character- istic of the one place that he is attempting to describe. The semi-poetical kind of description, of which prose-poetry is the vehicle, is a perilous kind of literary labor, for this reason. It is nothing without a gush of sentiment, and if the reader once begins to see reasons for suspecting that the sentiment is assumed for the occasion he very soon has enough of it. It may be that in this, as in other departments of fine art, the en- thusiasm is often only acting, but it ought to seem real and spontaneous. Here the qualities of clearness and accuracy are not enough; it is necessary to touch the reader's feelings and get him into a sort of enchanted condition in which he will fol- low a long description from beginning to end without weariness, and especially without thinking that the most enthusiastic meta- phors and similes are overdone. Mr. Ruskin is the greatest master of this difficult branch of art, and if he is not quoted in this place it is not from any want of appreciation, but because his finest descriptions are too well known for quotation to be necessary, and also because they are generally long, so that to borrow them would be a kind of annexation. Again, they would lose much of their meaning if detached from the argu- ment that led up to them, as for example in the description of Sion, in the chapter on "Mountain Gloom," the neglected con- dition of the city is connected with an argument about the ef- fects of mountains and Roman Catholicism upon the mind. The description itself begins in a plain way with noticing a num- ber of minute facts, all bearing more or less directly on the main purpose; and finally, when the reader's mind has been suf- ficiently prepared by dwelling in the details of a strange and melancholy city, he is led up to poetry in the conclusion, which I cannot help quoting, after all: < - THE ART OF DESCRIBING LANDSCAPE. 57 ،، 'Beyond this plot of ground the Episcopal palace, a half- deserted, barrack-like building, overlooks a neglected vineyard, of which the clusters, black on the under side, snow-white on the other with lime-dust, gather round them a melancholy hum of flies. Through the arches of its trellis-work the avenue of the great val- ley is seen in descending distance, enlarged with line beyond line of tufted foliage, languid and rich, degenerating at last into leagues of gray Maremma, wild with the thorn and the willow; on each side of it, sustaining themselves in mighty slopes and unbroken reaches of colossal promontory, the great mountains secede into supremacy through rosy depths of burning air, and the crescents of snow gleam over their dim summits, as if there could be Mourning as there once was War in Heaven- a line of waning moons might be set for lamps along the sides of some sepulchral chamber in the infinite." — — This is very daring, and perhaps no other writer of sound prose would have ventured quite so far as the sepulchral chamber in the Infinite; but the effect is powerful in connection with the melancholy note of the whole subject, that of Mountain Gloom, which really has to do with the spirit of the Universe. The art here consists in lifting the subject upon a sufficiently high plane of thought to make imaginative sublimity in keeping and appropriate. To understand the necessity for this, the reader has only to suppose that a traveller of ordinary type visits the same town of Sion and takes note of its backwardness in a commonplace spirit, without reference to the persistent in- fluences of overwhelming Nature on the mind. Such a traveller could never effect the transition from the details of ill-kept streets to a line of waning moons;" and if he made any attempt at sublimity he would fall into the bathos of the false sublime. "C [Novelists have a great advantage over travellers and essayists, in being able to connect descriptions of landscape with human feeling in persons quite outside of themselves. The reader probably remembers how very skilfully the "Mountain Gloom" of the Isle of Skye is connected, in "A Daughter of Heth," with Coquette's depressed and unhappy state of mind when she discovers that she is in love with Lord Earlshope. She wants to get away, she is like a prisoner on the yacht, and the gloomy mountains (so different from the brighter and more open French scenery she had been accustomed to in childhood) deepen her melancholy more and more. "To me these hills 58 LANDSCAPE. look dreadful," she says. "I am afraid of them. I should be glad to be away." It is this suffering of one poor little human heart that gives an appalling power to the scene. "Far up amid the shoulders and peaks of Garsven there were flashes of flame and the glow of the western skies, with here and there a beam of ruddy and misty light touching the summits of the mountains in the east; but down here, in the black and desolate lake, the bare and riven rocks showed their fantastic forms in a cold gray twilight. There was a murmur of streams in the still- ness, and the hollow silence was broken from time to time by the call of wild fowl. Otherwise the desolate scene was as silent as death, and the only moving thing abroad was the red light in the clouds. The 'Caroline' lay motionless in the dark water. As the sunset fell, the mountains seemed to grow larger; the twisted and precipitous cliffs that shot down into the sea grew more and more distant; while a pale blue vapor gathered here and there, as if the spirits of the mountains were advancing under a veil." In the simple prose description the essential merits are truth to Nature, and the art of insisting on those points that the reader is not likely to imagine without suggestion and help. The skil ful writer of travels makes us not only see the country, but feel its atmosphere around us; and yet, to effect this, he has re- course to very simple means. With the prose-poet the case is somewhat different. He begins by observing facts as carefully as the other; but when he has made the facts quite plain to us, he leads us on from the region of positive truth to the realm of imagination, and before we are quite aware of the change a wonderful transition is effected; we are raised from the common earth and carried into the land of dreams. The difficulty here is in delivering the mind from the real and lifting it beyond reality with the help of reality itself. In professed poetry this transition has not to be made. It is expected that the poet shall have made it for himself before be- ginning to write, and if he has not quite succeeded in doing this, we feel that he has begun to write with an inadequate in- spiration. This was the one great fault of Wordsworth, — that he often wrote verse when not completely in the poetic mood. Is this poetry? "In one of those excursions (that I hope I shall never forget) with a young friend through North Wales, I left Bethgelert at bed- time, and went westward to see the sun rise from the top of Snow- don. We came to the door of a rude cottage at the foot of the THE ART OF DEScribing LANDSCAPE. 59 mountain and roused the shepherd, who is a trustworthy guide for strangers, then sallied forth after some refreshment. It was a close, warm, dull night, with a dripping fog, that covered all the sky; but without being discouraged we began to climb the moun- tain-side." Does this prose become poetry when versified as follows? "In one of those excursions (may they ne'er Fade from remembrance!) through the northern tracts Of Cambria ranging with a youthful friend, I left Bethgelert's huts at couching-time, And westward took my way, to see the sun "Rise, from the top of Snowdon. To the door Of a rude cottage at the mountain's base We came, and roused the shepherd who attends The adventurous stranger's steps,— a trusty guide; Then, cheered by short refreshment, sallied forth. "It was a close, warm, breezeless, summer night, Warm, dull, and glaring, with a dripping fog, Low-hung and thick, that covered all the sky; But, undiscouraged, we began to climb The mountain-side." No, this is not poetry yet; it is only prose in metre: but a very little farther in the same work (the fourteenth book of the Prelude) we come upon a description sufficiently sustained in its emotional elevation to be truly poetical:- "The moon hung naked in a firmament Of azure without cloud, and at my feet Rested a silent sea of hoary mist. A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved All over this still ocean; and beyond, Far, far beyond, the solid vapors stretched, In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes Into the main Atlantic, that appeared To dwindle, and give up his majesty."] From this and many other examples I should infer that Wordsworth was a prose-poet; that is to say, one who rises from prose to poetry, and then falls back again into the heavier medium, as a flying-fish plays between water and air, while the complete poets sustain their flight, and scorn the ocean of the commonplace that tumbles heavily beneath them. Without imaginative conception and musical expression there is no poe- try; but good poetry requires knowledge at first-hand also, therefore the poets are very close observers. There is a most 60 LANDSCAPE. interesting passage about the study of landscape-nature in a letter by Tennyson,¹ from which I borrow the following account of his way of taking mental memoranda : "There was a period in my life when, as an artist, Turner for instance, takes rough sketches of landskip, etc., in order to work them eventually into some great picture, so I was in the habit of chronicling, in four or five words or more, whatever might strike me as picturesque in Nature. I never put these down, and many and many a line has gone away on the north wind but some remain; for example, A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight.' Suggestion the sea one night at Torquay, when Torquay was the most lovely sea village in England, though now a smoky town. The sky was covered with thin vapor, and the moon was behind it. 'A great black cloud Drag inward from the deep.' แ "Suggestion: a coming storm seen from the top of Snowdon. In the Idylls of the King:' ' With all Its stormy crests that smote against the skies. "Suggestion: a storm which came upon us in the middle of the North Sea. 'As the water-lily starts and slides.' (" Suggestion: Water-lilies in my own pond, seen on a gusty day with my own eyes. They did start and slide in the sudden puffs of wind till caught and stayed by the tether of their own stalks,- quite as true as Wordsworth's simile, and more in detail. 'A wild wind shook-follow, follow, thou shalt win.' "Suggestion: I was walking in the New Forest. A wind did arise and 'Shake the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks Of the wild wood together.' "The wind, I believe, was a west wind; but, because I wished the Prince to go south, I turned the wind to the south, and, natu- rally, the wind said 'Follow.'" << The landscapes of Tennyson are generally distinguished by their brevity and concentrated force; the other quality of first- 1 Addressed to Mr. E. S. Dawson, of Montreal, and dated November, 1882. See" The Academy," No. 629. THE ART of descRIBING LANDSCAPE. 61 hand observation they have in common with the more diffuse landscape descriptions of Wordsworth. In Shelley the observa- tion is not so close, original, or accurate; but the poetical spirit is so strong in him that the comparative deficiency of substance is easily forgiven. His mind moves in a dream-world, vast and vague, which rarely gains any very definite clearness. Here is a vision of land and sea by starlight: ["The mountains hang and frown Over the starry deep that gleams below, A vast and dim expanse, as o'er the waves we go." 1 Islands are met with afterwards in the course of the voyage and thus described, the reader will see with how little defini- tion : "Winding among the lawny islands fair, Whose blosmy forests starred the shadowy deep, The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep." ❞ 2 When the scene is transported to a mountain-lake, the lake is certainly mentioned; but we can scarcely say that it is described: "The rock-built barrier of the sea was past, And I was on the margin of a lake, A lonely lake, amid the forests vast And snowy mountains.” 3 The following magnificent lines have the peculiar quality of Shelley's landscape-work in the greatest perfection. They were probably suggested by the Rhone, but of course the poet keeps clear of localized geography. The choice of epithets in the first line is most artful in its expression of the power of a great current : «Till down that mighty stream, dark, calm, and fleet, Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven, Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet, As swift as twinkling beams, had under heaven From woods and waves wild sounds and odors driven, The boat flew visibly. Three nights and days, Borne like a cloud through morn and noon and even, We sailed along the winding watery ways Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze. 1 Revolt of Islam, canto i. 23. 2 Ibid., canto iv. 4. 8 Ibid., canto i. 51. 4 Ibid., canto xii. 33. 62 LANDSCAPE. > It is remarkable that as Rossetti was a painter he should not have taken a stronger interest in landscape. Such landscape bits as occur in his poems are good and sometimes admirable, but they are rare. Even "The Stream's Secret" does not con- tain much about the stream, although we have it on the authority of Mr. William Bell Scott, who was a fellow-visitor with Rossetti at Perkill Castle, in Ayrshire, that the poem was written, as it were, from Nature, or at least in the presence of Nature.¹ There is hardly any stanza in which the stream itself has such an important place as in the following, where a night effect and an effect of sunshiny morning are brought close together for contrast, see in how few words! "Dark as thy blinded wave When brimming midnight floods the glen, - Bright as the laughter of thy runnels when The dawn yields all the light they crave; Even so these hours to wound and that to save Are sisters in love's ken." In "Rose Mary" there are some glimpses of landscape, seen in the beryl, which show great strength of mental vision and bring the scenes before us with a word or two. We see the weir and the broken water-gate, and afterwards stand where the roads divide and the river is like a thread beneath us; then the waste runs by," and we come to the place "where the road looks to the castle steep," and there are seven hill-clefts, one of them filled with mist. But in all Rossetti's poems there is nothing in the way of landscape-painting comparable to the weird little marine picture in "The King's Tragedy":- "And we of his household rode with him In a close-ranked company; But not till the sun had sunk from his throne Did we reach the Scottish Sea. "That eve was clenched for a boding storm, 'Neath a toilsome moon half seen; The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high; And where there was a line of the sky Wild wings loomed dark between. 1 Published in 1870, it was written so late as in the autumn of 1869, and Mr. William Bell Scott has told me how he frequently used to look for Rossetti as the dinner hour drew near, and almost invariably found him lying in the little cavern a-sprawling in the long grass and bracken along the banks (of the river Penwhapple). He considered it one of his very best productions, and it certainly cost him the most labor, very probably his opinion being due to that fact as well as to its having been written "direct from Nature." — Life of D. G. Rossetti, by William Sharp. THE ART of DESCRIBING LANDSCAPE. 63 This example gives evidence of one of the many superiorities that literature has over painting.¹ A writer, whether of prose or verse, is not compelled to introduce the reader to any scene without preparation, and it is one of the best known and most useful literary artifices to lead the reader gradually on till he is made to expect a description, and even to desire it. In this case the reader accompanies the royal household and so comes to the sea-shore, when he naturally wants to look seawards (as we all do when we reach the sea-side on account of the fasci- nation exercised by so great a spectacle as that of the waste of waters), and the poet gratifies the wish he has created. In prose romances the novelist often describes unpleasant scenery till we feel the full tedium of it, and then he relieves our desire by a description of an approach to a more pleasant place that seems quite charming when, at last, we get there. Landscape description in literature has been treated with in- tense and unintelligent scorn by some critics, but it only de- serves contempt when it is out of place or ill done. A narrative of real or fictitious events is never quite complete or satisfactory unless we are told something about the sort of country where they happen. We always desire to fill in, however broadly, a landscape background for ourselves. The commonest vices of bad landscape description are tediousness and false sentiment. Tediousness comes from want of selection, but there is another vice connected with the art of choosing which, if not so tiresome, is certainly more pro- voking. A writer leads us to a place that we want to know something about; he makes a description of it, but fails to mention something that is quite essential to our understanding of the place. A traveller will sometimes attempt to describe a building, and forget to mention the style of its architecture, or he will mention an avenue of trees but take no note of their species, or he will talk of a valley and mountains without giving any idea of their proportions. Sometimes a describer will waste valuable space in absurd comparisons that lead the unwary wrong, when fewer words might have given a truer picture. Even in conversation, with the great help of questions, we are sometimes strangely baffled by the want of describing power in others. They have been to some place that we are interested 1 Compensated, more or less completely, by superiorities of another order that painting has over literature. 64 LANDSCAPE. in, but we meet with the utmost difficulty in getting a clear account of it out of them. As for the vice of false sentiment, it is one that is very easily cured. A writer has nothing to do but to ask himself whether he really feels the emotions that he connects with the natural scene. Do the bright, dancing waves of the Mediterranean make him feel gay in the southern sunshine? Does the gloomy calm of the Highland loch make him really feel oppressed and sad? If they do so much, it is only a part of veracity to describe these effects upon the mind; but if it does not matter to him what may be the moods of Nature, and he pretends to be affected by them that he may produce an impressive paragraph, then I should say that his false sentiment will very probably be found out, and that even if undetected it is superfluous. i 1 LAND AND SEA IN THE ODYSSEY. 65 CHAPTER VIII. મ Munch 12/93 LAND AND SEA IN THE ODYSSEY. I TAKE the "Odyssey" as a subject of study, rather than both the Homeric poems, because a limit is convenient in materials when it is imposed in space, and also because the ref- erences to Nature are more frequent in the tale of Odysseus than in the history of the Trojan War. My quotations shall be made from the English prose translation by Butcher and Lang, be- cause they will interrupt the reader less than quotations from the original Greek and fit better into the texture of my own prose, while the fidelity of such a translation makes it almost as useful for our present purpose as the original, the chief loss being the majesty of the versification, only to be felt by the small minority who unite accomplished scholarship to an appreciation of poetic art in language, and imperfectly even by them. Homer is not a picturesque author in the conscious modern way. He does not set himself to describe and produce effects, does not study the art of word-painting, and has not either the strength of affection for Nature that makes a modern poet dwell upon the details of a scene, or the consciousness of pictorial power that makes him take a pride in elaborating a description. Still, there was in Homer a sentiment with regard to Nature which, though not that of a landscape-painter, was strong and genuine in its way. He was nearer to Nature than many a lite- rary man of the present. There is, in his poetry, a frequently expressed sense of contact with the natural world which, if not quite the same thing as picturesque enthusiasm, is at least equally refreshing. All who have been brought close to Nature by the experiences of wild travel, or by life in places not yet spoilt by mechanical civilization, feel that Homer had lived in their world, that world in which life is natural yet, and where strength and courage may increase themselves by healthy exercise. 5 66 LANDSCAPE. This feeling of contact with Nature is, to me, one of the most delightful associations of the "Odyssey." The account of the landing after the adventure on the raft is as close to the real thing as a passage from "Robinson Crusoe " : "He rose from the line of the breakers that belch upon the shore, and swam outside, ever looking landwards, to find, if he might, spits that take the waves aslant and havens of the sea. But when he came in his swimming over against the mouth of a fair-flowing river, whereby the place seemed best in his eyes, smooth of rocks, and withal there was a covert from the wind, Odysseus felt the river running, and prayed to him in his heart." The river-god hears the prayer, but Odysseus does not feel himself to be out of danger yet, for the following reasons: I "If I watch in the river bed all through the careful night I fear that the bitter frost and fresh dew may overcome me, and I breathe forth my life for faintness, for the river breeze blows cold betimes in the morning. But if I climb the hillside up to the shady wood, and there take rest in the thickets, though perchance the cold and weariness leave hold of me, and sweet sleep come over me, I fear lest of wild beasts I become the spoil and prey." The passage I have italicized is clear evidence that the poet himself had sometimes passed a night in the open air. The same knowledge of rough life is shown by the description of the swineherd's choice of a place of rest when Odysseus has come to Ithaca: "Then he went to lay him down even where the white-tusked boars were sleeping, beneath the hollow of the rock, in a place of shelter from the north wind." Odysseus, after landing from the raft, went up to the wood and there crept beneath some bushes. A common poet would have been satisfied with the general term, but Homer tells us that they were twin bushes of olive, and that one of them was wild olive: "Through these the force of the wet winds blew never, neither did the bright sun light on it with his rays, nor could the rain pierce through, so close were they twined either to other, and thereunder crept Odysseus." 1 In the original, "before daybreak." LAND AND SEA IN THE ODYSSEY. 67 The strong and simple sense of reality which always distin- guishes Homer is conspicuous in the washing of Odysseus. In the fresh river water he "washed from his skin the salt scurf that covered his back and broad shoulders, and from his head he wiped the crusted brine of the barren sea." Homer always seems to have accurate local knowledge, even of imaginary places, a characteristic so valuable for giving reality to a narrative that it has often been assumed or imitated by suc- ceeding writers. He knows that, in Calypso's island, the tall trees grew on the border, and that the species of them were alder, poplar, and pine. He gives quite a minute account of the island outside the harbor of the land of the Cyclôpes, "neither nigh at hand nor yet far off, a woodland isle.” "Yea, it is in no wise a sorry land, but would bear all things in their season, for therein are soft-water meadows by the shores of the gray salt sea, and there the vines know no decay and the land is level to plough. Also there is a fair haven, where is no need of moorings, either to cast anchor or to fasten hawsers, but men may run the ship on the beach, and tarry until such time as the sailors are minded to be gone and favorable breezes blow. Now at the head of the harbor is a well of bright water issuing from a cave, and round it are poplars growing." This minuteness in describing imaginary localities was due to the accurate observation of real ones. The character of Ithaca is alluded to at different times, and always strongly marked. It is contrasted by Telemachus with the landscape character of Pylos when he declines the offer of horses from Menelaus. Telemachus says he will not take horses to Ithaca because "there are no wide courses, nor meadow-land at all," but his local af- fection breaks out in the exclamation that it is a pasture-land of goats," and more pleasant in my sight than one that pastureth horses." Still, he appreciates the plain as a good place for pas- turage and driving. Athene describes Ithaca to Odysseus on his return with reference to the same rugged local character : "Verily it is rough, and not fit for the driving of horses, yet it is not a very sorry isle, though narrow withal. For herein is corn past telling, and herein too wine is found, and the rain is on it evermore, and the fresh dew. And it is good for feeding goats and feeding kine; all manner of wood is here, and watering-places unfailing are herein.” 68 LANDSCAPE. And when Athene sheds a mist about Odysseus that he may not recognize Ithaca, we are told that all things showed strange to him, "the long paths and the sheltering havens, and the steep rocks and the trees in their bloom." In the drive of Peisistratus and Telemachus from the house of Nestor at Pylos, the horses "flew towards the plain, and left the steep citadel of Pylos." They put up for the night at the house of Diocles, and next day the drive is continued in a de- cidedly lowland country, "the_wheat-bearing plain," and they drive on till all the ways are darkened. Finally they come to Lacedæmon," lying low among the caverned hills." Aided by these brief indications we imagine the landscape through which the swift horses speeded on their way. out. Odysseus has a sailor-like way of climbing a hill for a look- In his account of his own travels he tells King Alcinous that he "went up a craggy hill, a place of outlook, and saw the smoke rising from the broad-wayed earth in the halls of Circe through the thick coppice and the woodland." He had also a sailor's appreciation of a good harbor, for wherever there is one it is mentioned just as a sailor of our own day would mention it. The actualité of Homer is indeed so striking in this respect that the most modern travellers remind us of him.¹ Here is one example out of many. When Odysseus and his com- panions are sent away from the Court of Aeolus they sail for six days and arrive on the seventh at the stronghold of Lamos. See how minute is the description of the haven: - "Thither when we had come to the fair haven, whereabout on both sides goes one steep cliff unbroken, and jutting headlands over against each other stretch forth at the mouth of the harbor, and straight is the entrance; thereinto all the others steered their curved ships. Now the vessels were bound within the hollow har- bor each hard by the other, for no wave ever swelled within it, great or small, but there was a bright calm all around. But I alone moored my dark ship without the harbor, at the uttermost point thereof, and made fast the hawser to a rock." The descriptions of the sea in Homer are powerful in this sense, that they convey to the reader the feeling of its presence 1 A few hours before writing the above lines I had a conversation with an old naval officer about the Mediterranean, and noticed that he talked about the har- bors (in the Grecian Archipelago and elsewhere) quite in the Homeric manner. LAND AND SEA IN THE ODYSSEY. 69 or neighborhood. In this way it has come to pass that the Homeric poems, especially the tale of Odysseus, are closely as- sociated with the sea, an association of which Mr. Lang has made excellent use in his two beautiful sonnets on the "Odyssey." It is, however, easy to make too much of Homer's marine de- scriptions. They are, after all, only a form of early art, and it is a mistake to attribute to them the qualities of cultivated observation. A word or two of reality brings us from time to time to the sea-shore or the tossing waves, and we are grateful. When the maidens of Nausicaa have unharnessed the mules, they drive them "along the banks of the eddying river to graze on the honey-sweet clover;" and when they have washed the linen, they "spread it all out in order along the shore of the deep, even where the sea, in beating on the coast, washed the pebbles clean." Nothing can exceed the freshness of this touch. For brief descriptions of the power of wave and wind you have only to turn to any of the pages where the mariners are thwarted by the gods. There is an expression in the twelfth book about the sea darkening under a dark cloud, which is the most picto- rial bit of marine description in the narrative : "But now, when we left, that isle nor any other land appeared, but sky and sea only, even then the son of Cronos stayed a dark cloud above the hollow ship and beneath it the deep dark.ned." While Odysseus is on the raft, Poseidon smites it with two exceptionally great waves, the last so powerful that it separates the timbers: "While yet he pondered these things in his heart and soul, Po- seidon, shaker of the earth, stirred against him a great wave, ter- rible and grievous, and vaulted from the crest, and therewith smote him. And as when a great tempestuous wind tosseth a heap of parched husks, and scatters them this way and that, even so did the wave scatter the long beams of the raft." The epithet here translated "vaulted from the crest" is the mark of additional power in this wave. The first is not so de- scribed, it was only a great wave, but this is a great overhanging wave that comes crashing down (what we call a breaker), and so it severs the beams of the raft. The description of water- action in Charybdis, with its mightily pulsating rise and fall, is so real as to have been plainly suggested by something ob- served in Nature either in river or sea: $ 70 LANDSCAPE. "On the one hand lay Scylla, and on the other mighty Charybdis in terrible wise sucked down the salt sea water. As often as she belched it forth, like a caldron on a great fire, she would seethe up through all her troubled deeps, and overhead the spray fell on the tops of either cliff. But oft as she gulped down the salt sea water, within she was all plain to see through her troubled deeps, and the rock around roared horribly, and beneath the earth was manifest swart with sand." From all these extracts it is plain that Homer's close intimacy with Nature was rather the practical knowledge of a traveller, sailor, breeder, agriculturist, than that delicate observation of forms, effects, and color, which must enter into the training of a modern landscape-painter. This is a distinction which does not imply censure, as literature is an art quite separate from painting. A writer can bring to the mind recollections of other than ocular perceptions. In Homer we hear the shrill winds blowing in the wake of the hollow ship; we feel the flow of the river; we climb the rough track up to the wooded country; we taste of the honey-sweet lotus; but although the Homeric descriptions have often suggested ideas to painters, they are hardly ever in themselves pictorial. The all but complete ab- sence of color is a well-known negative characteristic ; and it has been inferred that in Homer's time the color-sense was in a ru- dimentary condition. Magnus says that Homer uses xλopós for green, and that only once; but he is so little decided about the hue, that he also employs xλwpós for the color of honey,¹ and for the pallor of the complexion produced by fear. The blue- ness of the sky is never mentioned by Homer; and if kvάveos meant blue at all, it was confounded so completely with dark brown or black, that he applied it to the hair of Hector, Odys- seus, Hera, and Zeus. The epithets used by Homer, and sometimes supposed to have reference to color, are in reality suggested by different degrees of light or conditions of reful- gence, such as splendor and glitter. I do not go farther into this question, having been preceded in the investigation by more competent students; but I may illustrate the subject from other sources. All primitive and little-cultivated persons have a way of confounding what they consider dark colors with black. What are called (by translation from the Gaelic) the "Black Isles on Loch Awe are gray rocks, spotted with lighter lichen, 2 Iliad, vii. 479. 2 "" 1 Odyssey, x. 234. LAND AND SEA IN THE ODYSSEY. 71 as and crested with heather, Scotch fir, and beech, offering alto- gether a rich variety of grays, greens, and purples; all of them pale at a little distance, and as far from black as can be. So I heard a French lady from the south affirm that the landscape of the Morvan was noir, an impression produced on her mind by comparison with the extremely pale mountain distances of Provence. All that the word "black" means in such cases is that the scenery is rather dark in comparison with some- thing else. I have never seen the Black Sea, but suppose it to be blue, or blue-green and gray, according to the weather. The Black Mount is purple and green, or blue in distance. Vino nero, in Italian, is chromatically as incorrect an expression white wine" when applied to sherry. These expressions are as wide of the truth as Homer's, yet people employ them who are supposed to possess completely developed senses, and who live in a time when the color vocabulary is extensive. In Homer's time it was very narrow, and a man of genius might be unable to express the variety of his own sensations. One of the few color epithets used by Homer may be true, iocidéa, violet-hued, as applied to the sea. Under certain effects the Ionian sea must be nearly the color of a violet. His association of the sea color with wine, though generally supposed to refer to its darkness only, may possibly have been suggested by ef- fects of sunset, when under a purple and crimson sky the waves do really bear some resemblance to the color of dark-red wine. No doubt Homer's perceptions of color were primitive and often indeterminate; but the exact degree of a poet's sensitive- ness can hardly be ascertained when we have only his writings, and he himself had no terms at his disposal outside of the mea- gre nomenclature of his time. 72 LANDSCAPE. Anie CHAPTER IX. t THE VIRGILIAN LANDSCAPES. TH HE natural progress of the mind towards the feeling and culture of a modern landscape-painter is through that state of feeling which may be simply described by the word "rural." The lady who exclaimed, when she saw the Alps for the first time, "Oh, how very rural!" was a little behind the fully developed modern passion for landscape, but she was on the way to it; she was in the preparatory stage. Even in our own day numbers of people are perfectly satisfied with simple rural- ism. They enjoy "the country" as a change from town, they like to visit a farm occasionally and see the folk in hamlets where life is simpler and less sophisticated than in the Champs Elysées and Belgravia. They feel themselves under the influence of the oldest poetical associations when the kine are brought home in the twilight, and the sheep are in the fold. This simply rural sentiment is, as I have said, the beginning of the landscape pas- sion, but it does not die out to be replaced by a stronger feeling. All that seems to happen with regard to it is that some quite modern minds, while preserving the old love of the country add to ruralism something else,—a passion for sublimity in wild landscape which has little apparent connection with rural inter- ests and associations. The poetry of the country is, indeed, so closely associated with the past history of mankind that it would have a good chance of enduring as long as the human race, were it not for one great danger. The progress of scientific agriculture may deprive the country itself of its old romantic. charm by substituting a rigid utilitarianism, a visibly exact econ- omy in mechanical methods, for the somewhat loose and easy primitive ways that still in certain regions remind us of the ancient Virgilian husbandry. The distinction between rural sentiment and the modern pas- sion for wild landscape may be felt at once on referring to THE VIRGILIAN LANDSCAPES. 73 * any of those studies of perfectly desolate scenery which are produced from time to time by our landscape-painters because they like the wildest Nature and enjoy what a classical mind would have called the "horror" of it, or what we call its sub- limity. A dark and lonely highland tarn, a rocky, treeless corrie, whose purple precipitous sides glisten under the moisture from its gray cloud, the barren shore of a sea-loch washed by the long tidal waves, an Alpine glacier flowing slowly past the foot of an inaccessible aiguille, a desolate stretch of ocean shore, a view of the Arabian desert with thirsty camels hurrying across the dreadful Nefood, all these are subjects interesting to the modern mind, but outside of that quiet and affectionate enjoy- ment of rustic life which was the landscape inspiration of Virgil. The genuine rural sentiment is as surely deprived of the solace that it requires in the dreariness of wild Nature as it is in the streets of a city. Its happiness is in some picturesque, well- situated farm, where, from dewy dawn to mellow sunset, a man may dwell in health, and plenty, and peace. The strength and genuineness of the rural sentiment in Virgil have won him credit for more power as the poet of landscape than that which he really possessed. An ancient author easily gets credited with more faculty and insight than were ever really his own. The slightest hint is seized upon as proof of his sen- sibility and of his watchful keenness of observation. With regard to Virgil this tendency is increased by his own affectionate ways. He really loved the country, the fields, the trees and vines, the oxen and sheep, the peaceful, rural life, and all true lovers of these things love him for his love. He expressed in the most beautiful language the old poetical feeling of rustic humanity that had come down to him from I know not what dumb and nameless ages of far antiquity; and so persistent is the sentiment that it often happens to us in these modern days to be suddenly struck with the Virgilian character of some quiet rural scene, and to remember that the Mantuan poet had noted exactly the same thing nearly two thousand years ago. He did not simply ad- mire Nature as a spectacle, but had a true happiness in thinking of the country, so that rural images easily occurred to his mind. His poems do not contain many descriptions, and the few that we find are short, but his references to Nature are frequent. He compares the majesty of Rome in her predominance over other cities to that of cypresses lifting their heads high above Celje, g 74 LANDSCAPE. a brushwood of viburnums. When Horace desires to convey the idea of permanent fame he thinks of enduring bronze, but Virgil thinks of the still more enduring instinct that makes animals love their natural haunts. "As long as the wild boar shall love the hill-tops and the fishes the rivers, as long as bees shall pasture on thyme and the cicala drink the dew, so long shall last thy praise and the honor of thy name." Daphnis is told that he is an ornament to his people as the vine is to trees and the grapes to the vine. Virgil sees clearly that there are differences of rank in the productions of Nature; shrubs and heather are not always enough: "If we sing the woods, let the woods be worthy of a consul!" Like all lovers of Nature, Virgil is not satisfied with mentioning "trees" in a vague general way, he must name their species. When Aeneas and his man go to cut wood in obedience to the commands of the Sibyl (Book VI.), we are told that they felled ash-trees and pines and big elms and a kind of oak that could be easily split with wedges. There is more tree-felling in the eleventh book, and this time are mentioned ash-trees, very tall star-pointing pines, the easily split oak, and the fragrant cedar. This does not come by chance, it is because the poet had the sylvan sense ; he knew the trees and their qualities. It might readily be argued that in the Eclogues Virgil would assume an interest in the things of the country as a part of his predetermined poetical manner, as we all know that it is a part of a poet's craft to assume and sustain in each composition the state of feeling that is best suited to it. I will not, therefore, insist too much upon the abundant employment of rural refer- ence in the dialogue between Thyrsis and Corydon in the Sev- enth Eclogue, but the Aeneid had no such rustic keynote. In the ninth book Virgil attributes to the mother of Jupiter those tender feelings about groups of trees that he experienced in his own mind with an almost Wordsworthian intensity. “There was a pine-wood of my own," she says, “beloved during many years; there was a sacred grove on the top of the hill whither men brought offerings; it was dark with the black fir and with trunks of maple." She has given this wood for the construc- tion of a fleet, and now, because of her old tender affection for the trees, she is anxious about the fate of the ships, loving still the very wood they are built of. Jupiter could not promise that the vessels should be exempt from peril during their voyages, • THE VIRGILIAN LANDSCAPES. 75 1. but he promised that those which escaped should be changed into sea-deities afterwards. Thus it came to pass that the pines of Ida became nymphs, as we learn in the tenth book. I do not remember anything in Virgil like Dante's sense of the oppressive forest gloom. Dante is frankly afraid of the thick forest: ** Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte, Che nel pensier rinnova la paura.” Virgil has too much science of forestry and love of trees to be atraid of them, and if they are fine ones they suggest the idea of wood-cutting; still he feels the vastness of the forest, and Aeneas gazes on the " silvam immensam before he is guided by the doves to the spot whence he may see the glistening of the golden bough: "" "Discolor unde auri per ramos aura refulsit." In the seventh book of the Aeneid there is a description of the Tiber pouring its flood into the sea with many whirlpools, "yellow with much sand." This is a very characteristic touch, and quite modern in its notice both of color and motion. The descriptions of rocks are slight: you have the bounding of a great block as it rushes down a mountain-side (Book XII.), and stationary rocks may be just mentioned, like the isolated rock in the sea (Book V.), but Virgil's geology does not go into any- thing like the same degree of affectionate specialization as his botany. In his day trees were distinguished, but stones hardly distinguished, except in the case of the marbles which Roman luxury sought for and appreciated. The meteorology of Virgil is confined to a very few descrip- tions of storms, a ready homage to the beauty of the dawn, and one or two brief descriptions of evening, such as that in the first Eclogue. We have the great storm in the first book of the Aeneid; but although the water is powerfully described, the clouds are only just mentioned as darkening the sky. In the twelfth book a squall cloud is used for comparison, and with great effect, but more is said of the devastation caused by it than of its appearance. The descriptions of sunrise scarcely give proof of any direct observation. The sea reddens, and Aurora drives her rose-colored equipage, or sheds her fresh light upon the earth when she leaves the saffron-colored couch of Tithonus. The verses, — 76 LANDSCAPE. "Et jam prima novo spargebat lumine terras Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile," are used in the fourth book of the Aeneid, and again, without alteration, in the ninth. The tendency, as in Homer, was to form a sort of cliché which would do duty for occasions of sun- rise, and this was greatly aided by the mixture of mythology with Nature. We are a long way, as yet, from the separate and special observation of one sunrise as distinguished from another. There is a touch in the concluding verses of the second book which seems to imply, notwithstanding the extreme brevity of the expression, a sense of the poetry of star and peak that we find developed in modern literature and art: Already the morning star was rising over the crests of loftiest Ida, and bringing back the day." In the same book occurs that remark- ably accurate description of a meteor with its train of light over the forests of Ida, evidently a recollection of some aerolite whose bright and wonderful passage through the atmosphere Virgil must himself have seen. (6 Of evening effects I remember nothing in Virgil bearing the stamp of personal observation like that simple account in the +first Eclogue of the lengthening of the shadows from the moun- tains. The beauty of the verse, its soft cadence — soft almost as the falling of the shadows themselves gives an importance. to the passage beyond its science, and the impression of repose is enhanced by the smoke rising from the distant homesteads : "Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant, Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae." Here may appropriately come to an end our present study of a poet who loved Nature sincerely, though not exactly in our way. He had the enjoyment of the country quite as decidedly as any modern, and was not insensible to the sublimity of the sea, the vastness of the forest, the height of the mountain. He knew agriculture like a farmer, and trees like a woodcutter, but the element that is wanting in his appreciation of Nature is the observation of distinct pictures. Any description by Virgil would be applicable to a thousand scenes of that class; the best modern work is the result of particular suggestions or impressions. THE LANDSCAPES OF ARIOSTO. 77 CHAPTER X. C THE LANDSCAPES OF ARIOSTO. I HAVE preferred Ariosto to Spenser as the representative of the Renaissance, both because Ariosto was born earlier and in Italy (the centre from which the Renaissance spirit spread to other lands), and also because he is richer than the English poet in the materials of landscape. Not that Ariosto himself was a close or affectionate observer of the external world, indeed the most striking landscapes are never more than the background of his crowded tapestry, picturesque chiefly in human life and costume; but he had a way of treating land- scape that deserves attention for its art. The direct source of his poetic inspiration was the mediaeval romance of chivalry; yet as Ariosto was a cultivated man, a scholar, a reader, and in some degree a traveller, he added to the simple mediaeval art the touches that come from a riper learning and a wider range of experience. Both in Ariosto and the mediaeval writers it is hard to distinguish between the landscape-painting and the geography or minute local topography. The one glides imper- ceptibly into the other so that it is often hard to say whether the landscape is a bit of pictorial description or a sort of map in which things are drawn according to the usage of those times. I have just been comparing with Ariosto the mediaeval romance of "Meraugis de Portlesguez," by Raoul de Houdenc (thirteenth century), and I find essentially the same method adopted in both cases, though with far greater skill and richness in by Ariosto. The principle is to keep the dramatis personae motion, and to give variety to the story by taking them into un- expected situations. Changes of landscape thus become impor- tant, not only as they do to all travellers, but especially because in an adventurous career strange things may be expected to happen in strange places. After a little experience the reader 78 LANDSCAPE. knows quite well that when the poet is leading him into new scenery fresh adventures may be counted upon. It is in this way, and not for any great artistic interest in the landscape it- self, that the old romancing poets made use of it; and with this key to their purpose it is amusing to see how cleverly they man- aged to stimulate flagging interest by a change of scene, and to obtain a little respite from the perpetual invention of human ecstasies and woes. In Meraugis we find a knight riding with a lady along a new road, and it has been snowing in the morn- ing, and they pass by an enclosed wood lower than the road. I should hardly call this landscape, but rather topographic detail. In another place they ride through a dark forest which of course is preparatory to meeting with an adventure : "Ainsi chevauchent ambedui, Parmi la grant forest oscure Tant qu'à un gué, par aventure, Ont un chevalier encontré.” You have a description of a castle in a very fine situation on a rock near a river, a meadow, and a wood: "Un chastel, jouste une riviere, Trop haut. Ne sai de quel maniere Il fu assis sur une roche; Mes a tant entailliez la broche, C'est li plus biax du monde à chois Entre le chastel et le bois, Virent en mi la praierie La plus bele chevalerie Qui onques mes fust assemblée." In the course of his wanderings Meraugis is riding near the sea, and he discovers a rock far away in the mountains "Very high and all of a piece, and always green with ivy" "Mult haute et toute d'une pierre En touz temps verds, qu'ele estoit d'ierre Bordée tout à la reonde." He rides straightway to the rock, but finds it totally inacces- sible without doorway, or window, or step, and there are twelve damsels on the top, and he rides round it three times, but see- ing no way up, at last begs them to say how he is to get there. All this is thoroughly mediaeval in spirit, and in the miniature illustrating the manuscript the ladies are represented as sitting THE LANDSCAPES OF ARIOSTO. 79 on a sort of table-stone, all very well dressed, and supposed to be shaded by one tree that grows up in the middle. Now I see no real distinction in artistic principle between these descriptions and those of Ariosto. He, too, has his deep woods, his inaccessible rocks, his grandly situated castles, his wild roads or tracks followed by wandering adventurers. But his genius was so inventive, so rich and fructifying, that he gave a new vitality to everything; and he as greatly exceeds the mediaeval writers in the brilliance of his descriptions as in the rapidity and interest of his action.. There is no depth of thought in either; the genius of the poet and the influences of his age were alike unfavorable to any permanent seriousness; he writes simply to amuse, to entertain the reader, and to please himself with the recurring measures and rhymes of a singularly facile versification. He is not always gay, but the occasional shadow of unhappy chance or disagreeable locality does not rest on the verse for long; the stanzas flow swiftly still, like a stream through a wood, sure to get out of it into the sunshine. He is more at home in pleasant places, but does not shrink from the others; and has especially the traveller's spirit, never desiring to stay long in one place, whatever may be its charms. His geography, though inaccurate, embraces a vast extent of country. His characters travel everywhere and by all sorts of means, — by ship, by river-boat, by ordinary horses, and by that famous hippogriff which flew over land and sea. Astolpho goes out of our world, descends to the infernal regions, rises to the high terrestrial paradise, and finally visits the moon. The poet never shrinks from the responsibility of inventing details, his prodigal genius undertakes to tell everything, and wherever it leads him he sees the configuration of the land. Born, like Virgil, in a warm climate, he has the old Latin appreciation of shady groves, green meadows, sparkling fountains, and running streams; while, on the other hand, his most successful effort in uncomfortable description is that powerful one of Roger's hot ride in the eighth Canto, when he goes from one precipice to another, and from path to path, all alike "rough, solitary, in- hospitable, and wild," till at length, under the fervid heat of noon, he comes to a plain between sea and mountain with a southern aspect "burnt, bare, sterile, and deserted." The sun's rays are reflected from the hills with such intensity that air and sand are on fire with a heat " more than enough to melt glass." 80 LANDSCAPE. Every bird lies hidden in the shade; only the cicala makes its wearisome noise to valley and hill, to sea and heaven. For unity of effect, simplicity of motive, and strength of language this is one of the finest descriptions in literature.¹ The same great quality of singleness of effect exists in the far simpler description of the island where Agramant took refuge in his voyage, "a little isle without habitations, covered with bilberry and juniper, a pleasant and retired solitude for deer, goats, and hares, little known except by fishermen, who often land there to dry their nets, the fish meanwhile sleeping peace- fully in the sea." This little picture, perfect in its way, is set in the frame of a single stanza.2 Alcina's island, where Roger alights from the winged horse, is intended to be as charming as possible, so Ariosto here gives us his own ideal of a place. The island includes "cultivated plains, gentle hills, clear waters, shaded banks, and soft mea- Then there are dows." pleasant bowers of odoriferous lau- rel, of palm-trees and myrtle, cedars, orange-trees laden with fruit and flowers, a thick shade against the burning heat of summer, and amid their branches the nightingales sing without fear. Cool breezes wander among red roses and white lilies, hares and rabbits play, the deer bound at liberty, and stags fear- lessly pasture on the grass." This is Ariosto's ideal, the ideal 1 Here is the original: 2 66 "Tra duri sassi e folte spine gia Ruggiero intanto inver la Fata saggia, Di balzo in balzo, e d' una in altra via Aspra, solinga, inospita e selvaggia, Tanto che a gran fatica riuscia Sulla fervida nona in una spiaggia Tra 'l mare e 'l monte, al mezzodì scoperta Arsiccia, nuda, sterile e deserta. "Percote il Sole ardente il vicin colle, E del calor che si riflette addietro In modo l' aria e l' arena ne bolle, Che saria troppo a far liquido il vetro. Stassi cheto ogni augello all' ombra molle, Sol la cicala col nojoso metro Fra i densi rami del fronzuto stelo Le valli e i monti assorda, e 'l mare e 'l cielo." "D'abitazioni è l' Isoletta vota Piena d' umil mortelle, e di ginepri; Gioconda solitudine, e remota A cervi, a daini, a capriuoli, a lepri; E, fuor che a pescatori, è poco nota, Ove sovente à rimondati vepri Sospendon, per seccar, l' umide reti: Dormono intanto i pesci in mar quieti." THE LANDSCAPES OF ARIOSTO. 81 of a southern imagination; and to this day nobody has dis- covered anything pleasanter for rest of mind and body, though some of us in more active moods prefer a storm-swept loch or a stony moor in the Highlands with the bracing northern air. Invariably for Ariosto the notion of pleasantness is associated with shade. "There lies in Araby a delicious little vale far from cities and villages, in the shadow of two mountains, and all full of old pine-trees and great beeches. Vainly the sun darts his rays thereon, for he cannot penetrate the thick foliage." When Roland is to go mad because he has seen the names of Angelica and Medor together, a contrast is sought between the beauty of the place and the harshness of the discovery, so the poet brings together the old pleasant elements, "a stream clear as crystal, a beautiful meadow, many and fine trees." On the contrary, when Ariosto wants to make us feel dreary he de- scribes " a vast plain that lay entirely open to the sun's rays, on which neither laurel nor myrtle could be seen, nor cypress, nor ash, nor beech, nothing but naked gravel and perchance some poor sprig of a plant." Without being of those critics, justly laughed at by Tennyson, who fancy that a poet "has no imagination, but is for ever pok- ing his nose between the pages of some old volume in order to see what he can appropriate," we cannot help noticing the existence of artistic traditions which sometimes are little better than repetitions of old forms. The influence of Virgil on Ariosto is plain enough at times, especially in his mythological sunrises, one of which occurs curiously out of place in the terrestrial paradise, where you meet with the Apostle John and other saints or prophets, yet at the same time are told, when the sun rises, that Aurora left her old husband, who did not dis- please her in spite of his great age. In the thirtieth canto Aurora escorts the sun; in the twelfth, Apollo drives his horses out of the sea, their coats wet, and Aurora sprinkles yellow and red flowers all over the heaven. I fancy, too, that if Virgil had not specialized his trees Ariosto would probably not have done so to the same extent or on so many occasions, and I am sure that in describing sea-storms Ariosto had in view those in the 'Aeneid," and tried his hand in a rivalry that we cannot consider presumptuous. Both poets had rather in view the danger of the vessels than any close study of sky and sea. The clouds cast a veil over the sky, so that neither sun nor star appears, the sea 66 6 82 LANDSCAPE. roars below and the winds above, the mariners have to struggle against rain, hail, and darkness. Is not this an almost exact account of the storm in the third book of the "Aeneid?" One stanza is almost a literal translation of four verses in Virgil's first book. I print the two passages below. This cannot be an accidental coincidence. When there is really a strong love of landscape it shows it- self quite as much in frequent reference and comparison as in labored and intentional description. In Ariosto such compari- sons are not frequent, yet they are to be met with occasionally. There is a pretty one in the thirty-second canto, where the Lady of Iceland receives notice to leave the castle. "As one sees in a moment a dim cloud rise from a damp valley to the sky and cover the sun's face, once so bright, with a tenebrous veil, so the lady changed on hearing the hard sentence." She finds a defender, and this gives an opportunity for another comparison which shows rather a more tender regard for the small things of Nature than might have been expected from a brilliant story- teller like Ariosto. "As in the most burning heats of summer, when the earth is most thirsty, a flower, nearly deprived of the fluid that keeps it in life, feels the beloved rain," so the lady rejoiced on finding her defence undertaken by the daughter of Amon, and became glad and beautiful as she was before. There is a curious double comparison to illustrate the beauty of Bra- damante, and even a triple comparison if we consider the last line. She is taking off her armor, and her long hair has rolled out of her helmet and fallen over her shoulders; then her sud- denly discovered beauty suggests to the poet, first, the stage of a 1 "Postquam altum tenuere rates,” etc. 2 VIRGIL. "Talia jactanti stridens Aquilone procella Velum adversa ferit, fluctusque ad sidera tollit. Franguntur remi; tum prora avertit, et undis Dat latus: insequitur cumulo praeruptus aquae mons." Aeneid, lib. i. 102. ARIOSTO. "Ecco stridendo l' orribil procella Che 'l repentin furor di Borea spinge, La vela contra l' arbore flagella; Il mar si leva, e quasi il cielo attinge Frangonsi i remi; e di fortuna fella Tanto la rabbia impetuosa stringe, Che la prora si volta, e verso l' onda Fa rimaner la disarmata sponda." Orlando Furioso, canto xli. 13. THE LANDSCAPES OF ARIOSTO. 83 theatre when the curtain rises and a scene with a superb build- ing full of gold, and statuary, and painting, and lighted by a thousand lamps. This is the first comparison, not very happy, as a beautiful girl's face is far superior to all such things, and even on the stage itself extinguishes them at once. Perhaps the poet felt this, for he next compared her with the sun issuing from behind a cloud; very laudatory, but still not perfect, as the sun causes us painful sensations, while a beautiful face gives un- alloyed pleasure. Ariosto may have felt this too, for finally he tells us that in lifting the helmet from her head the lady showed paradise opening itself. Ariosto sometimes takes note of rivers and makes his heroes do a little boating upon them, but we do not find much charac- teristic description. Rinaldo descends the Po in a rowing-boat, and Rodomont out of kindness to his horse puts him on a boat upon the Saône and descends that river with him. He is a day and a night on the river, but there is not a word to indicate its character, not even that single epithet used by Wordsworth, "gentle." Rinaldo is quietly asleep all night while the rowers work, and when he awakes all his attention is attracted by the towns they pass; and when there are no towns the difficulty of giving duration to the voyage without description of the scenery is ingeniously overcome by making one of the boatmen tell a story that occupies seventy-one stanzas. Then comes just a touch of landscape description. While they are eating on the boat the beautiful country glides away to the left and the bound- less marsh to the right : — "Fugge a sinistra intanto il bel paese Ed a man destra la palude immensa.” I remember, too, in the ninth canto, the river that separates Normandy from Brittany, and is described as being in flood, "swollen and white with foam from melted snow and rain from the hills, so that the force of the water had broken and carried away the bridge, the only way of getting across." Here we have, in literature, a picture bearing a wonderfully close resem- blance to Mr. Graham's "Spate in the Highlands," even to the incident of the bridge, M 1 "Upon the bosom of the gentle Saône We glided forward with the flowing stream." The Prelude. . 84 LANDSCAPE. 1 "Passando un giorno, come avea costume D'un paese in un altro, arrivò dove Parte i Normandi dai Bretoni un fiume, E verso il vicin mar cheto si move, Che allora gonfio e bianco gía di spume Per neve sciolta, e per montane piove, El' impeto dell' acqua avea disciolto E tratto seco il ponte, e 'l passo tolto.” WORDSWORTH. 85 CHAPTER XI. (4 WORDSWORTH. ΤΕ 'HE poets we have been studying lived before the age of landscape-painting; Wordsworth was the contemporary of artists who had brought landscape-painting to the greatest perfection and he shared their way of looking at Nature. On this point I have safe testimony. Mr. J. P. Pettitt, who taught me painting in my youth, told me that Wordsworth had often joined him when he was working from Nature in the Lake District, and had given clear evidence in his conversation of a knowledge of landscape very nearly resembling that of a modern English landscape-painter. It is highly improbable that a painter would have said as much of Virgil or Ariosto, though he might have received suggestions from their verse to be elabo- rated by the addition of pictorial knowledge. It is quite within the truth to describe Wordsworth as a · landscape artist in verse who belonged to the age of the great landscape-painters, and whose mind, like theirs, filled itself habitually with images derived from the natural world. He told · Crabbe Robinson, with satisfaction, that when a stranger had asked to see his study the maid had shown him a room and said, "This is master's library, but he studies in the fields." After reading the poems we hardly need this testimony of an observant domestic. Crabbe Robinson said that if the poems had been in Italian many of them might have been classed as "alla bella Natura; but the truth is, that many others, not intentionally dedicated to Nature, contain comparisons and allusions that prove even more plainly still how habitually the writer's mind was filled with images derived from landscape. is so both in his most solemn and his most trivial poems. The magnificent Ode on the "Intimations of Immortality" mentions meadow, grove, and stream" in the first line, and “the earth "" It • 86 LANDSCAPE. and every common sight" in the second. When he had just read in a newspaper that the "dissolution of Mr. Fox was hourly expected," Wordsworth at once composed a poem, and the first two stanzas are all landscape: "Loud is the Vale! The Voice is up With which she speaks when storms are gone, A mighty unison of streams! Of all her Voices, One! "Loud is the Vale! This inland Depth, In peace is roaring like the Sea; Yon star upon the mountain-top Is listening quietly." He praises a healthy and pretty girl, and says that she is fleet and strong, and can leap down the rocks like rivulets in May, a comparison which in its health, freshness, and gayety is not to be surpassed; but in the second stanza of the same poem, "Louisa," there is an association of love with northern English landscape that is the gem of the poem :- And, when against the wind she strains, Oh! might I kiss the mountain rains That sparkle on her cheek." That exquisite little poem about the "Maid whom there were none to praise," one of the most perfect short compositions in our language, begins with a landscape association that gives the charm of loneliness and purity : "She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove." In the "Excursion," a mind by Nature discontented and in- tolerant of peace leads a "Dread life of conflict! which I oft compared To the agitation of a brook that runs Down a rocky mountain, buried now and lost In silent pools, now in strong eddies chained; But never to be charmed to gentleness." From these and many other similar allusions to the natural world it would be evident that Wordsworth often thought of landscape, and keenly appreciated not only its beauty but its other qualities also. Yet still, if we had only these allusions, we should not know that Wordsworth surpassed his predecessors in WORDSWORTH. 87 observation even more than he surpassed them in affection. The mere love of Nature is not by any means a rare quality in earlier writers. Chaucer had it in great strength, and evidences of it are scattered over the ballad and romance literature of the middle and subsequent ages, often in a single epithet, tenderly repeated. Most of us remember how " the birk and the broom blooms bonnie," how "the primrose spreads so sweetly," and what loving repetition is given to "the bonnie mill-dams o' Bin- norie." In "The Demon Lover" the "hills of heaven "" are pleasant and the sun shines sweetly upon them, but the " moun- tain of hell" is "dreary in frost and snow." This sort of land- scape characterization was not uncommon before Wordsworth, and we ought not to undervalue it, as it often lends a grace and charm to poetry by recalling the beauty of Nature; but it is without any special knowledge or evidence of study. The most ordinary powers of observation are enough to make a poet use such an epithet as "fair," or " bonnie,” of tree and flower. They are only expressions of admiration like the praise of beauty in woman. Now see how Wordsworth approached a natural scene before he was twenty years old. Here is a description of a lake surface. The poet does not content himself with calling the lake "fair" or "bonnie," but he observes the phenomena of water: "Into a gradual calm the breezes sink, A blue rim borders all the lake's still brink; There doth the twinkling aspen's foliage sleep, And insects clothe, like dust, the glassy deep; And now, on every side, the surface breaks Into blue spots, and slowly lengthening streaks; Here, plots of sparkling water tremble bright With thousand thousand twinkling points of light; There, waves that, hardly weltering, die away, Tip their smooth ridges with a softer ray; And now the whole wide lake in deep repose Is hushed, and like a burnished mirror glows, Save where, along the shady western marge Coasts, with industrious oar, the charcoal barge." This may easily be undervalued by a reader of the present day, because it is rather formal and old-fashioned, but it is quite unapproached in delicacy of observation by any previous writer. The young poet is not satisfied with telling us that the lake was calm; he gives us an account of its changefulness, of its life. Unobservant people fancy that a lake is calm all over equally; b 88 LANDSCAPE. · Wordsworth saw that the surface was dealt with differently by the air in different places, that in some places there were "plots of sparkling water," in others dying wavelets, and when the whole lake was hushed in calm the boat disturbed it. The "blue spots" and "slowly lengthening streaks" are sky reflec- tions on places slightly roughened by faint local breezes. This delicacy of observation remained with Wordsworth dur- ing the whole of his long life, and often inspired passages of ex- quisite truth that are entirely lost upon worldly readers, though they make his name dear to every true lover of landscape. He wrote stanzas on a picture of Peele Castle in a storm, and for contrast described it, as he had seen it, in calm weather: "So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! So like, so very like, was day to day! Whene'er I looked, thy Image still was there; It trembled, but it never passed away." This is the poet's exquisitely beautiful way of telling us that the light airs were just strong enough to disturb the reflection occasionally, but never strong enough to efface it. No poet before Wordsworth would have written anything like that. In this little picture he had the presence of water, a great advan- tage; but now see what he can do without it: "And yet, even now, a little breeze, perchance, Escaped from boisterous winds that rage without, Has entered, by the sturdy oaks unfelt, But to its gentle touch how sensitive Is the light ash! that, pendent from the brow Of yon dim cave, in seeming silence makes A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs." This delicacy of observation was not of the eye only. We have a hint in the "seeming silence" that the ear shared it, and even in his youth Wordsworth listened as well as looked. He listened in the evening hours for "the song of mountain streams unheard by day now hardly heard," and many a year afterwards "The little rills and waters numberless, Inaudible by daylight, blend their notes With the loud streams." The love of Nature developed itself so early in Wordsworth, that it seems to have been born with him; but there is an import- ant passage in "The Prelude " which tells us that boyish activity WORDSWORTH. 89 “and preceded it, "animal activities," to use his own exact expres- sion, "and all their trivial pleasures." This is quite the healthy and natural course of development for a poet or painter of landscape. He should begin by a taste for pedestrianism, skating. boating, and so gain an intimacy with Nature not to be acquired in cities; then, if he has the instinct, his mind will gradually open itself to a delight in Nature quite different from physical exercise. "I loved whate'er I saw, nor lightly loved, But most intensely; never dreamed of aught More grand, more fair, more exquisitely framed Than those few nooks to which my happy feet Were limited." The love of Nature at this time was so strong that it became oppressive, a state of mind dangerous to its balance, as we have other faculties to cultivate than that of perpetual and ecstatic admiration. "When I began in youth's delightful prime To yield myself to Nature, when that strong And holy passion overcame me first, Nor day nor night, evening or morn, was free From its oppression." There is a splendid passage in "The Prelude," too long for quotation, in which the poet acknowledges a great obligation to these early influences of landscape, which had given his mind confidence, faith, and a support in sorrow. This was written when the oppression of the landscape influence had passed away, and what remained of it was felt to be purely beneficent. That influence was one of the main causes of the extremely serene calm that distinguished the life of Wordsworth, and made him not much liked by petulant people who are always wanting excitement. It must, indeed, be admitted that his placid enjoy- ment of an uneventful existence, and his satisfaction with his own wise choice in life, made him easily tolerant of dull passages in his own poems, but here the penalty falls only on the reader; for Wordsworth himself the love of Nature was a refuge against that dissatisfaction with mankind which troubles all those who think, and perverts so many to cynicism. It is a great thing to 1 The passage alluded to is towards the end of the second book. It begins with the words, "If this be error," and finishes with "purest passion." 90 LANDSCAPE. "" have a secure refuge from the insincerities of society and the meanness of politics. Wordsworth roamed about his hills and valleys, and remained like the Wanderer, "vigorous in health, of hopeful spirits undamped by worldly-mindedness or anxious care. If any proof were needed that the love of natural beauty was not, in his case, and need not be, a deteriorating influence, it might easily be shown that it was accompanied by a correla- tive love of moral beauty. The magnificent ode in which, at the age of thirty-five, he dedicated himself to Duty, contains two immortal lines, where he places the moral beauty of a satis- fied conscience above all other. "Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face." 1 It was a marked characteristic of Wordsworth's genius to take note of small things as well as great, and yet not to lose himself in any insignificant details. The poem called "The Pilgrim's Dream," in which there is a colloquy between a star and a glow-worm, gives evidence that the author was conscious of this breadth of interest, and, indeed, are not star and glow-worm equally beautiful and just equally wonderful, absolutely inexpli- cable both of them? Some minds rise to the sublime but dis- dain the humble. Byron's mind was of this temper; others love humble landscape and shrink from the sublime as George Eliot did; others rise to sublimity at one time, and condescend to little things at another, as Victor Hugo does; but in Words- worth the magnificence of Nature at once, and, as it seems, in- evitably, suggests what is lowly and unobtrusive. His mind knew the "union of extremes " the "natural bond between the bold- est schemes Ambition frames and heart humilities," and it was he who told us, with profound significance, that "Beneath stern mountains many a soft vale lies, And lofty springs give birth to lowly streams.” 1 These two lines would be incomparable in their elevation if we had not in Shelley's " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" three verses of such transcendent majesty: - "Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds depart And come, for some uncertain moments lent Man were immortal and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart." WORDSWORTH. 91 The passages that prove Wordsworth's affectionate interest in places that less observant people go by without a glance are too numerous for quotation; but here in four lines is an example dear to me who know many such places : "Between two sister moorland rills, There is a spot that seems to lie Sacred to flowerets of the hills, And sacred to the sky." In the poem entitled "Fidelity," where the first object is to produce the impression of loneliness, there is a picture, sketched in the fewest possible words, of a tarn "far in the bosom of Helvellyn," with a lofty precipice in front of it, and December snow in June. Byron described Lake Leman, but would scarce- ly have noticed a gloomy, little nameless tarn in the hollow of an English hill. Wordsworth's interest in the world of plants had the same in- clusive character. His description of yew-trees, written at the age of thirty-three, and classed among the Poems of the Imagi- nation, contains firm truth and noble imagination also, and remains permanently the one description of that tree. The allusions to other trees are frequent, but not so new in litera- ture 1 as the descriptions of clouds and water-surfaces. The poems about flowers are very original in a playful affectionate- ness that appeared silly to men of the world. Wordsworth wrote two poems on the Daisy, two to the small Celandine, two about the flower called "Love-lies-bleeding," and we all know what he had to say about the primrose by the river's brim, and the "never-ending line" of daffodils "along the margin of a bay." The Lake District is not rich in interesting buildings, and it may be for this reason that Wordsworth has so much less to say than Scott concerning the influences of architecture. When he does describe a building there is little that is specially charac- teristic, but the surrounding landscape is not likely to be over- looked. The address to Kilchurn Castle is not individual, it would apply equally well to other strongholds of the kind; but the poet does not fail to tell us that Kilchurn is associated with "mountains, torrents, lake, and woods." So with Norton Tower: there is no detail of architecture, it is simply "an edifice of 1 Except, perhaps, the poem on the old Thorn. 92 LANDSCAPE. warlike frame;" but the prospect from it is carefully de- scribed: "It fronts all quarters, and looks round O'er path, and road, and plain, and dell, Dark moor, and gleam of pool and stream Upon a prospect without bound." 66 "} The sonnet on a "Highland Hut" was written because there were gay wild flowers on its roof, and because the smoke issuing from it shone "in the greeting of the sun's first ray." Another strong reason was because the limpid mountain rill "avoided it not." The humble Scottish graveyard attracted the poet's attention, because part of its enclosure was a "rugged steep that curbs a foaming brook." So we hear of a piece of old military architecture in Switzerland because it can be men- tioned in connection with a remarkable river and a lake : — "We met, while festive mirth ran wild, Where, from a deep lake's mighty urn, Forth slips, like an enfranchised slave, A sea-green river, proud to lave With current swift and undefiled The towers of old Lucerne." While giving full credit to Wordsworth for his merciful senti- ment about animals, and while feeling especially grateful to him for the two most noble lines with which the second part of Hart-Leap Well" comes to such an admirable termination, we cannot help perceiving that the motive of the poem lay in the connection of the incident with a place. The hart had died close to a spring beneath a hill, and so the animal's death became a Wordsworthian subject. In like manner "The White Doe of Rylstone" is associated with the landscape of Bolton Abbey. Of all poets Wordsworth is the most decidedly a student of landscape; and he was so much a student as to be sometimes a defective artist. The experience of painters throws a valuable side-light on the poetical production of Wordsworth. It is well known among landscape-painters that the habit of making careful studies, though excellent in itself as a means of acquiring knowledge, may have a bad effect upon production, if it is carried into what ought to be works of a higher inspiration. It occasionally happened that Wordsworth inserted studies in poems, a practice always wisely avoided by Tennyson, who makes WORDSWORTH. 93 use of Nature for suggestion only, and concentrates the idea suggested in a form of expression as remarkable for brevity as for power. But whatever may have been the artistic errors of Wordsworth, every true lover of landscape must think of him with gratitude. He was not the first poet who felt the influences of Nature; but he was the first who took the trouble to observe with the attention of a painter, and his mind was so constituted that landscape was more significant for him than it had been for any of his predecessors. To trace all the subsequent ramifica- tions of his influence would require a long essay. All English prose and poetry that deals with landscape in this century is more or less indebted to him. Some of his successors appear at times more powerful than their original; they are, at least, more artful. Others remind us pertinently of his own saying, that lofty springs give birth to lowly streams. 94 LANDSCAPE. ** CHAPTER XII. LAMARTINE. K I HAVE felt some hesitation about adding Lamartine to my list of selected poets; not because he is at all wanting in interest relatively to the subject of landscape, but because French poetry is so little read in England, and generally so little liked. For this there are many reasons. One is that as French literature is not included in what is called classical · education, an Englishman is not obliged to admire a French poet as he must admire Homer or Virgil, and so he says what he thinks, which is so commendable a practice that it might be extended to other studies with advantage. Another reason is that very few people appreciate any foreign poetry whatever. In reading poetry in a foreign language we encounter two dis- tinct classes of difficulties. We do not feel the good qualities of the verse so readily as a native does, and also (this is less. generally known) we are much more alive to certain inevitable imperfections that he passes over easily from habit. In many passages of what, on the whole, are fine poems, there are words and phrases inserted merely to fill up a void. An accomplished native reader glides over these to get his pleasure farther on, but the less rapid comprehension of the foreigner is arrested by them. Again, there are many words in poetry which do well in their place, if rapidly passed over, but which hardly bear ex- amination; and the foreigner looks at details too closely, as a man who only half understands painting scrutinizes the clots of color and thinks the work is coarse, when it is in reality well calculated. Even in our own language we perceive the strange- ness of certain epithets when the poetry has had time to be- come old-fashioned. If the reader will turn to the second quotation from Byron on page 34 of this volume and ask himself LAMARTINE. 95 "" fairly why the blue of the Highlands is said to be "swelling," 1 he may feel this, and "infant rapture may seem even a little ridiculous. To enjoy poetry thoroughly, and even to appreciate it, we need insensibility to some things quite as much as a delicate sensibility to others. The music of verse, too, when thoroughly enjoyed, makes the meaning of it a secondary con- sideration; and to enjoy the music, even when we do not read aloud, we must imagine good reading, which includes correct and facile pronunciation. Then there is poetical diction, the custom of each country and time accepting certain forms and expressions as being suitable in poetry but not in prose; and the poetical diction of one country often seems odd to the inhabi- tants of another. Expressions that seem from association poetical to a native are destitute of this quality to a foreigner. For example, the French word guéret is much used in poetry. Strictly, it means a field that has been ploughed but not yet sown; but why the poets like it is hard to say. They are also very fond of pampre, which means a vine-stalk in leaf, a word seldom used in prose, except in descriptions that aspire to be poetical; but to an Englishman "the vine," though not reserved for poetry only, seems more poetical than pampre. The inten- tional simplicity of certain forms is apt to appear childish to a foreigner, whereas a native perceives it to be the result of art. These are some reasons why poetry is not easily appreciated out of its own land; but by far the strongest reason of all is that poetry requires sympathy in the reader far more than prose, and there is hardly any sympathy between nations. Between Eng- land and France the want of sympathy is continually manifesting itself on small occasions and great. In the arts it shows itself, on the French side, in contemptuous reference to English paint- ing, sculpture, and architecture, confounding genius and me- diocrity in indiscriminate condemnation; while on the English side it is principally evident in the unsympathetic reception of French literature of the higher kind, and in the application to it of standards of taste which are purely British and have nothing to do with the genius of the French language or the traditions of French thought. We are the more exposed to this error with 1 I suppose that the word "swelling" was used by Byron to imply that as we gaze on the blue of a Scottish mountain it grows upon us, or possibly that it may spread over the distant landscape by the changes of effect; but fancy a Frenchman trying to translate it! "L'azur qui s'enfle! Qu'est ce que cela peut vouloir dire?” • 95 LANDSCAPE. regard to poetry, that the construction of our own tongue makes it a better instrument for poetic use, a fact admitted by Lamar- tine himself and by all who know enough of both languages to have an opinion on the subject.¹ Lamartine was not by any means so close an observer of landscape as Wordsworth, but he associated landscape with hu- man life as intimately, and he excelled Wordsworth in one im- portant quality or power, that of fusing the landscape and the human elements inextricably together. You may like his sen- timent or not, you may call it human feeling, which is praise, or "French sentiment," which in English is an expression of an- tipathy; but in any case you must admit that there is a feeling, a sentiment of some kind which absorbs all the landscape and the human life together into itself, and this I take to be one of the marks of true genius in poetry. I should say that if a poet were to make an accurate piece of painstaking observant de- scription of some place and then insert that in a poem for which it was not originally intended, it would be a sign of imaginative sluggishness or feebleness in him; but if the landscape sug- gested itself in the course of his narrative as entering necessarily into the influences which developed the characters of his per- sonages or determined their actions, then it would truly belong to the poem and therefore be artistically superior to the other, though less minutely faithful to Nature. Now in "Jocelyn, from beginning to end, the landscape influences are so closely interwoven with the tissue of the poem that they cannot be de- tached from it. The story is a story of loss and separation, of permanent sorrow endured with patience, but ending only in the grave. The first note is a note of sadness, and when a gleam of happiness comes in the middle of the tale it leads to a discovery by which grief is made more grievous and loneliness. still more lonely. The scene is laid in the Alps of Savoy, and it is the use of the mountain influences which gives the work its special interest for us. Lamartine was born at Mâcon, a place not in the mountains, though hills and the cliff of Solutré are near; but from Mâcon in clear weather before rain you see the snowy dome of Mont Blanc and may distinguish the dark rocks 11 2 1 English is a better poetical instrument than French, and yet there are several favorite effects of resonance and metre in French poetry that are unattainable in English, so that French poetry has a value and interest of its own. 2 Lamartine's most important poem. LAMARTINE. 97 with a telescope. This was enough to awaken an early interest in Alpine scenery which was soon increased by travel. And here I have a word to say about the association of language with locality. We know that language is not permanent, that the tongues we use are not of any great antiquity, and that they are not likely to last for ever. We know that the hills are incomparably older than any language, and likely to outlast our present forms of speech, though geologists may show how they have been slowly upheaved and subsequently sculptured, and how they are gradually wasting in their long decay. Still, in spite of this knowledge, every region is, for us, associated with one particu- lar language. We do not say "The White Mountain" even in speaking English; we say, "Mont Blanc." We do not say "Mount Lomond,' "“Mount Cruachan," "Mount Nevis;" we adopt the Gaelic Ben. We never speak of Lake Fyne, Lake Goil; but of Loch Fyne, Loch Goil. We talk about the Sierra Morena and the Sierra Nevada as if we had some knowledge of Spanish, and if we do not talk of a lago we have turned laguna into lagoon. Nay, our Alpine climbers have adopted a whole French vocabulary about the Alps, and when they quit that it is to use, not English but German. You cannot open an English Alpine book without finding French expressions. The writer will not say "The White Tooth," or "The Green Needle," but La Dent Blanche and L'Aiguille Verte. He will not say " crevice" but crevasse, not " ice-stream" but glacier, not" snow- slip" but avalanche. The reason is that when actually impressed by the presence of the real thing he associates with it the term used in the country. And so it comes to pass that although a poem about the English Lake District is best in English, a poem on the Western Alps seems most natural in French, at least to one who knows them. The French words have the authentic association with Nature, one of the principal advan- tages of "Jocelyn." The first mountain-note is touched delicately in the prologue by one of those preparatory suggestions that a master in litera- ture employs :- "J'étais le seul ami qu'il eût sur cette terre Hors son pauvre troupeau : je vins au presbytère, Comme j'avais coutume, à la Saint-Jean d'été A pied, par le sentier du chamois fréquenté.” 7 98 LANDSCAPE. In these four opening verses you have a hint of both the dominant ideas that run through the whole poem and give it perfect unity. The "il" in the first line is the hero, the " "je" simply a friend who speaks in the prologue and epilogue. The first line gives the idea of sadness and solitude, the second that of surrounding poverty, and further indicates that the hero is a priest by an allusion to his dwelling. The third line dwells on this connection by mentioning a festival of the Church, and the fourth makes the reader at once aware that he is in a land of high mountains. The two following lines fix the idea thus sug- gested much more strongly :- "Mon fusil sous le bras et mes deux chiens en laisse, Montant, courbé, ces monts que chaque pas abaisse." Jocelyn, the priest, has been appointed to this remote village by his bishop in these terms: "Il est, au dernier plan des Alpes habité, Un village à nos pas accessible en été, Et dont pendant huit mois la neige amoncelée Ferme tous les sentiers aux fils de la vallée. Là, dans quelques chalets sur les pentes épars, Quelques rares ribus de pauvres montagnards, Dans les champs rétrécis qu'ils disputent à l'aigle, Parmi les châtaigniers sèment l'orge et le seigle, Dont le pâle soleil de l'arrière-saison Laissae à peine le temps d'achever la moisson." Here he passes the remainder of his existence and dies, hav- ing occupied a part of his leisure in writing an account of cer- tain events that happened to him at the time of the Revolution, and the autobiography forms the substance of the poem. His family is ruined, his mother and sister have emigrated to America; he himself, a proscribed priest, takes refuge in the mountains, where a herdsman provides him with bread; and during his solitary life there two refugees come to the same place, but one of them, the father, is killed by his pursuers, and the son takes refuge with Jocelyn in his cave. This son is afterwards discovered to be a daughter, disguised to give her a better chance of safety in flight, and Jocelyn loves her, but, being a priest, is obliged to go elsewhere and renounce her. He bears his trial, and lives thenceforth the life of a lonely ecclesiastic. The only exception to the continual presence of mountain scenery is a brief visit to Paris, slightly and rapidly sketched. LAMARTINE. 99 Jocelyn's refuge, when proscribed, is near a lake high in the mountains of Savoy, and there is evidence enough, for a reader who knows such lakes, that Lamartine had appreciated one of them for himself. The delightful miniature geography of such places is only known to those who love them. Observe this exquisite little sketch of a small lacustrine promontory : "L'un à côté de l'autre, en paix nous nous assîmes Sur un tertre aplani, qui, comme un cap de fleurs, S'avançait dans le lac plus profond là qu'ailleurs, Et dont le flot, bruni par l'ombre haute et noire, Ceignait d'un gouffre bleu ce petit promontoire; On y touchait de l'œil tout ce bel horizon; Une mousse jaunâtre y servait de gazon, Et des verts coudriers l'ombre errante et légère Combattant les rayons, y flottait sur la terre. "" The same lake is described towards the close of a mag- nificent page of landscape in the canto entitled "Deuxième Époque :- C "Lac limpide et dormant comme un morceau tombé De cet azur nocturne à ce ciel dérobé, Dont le creux transparent jusqu'au fond se dévoile Où, quand le jour s'éteint, la sombre nuit s'étoile, Où l'on ne voit flotter que les fleurs du lotus, Que leur poids de rosée a sur l'onde abattus, Et le duvet d'argent que le cygne sauvage, En se baignant dans l'onde, a laissé sur la plage: Golfes étroits, cachés dans les plis des vallons, Aspects sans borne ouverts sur les grands horizons." Certainly, this is gracefully and beautifully done, especially the line about the narrow inlets hidden in the folds of the val- leys. Here is a delightful bit of lake-shore, with its fine sand and its wall of rock protecting a hillock all the greener for its shadow: "Au bord du lac il est une plage dont l'eau Ne peut même en hiver atteindre le niveau, Mais où le flot qui bat jour et nuit sur sa grève, Déroule un sable fin qu'en dunes il élève Là, le mur du rocher, sous sa concavité, Couvre un tertre plus vert de son ombre abrité." Some English readers will know the poem "Le Lac," univer- sally known in France both for the extreme skill with which the poet has associated the beauty of its scenery with melancholy 100 LANDSCAPE. 1 caused by human loss, and for the deep feeling in the music by Neidmeyer. I remember hearing that exquisite thing sung one evening an hour after sunset on a very beautiful lake, and when the singer came to the "parfums légers," a faint breeze brought us a delicate odor of honeysuckle from a shadowy islet under the lingering light. 'Tis twenty years ago, and now there is a new meaning in the words: (( Que le vent qui gémit, le roseau qui soupire Que les parfums légers dont l'air est caressé, Que tout ce qu'on entend, l'on voit ou l'on respire, Tout dise: Ils ont passé! "2 In "Jocelyn," when he comes back to revisit his Alpine soli- tude, the lake is dreary and under a sad effect: J "Le lac déjà souillé par les feuilles tombées, Les rejetait partout de ses vagues plombées; Rien ne se reflétait de son miroir terni, Et son écume morte aux bords avait jauni.” There is hardly, in the poem, anything that can be called a definite description of a mountain; it is not much in Lamar- tine's way to attempt set portraiture, but he makes you con- stantly feel the august presence of the lofty peaks by passing allusions to their majesty, as, for example, in the powerful lines about Mont Blanc in a thunderstorm, which are merely a com- parison with another influence on the soul, the poet comparing the power of a great cathedral at certain hours with what the ear feels on receiving the "Onde, Qui des pics du Mont Blanc s'épanche, roule et gronde Quand s'efforçant en vain, dans cet immense bruit, De distinguer un son d'avec le son qui suit, Dans les chocs successifs qui font trembler la terre Elle n'entend vibrer qu'un éternel tonnerre." Here may come to its close a study which I feel to be more inadequate than its predecessors, both because Lamartine's landscape is so closely interwoven with the sentiment of each poem that to appreciate its value the only way is to read the poem itself, and the whole of it, and also because the best 1 It is curious that Lamartine was vexed when this poem was set to music, and yet to-day, when his fame is temporarily eclipsed by that of Victor Hugo, Neid- meyer's music recalls Lamartine's name to thousands. 2 Often, but incorrectly, the word "aimé ” is substituted for "passé." LAMARTINE. ΙΟΙ ¡ "Sur la plage sonore où la mer de Sorrente Déroule ses flots bleus au pied de l'oranger, Il est près du sentier, sous la haie odorante, Une pierre petite, étroite, indifférente Aux pas distraits de l'étranger." ! passages are generally long, and exceed the limits of quotation. I feel discouraged too by the clear knowledge that French poetry lies outside of English sympathies, so that an essay upon it is addressed to very few; and yet it is hard to understand how any one can despise such touching and melodious verses as those famous ones that begin with the little picture of an Italian shore: - 102 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XIII. LANDSCAPE AND THe graphIC ARTS. A GREAT delight in the beauty or grandeur of natural landscape exposes the enthusiastic lover of it to a kind of error for which I do not find any exact parallel in other tastes and pursuits. His enjoyment of it is so great that he would willingly go beyond enjoyment and undertake the toil of graphic representation, in order to preserve for himself, or con- vey to others, the glory of the natural world. After much labor, he makes two disheartening discoveries. The first is that land- scape art does not readily convey to others the emotion experienced by the artist; the second is that, although objects seen in Nature may produce a most powerful impression, a truthful representation of the same objects may have scarcely any perceptible effect upon the spectator. Besides these causes of probable disappointment, there remains the misfortune, be- longing in an equal degree to no other form of art whatever, that landscape art is avowedly unable to represent Nature with- out sacrifices of a kind requiring especial indulgence, and for which nobody who has not studied the subject will make the necessary allowances. This bald statement of the case might leave the reader in doubt if it were not followed up by a more detailed argument. I propose, therefore, in the present chapter, to give the reasons for believing the first two assertions. As for the third, which concerns the “sacrifices of a kind requiring especial indul- gence," I need not go deeply into it here, because it has been fully dealt with in other works. It has just been affirmed that landscape art does not readily convey to others the emotion experienced by the artist. The reader will observe that I have been careful not to make this assertion too absolute. I do not go so far as to say that the emotion is never conveyed by art, only that it is not readily LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 103 conveyed. With this limitation we shall find the principal cause of disappointment in the lives of artists who devote their energies to landscape. They do not generally fail from want of power in representing objects, for most of them can make suf- ficiently truthful studies, their failure is not of that tangible and material Nature, it is more subtle and elusive, so that they feel bewildered by it and cannot tell where to look for the cause of it. The reason is that the picture, although a product of emo- tion, fails to excite in the mind of the spectator an emotion like that which gave it birth. Let us suppose the case (indeed, it is not imaginary) of an artist who has a passionate love for the sublimity of mountain scenery and who paints it, as he believes, with his whole soul. He comes with his picture to London, and finds, perhaps, that it does not excite any sense of the sub- lime, yet the natural scene was of a high order and his feelings had been strongly excited. He cannot overcome what seems to him the public apathy about mountain scenery; but is that really the state of the case? Many people, no doubt, are quite absolutely apathetic about mountain scenery, they do not care for it in the least, though they may use a few conventional ex- pressions of admiration, because it is the fashion, in our century, to have feelings about landscape. But it is not these perfectly apathetic people who disappoint an artist and make his efforts a failure. He knows that there are numbers of such people in the world, and he no more expects them to be impressed by his pictures than a clergyman expects atheists to be moved by an affecting sermon. A painter addresses himself to the minority who enjoy in Nature what he represents in art. Failure and disappointment consist in his inability to overcome the indiffer- ence felt by these to the message which his art has to deliver. "I paint," he thinks, "with the utmost warmth and sincerity of feeling; I love Nature with all my heart, I am profoundly im- pressed by the grandeur and beauty of the world, and willing to give my best labor to illustrate it, and yet my feeling does not communicate itself, through my art, to people who are, never- theless, by no means incapable or apathetic in themselves. I am driven, then, to the conclusion, that for some reason which I do not understand, my art fails to express my feeling so as to make it intelligible to others.” I believe this difficulty to be far greater in landscape than in any other department of the fine arts. Those who have over- :> 104 LANDSCAPE. come it by finding some expression of their feeling that is intelligible to others are the successful and famous men. All their deficiencies are forgiven them, and they are placed in a situation almost unassailable by criticism. There is Corot, for instance, not by any means a strong painter in the representa- tion of tangible things, such as rocks, trees, and buildings; indeed, it may be safely affirmed that in this quality of forcible representation he is surpassed every day by a multitude of painters who have not the faintest chance of escaping permanent oblivion, yet Corot is a most famous artist. All his fame is due to success in one thing, he was able to express a certain feel- ing about Nature which some lovers of Nature could under- stand. As it seemed to them pleasant and poetical, like a walk in the dewy fields at dawn on a summer morning, they were grateful for the gentle excitement, and repaid Corot by declaring that he was a great artist. After this, all criticism of Corot falls to the ground. It is a waste of industry to demonstrate that a man who has hit the bull's eye has not placed his arrow in this or that circle of the target. He preferred feeling to substance, and won his prize with that, sacrificing all else as being for him superfluous. The question of Turner's success depended mainly on the reception of Turnerian sentiment, — that sentiment which per- vades his works and gives them the well-known Turnerian as- pect. If he had failed to communicate that sentiment, all his knowledge of hard fact, all his memory of effect, would not have availed to save his name from the dark fate of those who are not supposed to feel even when they feel most deeply. The Turnerian sentiment was, I should say, especially and peculiarly a delight in beautiful mystery. His success de- pended on finding a certain number of people to whom this sentiment could be communicated by his method of painting. As nothing moves common people to laughter more readily than a deep and sincere sentiment that they do not enter into, it naturally happened that the unsympathetic considered Tur- ner's work ridiculous; and there is no reason to suppose that it would have appeared otherwise to the ancient Greeks, to the English and French of the Middle Ages, to the Japanese, or, in short, to any people who loved clearness only. This leads us to the statement of a certainty and a probability with reference to the feelings that may be excited in us by LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 105 the natural world. The certainty is, that at periods of history which can be readily fixed upon, some of those states of feeling about landscape which are perfectly familiar to us were as yet totally unknown. The probability is, that in our own day we ourselves are totally ignorant of other states of feeling that will reveal themselves in the future, and that we are entirely unable to imagine what those states of feeling will be. But as it hap- pens that artists are more advanced in the study of Nature than the rest of us, they are likely to be nearer to the future than we are, and it may occasionally happen that the feeling expressed by an artist is of a kind that will become intelligible in a hun- dred years, but is not intelligible now. Meanwhile, the artist lives in obscurity and dies in poverty and neglect. J Even if the emotion felt by the artist is of a kind that the contemporary public understands, it is not certain that his art will convey it. Painting is hampered with technical difficulties, and it may happen that the contest with these difficulties m so absorb the efforts of a painter as to chill and arres e ex- pression of his feelings. An author writes vigorously because he is allowed to scribble rapidly as soon as a paragraph has formed itself in his mind; but if he were compelled to form his letters like a writing-master, the molten current of thought and feeling would be congealed. So if a painter is consciously struggling to imitate natural forms, it is hardly possible for him, at the same time, to give expression to passionate feeling. The student-struggle for imitative skill must be over before the soul of the master can make its way through the clogging material pigments. This may be the reason why some painters who are very lively and energetic men, sensitive to a great variety of natural beauties, produce works that are deficient in liveliness, energy, and variety. There is still another cause of disappointment in art. The representation of a thing does not produce on the mind the same effect as the thing that is represented. A mountain seen in reality strikes the most indifferent as a huge mass, but it will not overawe the mind in a little picture. In the Salon of 1883 there was an enormous canvas by M. Renouf representing a boat rowed in a rough sea, and it produced a great effect on the public, which was partly due to the mere scale of the paint- ing, since with the same artistic talent the painter could never 106 LANDSCAPE. have made a wave look so overwhelming on a small canvas. For the same reason a huge mountain should be painted on a gigantic canvas; but as there is not room for such things in private houses this is seldom done, and mountains are so re- duced in scale as to lose all majesty, unless the spectator sup- plies it from his memory of real mountains and his knowledge of the true significance of those geological forms which are in- dicative of great dimensions. Painters try to overcome this difficulty by exaggeration of relative height and by making the lines steeper in degrees of slope; but a sound draughtsman dis- likes exaggeration as being contrary to that perfection of draw- ing which he desires for its own sake, so that if a line has an inclination of sixty degrees he does not willingly make it verti- cal. It may, therefore, easily happen, and is likely to happen, that a truthful painter will seem tame and inadequate when a coarser and less observant artist will be more effective. There is, indeed, a certain sense in which it may be truly said that a close and loving observation of Nature is an obstacle to success in art; for the greater our intimacy with the natural world the less are we disposed to sacrifice delicate knowledge and affec- tionate feeling to popular notions of what is powerful. There is a place in Scotland, the head of Loch Awe, which has been celebrated for its sublimity ever since Burke wrote his essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful." It has been painted by a multitude of artists, and will, no doubt, continue to be a favor- ite sketching-ground so long as there are landscape-painters in Great Britain. It so happens that the head of Loch Awe is as familiar to me as some poem that I know by heart. During a part of my residence there I was endeavoring to draw mountain- forms, as nearly as might be, with strict accuracy, — a profound mistake from the artistic point of view, but it had the advantage. of opening my eyes, in a way that no other study could have done, to the real nature of popular landscape-painting. After. the strict discipline of severe topographic drawing I went to the exhibitions and found invariably that in those representations of the scenery familiar to me which were sure of a ready sale there was scarcely an attempt at truthful drawing. The forms were not studied, but the arrangements of color and effect were gen- erally brilliant or pleasing, and it was the cleverness displayed in these that insured the salableness of the works. Besides this, I made the discovery, and a most perplexing discovery it was to LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 107 me at that time, of the inadequateness of truthful drawing to convey the impression of sublimity which the natural scene sug- gested. The head of Loch Awe is, in Nature, a scene of almost overwhelming grandeur. In a truthful drawing the grandeur disappears and nothing is left but some hill-forms that seem cu- riously well composed, but are not otherwise impressive. They do not even give the idea of any great elevation. Turner dealt with them in the most arbitrary fashion. He did not think that the mountains about Kilchurn were striking enough for his pur- pose, so he transported the Cladich view of Ben Cruachan to Kilchurn; but as in the Cladich view itself there was a long slope without any special interest, he made it shorter, steeper, and more broken. He also got rid, altogether, of a great mountain mass (Ben Vorich) to his right, which he seems to have considered unmanageable. Still, there was far more grandeur in Turner's drawing than there could be in any faith- ful one, and therefore it may be said that he retained at least one truth which escaped from more faithful draughtsmen, since he retained sublimity. 1 This brings me to that point in all meditations upon landscape- painting where it becomes clear to every one who thinks boldly enough to face such problems, that the landscape-painter must look out for compensations to counterbalance the weakness of his art in conveying the emotions excited by Nature. The ex- perience of our predecessors has made it clear that this can only be done by abandoning accurate drawing, because accu- racy in drawing makes simple topography an ineluctable result,¹ and by substituting for it a complete liberty to alter and arrange materials in such fashion as to produce the strongest impression upon the mind. The artist who has accepted this necessity goes to Nature for suggestion and materials, but copies nothing accurately. He looks upon the world of landscape as a poet or a novelist looks upon the human world, and no more copies a "view" than a novelist reports a conversation. This leaves him free to use every means in his power for increasing the force of an impression. He discards everything that interferes with the intended poetical result, and exaggerates everything that can contribute to it. If he is skilful in these artifices he may pos- sibly (it is by no means certain) arouse a glow of feeling in 1 No subtlety of criticism can wriggle itself out of this. An accurate drawing from Nature must be a piece of topography. 108 LANDSCAPE. : . the public, enough to constitute what is called success, but to an artist with strong local affections there is something unsat- isfactory in having to use so much craft and guile to paint a place as it is not. I do not dwell upon the difficulty of imitating Nature in landscape-painting. It is enough to say, in passing, that the landscape-painter is at an enormous disadvantage here because he is continually attempting the impossible. The splendor of natural landscape lies quite outside of his range of light, as everybody interested in the subject is aware. On account of these various impediments there comes a time in the life of those who take a great delight in Nature when they feel art to be so disappointing (especially in their own prac- tice), that they are tempted to give up the pursuit and study of it, and enjoy Nature alone without any reference to painting. The deliverance from art is then felt to be an emancipation. We go to mountain and lake, and feel like schoolboys re- leased from school. Those highly artificial rules invented by artists and connoisseurs, which Byron so heartily detested, are violated by Nature at every turn, and with the very happiest results. She is constantly doing things that you and I would be severely blamed or pitilessly ridiculed for doing upon canvas; but still she goes on, heedless of all human opinion, and prodi- gal in her heterodox production. Indifferent to our indiffer- ence, equally careless of our enthusiastic praise, the sunlight and the earth or cloud forms together are eternally making new natural pictures of the most various aspect and character. Nature does this alike for heedless and admiring generations. Goldsmith looked upon the scenery of the Highlands as rather ridiculously hideous and dismal; to Scott the same scenery was a stimulus to the romantic imagination; for William Black it is a changeful vision of enchanted coloring that takes the mind outside of the common world into a dreamland of magical beauty. Nor were these men alone in their opinion. Each of them was the repre- sentative of the culture of his time. What Goldsmith expressed, all the scholars of Queen Anne's day believed in their inmost minds. When Scott made the Highlands romantic, a million readers all over the world were prepared to perceive romantic elements in scenery of that kind; and Black is simply the spokesman of a multitude of artists, amateurs, and people whose eyes have got somewhat accustomed to Highland coloring in LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 109 the exhibitions, and so are prepared to be delighted with it in literature and reality. But throughout these different phases of opinion Nature herself remained absolutely the same. Her marvellous spectacles were presented to unnumbered genera- tions before the faintest aesthetic interest in them arose. Even at the present day the delight in Highland color is, I believe, almost exclusively an English or a Scottish sentiment. French- men think it strange in Nature, and wrong, unintelligible, or ridiculous in art. After the first great disappointment caused by the discovery that truthful portraiture in landscape-painting does not convey the impression produced by the natural scene, there may come upon the mind a return to art with clearer views both of its true power and of its inevitable deficiency. We then admire the grandeur, freedom, and prodigious changefulness of Nature ; but have an affection for human art with less of admiration but more of sympathy. The power displayed by great artists, and even the mere cleverness exhibited by those who are only accom- plished, must ever remain among the most astonishing results of human genius and skill; but there is something in art of a more intimate character, something that addresses itself especially to our sympathetic imagination, and it is by this rather than by any ostentatious conquest of technical difficulty, that graphic repre- sentations of landscape retain their hold upon the mind. The kind of landscape represented may be of the humblest, so humble that we should scarcely notice it in Nature; yet the choice of it, and the method of its treatment, may give it a fascinating significance. The ultimate cause of this I take to be the pleasure we have in following the emotions, or perceiving the preferences of another human being, especially when they are not too obviously set forth. We have a delicate pleasure in detecting sentiments that are somewhat obscure, as for example in music, the tender and melancholy suggestiveness of Chopin makes us listen to him again and again with a somewhat tanta- lizing yet delicious sense of mystery, when very direct music has no such fascination. Among pictures that represent human beings there is, probably, not one in the whole world that has been so often looked upon in a spirit of profoundly interested, yet perplexed interrogation as that "Portrait d'Homme," by Francia, in the Louvre; the quiet, sad seriousness of the coun- tenance, the wistful gaze that we feel to be directed on no IIO LANDSCAPE. material object, the man's perfect forgetfulness both of himself and his surroundings, present us with a problem that must for- ever remain obscure. His very name is lost; of the sorrows of his life nothing whatever is known to us. This only we know, that hundreds of years before we were born, this nameless Italian gentleman had been saddened by "the malady of thought." A painted landscape does not offer this interest so directly as a human face, but it may offer it indirectly. When we say that a landscape is melancholy, and it seems to draw us and hold us as by a spell, what we really feel is the melancholy of the artist who chose the subject and infused a poetic sadness into his interpretation. A lake and a wood are not melancholy in themselves; but how ineffably dreary they become in the hands of the poet who intentionally depresses us by every arti- fice of language, and then takes us to "the dank tarn of Auber, in the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir!" So, in painting, one of the most affecting landscapes I remember consisted exactly of these materials. It was by Daliphard, an artist who died be- fore he had fully expressed himself, and who may possibly have been saddened by some foreboding. His picture represented a lonely pond, and a bit of rising woodland in a calm but dreary evening. That was all, but it was enough to make you pensive, and he called it “Mélancolie." Even in this case, however, though the artist appears to have been successful in conveying the intended impression, the reader will observe that he did not entirely intrust his message to pictorial art, but called in the help of language, though only in a single word.¹ To recapitulate what has been already advanced (before pro- ceeding to another part of the subject) I should say that there is always an element of possible disappointment in graphic rep- resentations of landscape, for two chief reasons. The first is that depth and intensity of feeling, or other varieties of feeling, are not sure to get conveyed by means of painting to the spectator (not nearly so sure as in written description); and the second is that (to repeat words I have used already) although objects seen in Nature may produce a most powerful impres- sion, a truthful representation of the same objects may have scarcely any perceptible effect upon the mind. Beyond this we 1 Without the title most of the vulgar kind of spectators would have condemned the picture as uninteresting for want of subject. They would have liked it better with evidences of cheerful human life to the destruction of its sentiment. LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. III know that Nature is unapproachable by art in effects of size and splendor, and yet in spite of these risks of failure and defici- encies of resource, the fact still remains that landscape art may often succeed by winning sympathy, especially if it is of an inti- mate character, and that after we have clearly perceived the inadequacy of art to maintain any contest with Nature we may come back to art with an affectionate interest in the human side of it. I find on looking back over my own experience of these matters, which now extends over more than thirty years, that the history of it may be briefly epitomized as follows: First, there was a passionate but very confused love of both art and Nature; then a predominant passion for Nature with a disposi- tion to sacrifice art to it entirely, making art wholly subordinate ; finally (my present state), a clear perception that art and Nature are far apart and must not be confounded; but this perception is accompanied by a discouraging sense of the entire uncertainty of art in its action upon mankind. In early life I believed that if work was truthful it would appear truthful, and I also believed that if the artist put deep feeling into his performance the pres- ence of feeling must be visible to every one. I have no rem- nant of these beliefs at the present day. The effect of a work of art is aleatory. All that can be said is that any one who cares at all seriously for landscape is likely to find, among the immense accumulations of existing art, some expression of knowledge that he can appreciate, some evidence of feeling in sympathy with his own. It is time now to consider briefly in what degree the different means which the graphic arts place at our disposal may be avail- able for the expression of human feeling about Nature. It so happens that I am writing this chapter by a window in an upper room from which there is an extensive view, and among the things on my table there is a small tray in émail cloisonné. A comparison of these may serve to make some elementary truths plain to us. The natural scene is composed of fields, woods, and hills; and as it is a fine day there is a blue sky, with a few white clouds floating so slowly that I can only just detect their mo- tion. The distant hills are extremely pale, but the nearer ones, being covered with wood, are dark relatively to the sky. The fields take different colors, according to the varieties of culture ; and in the foreground there are some trees, principally fir, birch, II2 LANDSCAPE. and horse-chestnut, bright green where the sun strikes them, and very dark (the firs especially) in their shady hollows. As for the piece of enamel, its elements are not altogether dissimilar from those of the landscape. The ground is pale blue, like a sky, and on it there are leaves and flowers, every leaf or petal care- fully separated by its own little brazen wall, of which of course I only see the polished top, a line as of pale gold surrounding each patch of color. The ribs of the leaves are represented by these little brazen walls. As I glance from the enamelled tray to the natural scene I perceive that they have much in common. In both I see patches of color on a dominant blue ground. There are, how- ever, two essential points of difference. In Nature all the patches of color are gradated, while in the enamel there is no gradation ; on the other hand, the enamel is divided by brazen lines, while in Nature there are no lines. So we say that an émail cloisonné of this kind is conventional art, because a tacit agreement or convention between the workman and the spectator has per- mitted the use of ungradated colors and linear divisions, both parties knowing that these devices are at the same time con- venient and unnatural. I now turn my little tray upside down, and I find that the workman has enamelled the bottom of it also, but as it was not likely to be often seen, he has done it all in one color, sky-blue ; yet there are cloisons, or brazen walls, in this, producing the effect of flourishes drawn in golden lines upon a sky-blue ground. Here, then, the linear drawing is not used to assist definition by separating patches of color, but it gives a definition by itself. If the brazen walls could be removed from the upper side of the tray, the patches of color would still explain the nature of the flowers and leaves represented against their ground of sky. If, on the contrary, the enamel were melted away and the cloi- sons preserved, we should know by the drawing of these out- lines that flowers and leaves had been intended, and we should know all about their shapes. The first would approximately represent a painting (minus gradation), the second would be an outline drawing. Still there would be something absent in either case. An enamel of this kind has lights and darks, one patch being lighter or darker than another, but it has no light and shade. If I tried to make a study of what is visible through my window LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 113 in oil or water-color, I could manage, more or less clumsily, to give some notion of natural color and natural light and shade at the same time, and there would be no lines in my work. This would be like the enamel without cloisons, but better. If, on the contrary, I took pen and ink and drew lines and shades, that would be like the coisons without the enamel, but superior in being shaded. Now the question, in dealing with natural landscape by means of the fine arts, always reduces itself to this: What qualities of Nature do we want to suggest to the mind? Painting either imitates or suggests the entire synthesis of natural appearances. At first this seems such a decided advan- tage that there can be no hesitation in preferring painting to every other graphic art for the rendering of landscape; but there is this great objection to painting, that it is indiscreet, it affirms too much, it does not allow of sufficient reticence. In literature I may go just so far in assertion as my knowledge goes, or I may give as much of my knowledge as I choose, and withhold the rest; in painting I must tell more, and either display my ignorance or affirm positively what I would rather have left vague. The slighter graphic arts have, therefore, a real advan- tage over painting in this respect; they are not simply inferior, as is often believed; their inferiority is compensated by a real gain. In words I may say, "The lake was calm, the moun- tains rose pale in the distance, the clouds hung motionless in the sky." I take up a palette and cannot affirm this (which of itself is all that is wanted to convey the idea of repose in Nature) without making other affirmations utterly superfluous for the mental impression. I must say what was the shape and color of the mountains, what season of the year it was, what species of cloud hung in the air, and I must combine all these affirma- tions with such a scheme of composition and light and shade as may prevent critics from falling down upon me, while express- ing myself with such manual dexterity as may save me from the contempt of artists. Now we see how the mental freedom of the designer gains when he takes up a simpler art, and gains precisely because the art is less complete, less comprehensively affirmative. Try to say in charcoal drawing, "The lake was calm, the mountains rose pale in the distance, the clouds hung motionless in the sky." This can be fully expressed without going very much 8 114 LANDSCAPE. ... further than the words. There are no hues in charcoal, nothing but values,¹ an immense deliverance, and charcoal permits a certain vagueness in the forms. Next, let us suppose the statement to be, "The Castle of Crussol stands upon a rocky height by the Rhone opposite Valence." I could make this statement quite truly in words without having seen the castle; but if I drew it I should have to draw Crussol and no other castle, because all the graphic arts require so much definition that it is impossible to escape it. Still in the above statement there is nothing about color, so I may avoid painting; nor is there anything about light and shade, so I may leave charcoal aside and make an outline with a pen- cil or an etching-needle. I have said that painting is indiscreet, that it often refuses the liberty of reticence when the artist might desire it. Let me show another form of this indiscretion, this compelling to say more than is always necessary or desirable. If you look over a sketch-book by any clever landscape-painter you will find many a page in which only the most interesting part of the subject is drawn with any completeness, the rest being slightly indicated. That is quite the most rational action of the human mind with reference to what attracts its attention. The Castle of Crussol interests me; I sketch the ruin with some care and that part of the precipice which is interesting; the rest I indicate loosely in a few minutes with the pencil point. There is no available foreground in the natural scene, so I leave it out, and my cas- tled rock is suspended in the air; but that is of no consequence. In painting, what a difference of exigency in the art itself! I may not vignette the subject on canvas; it must be filled out to all the four corners, even though Nature may have provided nothing to furnish them, so I must go elsewhere to get materials and fill up my vacant places, even at the cost of all local fidelity. Hence it follows that the art of pencil-sketching, which at first sight seems so very inferior to painting, is really superior to it for topographic work, because it allows parts to be treated slightly and vacant spaces to be left without offence. The art of the pencil-sketcher does, in fact, answer much more closely to the action of the mind in conversation and in literature, where 1 Most readers will be aware that the French expression les valeurs means the degree of lightness or darkness that colors possess independently of their hues. It is most desirable that this term should be generally adopted in English for the sake of brevity. LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 115 we dwell only on what we consider to be interesting and pass over the rest as lightly and rapidly as we can. It may, however, not unfrequently happen that color is abso- lutely essential to express that quality in a landscape which most affects us, and when this is the case it is hopeless to try experi- ments in any kind of monochrome. The wonderful evening effects in northern mountainous countries, when the distances pass into intense purple and deep azure against a line of strong yellow in the sky, when the greens of the near trees and fields grow deeper and richer as the twilight advances and the gray clouds that veil the upper heaven seem placed there only to catch on their billows the farthest reverberations of the after- glow, such effects as these have a power on the mind as much dependent upon coloring as the flowers in a tropical forest or the plumage of its birds. Nay, more, the very transience of these evening splendors gives them a pathetic charm. We know that they will not last longer than some rich but melan- choly strain in music, and that they will never be played over again exactly, so long as the world endures. Are such glories. to be painted in dull brown monochrome with nothing but earth and oil? Let them be painted, rather, with jewels or colored flames! What painter is to translate into monochrome that poem of Uhland's, which Longfellow rendered thus?- Ma "Hast thou seen that lordly castle, That castle by the sea? Golden and red above it The clouds float gorgeously. "And fain it would stoop downward To the mirrored wave below; And fain it would soar upward In the evening's crimson glow.” The value of color in landscape art is one of the most com- plicated questions known to criticism. Strong local color may be an interference of a most inconvenient kind by attracting at- tention to itself, to the detriment of the unity of the scene, as in masses of brightly colored flowers or colored strata of rock. It may even happen that the coloring is in contradiction to what would otherwise be the dominant sentiment of the scene; for color often appears to be purely accidental and to be due to cir- cumstances that have no connection whatever with the unity of impression that we desire to receive from Nature. It may be due 116 LANDSCAPE. man. to the simple fact that certain spots are favorable to certain vege- table growths, or it may be due to the agricultural enterprise of Important patches of color may be the result of a dan- gerous industrial activity. I know a region where there is a tile- manufactory of a most advanced and scientific kind, and the directors and workmen are so terribly clever that they can produce glazed tiles of all colors, so that the roofs in the neigh- borhood are beginning to display polychromatic horrors of a dazzling and, I fear, a permanent brightness; one house espe- cially enjoying a roof of a blue so brilliant that the sky must look down upon it with jealousy. Thus it happens that patches of color, both in Nature and in human work, may be most in- conveniently obtrusive. In the real scene there is no getting rid of them, and many an otherwise beautiful place is spoiled by them; but in art they may be got rid of in two ways. picture that looks as if it had been painted in full color may nevertheless quietly ignore every piece of natural color that is inconvenient, and substitute something more easily harmonized with the rest. This is continually and quite rightly done by artists, especially by those who have a cultivated taste in color. I hope there is not a landscape-painter living who would hesitate about substituting something quieter for a field of rape in flower. A The surest way of getting rid of chromatic impertinences is, however, the use of monochrome, of which the best forms are sepia, Indian ink, or charcoal for tones, and pen-drawing or etching for lines, while pencil gives both, but in a minor degree, its lines not being quite so sharp as those of the needle, nor its tones so deep as those of sepia or Indian ink. These processes are all absolutely satisfactory within their own limits, and are not likely even to be superseded. Oil monochrome is not so acceptable as any of these, because if pigments are used as glazes only, that is, transparently, they look too thin and lack the crispness and decision of water-color; while if made opaque by mixture with white they acquire contradictory chromatic quali- ties ¹ and become disagreeable. Hence the result that, although oil monochrome may be resorted to for photographic reproduc- tion, it is not liked by artists for itself. There is no such objection 1 1 What I mean is, that if you make a scale of tints, say with burnt umber and flake white, the more white you mix with your umber the farther will the mixture get away from the chromatic quality of umber, quite independently of lightness. This divergence does not occur when umber is diluted with oil. LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 117 to sepia used with water, nor to charcoal, nor to etching; and these three processes are accepted by all artists as sound in their several ways. I repeat this here, in a succinct fashion, to spare the reader the trouble of referring to "The Graphic Arts," though I desire, as far as may be, to exclude technical matters from the present volume. I may now proceed to consider some points, not hitherto dealt with, in the relation between the monochromatic graphic arts and Nature. We have seen that monochrome has the advantage of getting completely rid of distracting and impertinent color. It has also this farther advantage, that while in painting light has often to be very much lowered in order that color may be preserved, monochrome is free from that necessity. A red sky cannot be painted without darkening the whole subject excessively to give it some relative brightness; but the same sky may be kept much brighter in a sepia drawing, and, therefore, a more extended scale of values may be preserved. It is not necessary for his intellectual purpose that the artist should trouble himself to dis- criminate between delicate tones at the high or treble end of the scale, he can easily lose them all in white, leaving simple blank paper, without incurring any blame for doing so; and by this means his work is not only simplified but even made lumi- nous, and he gains more space for his middle tints. He may also lose many of the lowest notes in black, which would be im- possible if he used color. Besides this, all imaginable degrees of sketchiness are permitted in the black-and-white arts, be- cause the paper itself may be left to play a part, while in paint- ing the canvas is always covered. I think it is clear, then, that the arts of monochrome allow of more freedom in the expression of the mind than painting does, and, therefore, that they are more likely to suit intellectual men, except only in those cases where color itself is essential to the expression of thought, from its close connection with the central motive or idea. This may explain the following short para- graph in the "Life of Samuel Palmer," which must have been a surprise to many readers: "For some years after his removal to Red Hill, Samuel Palmer had been obliged to abandon etching, through pressure of water- color commissions, though with great reluctance, as it was an art he far preferred to painting, which he would, if possible, have wholly given up in favor of the needle." I 118 • LANDSCAPE. This is simply evidence that the intellectual and imaginative faculties were stronger in Palmer than the sensuous delight in color, a view of his nature that is still further borne out by his extreme interest in literature, an interest perhaps exceeding, on the whole, that which he felt in the graphic arts. "If I love any secular thing," he wrote to me in 1871, "better than art, it is literature. Would that even now I might serve a late appren- ticeship to it! Surely the direction of a line, or the gradation of a color, is not more interesting than the structure of a para- graph. . . . To be engaged for years in writing books is my ideal of secular bliss: for a yet higher kind I fear we must turn away from the intellectual hemisphere altogether." It seems to follow from this, that art in monochrome, which usually accompanies literature in illustrated books, is by its nature better adapted for association with literature (the most thoughtful of all the arts) than colored illustration, while, on the other hand, the more sensuous art of painting is better adapted for the walls of rich men's houses, where it is associated with rich hangings, beautifully colored carpets, polished woods or marbles, and other things agreeable to the eye. As for the closeness of the connection with Nature, it might indeed be argued that painting is, of all the graphic arts, the most closely related to the natural world; but it so happens that artistic necessities are continually compelling painters to deviate from Nature, so that the connection is not so close as it appears, at first sight, to the inexperienced. There can be no doubt whatever that of all the arts oil-painting is the one which, on the whole, can come the nearest to an imitation of a natural land- scape; but this closeness has seldom been seen except in studies executed with rare singleness of intention, having truth, and truth alone, for their object. So soon as the desire is to make a picture and not a study, the artist no longer makes his canvas a faithful mirror of the natural world; and he is not likely to give toilsome pains to the attainment of this extreme and trustworthy fidelity when he has experienced its consequences, and felt what it is to be treated as a crude experimentalist beyond the pale of the fine arts. The few who have devoted themselves to paint- ing landscape as it is, have generally been told that they were ignorant of art, or that their subjects were badly chosen. The same subjects, in the hands of artists too prudent to be truthful, have supplied material for popular pictures. LANDSCAPE AND THE GRAPHIC ARTS. 119 I have said nothing about executive difficulty, preferring to suppose that all these arts have been equally mastered. It may, however, be noted that what artists call the quality of natural objects is but rarely rendered in its perfection, and that an art which evidently renounces all striving for it (such as linear drawing or etching) is often less disappointing than one which, like oil-painting, is almost compelled to aim at quality, unless it is decidedly abstract, like the landscape backgrounds in mural works by Puvis de Chavannes. It is well known to painters of the figure that the quality of flesh and hair is seldom attained in such perfection as to give delight; and the same difficulty presents itself in landscape in an equal degree, for nothing can be more difficult to render than the nature of clouds, which may seem solid without substance, and translucent without transparency. 120 LANDSCAPE. • ،، CHAPTER XIV. THE SCENERY OF GREAT BRITAIN. IN N the distribution of beauty over the surface of the world our own island may be congratulated on having received a pleasant and most acceptable, though not a brilliant share. Great Britain contains within itself suggestions enough to make almost any kind of landscape intelligible to a Briton who knows his native island, but it does not contain specimens of the greatest natural magnificence. It has been sometimes asserted that we do not even possess a mountain, and that our lakes are mere bog-tarns, unworthy to be mentioned with those of Switz- erland and Italy. If the word "mountain " is to be limited by application to those which pass the line of eternal snow, and have glaciers, and rise into sharp, high peaks and needles of almost inaccessible naked rock, then of course it is plain that Ben Nevis is not a mountain; but if a certain grandeur of mass and sublimity, of crest and precipice, is enough to make a hill worthy of the higher title, then Ben Cruachan unquestionably de- serves it. The word "mountain came into our language from the old French montaigne, derived from the Latin mons; and neither the old nor the modern French nor the ancient Romans themselves, nor the modern Italians, nor any other of the Latin races, have ever used the word in the narrowly restricted sense which some Englishmen have endeavored to attach to it. This, indeed, is sometimes observed by the English themselves, but with the inversion that comes of patriotism; for when a French- man uses montagne," in its correct old sense, of any consider- able hill, they laugh at him for his inaccuracy in the use of lan- guage. It is, no doubt, desirable that we should have words to distinguish one thing from another, but it may be considered sufficient to call mountains of the first class "Alps," and those of the second class (like our Scotch Bens) simply "mountains," while those elevations which do not attain any grandeur of peak "" THE SCENERY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 121 or precipice (such as Pendle Hill for example) may be classed together broadly as "hills." Accepting, then, this rough general classification for its convenience, I may say that Great Britain has some mountains of which the sublimity is out of all propor- tion to the measurable altitude; this sublimity is greatly en- hanced by the harshness of the climate in North Britain, which does not permit the growth of trees above a very moderate height, and so gives an aspect of desolation to the upper re- gions which would be lost under a more genial sun. Again, although the mountains of Scotland are not Alps, since they do not rise above the limit of eternal snow, they are far enough to the north to have snow upon their summits both late and early in the year, and by this also they gain an apparent grandeur beyond their rank in physical geography. The magnificence of the scenery in the Highlands of Scotland, especially to the west, is so much increased by the extraordinary brilliance, richness, depth, and variety of the coloring, and by the startling sudden- ness and strength of the effects, that it far surpasses in artistic interest much Continental scenery that is on a larger scale. It is, therefore, not by any means a mere delusion of patriotism in the inhabitants of Great Britain to hold the northern part of the island in high esteem as a region of landscape refreshment for the eye, while it is at the same time good for hardy bodily exercise. A word may now be said in defence of the lakes. They are, it is true, generally upon a small scale, but that very smallness allows the existence of many within a limited extent of terri- tory; and there are certain reasons, to be developed at length in another part of this volume, why it is not desirable, in the interest of their own beauty, that lakes should be too large. Some of the lakes in Great Britian are remarkable for the beauty of their islands (I need only mention Windermere, Der- wentwater, Loch Lomond, and Loch Awe), and so are some Irish lakes, while those of Switzerland (almost without excep- tion) are destitute of this great element of interest and charm. The salt-water lochs of Scotland are not so imposing in their scenery as the Norwegian fiords, but they give some idea of them—just as Ben Cruachan in winter gives an idea of the Alps and the Scottish sea-lochs have often a character of their not so charming as the richer landscape of Loch Ka- trine, but more desolate and melancholy. : own, 122 LANDSCAPE. In the most striking contrast with the scenery of North Bri- tain, which repeats in a minor degree some characteristics of Norway and Switzerland, that of eastern England closely resem- bles Dutch scenery, which many excellent artists have held to be worth painting, though its qualities are not often much ap- preciated by the lovers of grander Nature. More will be said of these qualities in a subsequent chapter; for the present, it is enough to note the remarkable fact (little appreciated until the novel passion for romantic scenery has spent itself) that in so small an island as Great Britain we should possess our own Norway and our own Holland. The difference even in climate between Norfolk and Argyllshire is as great as if the countries lay very far apart, while in the character of the landscape the opposition is as complete as possible. The general characteristics of the English Midlands (so be- loved by George Eliot) are a homely and cheerful peacefulness associated with a great agricultural perfection. The Midland counties seldom offer much that is interesting in landscape, though they are well adapted to that healthy condition of the human mind in which, having subdued Nature to its own pur- poses, it is free to act without being too much distracted by natural difficulties or grandeurs. The landscape of the Midland counties is favorable to man as a home, but does not offer any- thing to attract him as a traveller in search of excitement. Those who pass through it as they approach the capital from the north may admire its fertility, and acknowledge its im- portance for the breeding of fine animals and strong English- men; but it must seem to them to have lost the masculine expression of their own ruder and less favored land. In the south of England the scenery becomes more interesting again. Notwithstanding their general want of elevation, the hills are energetic in form, on a small scale, and the vales are often rich in foliage and farm scenery to a degree unknown in the north. The country of Linnell, of Samuel Palmer, and other pastoral landscape-painters, must have excellent artistic elements. On the west side of England the beauty of landscape culmi- nates in the Lake District, then dies away by a gradual decline to the region about Liverpool, to resume its energy in North Wales. There is then a second decline, not from beauty to ugliness, but rather from energy to comparative repose, and the landscape energy is recovered to the south of the Bristol THE SCENERY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 123 Channel, in the highlands of Devonshire, which are not without many characteristics of the north, pure streams flowing over granite, and a high heathery region that would remind us of Scot- land, if there were the same bold mountain forms, and the same deep lakes in the valleys. River scenery is not the strong point of landscape in any island, as a great river has not space to develop itself; and yet England has her Thames, which for variety of character and a certain park-like richness in some portions of its course is without a rival on the Continent. From Oxford to London, beauty; from London to the sea, the grandeur of the stateliest water-way in the world, laden with the merchandise of the greatest maritime empire! And besides this grandeur, and that of the western estuary, how much beauty in a hundred streams, some of them made famous, like the Tamar and Wharfe, by painters; others immortalized, like Tweed, and Doon, and Yarrow, in verse that will live for ever! The mere names of them are enough to produce an inexpressible emo- tion when one thinks of them in a foreign land; and even the rivers that nobody has ever heard of have their own special friends, the quiet angler, the humble painter or poet, not more notorious than the streams they visit with a secret and tender affection. I have not mentioned the archipelago in the northwest, full of interest, and possessing every kind of beauty except that of a rich southern vegetation. Exposed as it is to the storms of the Atlantic in a latitude too far north for any soft luxuriance of sylvan beauty, it still offers in the long days of the northern summer a region for yachting second only in interest to the isles of Greece, a region where it is possible, without any pain- ful effort of the imagination, to realize the wanderings of Odys- seus. Farther still to the north we have groups of islands that suggest other associations, belonging rather to Scandinavia. Bleak lands and lofty gray precipices, with stormy seas and rushing tides, are the dreary but subline characteristics of Ultima Thule. The advantages of Great Britain from our present point of view are chiefly these: first, that within a moderate extent of country are to be found many varieties of landscape; secondly, that these varieties are often so suggestive of other lands that they enable us to imagine them with little effort; and lastly, that -> I 124 LANDSCAPE. I the climate itself affords almost as much variety as the land- scape, so that in the course of a single year an Englishman may sometimes fancy himself in France, and sometimes far to the north. The disadvantages of the country are, first, that nothing is ever to be seen on a large scale, except the Atlantic Ocean, while human industry in many parts of the island has entirely destroyed the natural character of the landscape, and even the purity of the sky, so that the inhabitants live in a sort of arti- ficial limbo of perpetual ugliness and gloom. Nor is this the only evil effect of industry; for if manufactures ruin landscape altogether, scientific agriculture too completely effaces the natu- ral roughness of the land, leaving no wildness to please the eye that hungers for the liberty of Nature. These two forms of destruction by industry have spoilt a great part of England, and the process is extending daily, so that the number of English people who are exiled by their own surroundings from a sight of unspoilt Nature, even of the humblest kind, is continually and painfully on the increase. These things have been said before by writers who live in the midst of the lamentable change, but to one who comes occasionally on the accumulated effects of it the result is still more striking; and when I reflect on the destruction of landscape that has been accomplished in my own lifetime, I am forced to the conclusion that the English people of the future will either have to content themselves with painted canvases for landscapes, or undertake a long railway journey for every glimpse of pure and genuine Nature, at least upon the land. It is one of the great advantages of living upon an island, that the majority of its inhabitants are never very far from the sea, which is always sure to be perfectly natural, as men have no power to spoil it. The shore, too, is likely to remain natural for the greater part of its extent, so that the line of coast affords an opportunity of seeing natural forces as they act indepen- dently of human interference. The exercise of a little imagination, aided by the discoveries of modern geological science, adds immensely to the grandeur of British scenery in our mental conception of it; for although there is not a single glacier in the kingdom, we have now the certainty that immense glaciers have existed in the past, and that they have left traces of their powerful passage on rocks that we know familiarly. In writing this I recall to memory with the THE SCENERY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 125 utmost distinctness the glacier-polished rocks of Loch Awe.¹ The sublimity that such a lake-basin gains from its past history is almost enough to compensate for the absence of glaciers in the present; and when we remember the extreme antiquity of the British mountains and the fact that they are the reduced representatives of loftier peaks that existed at a time incon- ceivable by us, and think of the slow action of the agencies that wore them down, we find in the geological history of our land a grandeur which, though unconnected with the presence of man, was a magnificent preparation for his coming. A ― 1 "One cannot but wonder when, on ascending the valley from Kilmartin, he at last finds himself on an ice-worn barrier of schist, and sees stretched out for miles before him the wooded shores of Loch Awe. The lake is dammed back by hard rock, yet the smoothed and polished surface of the barrier and the parallelism of its striations with the length of the valley, show that the mass of ice which once filled up the present basin of the lake passed on down the continuation of the valley towards Kilmartin. And all along the sides of the loch, and on its rocky islets, the same traces may be seen of the steady southward march of the ice. The rocks are worn into smooth, mammillated outlines, and covered with ruts and grooves that trend with the length of the valley. It is, in short, a rock-basin of which all that can be seen is ice-worn; and if further proof of the old glaciers were needed, it would be found in the heaps of moraine rubbish piled along the side of the valley." The Scenery of Scotland, by Archibald Geikie. - 126 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XV. THE SCENERY OF france. * I GIVE a separate chapter to the scenery of France for sev- eral different reasons. It is interesting to us as that of the nearest Continental country, often visited or crossed by English people who go abroad; it is useful, being a part of the Conti- nent, to make us understand some of the peculiarities of our own island by the valuable contrast and standard of comparison which it affords; and it happens to be very familiar to the writer of this volume. The first important difference between English and French scenery is that French scenery is on a much larger scale. This has nothing to do with the extent of the country as a political division of Europe. It is true that the area of France much exceeds that of Great Britain,¹ but the scenery of a very large country may be on a small scale. Holland is an example of a small country with large scenery, because it is part of a great plain. It would not be accurate to describe French scenery as being entirely on a large scale. A tourist who explores will find in some parts of France scenery as small in scale as that of Surrey or Derbyshire, but the truth remains that some of the features in France are large features. Its plains are of great extent, its mountains are very lofty, and its rivers broad at a distance from the sea, and so long that on the Loire you may make a boat voyage exceeding the length of England, and on the Seine, or the Saône and Rhone, other voyages longer than Scotland or Ireland. As to the scale of the mountains, Mr. Whymper tells us that "there are more than twenty peaks exceeding. twelve thousand feet and thirty others exceeding eleven thousand feet, 1 France is (roughly speaking) about three times the size of Great Britain. THE SCENERY OF FRANCE. 127 within the district bounded by the rivers Romanche, Drac, and Durance." Now if the reader will take the trouble to consult a good map of France he will be surprised to see in how small a space, comparatively to the whole country, those fifty peaks are congregated, yet the lowest of them is more than three times the height of Helvellyn; and if, after that, he will extend his survey to the other mountainous parts of France, taking some note of the number of mountains that exceed the altitude of Ben Cruachan and Ben Lomond, he will be in little danger of believing that French scenery is always tame. There is, for ex- ample, the department of the Ardeche, on the right bank of the Rhone, which is but little visited by tourists, and does not con- tain a single mountain whose name is known in England. It is natural that the hills of the Ardèche should be little known, as the fame of them is extinguished by the Alps, yet they are highly picturesque and full of geological interest. As to their altitudes, they are not considered high mountains in France, but there are twelve of them that excel Ben Nevis. The total ex- tent of the mountainous parts of France is estimated by Reclus at twenty-four or twenty-five millions of hectares, which exceeds the surface of Great Britain. The ground covered by the Euro- pean Alps, including those of France, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria, is estimated at the same area. Notwithstanding all this geographical evidence, it is quite common to meet with English tourists who judge of French scenery in general by that which they see between Boulogne and Paris. "French scenery" for them means an interminable plain with occasional undulations, and straight lines of poplars along a lazy river or a stagnant canal. And they do not appreciate even the lowland scenery at its value. They do not care for the frequent elegance of its forms, the delicacy of its coloring, or the innumerable pictorial suggestions which it contains. 1 Some readers may be interested to learn the names of these twelve and their altitudes, so I append them. The heights are in English feet: Mézenc, 5,753; Gerbier de Joncs, 5,087: Roche d'Astet, 5,087; Sépoux, 5,031; Mont de la Croix de Bauzon, 5,051; Tanargue, 4,982; Mont Cros, 4,949; Rocher d'Abraham, 4,923; Suc de Bauzon, 4.832; Bois de Montsezieu, 4,792 ; Suc de l'Areilladou, 4,644; Suc de Montivernoux, 4,732. The height of Ben Nevis is 4,368 feet. I may add that the low ground of the department of the Ardèche is not of any great elevation. Its lowest water level is about 130 feet above the sea. As you go down the Rhone you pass the Mont Pilat. near Condrieu, which is 4,700 feet high, and the Mont Ventoux, near Avignon, which is more than 6,200. FL 128 LANDSCAPE. The plain, no doubt, has an important place in the scenery of France. In the great French plains three Irelands might find a lodging, and it is easy to feel in the midst of one of these as if there could be no mountains anywhere, so dominant is the influence and sentiment of the plain, which even the very sky reflects; for the sky of a low country has, like the land, a charac- ter of its own. It is a common English belief that there are no hedges in France. The truth is that in some parts of France, of considerable extent, hedges are as numerous as in England. I know many a French estate that is so divided. Still, it is also true that there are vast spaces of French lowland without any such division; and it is hard to imagine the natural grandeur of lowland scenery unless it is seen without hedges. They make a farm more snug and comfortable, but they destroy a prospect. There is, however, another evil in agriculture that does great harm in France, at least from the artistic point of view. In some parts of the country the small properties, though not divided by hedges, lie in long strips or bands of different cul- tures that extend like pieces of narrow cloth along the ground, and when the contrast between them happens to be glaring, as it often is, the result is a party-colored appearance, which few artists would feel to be desirable, and which has nothing to do with Nature. The habit of making straight roads and of plant- ing those long lines of poplars that Englishmen so generally detest, increases the feeling of weariness that one often receives from a French plain; but even the poplars themselves, though so obviously arranged in that way by human interference, have a certain grandeur, like armies, especially when their innumer- able crests rise against a lurid evening sky or sway gently in the river-breeze at dawn. The culture of the vine, according to French methods, has not been favorable to landscape, since whenever the exposure is good for the grape, and the soil propitious, vineyards have been planted upon the steepest slopes, which have been so striped with narrow terraces that their natural grandeur has suffered some injury in consequence. This is especially noticeable on the precipitous western shore of the Rhone, between Valence and Vienne. Had those lofty banks been left without terracing, and planted with almost any kind of trees that could flourish there, the effect would have been much more beautiful. In many places the artificial terraces are so numerous, and the THE SCENERY OF FRANCE. 129 little flat strips of earth have to be supported on such high walls, that we see more of wall than of anything else. Besides this objection, the French system of viticulture, even when there are no terraces, diminishes the beauty of the scenery. The vine, according to this system, is not a luxuriant but a low plant, with a short rough stick to compensate for the weakness of its stalk. When there are no leaves, you see these sticks by millions, and when the leaves are abundant you have an expanse of green that has often been not unjustly compared to a boundless field of currant-bushes. There is, however, a certain time of the year when the vine really adds to the beauty of the slopes of the Côte-d'Or and the Rhone. This is in the late autumn, when the leaves take the most gorgeous coloring, and you have miles of purple and gold and scarlet with fragments of green remaining still strangely fresh among them, the color of the whole often sublimated to an ideal glory by the magical state of the atmos- phere giving distances of almost unearthly delicacy, and the loveliest transitions from their wonderful aerial azure and grays to the golden splendor of the foreground. Trees have a less important effect on the general aspect of French scenery than might be expected from the known quantity of them. There are great forests, which indeed are necessary for the supply of fuel in a country where coal is little used for domestic purposes and where charcoal is almost always employed for cooking; but the general impression received by travellers is that wood is rarer than it is in England, rarer and of inferior size. There are in France large tracts of remarkable nudity and aridity, especially in the south; there are also other regions in which wood is very plentiful, but generally congre- gated into forests, the great extent of which is hardly to be realized by seeing them at a distance, and you cannot see much of a forest if it is near.1 With regard to the size of the trees, I know of nothing comparable for sylvan magnificence on a large scale to the wonderful Forest of Fontainebleau; but I have met with many fine trees elsewhere in France, though they are only found in certain districts, often out of the tourist's way, and the number of them is said to be steadily diminishing. The common French woods are cut every twenty years, in sections; but there are groups of trees left accidentally that escape this 1 The only way to realize the extent of the forests in France is to consult the Ordnance maps. 2 9 ! C 2 130 LANDSCAPE. treatment, and the avenues about the country towns, and in some private domains, are preserved until they perish from decay. The magnificence of French rivers is paid for by an almost total absence of lakes, which is the more to be regretted that in a country where the mountains are so numerous, so lofty, and often of such noble form, the lakes might have been expected to possess a character of great sublimity. It is difficult to ex- amine the map from Lons-le-Saulmier to Draguignan without thinking with some regret what a magnificent lake district that region would have made had it only been provided with lake basins. There is water in abundance from the torrents, there are valleys to make the most beautiful inlets, there is in short everything except that hollowing of the rock into depressions with a rim to retain water, which is indispensable to the forma- tion of a lake. In this respect Scotland is incomparably supe- rior to France, though the country is so much smaller and its mountains so inferior not only in altitude but also in grandeur of form. It is, however, inaccurate to say that there are abso- lutely no lakes in France. There are a few small ones compar- able to the smaller English meres (the pretty lake of Nantua is an example), and since the annexation of Savoy there are the beautiful lakes of Annecy and Bourget¹ that may rank with Coniston and Ullswater. Besides this, it may be remembered that Lake Leman has a French shore. Of sea inlets France has nothing to compare with Norwegian fiords or Scottish salt- water lochs; but she is not absolutely destitute of these either, having the Étang de Berre, and the Lac de Valcarres. Of these, I have only seen the Étang de Berre, a very fine salt lake, with a narrow outlet to the Mediterranean, and otherwise entirely enclosed by hilly shores high enough to give a certain interest to the distances, but not high enough for sublimity. The lake is of the size the most favorable to effects of distance on water, for a narrower area seems in very clear weather as if you could row across it in a few minutes, and a broader area becomes so marine that the lacustrine character is lost. The Étang de Berre might be described as the finest of ponds or the most 2 1 The Lac du Bourget is said to be the one that suggested to Lamartine his beautiful poem of "Le Lac.” 2 The Étang de Berre is more than twelve miles long and ten miles in its great- est width, that of Valcarres is about thirteen miles by six; but its shape is very irregular. THE SCENERY OF France. 131 perfect of miniature seas. It is impossible to imagine anything better adapted for boating, as the waters are completely pro- tected against the swell of the Mediterranean when the south wind drives the breakers against the rocky coast of Provence, while the hills are not elevated enough to produce the dan- gerous squalls of Scotland or Switzerland. The scenery about the Lac de Valcarres is the desolate plain of the Camargue, in the delta of the Rhone, a region of great interest for its strongly marked melancholy character, but generally avoided even by rather adventurous travellers on account of the dreaded paludine fever that clings to its victim long after the first attack. France has an immense advantage over England in the better harmony between her cities and towns and the country where they are placed. In England it rarely happens that a town adds to the beauty of a landscape; in France it often does so. In England there are many towns that are quite absolutely and hideously destructive of landscape beauty; in France there are very few. The consequence is that in France a lover of land- scape does not feel that dislike to human interference which he so easily acquires in England, and which in some of our best writers, who feel most intensely and acutely, has become posi- tive hatred and exasperation. The desire to render the French rivers navigable has caused interference with their banks which is not always favorable to their beauty. The clever engineers who take so much care of the great rivers and display so much ability in dealing with the difficulties which they present, are responsible for having replaced many a mile of beautiful natural shore with well-built but wearisome river wall. The French engineers are a very influential class of men, and they easily obtain authority to deal with the rivers as they please. The latest instance of this has been their gigantic experiment upon the Rhone, an experiment which most of the inhabitants con- sider to be rather worse than useless, though it has cost eighty millions of francs.¹ The effect of climate on the appearance of landscape is well known in some of its elementary conditions, such as the verdure of a moist country like Ireland and the aridity of 1 The works consist in deflecting the current in many places by means of walls or breakwaters, but often with the unforeseen result that new shoals have been created in places where, as for example near the suspension bridge at Beaucaire, they are in the highest degree inconvenient. The landowners dislike the works, but they have made steam navigation possible when the water is very low. 132 LANDSCAPE. Don Quixote's country in Spain; but in trying to imagine the appearance of foreign countries with which we are not familiar we often commit the great mistake of attributing to them one climate when they have many. There is no "French climate,” but there are a number of climates differing from each other to such a degree as to have scarcely a characteristic in common.¹ Geographers estimate climate by the fall of rain, the prevalence of winds, the degrees of temperature; but a more difficult crite- rion, and one more suited to our present subject, would be the effect on the coloring of landscape. I know a distinguished French art critic who has the most decided ideas about the tones given to landscapes by different French atmospheres ; and I have no doubt that a very careful observer might arrive at some interesting results by living in each of the different cli- mates for a considerable length of time, but I doubt the value of the conclusions arrived at by merely travelling. It may hap- pen that on the occasion of your visit the country does not wear its most characteristic coloring. For example, I remember that M. Taine (who is not the critic just alluded to) gives in his "Notes on England" a short account of a tour in Scotland; and his description of the coloring of the Highland lakes is that the distant mountains were bluish and the water black. After leaving the Crinan Canal, M. Taine saw the rocky islands de- tached against a pale azure. Now, I do not dispute the truth of this description, as it often happens for several days together that the coloring even of the West Highlands is dull and com- monplace; but to any one who, like Mr. William Black, or the writer of these pages, is intimately acquainted with the marvel- lously powerful coloring of those landscapes under their grandest effects, M. Taine's description must seem utterly inadequate if taken generally. I should say with regard to the two parts of France I know best, that in the country about Paris and a little south of it there is often a milky delicacy in the coloring which is not familiar to me in England, while in the Morvan I have at times found the Highland coloring again, but of inferior intensity, and at other times a strength of illumination quite 1 France is usually considered to have seven distinctly marked climates rather differently named by different geographers. Reclus calls them "les climats Vos- gien, Parisien, Breton, Girondin, Auvergnat, Lyonnais, et Mediterranéen." It seems natural enough that the climate of Brittany should differ from that of the Mediterranean coast, but the immense difference between Lyons and Marseilles would never be guessed without observation. The Scenery of france. 133 unknown in Great Britian. I am less intimately acquainted with the southern mountains; but the impression they leave on one whose early experience has been in the north is, that their pale grays and luminous azures are beautiful rather by delicacy than by strength, and are scarcely a compensation for the northern purples and deep ultramarine, not to speak of the Highland russet and gold. The coloring of Provence is pretty in spring when the fields are still green and the mulberry-trees are in leaf and the dark cypress and gray olive are only graver notes in the brightness, while the desolation of the stony hills is prevented from becoming oppressive by the freshness of the foreground; but when the hot sun and the dry wind have scorched every remnant of verdure, when any grass that remains is merely un- gathered hay, and you have nothing but flying dust and blind- ing light, then the great truth is borne in upon one that it is Rain which is the true color-magician, though he may veil him- self in a vesture of gray cloud. 134 LANDSCAPE. 66 CHAPTER XVI. THE GEOGRAPHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. OP PTIMISTS, who find a pleasure in representing the life of ordinary mortals as being happier than it really is, have a temptingly easy method with regard to the beauty of the world. They say, "Behold how generous Nature lavishes all her glories upon us! What infinite beauty there is in mountain, lake, and forest! What a poetic charm in the flow of crystal streams !" We have only to think in this strain for a little while to intoxi- cate ourselves with self-congratulation on the fact that we in- habit a world where all these beautiful things are to be found. I wonder if it has ever occurred to the reader to reflect that the places he passes through so easily are places of permanent habitation to others, and what a matter of chance it is, in the case of most men who have to earn their living, whether their lot shall be cast in some spot where natural beauty is accessible, or in one that is hopelessly far away from it. The distribution of landscape beauty is so unequal that it may possibly not be given to us in the whole course of our existence, and, what is saddest of all, the more human beings are congregated together the smaller is their chance of enjoying it, since they themselves are the greatest destroyers of it, partly from carelessness and ignorance, but partly from hard necessity. There is a beautiful passage by a distinguished modern author in which he speaks of the moun- tains as great natural cathedrals; but they differ from those built by human architects in being generally remote from great con- gregations of mankind instead of standing in the midst of them. A few cities are surrounded by noble landscape, but the great centres of business and industry are situated in places where they can easily expand, and who that has once seen it can Forget six counties overhung with smoke, Forget the snorting steam and piston-stroke, Forget the spreading of the hideous town"? 4 THE GEOGRAPHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. 135 It spreads over the beautiful fields, first blighting them into the black desert known as "building-ground," then covering them with dreary brick or stone. It destroys every vestige of natural beauty on the banks of streams, either confining them between walls or sending them through a gloomy tunnel and converting them into offensive sewers. For miles round the great cities there is hardly any bit of unspoilt Nature remaining; only by chance some old park may happen to be preserved. There even comes at last a condition of things in which the centre of a great city is more agreeable than its outskirts; for in the centre there may be an artificial restoration of beauty by gardens and architecture, while in the outskirts natural beauty has been everywhere ravaged and ruined, and there is nothing to take its place. Meanwhile in remote mountainous districts a few herdsmen are tending their kine on the roofs and ledges of the great natural cathedrals, and remain for the most part per- fectly indifferent both to the magnificence of the mountains themselves and to the glorious effects by which their majesty is exhibited in all its pomp and state. Nor is the loss at all adequately expressed by mentioning only the mountains, except to those who know them intimately. Nobody who is not ac- quainted with some mountain land has ever seen a torrent, or the grandeur of a pine forest, or even the rural beauty of a green field; for green fields themselves are monotonous in Dutch low- lands, and need, to be appreciated, the contrast of wild brown or purple heath and rocky, rough land, over which the little burn may tumble merrily before it waters the patch of emerald grass below. It is not the great masses of frozen granite that are the most precious gift of Nature in a mountainous country; but all the innumerable nooks that give such endless interest to exploration, the enchanted solitudes where the wild Alpine flowers bloom in millions, and the fair sloping pastures that lie in the great hollows and come up to the chestnut glades, or touch the foot of the precipice. There are no gardens like the natural lawns of short, soft grass that lie close to the roughest land in the world; there are no parks like those natural parks, where there is no intentional arrangement, where the great trees have been planted by the accident of wind-borne seed and happily favorable site, and the glades are opened by no art of land-owner or gardener. And yet vast quantities of this beauty are as much wasted as they were before man came upon the 136 LANDSCAPE. planet; and while human beings are living by hundreds of thousands in the midst of hideousness of their own creation, the eagle looks down on many a lonely dell that would be a paradise if there were anybody to enjoy it. Not only are men kept away from natural beauty by living in cities, but they are severed from it by being ill placed even in the most open country. Natural landscape is not always beau- tiful; it is often bare, bleak, and ugly to a degree that we seldom realize, because we pass through ugly places as quickly as we can, and willingly forget them. Artists are responsible for much of our false impression about the beauty of the world. They concentrate from right and left what is pretty and agreeable, they compose these materials into charming pictures, and en- hance their delightfulness by the most favorable effects. I have sometimes amused myself by doing exactly the contrary. I have taken some ugly scene in Nature, and drawn it purposely just as it was, without palliation of its defects and without dis- guising its poverty by pleasant material borrowed from another place. Studies of this kind reveal better than any others the common ugliness of Nature. I have said something in the Preface about the curious differ- ence between the public appreciation of literature and art, by which a plain statement of fact is willingly admitted in words, while a drawing is always expected to be pretty. There are, however, a few artists who have perceived the use that might be made of ugly landscape in giving an impression of sadness and dreariness. Among these I cannot mention one who has studied ugly landscape to better purpose than J. F. Millet. He lived close to the most magnificent sylvan beauty in the forest of Fontainebleau, but he painted very little of it, and preferred as backgrounds for his dull, overworked peasants, the dreariest fields in the plain of Barbizon. In "The Spaders," for exam- ple, given in Sensier's biography, the background is a bare hill and the foreground nothing but earth that the men are digging, diversified by a bit of bramble. In the famous picture of "The Angelus," which represents a man and a woman pausing to pray when they hear the evening bell, the ground goes up to a high horizon line, and occupies two thirds of the picture, but it is only a common potato-field. Following the example of Millet, many other French rustic painters have been contented with landscape material of the simplest and apparently the most the geograpHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. 137 uninteresting kind for their backgrounds; but the reason gener- ally is that they wanted to make us feel the dulness of rustic existence. Historical painters also know the value of a dreary background. There is a huge and unpleasant, but very power- ful, picture by Cormon in the Luxembourg representing the flight of Cain with his family, and the painter has most carefully abstained from everything that could make Nature in the least cheering or agreeable. They are traversing a hilly but perfectly arid landscape, where not a patch of green relieves the tawny aspect of an unfriendly world. The effect in this instance is greatly enhanced by the size of the canvas, which is perfectly oppressive, as it was intended to be. In the Salon of 1882 there was a picture by Pedro Lira representing "The Remorse of Cain," and here also the discouraging effect of barren landscape was employed. Cain (a naked figure with his back to the spec- tator) crouches with his face to a wall of rock, clutching a pro- tuberance of it with his hand. Nothing but rock is visible, and we feel it to be a landscape that must make despair itself more hopeless. Such is the effect of appearances on our minds that, although lovely scenery has not in reality any more sympathy with us than a stony landscape, we should feel Cain's lot to be less desperate if Nature smiled around him. Some readers will remember the story of the two princes, sons of Clovis II., who were énervés "¹ and set adrift on the Seine, when their boat was carried down by the current to Jumièges. A fine picture of this subject was painted by Luminais, and it was remarkable, among other good qualities, for the excellent judgment with which the landscape was introduced. The princes lie on a couch arranged for them with some degree of royal luxury in a rude boat, but the large cushions that support their heads and the embroidered coverlet that trails in the water only serve to make the river scenery more desolate. A common artist would have chosen a pretty river landscape to make his picture more agreeable; but Luminais, who has imagination, either sought the dreariest reach on the Seine or purposely invented a long stretch of muddy water and desolate shore. Not a habitation, not a sign of life, is to be seen. One uprooted tree floats down the 66 1 The word énervé has two senses corresponding to the two senses of the substantive nerf, which may mean either nerve or tendon. The princes who are called Les Énervés de Jumièges are said to have had their tendons cut to make them helpless when they were cast adrift. 1 138 LANDSCAPE. F turbid stream, and there is just a little patch of scrubby wood to the right. To make the dreariness of land and water more strongly felt, the artist placed his horizon very high, and the unshapely hills rise under a sky as uninteresting in its common- place cloudiness as the water in its monotonous ripple. The same art in using very dreary landscape for a purpose may be observed in Mr. John Collier's picture "The Last Voy- age of Henry Hudson," which transports us into the terrible Arctic regions. Here, indeed, we reach the extreme of all pos- sible discouragement that can be conveyed to the human mind by landscape on account of the obvious connection between the icy barrenness that the eye sees, and the death from cold and hunger that the mind has to apprehend. What chance is there for these lost ones in the boat? what food on that coast of frozen rock? — what heat from that air-chilling iceberg? Such landscape has its own sublimity, and even its own delicate beauty of rosy and azure coloring and lambent, palpitating light of aurora borealis; and yet it is dreadful otherwise than by ugliness, dreadful by its discouragement of human effort, by the stern veto that it puts on all human civilization. The grimiest ground near Liverpool or Leeds is cheerful in comparison with those pure Arctic snows, those magical castles of emerald and sapphire ice. We need not go so far as the Arctic regions to feel effects of dreariness in all their power. Our own island has regions of miserable desolation, of which perhaps the worst that I have seen is the great moor of Rannoch. There is an excellent de- scription of it in Macculloch, hardly to be surpassed for the skill with which it conveys the depressing aspect of such scenery : "Pray imagine the moor of Rannoch; for who can describe it? A great level (I hope the word will pardon this abuse of it) a thou- sand feet above the sea, sixteen or twenty miles long and nearly as much wide, bounded by mountains so distant as scarcely to form an apprehensible boundary; open, silent, solitary; an ocean of black- ness and bogs, a world before chaos; not so good as chaos, since its elements are only rocks and bogs, with a few pools of water, bogs of the Styx and waters of Cocytus, with one great, long, sinu- ous, flat, dreary, black Acheron-like lake, Loch Lydoch, near which arose three fir-trees just enough to remind me of the vacuity of all the rest. Not a sheep nor a cow; even the crow shunned it and wheeled his croaking flight far off to better regions. If there was a blade of grass anywhere, it was concealed by the dark stems of the black, muddy sedges and by the yellow, melancholy rush of the bogs." the GEOGRAPHY geograpHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. 139 A modern landscape-painter would feel the dreariness of such a scene, and try to communicate the idea of it by the help of a sad effect, but it is curious how little the old masters cared for the melancholy aspects of Nature, even when the subject most seemed to require it. There is a very fine old woodcut drawn on the wood by Titian himself and engraved by Domenico dalle Grecche, which represents "St. Jerome in the Desert.' "1 To my taste this is one of the very noblest of all Titian's landscapes, both by the imposing grandeur of its subject and the large, manly, comprehensive character of its execution, so superior, intellectually, to the finical details of modern imitative work ; but when we consider the appropriateness of the selection with reference to landscape character, our only conclusion must be that Titian did not take that into consideration, but simply thought about making a noble and interesting drawing. The "Desert" to which St. Jerome has retired is not a desert at all, but a delightful valley watered by a swiftly flowing stream that passes at the foot of a crag which is adorned by beautiful foli- age. Then you have a pleasant little plain which, in so well- watered a region, must be of the freshest green. Beyond this the land rises in rich woods till the view is closed by a noble range of Alpine mountains. There is a road on the bank of the stream, along which two men are driving a pack-horse, and the same road is carried up the side of the cliff, where it is well protected by a rail. A lion and a bear are either fighting or playing together in the plain, and St. Jerome is watching them in an attitude that expresses lively interest, and even some excitement, but a monk on the road and the two travellers with the pack-horse are quite indifferent to the wild beasts. All this is an excellent example of the temper of a great old master, thinking about a fine composition and caring nothing for appro- priateness. There is more of the dreadful desert in one line of Shelley than in all this agreeable drawing. In the sonnet on Ozymandias, after describing the shattered statue, he ends with a few words that leave you in the midst of an arid immensity. "Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." The fine landscape which Titian substituted for the desert, 1 Reproduced in "L' Art," vol. ix. p. 140. # A ་ + 140 LANDSCAPE. thereby favoring St. Jerome with an unduly delightful place of retreat, was no doubt suggested to him by reminiscences of the Cadore country, or may have been a sketch taken in that re- gion. The variety and richness of Italian landscape, from the Alps to the Sicilian sea, and the noble beginning of landscape- painting made by Titian, might have been expected to lead to a much earlier development of the art in its full extent than that which really took place; but the progress towards modern com- prehensiveness and catholicity of interest in Nature was slow and undecided, and has required the collaboration of other countries. It has long seemed to me a matter of regret that the influence of the Cadore country, through Titian, should not have led to the formation of a school of landscape-painters in Italy addicted to noble subjects, and disposed to treat them in a style above the pettiness of northern naturalism; but the time was not ripe for landscape-painting, which received its first really effectual impetus from Claude. His residence in Italy was fortunate for the art, not that he saw in it what Titian saw, but because the Italy of Claude was a very convenient sketch- ing-ground for an artist of his tastes. Those materials and arrangements of his, which to a modern landscape-painter have such an intensely conventional appearance, were, when Claude made use of them, the best materials in the world, and the most novel as well as the most beautiful arrangements. Noth- ing could have been better, nothing more suitable for art, than landscapes in which ruined temples recalled the historic past, while the land where they were situated offered every charm of beautifully undulated ground, noble vegetation, refreshing waters, and hilly or mountainous distances, always sufficient to give in- terest to the picture but never overpowering it. The associa- tion with classical poetry had also its own advantages. Thanks to that, Claude appeared an inheritor of the Virgilian inspiration, and was therefore not so isolated as he would have been with Nature only for his muse. The Italy that Claude painted was Italy of his own which he really found there; but it is only one aspect of that Italy which is visible to the painters of to-day, artists who seek for sublimities of form which to his taste would have been crude and harsh, and destructive of the Virgilian amenity, artists who seek, too, for a brilliance of color and a steady glare of unmitigated sunshine when he would have looked for unobtrusive tones, and veiled his sunshine in a poetic haze. s an the geograpHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. 141 Although Italy is a mountainous country, so that either lofty mountains or hilly ranges of some importance are visible from every part of it, while many of its least celebrated elevations are far higher than the most famous mountains of Great Britain, there has never been an Italian school of landscape that studied mountain form and color with any closeness of affectionate observation comparable to that of modern English and Scottish landscape-painters. The galleries are filled with figure pictures, the churches with saints and Madonnas, and until the new school came into being, a school entirely dissevered from the past and influenced more by photography than art, there were no professed landscapes, so far as I am aware, that showed any closer study of Nature than the vigorous but unobservant com- positions of Salvator Rosa. In recent times Italian landscape has been most carefully studied by Englishmen who had pre- pared themselves for convenient work from Nature by their mastery of water-color, and who had been led to love the scenery of Italy by a combined interest in pure Nature, learned in English fields, and respect for the famous name of Claude. In France Aligny put aside the traditions of "le grand paysage to find a still grander landscape in reality, and when he visited Italy soon discovered that there were elements in Italian sce- nery exactly suited to his mind. A certain comparison may be established between Titian and Aligny so far as their study of landscape was concerned. Both loved noble Italian subjects, and both had a preference for the pen and for an intentionally simplified interpretation of Nature. Aligny had a strong ap- preciation of beautiful lines in landscape, and he found these in abundance among the minor Italian hills. His treatment of trees, especially in the middle distance, reminds one both of Titian and Dürer. His work with the pen was of the most abstract character, rejecting local color altogether, and ad- mitting only just so much of light and shade as was necessary to distinguish some of his masses, and the abstraction went so far as to omit ruggedness in a mountain outline in order to get the clear sweep of it; yet in his time (the first half of this century) he was, among Continental artists, one of the closest and most loving students of natural beauty in Italy. 1 "" 1 This tendency is exactly the opposite of that prevalent in our own picturesque school, which exaggerates every protuberance to make ruggedness more rugged. -- 142 LANDSCAPE. It is a part of human nature to take a far keener interest in landscapes which are closely associated with humanity than in those which, however magnificent and sublime, show hardly any signs of human life and habitation; so that the Italian peninsula, by the number of its towns and villages, its visible associations with past history, and the evidence of Man's labor almost every- where, was a much more congenial field for the beginnings of landscape-painting than the great northern peninsula of Scan- dinavia. As, however, mankind advance towards the scientific stage, they become less exclusively interested in humanity, and they reach at last a condition of thought and feeling in which they are able to feel a sustained interest in pure Nature, with no more reference to human interest than that which must always remain between the man who observes an object and the object which is observed. Whenever this stage is reached a vast addition is made to the fields of landscape study. The artist is no longer confined to regions where he may find picturesque cities or classic ruins, but may travel and sketch in any country where he can find natural sublimity or beauty. Now, although the regions famous for historical and archæologi- cal associations are of small extent, being limited to countries of an ancient civilization, those where natural beauty is to be found are so extensive as to be absolutely inexhaustible. I have only space to glance at these, and am the less disposed to dwell upon them that I have not been a great traveller; but our knowl- edge is not strictly limited by what we have seen with our bodily sight, and if we know certain classes of scenery well we can easily, by the help of materials collected by artists and travellers, imagine scenes that belong to them. In an age like the present, when men have opened their eyes to Nature, and do not limit their admiration to "what savage Rosa dashed or learned Poussin drew," we are not any longer in danger of con- fining our minds to classical Italy. Everything that is successfully undertaken in our time has been attempted by some precursor whose work did not lead to any immediate development. In this way it must be admitted that Ruysdael was the father of those who paint the wild north- ern landscape. He did not see it with our modern eyes, he did not see it so clearly and truly as modern Scandinavian artists who have studied painting at Dusseldorf and gone back to their lakes with an educated skill, but he could love wild Nature in THE GEOGRAPHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. 143 his own grave way, and paint a torrent tumbling over rocks under a gray sky without desiring to embellish the landscape with any classical reminiscence. The full representation of Swedish and Norwegian landscape is, however, possible only in a century like our own. In Ruysdael's time nobody could have painted a Norwegian fiord; in our own time there are many artists, not only of Scandinavian but also of English or German origin, who can enter thoroughly into the northern landscape, and paint it with complete enjoyment of its own beauty, free from the temptation to introduce elements not its own. For them the lonely land-locked waters, the dark fir-woods, gray rocks, wild moors, and snow-capped mountains are enough. If they need a little human life they are content to give it no more than its due importance in the thinly peo- pled country. The habitations may be few and rude, but they are nearer to Nature and less destructive to natural scenery than the well-slated stone houses of our advanced industrial population. coun- Scandinavia has now its own native landscape-painters; and so has every country, from Holland to Russia, which comes within the range of German influence. Every international ex- hibition gives evidence of the general awakening to the pres- ence of natural beauty even in regions where there was hardly any precedent for admiring it, while in countries long famous for their connection with art, but not with landscape art, tries such as Greece, where the human figure was perfectly carved, or Spain, where it was perfectly painted, the modern landscape exploration has discovered an infinite wealth of ma- terial neglected for countless ages. Spain contains within its boundaries the extremes of ugliest aridity and most romantic loveliness, the contrasts that stimulate the artistic faculties to the utmost. A distinguished artist gave it the epithet "grim. -"grim Spain" he called it, laconically. We know that much of it is treeless and mountainous, with great spaces of plain or plateau, and a climate more remarkable for intensity of light than variety of effect. The absence of large waters in the in- terior, the glare of sunshine, and the dust make Spain as nearly the opposite of Scotland and of Norway as a mountain- ous land well can be. And although there is variety enough in the country if taken as a whole, it is horribly monotonous in parts. "It was not his books of chivalry that drove Don Quixote "" - ܝ 144 LANDSCAPE. mad," says an observant traveller; 1 "they only supplied a chan- nel for his disordered fancy. The real cause no one who has seen the country can doubt it- —was the heart-breaking monotony of the scenery by which the poor gentleman was surrounded. Natures like that of Sancho might be dulled and blunted merely, but a mind of higher temper could only go crazy. Phlegm or insanity, one of these two, must be the result of such a prospect day after day before the eyes." Elsewhere the same writer says that he could not endure the idea of a pedestrian excursion in La Mancha. "No creature except a camel or an ostrich would have thought of walking for pleasure over such a country. As far as the eye could see and in La Mancha the eye can see very far a rolling prairie of reddish brown lay baking into brick-dust under a powerful sun. There was not a tree, bush, or green thing within the limits of the horizon to hint the possibility of shade or moisture, nothing but parched thistles, spare stubble, glare, heat, and drought." 2 This is "grim Spain," tawny Spain," indeed; but it ought not to make us forget the wonderfully situated cities Toledo, Cuenca, Ronda, Segovia, Alarcon, on their craggy heights half encircled by rapid and picturesque rivers, nor the park-like scenery, wooded, as Ford tells us, "with oak, pine, and cedar, and freshened with rivulets as you go to Huerta del Rey," nor the Vierzo, with its rivers teeming with trout, and supplied with water from lakes kept full by streams from the snowy sierras, " a perfect paradise, where Ceres and Bacchus, Flora and Pomona, might dwell to- gether," nor the three hundred square leagues of hill and dale, river and forest, that constitute the Principality of the Asturias, 19 66 nor the marvellous landscape visible from the "magic case- ments" of the Alhambra, rich with trees and gardens near the incomparable palace, and stretching away over leagues of beauty to the snowy crests of the Sierra Nevada. A Ang palaka mp It is wonderful that a great school of painting should have existed in Spain, a school that had mastered the technical difficulties of the art, yet did not care to apply its acquired power to the illustration of such a land. It is wonderful, too, that 1 "Don Quixote's Country," Cornhill Magazine for April, 1867. 2 For a contrast between two quite opposite kinds of equally disagreeable land- scape, the reader may compare this very effective description with the equally powerful one by Macculloch of the moor of Rannoch already quoted in this chapter. the geogRAPHY OF BEAUTY ANd art. 145 the prodigal abundance of natural beauty in Switzerland should have excited, until the days of Rousseau, so little admiration, and that we should possess, in the engraved illustrations to De Saussure, such clear evidence of the wretched condition of land- scape art in relation to mountain scenery at a date comparatively so near to us as the close of the eighteenth century. De Saus- sure was, like our own Ruskin, an author in easy circumstances, who did the best he could with his books; but the distance between the illustrations of the "Voyages dans les Alpes" and the engravings from mountain studies in "Modern Painters " is so prodigious that it seems as if they belonged to differ- ent ages of civilization. One would believe, on comparing the coarse work of such engravers as Wexelberg, Töpffer, and G. Geissler, after paintings or drawings by M. T. Bourrit and Theodore de Saussure, with the delicate and intelligent engrav- ings of Le Keux, Armytage, and Cuff, after Mr. Ruskin's own keenly observant studies, that the first had been executed in the very earliest ages of engraving and the second in the time of its fullest development. But that is not the real state of the case. The art of engraving had reached the highest perfection, long before De Saussure's day; it was the knowledge of landscape that was wanting. His illustrators felt pretty safe in following an outline, though they did not draw outlines very well; but when they had to fill up an enclosed space with characteristic detail, they were all hopelessly at sea, and blackened their cop- pers with great spaces of utterly unintelligent labor. I do not say this to blame dead men who toiled in their time with praise- worthy patience, and doubtless did their best; and it is probable that if we had lived in that age we ourselves should have done no better but I take their work as curious and valuable evi- dence that at the end of the last century nobody in Switzerland could as yet approach the drawing of an Alp, even with the help of a really scientific critic like De Saussure. Since then Calame and others have illustrated the country with better knowledge, but even at the present day the landscape of Switz- erland does not occupy, in the fine arts, a position at all corre- sponding to its paramount rank in European Nature; and the difference is so great that we might have taken a keener interest in Swiss landscape if we had never cared for landscape-painting at all. There exists, no doubt, a very keen interest in the Alps ; but it is almost entirely athletic or scientific, hardly at all artistic. 10 146 LANDSCAPE. It is not possible, I believe, to find the name of any really great landscape-painter, in any country, who has made the Alps his favorite subject. Turner did not exactly avoid them, and when he did draw them it was with penetrating observation and an unprecedented power of conveying the impression produced by their prodigious size and inexhaustible detail; indeed, Turner so revelled in the detail that although he could not give all that was in Nature, he added much, to the same purpose, from his own prolific imagination. But although Turner proved his ex- ceptional competence to deal with material of such difficulty, we do not find that he devoted himself to it, or even that he gave it any considerable proportion of his time. There are, it is true, a number of sketches of Alpine scenery, or of places with Alpine distances, among the drawings, but they bear a small proportion to the vastness of the whole nineteen thousand ; and in the Tur- ner Gallery, a collection of more than a hundred pictures se- lected by himself to represent his talent and his taste, we find two pictures only of Alpine subjects, the "Cottage destroyed by an Avalanche," and the "Snowstorm with Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps." The dates of both these works are early (at or about 1812), and one of them is of unimportant dimensions. In the same collection, where all the Alps together are represented by only two pictures, one of which has a mili- tary and historical rather than a landscape motive, while the other has a cottage, and not a mountain for its subject, a single Italian city is represented by no less than eleven pictures. It is true that the city is Venice. Our other famous landscape-painters - Constable, Linnell, and their successors - have found their most suitable material in our own island, and often in parts of it which never in the faintest degree can even suggest a reminiscence of the Alps. The few northern artists who have done justice to our own mountains have seldom chosen to represent them under the snows of winter, when they remind us in some degree of Switz- erland. The French school of landscape-painters are quite remarkable for the care with which they avoid magnificent mountains. They seldom go beyond a gentle hill, of a grayish blue, behind their groups of trees. Mr. Ruskin, whose own love of Alpine scenery caused him to feel the neglect of it by painters, attributed it to the difficulty of dealing with the quantity of material presented by the great The GEOGRAPHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. 147 mountains, to the necessity for painting so many details fairly in order to give any approximate idea of that great multiplicity of parts which concur to produce the impression of immensity. This, no doubt, is one of the reasons why Switzerland is dis- couraging; but artists and dealers affirm that Swiss subjects do not generally make agreeable pictures, whether slightly or elabo- rately painted. A picture is not merely a reflection of Nature, it is a thing in itself; and it may be a rich-looking thing, like a fine Linnell, or a hard and meagre and cold-looking thing, like many pictures of Alpine scenery that could be mentioned. It would be impossible to mention anything less likely to give æsthetic pleasure than the illustrations to De Saussure; and even the engravings from Mr. Ruskin's drawings, so admirable for their delicate veracity, would not become pictures if they were copied with the addition of color. The same may be said of the fine photographs of Alpine scenery, very valuable from the scientific point of view, which have been produced by the brothers Bisson and others. My conclusion is, therefore, the conclusion at which all artists seem to arrive in their mature years, that there are things which are magnificent in Nature, but not so suitable for art as things that are less magnificent, and that Alps, icebergs, and volcanic eruptions are among them. We have seen in the chapter on the "Odyssey" in what de- gree the Greek intellect took note of surrounding landscape. If the paintings of Greek artists had come down to us, we might have observed with interest how far they had been impressed by surrounding mountain forms; but in the absence of material evi- dence we can only suppose that if such forms were drawn at all it must have been in a clear manner, and that the variety of nat- ural outlines would probably be much simplified. There is no reason to suppose that the ancient Greeks could color landscape otherwise than in a conventional, decorative way. We know, on the authority of travellers, that the natural landscape of Greece is remarkable for two chief characteristics. The atmos- phere is excessively clear and peculiarly favorable to the defini- tion of mountain form, while the color is of remarkable purity and brightness, yet without crudity. The most vivid idea of it has been given by Professor Colvin. He begins by telling us of the Saronic Gulf, that “the sea which leaps from the prow, and flashes under the following gale, is not sea, but a sapphire wine of fabulous color and intensity. The mountains, with their 4 148 LANDSCAPE. fainter azure, are mountains of enchantment; far off behind some of those foldings on the right, you know, lie ruins of old fame, —— Tiryns, and Mycenae, and Cleonae; on the left, the arid precipices of the Megarid descend in sunshine to the blue; in front, the gulf is almost closed by a crowd of steep and lonely coast and island forms which you have not yet learnt to name or distinguish." Evidently among natural things and qualities what struck Professor Colvin the most forcibly was the clearness of the Athenian atmosphere. "Until one has seen the effects of sculp- ture and architecture in that sun and that shadow, one can but feebly guess what Greek sculpture and Greek architecture mean. The moment you see shadows like these — strong, sharp, and defined as by a needle's point, yet full, in the shaded surface, of a blue and bloomy light-you have gained a new revelation as to the powers and effects of sculpture. In the West we know nothing of this daylight, which at the same time cuts out every shadow into the sharpest definiteness and force of contrast, and floods all that lies within the shadow with a soft and exquisite clearness. . . . In other climates it is only in particular states of the weather that the remote ever seems so close, and then with an effect which is sharp and hard as well as clear: here the clearness is soft; nothing cuts or glitters, seen through that magic distance; the air has not only a new transparency, so that you can see farther into it than elsewhere, but a new quality, like some crystal of an unknown water, so that to see into it is greater glory." Speaking of the "ranges and promontories of sterile limestone," the same writer observes that "the colors of them are as austere and delicate as the forms. If here the scar of some old quarry throws a stain, or there the clinging of some thin leafage spreads a bloom, the stain is of precious gold, and the bloom of silver. Between the blue of the sky and the ten- fold blue of the sea, these bare ranges seem, beneath that day- light, to present a whole system of noble color flung abroad over perfect forms. And wherever, in the general sterility, you find a little moderate verdure — a little moist grass, a cluster of cypresses or whenever your eye lights upon the one wood of the district, the long olive-grove of the Cephissus, you are struck with a sudden sense of richness, and feel as if the splendors of the tropics would be nothing to this."' The slightest attempt to describe, with such a degree of detail 1 "On Some Aspects of Athens," in the Portfolio for 1876. THE GEOGRAPHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. 149 as this, the immensely varied landscape of the world, would land us in endless geography and be the less necessary in this place that we may have occasion elsewhere to refer to the land- scape of different countries; but one observation suggests itself after some consideration of the subject from our present point of view, and that is, how abundant landscape beauty is upon the world, and how varied, if we think of the whole globe, yet at the same time how unequally distributed. The one quality of vari- ety in a small space, in a space that a common man who does not travel is likely to see in his lifetime, is in itself found in the most different degrees. In England we have great variety in one island, and yet in England millions have lived and died without ever once seeing a mountain. In France the variety is equally great, but the spaces of monotony are larger; in Hol- land you have a level, and in Switzerland a mountainous mo- notony. The course of the Nile, from the great lakes to the Mediterranean, is varied; and yet the length of the river is so great, and the spaces watered by that river only are so wide, that Egypt remains, for its inhabitants, not less monotonous than it was before the discovery of the great lakes, and each of those great lakes themselves is monotony in another form. For the yachtsman the Mediterranean is full of delightful variety, but for a resident at Aiguesmortes its tideless wave breaks ever on one dreary stretch of sand, where the walls and towers of the Cru- saders' city are more important than any natural object. There is beautiful scenery in Galilee, and still richer beauty at Damas- cus; but it is a dreary land between Joppa and Jerusalem, and who would live in the Wilderness of Judaea? Travellers in their tedious wanderings are occasionally rewarded for their toils by the sight of some lovely region that awakens their enthusiasm after the dreary desert they have passed through, and in this way we have shared the delight of Palgrave when he saw the fair Ara- bian country about Djebel Shomer and the noble landscapes of Nejed. So, after our imaginary fatigue in ascending the weary Nile, we find, with Baker, a sort of happiness tempered by daily danger in the grassy slopes and shady trees of the great natural park where the Baris live. Still, it is well not to forget the fate of those whose lot is cast in the very places that the traveller most willingly leaves behind. We may have a kind of pity for them like that which Tacitus felt for the ancient Germans, who lived in what he believed to be such a horrible country: "Quis 150 LANDSCAPE. کا porro, praeter periculum horridi et ignoti maris, Asia aut Africa aut Italia relicta, Germaniam peteret, informem terris, asperam coelo, tristem cultu aspectuque nisi si patria sit?” In the course of our travels how often does this very thought of Tacitus occur to us! "Who in the world would live in this wretched place unless it were his native land?" That explains everything in the way of affectionate restfulness. Just over the little town of Nantua, near the eastern frontier of France, a huge tower of solid rock is slowly, slowly but surely, toppling over; yet the people live on in the houses that it threatens and that it will infallibly crush one day. Men live within reach of vol- canic lava-streams; they establish their perilous home on the banks of rivers subject to terrible and almost calculably periodi- cal inundations. They adhere to the soil, generation after gen- eration, in places where it is perfectly well known that sound health is not to be hoped for. Who would live in a fever- stricken country nisi si patria sit? And if men will stay where health is known to suffer, is it surprising that they should dwell contentedly in places that are only destitute of beauty? The fame of beautiful places steadily increases by the wider spread of literature and landscape-painting. The beauty of the world is better known to us to-day than that of north Britain was to our forefathers. The wonderfully comprehensive intel- lect of Alexander von Humboldt had a more powerful effect than any other cause in directing attention to a comparative study of landscape as it exists over the whole surface of the globe. He did not remain satisfied, as some poet or painter might have done, with a pretty nook or corner of creation, some little Rydal Water, or lovely Loch Katrine, or picturesque Forest of Fontainebleau; he looked out over the whole world, and interested himself as much in the plateaus of Asia as in the mountains of South America, or the course of the Orinoco and the Amazon. Something of this comprehensive spirit with regard to landscape-a spirit that is independent of personal, and even of historical associations, and able to take an interest in landscape on its own account has descended to more recent travellers, who have described for us many parts of the world with skill enough to make us grateful for their observa- tions. Through these descriptions, and through the work of landscape-painters who are also travellers, magnificent scenery at a great distance from England has become familiar to us, at 1 THE GEOGRAPHY OF BEAUTY AND ART. 151 st least by reputation, so that we are beginning to see things more and more in their true proportions. We are no longer under the impression that the Alps of Switzerland are the only moun- tains of the highest rank; but we class them with other ranges in America, in Asia, and even in New Zealand. Our latest en- lightenment of this kind is due to Mr. W. S. Green, who has shown us the Alps of New Zealand with their eternal snows, their gigantic glaciers, and their many unconquered peaks. We owe hearty thanks also to Miss Marianne North for the courage with which she has initiated a kind of landscape-painting in the service of science, in which the artist abandons the crafty de- vices of professional work, the clever arrangements and opposi- tions, in order to give a simple account of the vegetation and the earth-forms and coloring in countries at a distance from England. I may mention, as specially interesting and valuable in this way, her views of Lake Wakatipe in New Zealand, and of Mount Earnshaw from that lake, which gave me, for the first time, a perfectly clear idea of scenery that had long awakened my curiosity. Thanks to Miss North, we now know how de- lightful that scenery must be, with its pure blue-green waters, its yellow sands, its ample and interesting vegetation, and its magnificent distances. The descendants of the English colo- nists will have the advantage of possessing, within the limits of their own southern islands, examples of the noble order of land- scape which, in this century, has been so strongly and frequently reflected in English literature and art; and for them those south- ern Alps will have one charm, one interest, which those of cen- tral Europe have never possessed for an Englishman, the charm that never belongs to any country, whether common- place or magnificent, nisi si patria sit. 152 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XVII. MOUNTAINS, IN youth we are so much the victims of our own personality that we take all its preferences for absolute and universal truths, not seeing that they are merely evidences of a relation between our own idiosyncrasy and the things that surround it. In later life a few of us, but only a few, make the discovery that each man has his own world made for him by a kind of natural selection from the infinitely various details of the external world. FOR AND AGAINST. I distinctly remember the shock of astonishment with which I first became aware that the delightfulness of mountains existed only in a relation between them and certain human beings, and that mountains had not any power over mankind generally, com- parable in universality to the refrigerating effect of frost or the heating effect of fire. They were so much to me, that I had the utmost difficulty in realizing the inconceivable fact that for many others a mountain was simply an obstacle to roads and railways, or an oppression to the mind, or an impediment in a view. The difficulty was increased by having to acknowledge that these dislikers of mountains were not persons devoid of intelli- gence or insensible to the beautiful or sublime either in literature or painting. I found that they were quite as capable of intel- lectual perception and aesthetic emotion as the best of us, and even that their insensiblity to the influences of mountainous landscape seemed to be compensated by a greater clearness of ' mental vision in other ways. One hesitates about making gen- eral statements to which there must be exceptions; but as a general rule, I should say that there is an antagonism between the love of mountains and the knowledge of mankind, that the lover of mountains will often be satisfied with their appearances of power and passion, their splendor and gloom, their seeming cheerfulness or melancholy, when a mind indifferent to this MOUNTAINS, < 153 FOR AND AGAINST. class of scenery might study the analogous phases of human character. But the root of the matter, both as to mountains and men, is that their deepest interest is not really in them- selves; they are interesting as partial expressions of that mys- terious, ever-present Power which existed before the upheaval of the oldest mountains, and will manifest itself in new forms when they shall have been worn down to littleness by the slow action of rain and frost. The effect of mountains as a manifestation of natural energy must, in a scientific age, be due in great measure to the curi- ously disproportionate influence between things seen with the eyes and things that are only apprehended by the intellect; for although a mountain is a huge object in comparison with human works, it is so small an excrescence on the globe that Switzerland is proportionately an almost imperceptible roughness. To be lost in admiration at the power displayed in the upheaval of a lump of igneous rock, and to be indifferent to that shown in the regular motion of the earth, is as if a microscopic creature were stopped by a little roughness in the paint of a locomotive, and ignorant of the machine itself. The truth may be that a planet is beyond our comprehension, that it can only be seen when at such a distance as to lose magnitude by perspective, and that nobody really imagines, or can imagine, the vastness of the earth; while a great mountain that we can climb in a day, or drive round in two days comfortably, is the largest object that we have mind enough to grasp. Another reason why mountains have an influence upon us is, that they are recognizable features in scenery; but this depends very much on personal instincts and tastes. Some lovers of hills and mountains (the present writer is of the number) have such an affectionately retentive memory for these objects that they always recognize them even after an absence of many years; but others retain no clear impression concerning them, so that even the most marked peculiarities of mountain structure fail to impress the mselveson their memories. An ordinary per- son who has been bred in a mountainous country will, however, generally remember the hills that surround his home; and the character of local peculiarity that mountains give to a place is the reason why mountaineers have a stronger home-feeling and suffer more readily from nostalgia than the inhabitants of plains. 4 154 LANDSCAPE. - Not only does a mountain give a home-feeling to one place, but if you have been accustomed to see it from any one place you will have in a minor degree the same home- feeling in all other places from which it may be visible. There is a book by a Japanese artist giving a hundred views of the great isolated Japanese Alp, Fusi Yama. The artist takes us into all sorts of foregrounds, but that snowy peak is ever visible in the distance, and the series of drawings tells us as plainly as possible that wherever the white cone of Fusi Yama shines in the clear sky there the loving draughtsman feels himself still at home. In this way there are regions where a certain mountain is the visible king, and all who live in sight of him have a sort of loy- alty to him. On an incomparably larger scale both for his own. altitude and the radius of his influence, a great mountain may be to a range of country what the dome of St. Paul's is to the city of London, or St. Peter's to modern Rome. But no dome ever built by human hands, however gorgeous with far-glittering gold, can have the variety of aspect which gives such a perpetual interest to a mountain. That variety is so great, so full of entertainment for the observer, that I cannot deal with it in a paragraph, and must needs reserve for it a com- plete chapter. Nothing in Nature, except sky and ocean, approaches in changefulness the aspects of a mountain in a variable climate; and it has this great superiority over its own clouds, — that it is permanent in changefulness. A cloud alters really, breaks into fragments, and passes away; a mountain seems to alter, but remains; so that we have always in the memory some standard by which to measure the degree of its wonderful disguises. The love of mountains is often very strong in those who feel the conquests of civilization to be rather oppressively com- plete and absolute. A plain may be cultivated throughout, and so completely subdivided into little fields, gardens, woods, vineyards, that there is no walking to be had over it except along the straight public roads; and these are sometimes en- closed by walls so that you cannot even look into a garden. There are regions in which the artificial is so completely pre- dominant that there is no escape from it; but a real mountain always affords that escape. On the Alps, even on the summits of our own northern hills, the land is as wild as in the prehistoric MOUNTAINS, · FOR AND AGAINST. 155 ages; there is real, unspoilt Nature, protected for ever by the stern guardians Frost, Storm, and Steepness. The neighborhood of a mountain has this further advantage, that it places a series of different climates within easy reach of the pedestrian. There are places among the Alps where the valley has the climate of Italy, and you can ascend without diffi- culty to a drier Scotland, and thence to Iceland, and finally to Spitzbergen. It is a great thing for a healthy and hardy person to have such changes without travelling far to seek them. As the mountains offer a new flora at every zone of altitude, and as they exhibit geological structure with a plainness not often visible elsewhere, they attract scientific students. The lovers of sublimity in Nature, independently of positive science, find it among mountains in such abundance that the only danger is insensibility from excess of stimulation. Those who desire to excite a sluggish imagination, find wings to their thoughts in the mountains. Poets go to renew themselves at the unfail- ing sources. More than fifty years ago he who is now the most famous poet in the world gave the wisest advice in verses of the most animated eloquence. When a writer of simple prose might have tamely recommended others to seek their inspiration in the grandeur of wild Nature, Victor Hugo sent them to the moun- tains with a voice like the sound of a trumpet, and in tones that are reverberating still : G "O poëtes sacrés, échevelés, sublimes Allez, et répandez vos âmes sur les cimes, Sur les sommets de neige en butte aux aquilons, Sur les déserts pieux où l'esprit se recueille, Sur les bois que l'automne emporte feuille à feuille Sur les lacs endormis dans l'ombre des vallons! "Frères de l'aigle ! aimez la montagne sauvage: Surtout à les moments où vient un vent d'orage, Un vent sonore et lourd qui grossit par degrés, Emplit l'espace au loin de nuages et d'ombres, Et penche sur le bord des précipices sombres Les arbres effarés!' "" All this is exactly what Byron really did. Instead of remain- ing quietly at Newstead and in London, he went to Switzerland for a fresh inspiration, and found it in view of "the Jungfrau with all her glaciers," of "the Dent d'Argent, shining like truth," and the Wetterhorn. "From whence we stood, on the Wengen Alp, we had all these in view on one side; on the other, the 156 LANDSCAPE. clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the ocean of hell during a spring- tide, — it was white, and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance." This is the prose account of what he saw, and he also says that he and his companion "heard the avalanches falling every five minutes nearly." The strength of the impres- sion was, however, too great to be confined to prose, so we find precisely these observations made use of in "Manfred : "" * "Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down, In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me! I hear ye momently above, beneath, Crash with a frequent conflict. The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell!" • Since Byron's day the Alps have become a field of athletic rather than poetical aspirations; but a strong though unexpressed passion for the sublime in Nature may often accompany athleti- cism and give a motive to its energy. It would be unfair to conclude that because the members of Alpine clubs do not often express their feelings in well-turned verses or florid prose they have no feelings to express except satisfaction in exercising their legs. The truth is, that the sensations experienced among mountains have now been uttered so often that we are scarcely disposed to repeat the expression of them; but they may be felt every year in all their wonder and freshness by those who stand for the first time on a glacier and look down into the azure depth of a crevasse. The objections to mountains are twofold, intellectual. practical and The practical objections come generally from economists who think about the wealth and convenience of nations, about their agriculture, population, manufactures. Mountainous countries are poor, thinly peopled, ill provided with means of communica- tion. In a deep valley you have one road, and may travel up the valley or down it; on a plain, the roads go wherever they are wanted. From the economist's point of view, a mountain is a waste of land, and he does not quite see the force of the High- lander's argument that they increase the acreage of a country. A mountain is the source of many streams, but till they reach the plain they are too rapid to be navigable. There is now, MOUNTAINS, ·FOR AND AGAINST. 157 however, a possibility that utilitarian mankind may be better reconciled to mountainous countries as the power of their rush- ing streams may be converted into electricity and turned to practical service in the valleys. The economist's objection to mountainous countries would be of great force if it were impossible to get away from them; but as, in fact, cities always grow to a large size only where they can conveniently do so, the consequence is that urban life on a large scale is mainly found either on flat or gently undulating ground. The capital of Great Britain has grown to its present. size because the site permitted its expansion. Glasgow is less inconveniently situated than Edinburgh, and so has become the commercial capital of Scotland. It is true that the human strength of nations, and their material wealth, are generally in inverse ratio to the extent of ground covered by lofty mountains. Compare the importance of the strength contributed to the British Empire by the Highlands of Scotland and the mountain- ous parts of Ireland with that derived from the Scottish Lowlands and the midland counties of England. In one point, the hill races are believed to be superior. They are more hardy, and therefore, in some respects, better soldiers than the Lowlanders. Is not Montenegro the "rough rock-throne of freedom," and have not her warriors beaten back the swarm "Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years"? The intellectual objection to mountains is that they assume a degree of importance when they happen to be near us, which is out of all proportion to their real importance in the world. They are the biggest visible things, but they are not so big really as any forcible and original man. They have the majesty of age, and of long passive resistance to storm and frost; but beyond mere mass and weight, and power of duration, they have nothing but their changeful beauty. And yet their mass is so visibly prodigious, their duration so overwhelming to the human mind, their beauty so supreme in its own wonderful way, and full of such lifelike vicissitude, that we are sometimes led to look upon them with a mistaken humility, as if they were supe- rior to ourselves. It may even come to pass that this too obtru- sive influence of the mountain may be a check and a hindrance to the development of the intellect and will. The dispropor- tionate self-assertion of a near mountain may dwarf the distant 158 LANDSCAPE. }. 1 i ¿ city where the rays of intellectual light converge. At Chamouni, Mont Blanc is more in people's thoughts than Paris. Even the most thoughtful men are often drawn to the mountain by the fascination of its mass. We gaze at the frozen heights as if we expected a new Moses to descend from them, and the only Moses we perceive is a wearied tourist with his guides. The last time I saw Mont Blanc it was reduced by distance to some- thing like its proper station in the world. Across the broad green plain of La Bresse, what seemed a low white cloud was visible on the far horizon. A field-glass soon resolved the cloud into a sharp snow outline and dark aiguilles. On the vast round surface of the earth the loftiest crest in Europe seemed no more than a white-sailed vessel dropping down behind the round globe- surface of the sea. • GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 159 CHAPTER XVIII. GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. IT T has been observed already, with reference to the landscape descriptions of Virgil, that the botany of the ancients was much more advanced than their geology. This may be ac- .counted for by the close neighborhood of different species of trees in the same forest, where the contrasts between them were visible to the least observant, and sure to attract the attention of the poet; whereas to see the different effects on landscape pro- duced by chalk and granite it was necessary to travel, and when men travelled in those days it was generally on military expedi- tions, which gave generals and soldiers something else to think about than the art of describing landscape. The ancients were better mineralogists than geologists, as the arts of the architect, the statuary, and the jeweller, made them acquainted with a multitude of substances found in the earth which were either useful or beautiful. This utilitarian mineral- ogy would lead to a sort of primitive geology by simply noting the character of the places where the desired substances were likely to be found; but I am not aware that there exists the slightest evidence in any ancient writer that he had observed the effect of mineral substances, in quantity, upon the character of the landscape. The state of feeling that characterized an intel- ligent citizen of ancient Rome, as in the observation of some landscape details by Virgil, and his neglect of others, is found again in the literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when almost every author who took any interest in landscape at all was careful to distinguish between trees, and often mentioned smaller plants by their names, especially when they had beau- tiful flowers, but classed all rocks together simply as "rocks" or "stones." The special study of rocks in the graphic arts is en- tirely modern, and yet it is of infinitely greater importance here 160 LANDSCAPE. than in literature, for a reason already glanced at in this volume, — the unfortunate necessity, in the graphic arts, of choosing be- tween a statement of special truth or a falsehood, it being im- possible for the draughtsman to say a thing, as a writer can, in general terms. The reader may remember a passage in the pre- face to the second edition of “Modern Painters," where, in an- swer to some foolish critic, the author said that as an animal must be one animal or another animal, and could not be a general animal, so a rock must be either one rock or another rock, and could not be a general rock, or it would be no rock. He also said that it was just as impossible to generalize granite and slate as to generalize a man and a cow. All this is perfectly true with reference to painting, though it would not be applicable to liter- ature; and hence it follows that all landscape-painting which is not founded upon special observation, that is, upon the observa- tion of species in everything, is really as monstrous as animal- painting would be if it also disdained the distinctions of species. "" I have no doubt that this necessity for specification in the graphic arts is a mark of inferiority in them, but it is an inferi- ority that has to be accepted. It is one of the marks of inferior- ity in certain languages not to possess general terms. Ernest Haeckel, when speaking of the intellectual status of the lowest savage races, says that their languages remain in a rudimentary condition, and gives as a proof of this the fact that many savage tribes have never had a word for "animal, plant, sound, color ; and there are many other equally simple ideas that these savages are unable to express, whereas for the different animals, plants, etc., that are familiar to them, they have different names. Paint- ing is in the same condition as these savage tribes, and must ever remain so unless it accepts monstrosity, as it is impossible to find, in the order of Nature, any animal, plant, or rock, which is without species; and the slightest attempt to portray Nature by any one of the graphic arts places the artist at once under that necessity of distinguishing species which is a characteristic. of Nature itself. It is always a mistake to push analogies too far, and so it might be well to content ourselves with saying that geology occu- pies, in the study of landscape, the same position that osteology does in the study of the human figure; but if we look farther into the matter, we soon discover that geology is in reality much more than the osteology of landscape, as it does not concern GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 161 itself simply with the hardest substances, such as rocks, which may be compared with the bony structure of the body, but also with the softest depositions, such as alluvial mud and sand, which, though incapable of tension and contraction, answer in some de- gree to the muscles. Besides this, geology has a superiority of interest in the great variety of the substances which are the sub- ject of its study, and in the variety of forms which result from difference of substance; and this superiority may be accepted as a compensation for the inferiority of mineral substances. in their want of organized parts. These comparisons are not without interest; but whatever may be the result of them as affecting our estimate of relative rank in geology and osteology, one certain truth remains, namely, that geology, like botany, is simply a part of one great comprehensive study, anatomy, which includes all those studies of Nature that aim at more accurate knowledge by separating the parts of things. For this reason, it has always seemed a mark of inconsistency in artists that they value anatomy so much with regard to the bodies of men and animals, and value it so little with regard to the mineral and vege- table world. Their negligence of geology and botany often amounts to a feeling of dislike and opposition, as if the same arguments that may be used against anatomy in one instance might not, with equal force, be employed against it in another. There is a converse instance in the case of Mr. Ruskin, who is opposed to the study of human anatomy, but who has given a large space, in an important work on art, to the anatomy of mountains. The value of geology with reference to the landscape that we see is, that it explains in some measure the causes of the shapes that interest us, and tells us something of the history of the earth. Surely there cannot be any valid reason why even a practical landscape-painter should close his mind against information that may be received without any great effort, though the data on which it is founded have cost others an infinity of toil. The only danger in these studies, for artists, is that they encourage a scientific rather than an artistic habit of mind, so that if the art-faculty is not of very great strength it may be overpowered by the scientific activities. I once knew a landscape-painter whose son had some talent for art, but he had also a strong taste for geology, and his father predicted that the indulgence of this scientific taste would spoil his career as an artist. This II 162 LANDSCAPE. might happen if time were given to details, such as the structure of fossils, which have nothing to do with the appearances of land- scape, and there might be a frequent temptation to pass from art to science, because you can always get real science from others with very little trouble, while to produce real art yourself, even on the humblest scale, is a matter of infinite uncertainty and difficulty. It is There is a reason for presuming that whether artists have con- sciously studied geology or not, they must have been influenced by it, as the truthful drawing and painting of rocks is contem- porary in art with the development of geology in science. only in modern landscape-painting that any acceptable rock- drawing is to be found. In all old pictures whatever, a rock is simply a blemish, at least with reference to the truth of Nature, though as a patch of gray or brown color it may be artistically useful in a background. The rocks of the old masters are of two kinds, either angular, when they look as if they had been cut out by imaginative masons with stone-saws and chisels, or else lumpish, when they have the appearance of brown sacks piled up in an accidental manner. The only step of importance made by them towards a true representation of rocks was that they seized the idea of stratification, but they did not study it carefully or intelligently; how could they, before the science of geology existed? Even in Wilson's time nobody could or would paint rocks as they really are. Allan Cunningham says that when Wilson began to paint landscape "he had been long insensibly storing his mind with the beauties of natural scenery, and the picturesque mountains and glens of his native Wales had been to him an academy when he was unconscious of their influence." It is a remarkable proof of the facility with which the eyes close themselves against what the mind has not been educated to per- ceive, that Wilson could have lived in Wales, and afterwards in Italy, without having received any faithful impression from the nobler rocks of either country. It may be suggested that he saw them, but was prevented by the traditions of art from paint- ing them as they were. The evil influence of tradition may have done something to keep truthful rock-painting out of Wilson's pictures; and yet it seems hard to believe that any artist who had seen rocks clearly in Nature would have content- edly substituted for them a conventional arrangement of tones that scarcely bore any relation to the coloring of the natural GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 163 rocks, while as to their forms he took scarcely any more note of their fractures and surfaces than if they had been entirely without significance in Nature. It appears as if in Wilson's time nobody had really seen such a thing as slate, though the material was used for roofing houses, and schoolboys wrote upon it. Even in our own times, though some landscape-painters have given an unprecedented amount of care and attention to sea-cliffs and the rocky beds of streams, others are still able to paint them carelessly without exciting any protest, unless it comes now and then from a scientific geologist. "In the recent exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy," Mr. Archibald Geikie wrote in 1865, “no feature struck me more than the conventionality of the Scottish artists in the painting of rocks. One of the more noted of their number is content to mottle the foreground of his Highland landscapes with lumps of umber and white, worked up indeed into the external outline of rocks and stones, but utterly without character. It seemed strange that in an exhibition containing so many pictures with Highland scenes as subjects there should scarcely be one which showed that the painter had tried to study the individuality of rock masses and boulders over and above that of hills and mountains." Mr. Geikie then expresses his warm approval of the picture of Pegwell Bay by W. Dyce, R. A., which gave the geological structure of a chalk cliff with great fidelity, and also the worn floor of chalk on the beach and the scattered stones, whether rolled pieces of chalk or fractured flints. Mr. Geikie had a special admiration for the remarkable studies of rock scenery by Mr. E. W. Cooke, R. A. "In looking at them,” he said, “I am at a loss whether to wonder more at their scrupulous truth or at the amount of thought and feeling which glows through each of them." I have also seen most faithful work by Mr. Cooke, and the fidelity of it was appreciated by most people whose love of Nature was of a scientific character; but it was with his work as with that of other very close observers, it appeared rather hard in manner to those artists and critics who cared less for positive veracity than for aesthetic pleasure, and unfortunately aesthetic pleasure is of paramount importance in the fine arts. I think my old master, Mr. J. P. Pettitt, deserves mention (independently of my personal respect for his memory) on account of the trouble he took to be faithful in his paintings of rock scenery at a time when geologists and photographers had not rendered the knowledge of stony Nature so accessible 164 LANDSCAPE. as it is now. Mr. Pettitt used to make careful separate studies of every piece of exposed rock that came in his way; and he was fond of rocky places, one of his great pedestrian tours having included a vast extent of the British coast. Without being ex- actly what is called a geologist, he would think it quite a suffi- cient reason for making a thorough study of some cliff, that he had not in his portfolio a study of the same kind of stone. He was very observant of the effects of water-sculpture in the beds of streams; and I remember, in particular, seeing him paint a picture in which he copied with great enjoyment the beautiful smooth-sided holes that are often produced by the wearing of an imprisoned stone kept in motion by water during floods. All this, it may be said, was taking a geological rather than an artistic interest in Nature. It might be argued that one of the great old masters would not have paid any attention to these things, but given, in the place of them, I know not what ideas of gran- deur and sublimity. To such objections the answer is that the grandeur of a real precipice far surpasses that of the ignorant ideal, because the real thing tells the story of its structure, and the false thing has no story to tell the real thing is built like a cathedral when it is stratified, and gives evidence of even greater forces when it is not stratified; the false thing has no more structure than a piece of putty. And besides this difference of interest, it may be safely asserted that in Nature there is far more beauty, and a far greater variety of beauty, than in the false ideals of stony shapes that were invented by the misdirected genius of men. In all that concerns the forms of the earth the modern painters who have studied Nature the most carefully have produced works which, however unprecedented they may seem, however remote from the examples of the old masters, do really contain not only infinitely more of truth, but infinitely more of beauty also, than is to be found in galleries where there is no truthful geology. The curves of water-worn rocks are often most beautiful curves; the local coloring of rocks in Nature, instead of being limited to the dull brown of the old masters, is full of every variety of hue, often giving tints of indescribable delicacy, and sometimes of great richness and strength. The coloring of a river-strand of pebbles may be found to vary from rosy tints to the most beautiful blue grays. A precipice will vary in color at different strata, and as you pass in travelling from one kind of formation to another you find sources of novelty in the form GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 165 and color of the rocks which are quite as striking as those due to differences of vegetation. From the red sandstone of Scot- land to the blue slate of North Wales the transition is more remarkable than that from English hop-gardens to French vineyards. ❤ My sympathies, as the reader sees, are here entirely on the side of knowledge and observation, as opposed to an ignorant, or at least a disdainful, conventionalism; but I am well aware, at the same time, that, although it is not difficult to perceive how much richer natural geology is in interest of all kinds than that of the old masters, the great variety, and especially the striking peculiarities of natural truth, make it extremely difficult to deal with in such a manner as to keep it subordinate to the artistic necessities of picture-making. There is an argument on the other side from the point of view of an old-fashioned art- critic, which I will endeavor to state in its full force, not as be- ing convinced by it, but because it is more convenient to state one side of a question fully and fairly, while reserving objections for the time, than to be perpetually interfering with the course of an argument while it is going forward. A lover of old-fashioned landscape-painting might argue against the free admission of truthful geology into painting in this man- ner. From the artistic point of view it is always highly desirable to avoid everything that attracts attention so as to awaken doubt or curiosity to the detriment of aesthetic pleasure. All those geological truths which are of interest to the geologist are likely, if brought forward by an artist with any prominence, to strike the unscientific spectator either as being false or strange. Even if he believes them to be possibly true, he is put out by them, and prevented from enjoying the artistic beauty of the work in peace. His notion of a rock is a sort of general notion, as of a large piece of stone that has been exposed for a long time to the weather; and if something that suggests this idea in a gen- eral way is painted for him he is content, but if you give him a hard study of some geological curiosity it does not strike him like the natural thing which he admits to be true because it is in Nature, yet feels himself at liberty to neglect. A painted thing is more obtrusive than a natural thing: it claims attention, it awakens criticism, and when the subject of it is unfamiliar it pro- vokes a feeling of opposition. If Wilson had truly painted the slate rock at Llanberis, he would have spoiled the aesthetic effect 166 LANDSCAPE. of his pictures on all spectators who were not familiar enough. with slate in Nature to see it without the slightest surprise in art. When we look at the illustrations in geological books we soon perceive that the things illustrated would in most cases obtrude themselves as unfamiliar things, and art should always avoid the unfamiliar. Mr. Ruskin's comparison of the difference between granite and slate with the difference between a man and a cow is perfectly sound with reference to Nature; but it fails on the side of art, because all people who see pictures are familiar with the sight of men and cows, while it is only those who have lived or travelled in granite or slate countries who know the effect of these materials on landscape. Since art deals only with the fa- miliar, it is right that it should make clear distinctions between men and animals, and right also that it should be vague about rocks, which are known only to the scientific. Let us take as an example the frontispiece to the fifth edition of Lyell's "Man- uel of Elementary Geology." It is engraved" from a painting by Jarnes Hall, Esq.," and it represents "Strata of Red Sand- stone, slightly inclined, resting on vertical schist, at the Siccar Point, near St. Abb's Head, Berwickshire." The mere title, in the first place, is of itself sufficient to frighten away any lover of art, who would at once infer that the picture was a geological diagram. The description of the original work, given by Lyell, would only corroborate this idea : - "In the frontispiece of this volume the reader will see a view of this classical spot, reduced from a large picture, faithfully drawn and colored from Nature by the youngest son of the late Sir James Hall. It was impossible, however, to do justice to the original sketch, in an engraving, as the contrast of the red sandstone and the light fawn-colored vertical schists could not be expressed. From the point of view here selected, the underlying beds of the perpendicular schists are visible through a small opening in the fractured beds of the covering of red sandstone, while on the verti- cal face of the old schist a conspicuous ripple-mark is displayed." Nobody who had not either visited the Siccar Point itself, or some other place where the same rocks were to be seen, could possibly appreciate the fidelity of the painter in his coloring of the red sandstone and the "light fawn-colored vertical schists." Not having seen the painting, we cannot affirm that it possessed what artists call good color, the "eye music" of contrasts and harmonies; but we may conclude that it was rather a faithful GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 167 map of natural hues than an artistic color-arrangement. With regard to other artistic merits we may be certain, from the en- graving, that there was neither an arrangement of light and shade nor any artistic composition, so that the one merit of the work would be its fidelity, and that only geologists could appreciate. The coloring of the Siccar Point, though remarkable and pos- sibly even beautiful, is of a comparatively mild kind, but there are some places in the world where it is so strong and so pecul- iar that if truly painted it would attract attention almost exclu- sively to itself, and everybody who looked at the picture (except some geologist who knew the place) would exclaim, "Can such coloring possibly be true?" thus losing aesthetic pleasure in pure wonderment. Imagine, for example, a faithful painting of the stratification which is to be found for many a league along the Colorado River, and which has been described as follows by Mr. Archibald Geikie:1 "The colors of these rocks are of the most vivid hues. Bands of brilliant red are relieved by others of dull chocolate brown deep- ening into purple or fading into slate and lavender. Some of the beds are of a pale lemon yellow, shading into orange or brown or into a delicate pearl-gray, with here and there perhaps a seam of pale verdigris-green. As these tints characterize different layers of rock, the level stratification of the country, thus so clearly marked off, is one of the most striking features in the scenery." What with brilliant red, pale lemon-yellow, orange, lavender, and verdigris-green, with dull chocolate brown to make the bright colors look brighter still, it is plain that in a faithful pic- ture of such a scene the local colors would be so dominant as to overrule all color in the artistic sense. So it must be on that astonishing Yellow-stone River in the National Park of the United States, where the bright yellow color of the strata has given a name to the stream. In Mr. J. F. Campbell's eccentric but very interesting book on the powers of "Frost and Fire" there are many illustrations drawn from the geologist's point of view. Let us select one of the most pictorial of these for analysis. It represents a scene in northern Scandinavia at a place called Quain Clubbe. There is a fine waterfall in the middle distance, and beyond it a suc- In the valuable paper on Rivers and River Gorges in "The English Illus- trated Magazine" for January, 1884. 168 LANDSCAPE. cession of rocks and hills, culminating in two mountains. The river rushes down the foreground, clasping an island in its em- brace, but the great peculiarity of the foreground, and the rea- son why the subject was selected for illustration, consists in certain grass-grown terraces of drift. No doubt the drawing is like Nature, but it has all the appearance of representing some- thing artificial. The terraces of drift look exactly like embank- ments made by some railway constructor, or like material delivered from wagons in a mine, and taking a regular slope. Such a subject would, therefore, be entirely unfit for treatment in a picture, because it would require explanation. The same objection would apply to the famous marks on mountain sides that are called "the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy." I have never seen them, but they are described as follows by Mr. Archibald Geikie : tr Returning now to Glen Roy, the traveller should ascend that valley to see what light its famous Parallel Roads' have to cast upon the history of the old glaciers of the Highlands. The same long straight line which, as he drew near to the Bridge of Roy, he noticed running high along the mountain-side. on the south of the Spean Valley, is now seen to turn up Glen Roy, winding along the hills of that valley with the same singular horizontality. When he gets several miles up the glen he begins to see traces of two other terraces, until, on reaching a turn of the road, the long deep glen lies before him, with its three bars straight and distinct as if they had been drawn with a ruler, yet winding into all the recesses of the steep slopes, and coming out again over the projecting parts without ever deviating from their parallelism. The Roads,' so long a subject of wonderment and legendary story among the Highlanders, and for so many years a source of sore perplexity among men of science, seem at last to be understood. Each of them is a shelf or terrace, cut by the shore waters of a lake that once filled Glen Roy. The highest is of course the oldest, and those beneath it were formed in succession, as the waters of the lake were lowered." Mr. James Geikie, in "The Great Ice Age," has an interesting paragraph on the same subject which explains the probable cause of the ancient lake: At one "In Glen Roy there are three distinct shelves, 856 feet, 1065 feet, and 1149 feet respectively above the level of the sea. time these shelves were thought to be old sea-beaches, and this continued to be the general belief even after Agassiz had suggested GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 169 their lacustrine origin. The later observations of Mr. Jamieson, however, would seem to have convinced most geologists at last that the glacial-lake theory is the true explanation of the phenomena. A massive glacier descending from Glen Treig filled up Glen Spean, and thus formed a barrier to the escape of the water from Glen Roy. Along the margins of the lake thus formed angular shingle and débris collected, derived in great measure, no doubt, from the degradation of the rocks under the influence of frost. As the icy barrier decreased, either by gradual melting or by sudden rupture, the lake was lowered, and thus another terrace of débris gathered along the slope of the valley at a lower level than the former. The further shrinking or bursting of the ice in like man- ner again lowered the lake, and so gave rise to the third and lowest shelf." It appears to be quite settled now that the "parallel roads” are in fact the shore-marks of an ancient lake, and all belief in their marine origin is abandoned. But it is impossible to suppose the lake without supposing a barrier of ice lasting all the year round, as there is no evidence of any rocky dam to the supposed lake, and no human being would ever imagine a state of climate in which glacier ice was permanent in Scotland, un- less he had been taught by geologists. Hence it follows that a truthful picture of Glen Roy, representing the "parallel roads," could only be properly addressed to that small portion of man- kind which is familiar with glacial theories, seeing that for other people they would be nothing but a distracting puzzle, pre- venting them from enjoying the landscape by causing hope- lessly wrong speculations about their natural or artificial origin. This brings us to the irresistible conclusion that in a painting of Glen Roy intended for artistic purposes, that is, to give aesthetic pleasure, and not for the scientific purpose of convey- ing accurate information, the marks of the ancient lake shores ought to be intentionally and deliberately omitted, although there can be no doubt that for any one capable of understand- ing their history they are the most interesting features of the landscape. Another natural fact that is absolutely inexplicable without the aid of geological science, is the existence of erratic blocks, pieces of stone, "of all shapes and sizes, occasionally reaching colossal proportions and containing many hundred cubic feet.” The most remarkable peculiarity of erratics is that they are often entirely different, in their mineral constitution, from the ground 170 LANDSCAPE. LANDS on which they have found a resting-place. Pieces of rock belonging to the Alps have been carried across to the Jura, or down the way towards Lyons. In the basin of Belley, on the line of the great ancient Rhone glacier, there is still to be seen a big erratic block of what French geologists call phyllade noire (black clay-slate). Only about half of it now remains, but that half contains four hundred cubic metres.¹ Other great pieces of the same rock are found in different situations. Now sup- pose the case of some artist who sits down to paint a scene in which blocks of this kind occur. How is it likely that they can be in harmony with the geology of the place? Their presence is nothing but an accident. They were brought by a glacier long ago, and deposited with no more intention than a sack that drops from a cart and is left in the middle of a road, and they have scarcely any nearer relation to their resting-place than the sack could have to the macadam. They are excessively interesting things to a geological student, and such a student would make very careful drawings of them; but a painter who had any regard to the unity of his subject, and to the necessity for avoiding problems that require explanation, had better simply omit them. They are not like passengers' trunks on a railway platform, they do not themselves explain the reason for their presence. To explain that, we have to go back to the glacial epoch, exactly as for the parallel roads of Glen Roy; and who but a geologist knows anything about that? An argument of this kind might be prolonged indefinitely, for there are a thousand instances of things in Nature that are suffi- ciently remarkable to look strange and even untrue in art, and absolutely to require some explanation. In Nature we know that there cannot be untruth, a thing is what it is beyond the possibility of discussion; but in art all unfamiliar truth, all truth not easily and at once accounted for, is a fatal obstacle to the reception of the work. Nor is it necessary to go so far as the Colorado or the Yellowstone Rivers to find examples of strange and unacceptable truth. On every sheet of water in the world certain phenomena, such as those of local breezes, isolated areas of calm, interrupted reflections, and the like, are of very frequent occurrence; and yet these phenomena are stumbling- blocks to most people in art, because they do not notice them anciens Glaciers de la Lyon, 1883. 1 Esquisse Géologique du Terrain Erratique et des Région Centrale du Bassin du Rhone. Par A. Falsan. GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 171 in Nature. For the same reason many forms of cloud that occur commonly enough in the natural sky look strange and eccentric in pictures, and are enough to prevent their sale. Still, if we follow the history of landscape-painting from its first existence as a separate art down to our own time, we shall find that its progress, or, if you like better, the course of its history, has been marked by a constant extension of its domain in the realm of Nature. The opening of the natural world by science has been followed by the illustration of it in art ; not to the same extent, and yet to an extent that would have appeared heretical and unintelligible to the criticism of the last century. The ten- dency to consider a landscape absurd because it represents truth- fully something that has never been painted by the old masters, has greatly diminished in the course of our own lifetime, and the reason appears to be that people are made better acquainted with natural truth by the positive and uncompro- mising statements of men of science, and by the personal study of Nature, that they encourage. In this way it is gradually com- ing to pass that a vast number of natural facts or phenomena, which in the days of Wilson and Gainsborough were really out- side of the domain of art because unfamiliar to the public, art dealing properly only with the familiar, may be consid- ered really within it, because they have lost the fatal defect of strangeness. This will be understood more perfectly by ref- erence to a special case, the scenery enclosed in the great National Park of the United States. That scenery is extraordi- nary in various ways, but as it becomes more and more familiar to the inhabitants of the States, and to visitors from foreign countries, the pictures of it that will be produced by faithful artists studying on the spot will, in course of time, cease to appear strange, and then people will be able to appreciate the beauty of the region simply, without thinking so much about it as a region of natural curiosities; and so, by increased familiar- ity, it will become a suitable field for art. Those who love landscape only for its beauty, poets and painters who have much sentiment but little positive knowledge, often have a dread of knowledge as being destructive of senti- ment; and the reader may remember that Mr. Ruskin gives an excellent instance of this possibility in a matter belonging to our present subject, the emergence of rocks from the soil. To one who only thinks of rock when he sees it or when he remembers 172 LANDSCAPE. what he has actually seen, it may appear far more wonderful, astonishing, awful, than it is likely to appear to a geologist who is mentally quite familiar with it already as it exists in beds under some uninteresting tract of country. It is probable that the extreme mental familiarity with rocks of different kinds which is the result of a geological education must take away much of that impressionableness which belongs to ignorance and in- experience. We may go farther, and say that to a simple mind which believes a precipice to be God's handiwork, as directly and immediately as a wall is human handiwork, it must appear far more sublime and overwhelming, and a far more striking manifestation of divine power, than it is likely to appear to a geologist who sees in it nothing but some conveniently exposed strata, whose lines and curves he will immediately proceed to account for by vertical or lateral pressure. In this way science may sometimes deprive us of the opportunity for noble emotion; but any loss that it occasions is compensated for by the great additional interest given to landscape through speculations on its past history. Some of these speculations may be of doubtful probability; but many others have reached the stage of cer- tainty, through the accumulation of material evidence in their favor. An hypothesis is suggested, it is applied to all known cases and found compatible with all known facts, after which probation it is accepted. I may illustrate the wonderful in- crease of interest that geology has given to landscape by a special subject which has long been to me one of the most fascinating and perplexing of natural puzzles, - the formation of lake basins. The whole subject has been treated with the ful- ness that it deserves in Mr. James Geikie's admirable book, "The Great Ice Age." He divides the lakes of Scotland into three classes: 1. Lakes occupying hollows in the till or other super- ficial deposits; 2. Morainic or drift-dammed lakes; 3. Lakes resting in basins of solid rock. "The third group," he says, "embraces the largest and most important lakes in Scotland, and to it also belong a vast number of mountain-tarns which are neither large nor important. All these lakes and tarns rest in hollows of solid rock." I will confine myself in this place to the rock-basins, concerning which the first question that ob- viously suggests itself is, How can they have been hollowed? Here are some of the difficulties that perplexed us in former times : GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 173 "When we reflect for a moment, we shall find that it is a very hard thing indeed to account for a rock-basin. The usual agents of erosion, those which we see at work in our own country, fail to afford any solution of the problem. We may, for example, dismiss the sea as utterly inadequate. The action of the sea upon the land is that of a huge horizontal saw; the cliffs are eaten into and grad- ually undermined; masses of rock, loosened by rains and frosts, tumble down and are pounded up by the breakers into shingle and sand. Thus in process of time a shelf or terrace of erosion is formed; and were the shore to be sufficiently elevated to-morrow, we should find that such a platform would extend all along our rocky coast-line, - narrowing where the rocks were hard and durable, broadening out where the cliffs had yielded more easily to the ceaseless gnawing of the waves. But nowhere should we be able to detect anything approaching to the character of a rock- basin; for it is evident that the sea cannot make a hollow be- low its own average level.' Its tendency, indeed, is quite in the opposite direction, much of the material derived from the de- nudation of the land being carried out and deposited in its quiet depths." D The question then arises, whether rock-basins can be ac- counted for by the action of rivers; but it is readily shown that although a river will run down a slope it will not run up an in- clined plane. Rock-basins are scooped out by waterfalls, but you cannot account for a great lake-basin by a supposed water- fall of sufficient volume. The next suggestion is that rock-basins may possibly be due to disturbances of strata that have made troughs. "May not the lakes then occupy such troughs, or rest in cracks and chasms or depressions caused by dislocation and displacement of the rocks?" The notion that rock-basins are formed of strata bent upwards at the sides like a dish is disproved by the fact that they are quite independent of the depressions in stratification. "As a general rule we find that synclinal troughs or geological hollows form hills, while conversely anticlinal ridges or geologi- cal hills give rise to valleys. And it not infrequently happens that the hollow in which a lake lies is, geologically speaking, a hill or anticline." It may be necessary to give some further expla- nation of this for the non-scientific reader. What Mr. Geikie means is, that the strata may have a convex curve, may round their backs, as it were, at the bottom of what is popularly called a valley (and so be exactly in the opposite condition to a dish unless you turn it upside down), while on the top of what we 174 LANDSCAPE. call a hill the strata may be concave. As for synclinal troughs, that is, rock-basins in conformity with the concave lying of the strata, like the top saucer of several in a pile, Mr. Geikie simply affirms that there is not such a thing in Scotland, and Professor Ramsay says that they are the rarest things in Nature. Neither do the lakes lie in "gaping fissures, or in chasms produced by dislocations of the solid rocks, or, as they are technically termed, faults. As a matter of fact, no single instance has yet been adduced, either at home or abroad, where a fault could be said to be the proximate cause of a lake hollow." The remaining hypothesis is that rock-basins must have been hollowed out by ice; and Professor Ramsay has been the first to put the argument in favor of ice with all its irresistible power. The strongest point of his argument is that if a glacier were the agent it would naturally have a more powerful erosive action towards the upper end of a valley where its thickness would be greatest; and in accordance with this theory we find that the rock-basins now converted into lakes are deepest at the place where the ice of the ancient glacier must have been thickest and heaviest. As the glacier "continues to flow, it gradually loses in bulk, its rate of motion at the same time diminishes, and thus its erosive power becomes weaker and weaker. The result of all this is the formation of a rock-basin, the deeper portion of which lies towards the upper end, just where the grinding force of the glacier is greatest." With this idea to guide us, we may presume that our Scottish rock-basins will generally be deepest at their upper ends, or, in other words, towards those ends that would be higher up the flow of the ancient glacier; and so we always find them. The theory is confirmed in other ways, especially by the existence of two or more basins in the same valley, which are exactly hol- lowed as they must have been under the hypothesis of glacier action. "An attentive examination of the physical features of the fiords, and a careful scrutiny of the Admiralty charts, will show that whenever the opposite shores of a fiord approach each other so as well-nigh to separate the water into two separate sheets, two dis- tinct rock-basins are almost invariably the result. This appear- ance is well explained by the erosion theory, but is inexplicable otherwise. When glacier ice filled such a fiord, it would be stran- gled in the narrow pass, and the motion of the ice advancing GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE. 175 from behind would be impeded. Hence there would be a heaping up of the glacier, and intensified pressure upon the rocky bed would produce its natural effect, increased erosion." 1 This theory of glacial action seems to be the only acceptable explanation of Scottish rock-basins, and a striking confirmation of it is the shape, well ascertained by soundings, of those rock- basins which have been invaded by the sea, and which have their deepest parts where the glacier would be heaviest, their shallowest where it would be lightest, and their rims or edges of rock exactly like the present fresh-water basins, although the rims may be now submerged beneath the salt water, and known to us only by the Admiralty charts. "" For the knowledge of all these details, or at least for the due sense of their significance, we are entirely indebted to the sci- entific geologists, and especially to Professor Ramsay and the Geikies. Before they investigated the subject for us, we fancied that the rock-basins were mere depressions, resulting from early disturbances of the earth's surface, or perhaps from slow subsi- dence afterwards, in the case of each particular lake; an idea now shown to be perfectly untenable, as "to have produced the innumerable lakes of all sizes that stud the surface of alpine countries and many northern regions the rocky crust of the earth must needs have been nearly as unresisting as putty.' And now, is it not plainly evident that every lake which oc- cupies a true rock-basin in Scotland or elsewhere gains im- mensely by being for ever associated with the tremendous grinding and scraping power of an ancient glacier and by the enormous lapse of time, of which, however, we may have some faint appreciation, that must have been needed by the slowly moving glaciers that hollowed out the dark depths of Loch Lomond and Loch Awe? To me it seems that a number of the most sublime and impressive ideas of natural action are con- nected with history of these lakes. We know that they are of great antiquity in comparison with any human work, and yet their antiquity is not so immeasurable as to discourage us by the ab- sence of a beginning. Having seen those remnants of the ancient glaciers that are still at work in Europe, we may imagine the far vaster glaciers of "the Great Ice Age," and see them at work in the valleys where now sleep the beautiful waters that we love, 1 The Great Ice Age. Chapter xxiii., "Rock-basins of Scotland." 176 LANDSCAPE. . . waters that are only frozen in our sharpest winters in their shal- lower creeks or bays, waters that reflect many a tree and plant that would have perished in the ancient Arctic cold, and are often cheered by the presence of human and animal life impossible in the ancient desolation. Surely the stupendous truths that we have learned from science have in this instance (and in how many others!) increased and intensified the interest that an intelligent man may take in the landscapes that he knows! The beauty of them as they are to-day is not diminished, but much enhanced, by the contrast with the stern past that endured so long, — long enough for such prodigious labors to be accomplished by such slow means; and yet that dreary past was a necessary prepara- tion for the beautiful present, when the artist sits in summer on a smooth rock polished by the ancient glacier, and paints the lake asleep in the hollow that it made. OF HIGH PLACES. 177 CHAPTER XIX. OF HIGH PLACES. WH HENEVER a subject belongs so strictly to the domain of science as the structure of mountains does, it is ex- cessively difficult to treat it otherwise than in a strictly scientific manner, and the reader is probably as little prepared to listen to a geological lecture in these pages as I am to deliver one. This need not prevent us from remembering what the profes- sional geologists tell us, so far as we are able to follow them; but my own purpose will be sufficiently answered if I am able to recall to the experienced reader the freshness of the sensa- tions that he has felt in the high places of the earth, and convey to the inexperienced some faint idea of those delights, for the enjoyment of which not a few have hazarded and even sacri- ficed their lives. Perhaps, before going farther, it may be well to consider briefly the disputed question of right and wrong in this matter. Is the pursuit of mountaineering perfectly blameless, or is it a foolhardy form of enterprise that a moralist ought to condemn? There are two things to be considered: the danger of the ascent itself for average climbers, and the degree in which the general danger is diminished in particular cases by the strength, skill, and experience of the climber who makes the ascent. It is ex- tremely difficult to determine what is the degree of general dan- gerousness in anything. It varies from people to people, and from age to age, according to the development of human apti- tude. Personal skill and coolness may make a situation safe for one man when it is perilous for all others. On the other hand, a particular weakness or disease may make the most insignifi- cant enterprise unsafe. It is imprudent for a person with heart- disease to climb a Surrey hill; it is an almost perfectly safe amusement for Mr. Whymper to go to the summit of Mont ✔ 12 178 LANDSCAPE. Blanc. An old friend of mine said to me as we were looking at a little open sailing-boat with which he had safely navigated the most dangerous lakes in Europe: "How relative safety is! that little craft is safe for us, but what madness it would be for an inexperienced person to embark in her!” Foolhardiness does not consist so much in putting ourselves in what may be gener- ally considered dangerous situations, as in over-estimating our own strength, skill, resources, and presence of mind. Some- times, too, it may consist in associating ourselves with incapable or less capable people, who create danger by their own deficiency of skill. There are, however, Alpine enterprises of such ex- treme temerity that the most accomplished guides themselves are in real peril; and then it becomes a question how far it is right to risk valuable lives for the celebrity that rewards the conqueror of some peak hitherto reputed inaccessible. In the terrible accident which will for ever be associated in the history of Alpine enterprise with the first ascent of the Matterhorn, Michel Croz, one of the bravest, coolest, strongest, and most active men in Europe, was hurled into eternity simply because (to quote the words of his employer, who witnessed the catas- trophe), "Mr. Hadow slipped, fell against him, and knocked him over." 1 To this it might be answered that the courage, coolness, strength, and activity that distinguished the unfortunate Michel Croz, are never developed in any human being without the full reality of danger; that these are flowers of manly character which never yet grew in the atmosphere of a safe and quiet life and that it may be better for mankind that some men should attain that degree of hardihood and perish by some sudden catastrophe, than that all men should fall far short of it and die of languor in their beds. Mountaineering requires as much courage as war, and a more skilful activity; while it has this great advantage over the battle field, that the peril may generally be neutralized by prudence. The reader sees that my sympathies are very much with the mountaineers; and indeed my admira- tion for their achievements is only equalled by regret when any 1 Mr. Whymper is careful to tell us that Mr. Hadow slipped at a relatively easy part of the descent, and that Croz could have saved himself, if he had suspected that anything was about to occur, by clutching a rock that was near him, or that he would have stopped himself if he had not been momentarily without his hatchet. This only shows the extreme peril of what a mountaineer considers really difficult places. OF HIGH PLACES. 179 serious accident befalls them. Mr. Whymper calls mountaineer- ing "the purest, healthiest, and most manly of sports." It is, indeed, quite absolutely dissociated from all degrading sensual pleasures, since they are incompatible with it, nor does it in- volve suffering of any one of the inferior creatures. Mr. Whymper is eloquent in its favor, and speaks from an enviable experience: "We who go mountain-scrambling have constantly set before us the superiority of fixed purpose or perseverance to brute force. We know that each height, each step, must be gained by patient, laborious toil, and that wishing cannot take the place of working; we know the benefits of mutual aid; that many a difficulty must be encountered, and many an obstacle must be grappled with or turned, but we know that where there 's a will there's a way: and we come back to our daily occupations better fitted to fight the daily battle of life, and to overcome the impediments which ob- struct our paths, strengthened and cheered by the recollection of past labors, and by the memory of victories gained in other fields. "We glory in the physical regeneration which is the product of our exertions; we exult over the grandeur of the scenes that are brought before our eyes, the splendors of sunrise and sunset, and the beauties of hill, dale, lake, wood, and waterfall; but we value more highly the development of manliness, and the evolution, under combat with difficulties, of those noble qualities of human nature ―courage, patience, endurance, and fortitude." The beginning of all mountaineering is simply the desire that we all feel to get to the top of some small eminence in order to have a better view. Then we see some loftier hill, and think "If we were there the prospect would be wider still;" and after a few ascents of hills or inferior mountains in youth we arrive at a state of feeling on the subject that makes it intolerable to live in the neighborhood of a mountain without having at least once ascended it. This state of mind is familiar, no doubt, to many of my readers, and is, I believe, a very common state of mind among healthy and active people. If such people happen to live near a mountain of some elevation and difficulty, they will become tolerable mountaineers through the teaching of that single height. After that, if they have a genius for mountaineer- ing, a new ambition is likely to implant itself in their souls. They will not be satisfied with the near and the familiar, but will travel to seek loftier and more difficult elevations. Then they will compare themselves with the élite of the climbers of the 180 LANDSCAPE. world, and strive to conquer peaks reputed to be inaccessible. After that, Europe itself will not hold them; but wherever a virgin Alp may rear its head in northern or southern skies, there they will arrive with axes, ropes, and alpenstocks, and wound its untrodden snows with the nails of their English boots. It will be a natural course of proceeding to advance gradually from the humblest to the loftiest hills; and here let me observe that the rewarding nature of an ascent is not so much to be measured by the actual height of the mountain as by its relation to the surrounding landscape. Very humble hills, indeed, may be well worth climbing if the prospect is clear on two or three sides of them, and especially if it is of a varied character; while lofty mountains may be overlooked by others still loftier, and the view from them may be blocked by near scenery of a monotonous kind, so that the ascent is scarcely rewarded by anything but physical exercise and opportunities for geological observation. Besides this, the beauty of scenery does not in- crease with the elevation of the spectator, neither does the feel- ing of elevation itself augment in any proportionate degree. All landscape-painters are familiar with the fact that the higher you go the less pictorial does the landscape become; but it is not necessary to confine ourselves to the landscape-painter's point of view, we are thinking about Nature just at present, independently of the fine arts. Even with this larger liberty of judgment we are still obliged to confess that if by climbing higher we are always gaining, we are as constantly and steadily losing beauty of some kind in our ascent. We see high moun- tains better from another mountain, but the inferior elevations flatten themselves before us as we rise. A still greater loss is the difficulty of seeing distances framed, as it were, by side- scenes. Such an arrangement, with side-scenes, has always been felt to be necessary, not in landscape-painting only, but also in the theatre and in the arrangement of gardens; and if any one finds fault with me for referring to such artificial things as these, *I may readily answer that the needs of the human mind are most clearly revealed when it is free to manage things as it likes best. Now, the higher you go up a mountain the less chance you have of getting a vista pleasantly enclosed; and when finally you come to stand upon some isolated peak, you can have no side-scene whatever, but see Nature as if you were a hovering kestrel, or an aeronaut suspended from a balloon. OF HIGH PLACES. 181 I should say, then, that the pleasure of ascending high moun- tains is much less of an artistic than of a physical and even moral nature. The physical pleasure is in the use of fine bod- ily powers with the profoundly satisfactory feeling that we are increasing them; the moral pleasure lies in the close analogy, which all men more or less distinctly feel, between the physical efforts needed for a mountain ascent and the moral effort needed for the attainment of a higher life. Even the poorer purposes of a worldly ambition are analogous to the climbing of moun- tains, as we know by many a current phrase referring to high places in which people have been born, or to which they have been clever enough to climb. These analogies are so familiar that it is needless to pursue them, and we may return at once to our minor hills. First, let us not despise them for their moderate elevation. The hum- blest of them are as high as a cathedral, and I never in my life felt the sense of being perched up aloft so completely as in the spire at Amiens, where you look down on the steep slope of the prodigious roof, and see the people like little black flies far down in the streets below. The feeling of possible danger in such a place is almost as complete as it could be on the peak of the Matterhorn itself; for if you fell upon that roof you might try to cling just as vainly as did poor Michel Croz, and your body, a second or two later, would be as lifeless as his own. There is nothing to choose, as to degrees of peril, between a fall of three hundred feet and three thousand. This must be the reason why the inferior hills, if they are only steep enough, awaken our feelings of sublimity almost as effectually as the colossal mountains. Even without any real peril of crag or precipice, a minor hill may have some energy of outline, and offer, on a small scale, the varieties of an interesting ascent. There is a hill in the Morvan called Bonnet Vert, because there is a little cap of brushwood on the top of it; and I do not know a better example of a minor hill anywhere. It is about three times the height of the roof of Amiens, or six hundred feet above the surrounding country. To ascend it you have first a path through a wood which conceals the latter half of your task, then you emerge upon a little plateau of cultivated land, and see the dome that is set upon it and which you have to climb at the cost of a little real exertion. As soon as you have emerged from the wood the broad basin of the Autunois stretches away : 182 LANDSCAPE. far below you till it is bounded by its distant hills, and once on the summit you look down into narrow vales where villages and châteaus lie nestling. To the west you have Mont Beuvray rising alone and wooded to the summit; to the south the long, monotonous line of wooded Montagnes de Montjeu with a park on their plateau and a towered city at their feet; while far to the east the landscape recedes to a remote horizon, and you may possibly, if rain is impending, catch a glimpse of the snows of Mont Blanc. There is some trace of human labor on the crest where you are standing, and you are told that in the earlier part of the century a semaphore telegraph was established there which repeated the signals from another post across the wide basin or plain, and was a link in the chain of telegraphic posts between Marseilles and Paris. The perfection of this little hill is due to the boldness of its form, the beauty of its curved lines, the steepness of the ascent, and to its position as an advanced post towards the plain, so that nothing interferes with the view, which is one of the finest in France among those that do not rise to the sublime. It is almost amusing to see how the appur- tenances of grander hills are imitated here. There is a beautiful valley at the foot on the very smallest scale, but with noble and ancient trees. 1 I have mentioned Mont Beuvray, and am tempted to describe it as being the most perfect of the minor hills that are very famil- iarly known to me. The mount stands isolated on the outskirts of the Morvan hills, and is about two thousand feet above the level of the surrounding country. The sides are steep, but there are no precipices; the summit is a small level plateau, and to the west there is a deep gorge with a stream. On the east another rivulet flows down a little dell, and even just under the summit itself the ground is well watered with abundant springs that seem almost iced in the hot weather. Nearly all the sides of the mount are clothed with dense forest of oak, beech, sycamore, etc., and winding about this forest are sixteen miles of road for the ox-carts that fetch the cuttings of the wood. The crest was occupied in Gaulish times by a great oppidum, or fortified city of refuge, and the fortifications are still easily traceable in a circle at some distance below the summit, where the hill is about two miles and a half in circumference. Within this circle the 1 Seen from the west it is higher, and from the east a little lower than the measure given above. The summit is 2722 feet above the sea. OF HIGH PLACES. 183 remains of many dwellings have been brought to light; among the rest a large Gallo-Roman mansion a little lower than the plateau.¹ The plateau itself is crowned with ancient beeches, and the rising, undulating land all about the foot of the mount is exactly suited to the chestnut, of which there are still many noble old specimens. From the summit of the mount the views range in the most favorable weather from the Loire in the west to Mont Blanc in the opposite direction. The western view is the finer, especially on account of the well-formed lower masses of the mount itself covered with dense wood and ending in a beautiful vale which has its castle on a rocky height. Beyond this the hill energy finally dies away in gentle waves, that perish in the great plain of the Loire, and across this plain itself in clear weather may be faintly seen other distant elevations. At sunset the Loire gleams and glistens in the blue of the misty plain. The reader must imagine for himself the infinite detail of a thousand fields and many a league of forest. 2 I have often rather envied the opulent Roman who had his palace on that height, and have indeed imitated him in a very humble way by living, for days together, in a thatched cottage built of the good granite of the mount and close to the founda- tions of his residence. From early dawn till after sunset I enjoyed, with a companion fully alive to such influences, the peculiar feeling of being isolated from the world, and yet seeing more of it than those who are not isolated, a feeling only to be experienced on an eminence. The little plateau was like an island in the air, like Gulliver's Laputa. When the plain was hidden in mist, our hill-top seemed to be floating in the infinite ; but it was never grander than in the moonlight, when the world below was still dimly visible, stretching away to an indefinite hori- zon, and nothing could be distinctly seen but a light in some distant farm or the glistening of the moonlight on a small lake that nestled in one of the valleys. In the daytime we had many a change to note from the dewy dawn to the fierce heat of sum- mer noon. If the hill had been sterile and dry, the heat would have been scarcely supportable; but with our noble groves of beech and other trees, our natural lawns of soft, well-shaded grass, and our delightful wells of purest water, always abundant, 1 See page 50 of the present work. 2 Built for the use of a learned antiquary, M. Bulliot, who for many years di- rected the excavations on the site of the Gaulish oppidum. 184 LANDSCAPE. always cold, we felt ourselves in a summer paradise according to the taste of Virgil or Ariosto. No sound ever disturbed us except the songs of birds or the wind in the leaves of the forest ; and though we knew that there were wild boars in its recesses, they troubled us no more than the timid deer, and only added a little to the poetry of the sylvan world that surrounded us. was a place wherein to read the old poets, a place where, after reading them, one might believe it not quite impossible to meet Adonis hunting in the forest, or to come It "Unto the place, where living free from blame Chiron the old roamed through the oaken wood." At other times the imagination might yield itself to influences of a later date. We often walked out in the middle of the night, and then, when the wind came from the west, and the leaves rustled, we remembered the legend that a seigneur of the cas- tle on the rock still hunts in ghostly fashion with ghostly dogs, and comes up from his old home with the chill night-blast and cheers his hounds across the plateau. Swiftly they pass, and soon are lost in the dark descending slopes of the forest on the other side. Now, for a contrast, let me take the reader to one of our northern hills, my old friend Pendle. It is much lower than the Beuvray, lower by about nine hundred feet; but there are no groves upon it for shade or shelter. The cold winds blow from one end to the other unimpeded; nothing except a cloud ever relieves the severe monotony of its outline. Some hills give the idea of being erect; but Pendle is a great recumbent mass, something like a sphinx, and the wind blows all along its back, a desolate range of wild and dreary moorland. One end of it (the breast of the sphinx) is exceedingly steep, but not an in- accessible precipice; the other slopes down to the level of a mere undulation of the land. Seen from the top of Pendle the surface of Lancashire presents the appearance, not of a country tossed into crested waves, but of a country with a long ground- swell rising and falling in great spaces and with slow curves, not without a certain severe beauty of outline, yet which cannot be described as picturesque. On the Yorkshire side the forms of Pennyghent and Ingleborough are more decided; and to the north in clear weather may be seen the mountains of the Lake District, while a long line of silvery sea glistens under the after- OF HIGH PLACES. 185 noon sun. This is interesting as a view; but what an immense difference has been produced in the pleasantness of elevated ground, in its adaptability to the needs of man, by the six and a half degrees of latitude that separate Pendle from the Beuvray ! The southern mount has shady groves like Ida, and like Ida is "many-fountained; " the northern is bare and bleak, recalling no classic association. I fear it must be admitted that Pendle is unfortunate in having neither southern richness nor the full and stern sublimity of the north. Skiddaw is as wild as a Highland Ben, and, though little more than three thousand feet high, is full of small sublimities which are impressive in the absence of larger. We may smile at Wordsworth's patriotic contention that Skiddaw is "nobler far" than Parnassus, and " pours forth streams more sweet than Castaly; " but however this may be, it is a fine bold specimen of the inferior mountains, and offers a view of much diversity, with the delightful little Derwentwater in the immediate neighborhood, almost all the summits of the Lake District in the distance, and some Scotch hills across the Solway, not to mention the Isle of Man and a possibility of seeing Ireland. In ascending our little British mountains it is wise to start about midnight, so as to get the powerful contrast between the mystery of darkness, and the splendor of sunrise over a great expanse of country. The gradual passage from one to the other, however frequently we may have witnessed it, is never common- place or familiar. The poetic effect of such an ascent is greatly enhanced if you have to cross a lake in the darkness before be- ginning it, as for example, when you ascend Ben Cruachan from the Cladich shore of Loch Awe, or Ben Lomond from Tarbet. The night should be as dark as possible, and you should be either entirely alone in the boat, or accompanied by a single silent companion. I remember crossing in this way from Tar- bet to the foot of Ben Lomond at midnight, when it was impos- sible to see the opposite shore (though the distance is less than a mile), until a moment before we landed there was a feeble glim- mer of white pebbles, and the boat scraped on the beach. The eerie effect of such a midnight row in a small boat is considera- bly enhanced when you know that you have five hundred feet of black water under you, and that you are in one of those nar- row gorges that may be swept from end to end in the most un- expected manner by a sudden squall from the mountains. After 186 LANDSCAPE. landing, you have a toilsome climb that raises you about a thou- sand feet, then an easier walk over a barren moor, and after that generally a steep ascent to the summit during which you have the encouragement of slowly brightening light. The common desire to see the sun rise from the top of a mountain is reason- able, because the landscape changes more rapidly than it usually does at other hours, and because you see enough of the earth to be impressed by the grandeur of its majestic eastward motion. Besides this, you have the spectacle of shadows thrown on a large scale; and though we are perfectly accustomed to see shadows of smaller objects, such as trees and houses, we can- not help feeling overawed by the great scale of Nature when the shadows of lofty mountains are cast across broad valleys and the lakes lie cold in the hollows, while many a rocky crest is golden or ruddy in the first bright rays of morning. Ben Lomond is perhaps the best of all the British hills for the enjoyment of this great spectacle, as the mountains visible from it are well dis- posed for the casting of the first shadows, and the view of Loch Lomond with all its islands is incomparably beautiful. You have the Clyde, too, beyond Dumbarton Rock, and Bute pale in the distance, and in the other direction Loch Katrine and the be- ginning of the Forth. Ben Cruachan is the best of the British mountains that are known to me familiarly, both by the sharpness of its rocky crests and the wild character of its remarkable corrie. What we call a corrie in Scotland (I may explain for the southern reader) is a hollow in the mountain itself presenting all the appearance of an ordinary valley or dell, except that it is enclosed on all sides but the open one by which its waters issue. If that opening is not cut low enough to drain the hollow completely, the conse- quence is a mountain-lake or tarn, of which there are many ex- amples. In the corrie of Cruachan there is only a stream which winds along the green bottom of the hollow as quietly as if it were in the English midlands, and then tumbles into a rocky ravine through which it passes by a succession of pools and cata- racts, mostly hidden by dense foliage, to the lake. I have never seen a painting of the corrie, and think it likely that the most faithful representation of it would be a disappointment, because the romantic character of the place itself is due in great measure to our knowledge of its height above the lake, and the difficulty of getting to it, which painting could not explain; but it might 1 OF HIGH PLACES. 187 on give a truthful idea of the inaccessible purple-gray precipices to the north and the ruddier steep of the great peak in whose hol- low lies in summer a diminishing field of snow. The view from the peak includes Loch Awe on one side of the Cruachan range and Loch Etive on the other, neither of them exactly an equiva- lent for Loch Lomond, an inferiority soon forgotten when the eye ranges westward to the Hebrides, and to the north and east over the sea of mountains that are the Highlands. The narrow summits of Ben Lomond and Ben Cruachan are better observa- tories for landscape than the flat and rather extensive table-land of Ben Nevis, as you have only to turn round like a weather- cock to see everything, which is the convenience we go to find The views we "the peaks of earth o'er-gazing mountains." get from such places are not pictorial landscapes but panoramas ; they are, however, as much a part of Nature as those narrower and better enclosed views which have a nearer relationship to artistic compositions, and they may have other kinds of interest than mere adaptability to art. It is, I think, especially interest- ing to watch meteorological changes over a vast extent of coun- try, to see one region obscured and another brought into light, to see rain and storm on one part of the country and the most brilliant weather elsewhere. Even the dreaded approach of the mountain cloud is not always a misfortune, as it may happen that the peak we stand upon rises clear of it, in which case we may have the remarkable spectacle of the great cloud ocean, out of which the mountain-tops rise like islands; and then it becomes difficult to believe that the human race is living at the bottom of that sea, or that we ourselves could not sail upon it from one rocky island to another. Even buildings may some- times be isolated in that manner. The Cathedral of Autun has a tall spire that stands on elevated land; but just behind it are the steep slopes of Montjeu, and it sometimes happens, espe- cially on autumnal mornings, that people walking on the zigzag road called "les rampes," which ascends those slopes, have a strange spectacle before them. The basin of Autun, including the city, is entirely flooded by a lake of level cloud, out of which the distant hills emerge, like the shores of Windermere above its waters. Nothing of the city is visible, nothing of the cathe- dral, except only the spire which rises in the clear air like an obelisk on the Egyptian plain in the most absolute apparent isolation. 188 LANDSCAPE. To return to our Highland mountains. Their barrenness is against their beauty; they would certainly be more delightful with glades of ancient chestnuts and soft natural lawns of ver- dure than with nothing but bog and moor after the first low belt of stunted oak and birch. Those mountains in the western islands that are continually exposed to the blasts from the Atlan- tic are especially bare and miserable. There is Ben More, for example, in Mull, with Loch-na-Keal at its feet, and the great expanse of the Atlantic spread out to the horizon, with Ulva just across the entrance to the loch and Staffa and Iona in the distance; well, Ben More is a mountain of majestic aspect and strikingly advantageous situation, commanding a varied pros- pect of land and sea, inlet and island (a region that I have seen under effects of magical beauty when the distant isles floated like pale clouds on a waveless summer sea, and Ulva darkened in the twilight under the crescent moon), and yet all this fair scene is ever saddened by its stony sterility. Surely, when Scott wrote of that " group of islets gay," it was an epithet chosen only for rhyme. There is no gayety of aspect in our British western isles, and the want of it is attributable almost entirely to the absence of sylvan vegetation. In Tennyson's little poem of "The Islet," where the object is to produce the impression of a perfectly beautiful mountainous island, see how careful he is to adorn it with foliage: "Fairily delicate palaces shine Mixt with myrtle and clad with vine, And overstreamed and silvery-streaked With many a rivulet high against the Sun, The facets of the glorious mountain flash Above the valleys of palm and pine. "" So in "Enoch Arden," when the poet wishes us to feel the perfect beauty of Nature as a contrast to the wretchedness of the solitude that is possible among it, he takes good care that his mountain shall be well wooded: M "The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven." There is but one advantage in the grim sterility of the Heb- rides, — it accords better than rich foliage with effects of gloom when the sternness of Nature predominates over beauty; and since in all things the perfection of one quality is attainable OF HIGH PLACES. 189 • only by the sacrifice of others, the sterility that may be regretted when Nature tries occasionally to be gracious becomes an in- crease of her power when she is terrible. A waste of desolate coast with craggy heights unadorned by a single tree is the grandest of all theatres for a tempest. The advantage of ster- ility as an element of savage grandeur was well understood by Landseer. Many of the backgrounds to his Highland subjects are purposely as sterile as possible. One of the best examples is "The Eagle's Nest." In this picture the landscape is of es- pecially great importance, as the birds occupy very little space, and there is not a tree, not a twig, except the few twigs that are enough to make a nest according to an eagle's notions of com- fort. Precipitous rocks descend to a gloomy tarn fed by a white rivulet, shreds of mist drive across the hills and before the face of the cliff, the male bird flies over the dark waters to his mate. This is the bleak home of the eagle, how different from the snug little nest of the nightingale, warmly sheltered by leafy curtains in southern summer woods! The sterile and dreary appearance of our northern mountains is wonderfully enhanced by the first snows of winter, and this led Mr. Alfred Newton to paint from Nature in Glen Coe at that time of the year, the result being his water-color picture, "Mountain Gloom, Glen Coe," the most strikingly truthful representation of northern melancholy landscape which up to that time had been exhibited in London. It has sometimes been suggested that a winter tour in North Britain would in some sort compensate the home traveller for the absence of Switzerland; but this is beyond the exact truth, as the annual snows that lie softly on the hills of Scotland are very different in character from the eternal snow that produces glaciers and the other arctic phenomena of the Alps. The higher mountain ranges of central Europe offer this at- traction, that they do really present an arctic region complete in everything but those wonders that can only be produced upon the sea. The first walk upon a glacier produces the feeling that one has got somehow to the polar regions, and, indeed, the simple truth is that the glaciers of France and Switzerland are really remnants of the far greater glaciers that covered western Europe at a time when, from the position of the planet, Britain was just as decidedly in the arctic regions as Spitzbergen is now. There is such a fascination in the high Alps, where 190 LANDSCAPE. : 1 everything is so different from what we see in the lowlands and among the inferior mountains even in the depth of winter, that it is not surprising if some men can scarcely keep away from them for a year. The change from a well-provided hotel in the bottom of a warm Swiss valley to the ice-fields a few thou- sand feet higher can be accomplished by an easy climb, and once in the upper region we feel a thousand miles away from civilization. There are, I believe, four new experiences for which no description ever adequately prepares us, the first sight of the sea, the first journey in the desert, the sight of flow- ing molten lava, and a walk on a great glacier. We feel in each case that the strange thing is pure Nature, as much Nature as a familiar English moor, yet so extraordinary that we might be in another planet. The slowest rivers in the world are the rivers of ice and of fire, the one destroying every tree upon its banks, first setting it aflame with the hot breath that precedes contact, then removing it as with a razor; the other, the ice-river, flowing more slowly still, hurting nothing that it does not touch, but grinding its bed with irresistible, incalculable power, the power that has hollowed the rock-basins where the great lakes rest and carried "erratics" all over the country as a flood car- ries leaves in autumn. It is curious but certain that the slowest and the swiftest mo- tions are the most sublime, while the moderately quick motions scarcely affect us in any way. A very rapid river, such as the Rhone in the steepest parts of its course, is so fascinating that one is never tired of looking at the blue-green waters as they go rushing and swirling along; and it may be noticed that the poets (who never miss what is likely to impress their reader) are sure to mention the speed of any river that is at all remarkable for swiftness. Yet it may be doubted whether the motion of the Rhone, even when most rapid in times of flood, is more sublime than the quiet crawl of the Mer de Glace, so slow that its mo- tion is absolutely invisible, and only ascertainable by setting up a pole in the middle of it and fixing a point of sight on the oppo- site rock, after which, by careful observation at intervals, you may satisfy yourself that the huge mass of solid substance, 1 "The guide Michel Croz had thus been engaged in both of these expeditions in Dauphiné, and I naturally looked to him for assistance. Mr. Mathews (to whom I applied for information) gave him a high character, and concluded his re- ply to me by saying, 'he was only happy when upwards of ten thousand feet high.'" WHYMPER'S Ascent of the Matterhorn. OF HIGH PLACES. 191 · weighing in itself perhaps as much as a Welsh mountain, is really and indubitably doing its ten or fifteen inches every twenty-four hours. The invisibility of the motion is so perfect that (as De Saussure tells us) a German named Plouquet un- dertook a journey in Switzerland towards the close of last cen- tury, and afterwards wrote a book for the express purpose of proving that glaciers were motionless. This he demonstrated to his own satisfaction and to that of a Literary Gazette then published at Jena. De Saussure's refutation was of a very sim- ple and intelligible nature. He showed that some glaciers ended abruptly at the top of a precipice, and that in all cases of this kind fragments of ice were constantly falling and heaping themselves up at the foot. To keep up the supply of these fragments, he argued that the ice itself must be pushing towards the brink of the precipice continually. I have had occasion elsewhere to note some of the points of inferiority in the graphic arts; and here I may observe that no picture could convey the idea of a glacier's motion, still less could a painter convey to us the most sublime of all the ideas connected with glaciers, the prodigious work they have done in the past, and appalling length of time that it must have taken them to do it. Suppose that the rock-basin for a future lake was twenty miles long, and that the ice was going at the rate of a foot a day, or three hundred and sixty five feet in the year, it must have taken fourteen years to do a mile, or two hundred and eighty years to accomplish the whole length of twenty miles. This would give one scrape along the future lake bottom in something short of three centuries; but, not to exaggerate, let us say that it would be scraped from end to end once in two hundred years. Now suppose that a model of a lake basin is to be made in Nature's own leisurely way, that a block of gran- ite is taken as the material, and that a mason scrapes along it once with a stone and sand, this operation being repeated five times in a thousand years, how long will it take to hollow out a trough representing in miniature the depth of Loch Lomond or Loch Ness? Ideas and questions of this kind add immensely, in our conception, to the grandeur of the invisibly moving glacier, but they cannot be expressed by drawing, and we should never have had access to them without the aid of those scientific teachers whom some artists foolishly dislike. The visible characteristics of a glacier that strike us all most K 192 LANDSCAPE. (6 66 powerfully when we first behold one are its roughness and the rather dirty appearance of the moraines, which look as if ashes had been purposely cast upon it. The unprepared spectator (if there are really any such in these days of photography) thinks of ice as something smooth and glassy, which indeed he may occasionally find in the Alps as an ice-slope," somewhat re- sembling that which Whymper had to descend when he crossed the Col Dolent. "For the first time in my life," he tells us, "I looked down a slope more than a thousand feet long, set at an angle of about 50°, which was a sheet of ice from top to bottom. It was unbroken by rock or crag, and anything thrown down it sped away unarrested until the level of the Glacier d'Argentière was reached." This is what Nature can do in the way of a montagne russe" when it pleases her; she can spread an ice- sheet smooth enough for sledging, but a little too steep. There is no chance of sledging on a glacier, with its chasms and pin- nacles of ice, itself a strange mountainous land in miniature, with white fantastic crests divided by valleys of azure depth wherein plunge the purest little streams, and in the larger hol- lows rest tiny lakes, surrounded, as De Saussure said, by trans- parent walls " de couleur d'aigue-marine." There are probably few better places (among those easily accessible in Europe) for seeing the true nature of a glacier than the end of the Mer de Glace at the source of the Arveiron. There you see the thick- ness of the ice with its perishing pinnacles above and the grotto of ice below, whence the hard “sea,” transformed into flowing water, begins its quick journey to the Rhone. Nothing in Na- ture, except a worm turned to a butterfly, gains so prodigiously in speed as an ice-stream that becomes a water-stream. If the water runs six kilomètres an hour and the ice creeps two cen- timètres, the water will be exactly three hundred thousand times the swifter of the two.¹ 1 We who have only seen Alpine glaciers know just enough about the subject to be able to imagine the far grander glaciers of the arctic regions, so long that they flow from the interior highlands down to the sea itself, and so thick that they present lofty cliffs of ice with a far greater depth beneath the water, the tall cliffs being relatively only like the narrow freeboard of a heavily laden vessel. We are told, too, that great rivers sometimes 1 The allowance here is handsome for the ice. I shall prove, later, that the speed of swift rivers is usually exaggerated. OF HIGH PLACES. 193 plunge into deep gulfs in the ice and find their way to the sea through icy caverns which no human eye may ever behold, but which, with the turbulent water rushing through their resounding halls, must be among the most magnificent things in Nature. As I have never been to Jan Mayen, and cannot conveniently go there just at present in order to write a page of original de- scription, perhaps the indulgent reader will permit me to quote one from Lord Dufferin, which gives us a vivid idea of the great arctic glaciers. He begins by speaking of an impenetrable veil of haze that "hung suspended from the zenith to the sea" and at first concealed the island of Jan Mayen : "A few minutes more, and slowly, silently, in a manner you could take no count of, its dusky hue first deepened to a violet tinge, then gradually lifting, displayed a long line of coast —— in reality but the roots of Beerenberg - dyed of the darkest purple ; while, obedient to a common impulse, the clouds that wrapt its summit gently disengaged themselves, and left the mountain stand- ing in all the magnificence of his 6870 feet, girdled by a single zone of pearly vapor, from underneath whose floating folds seven enor- mous glaciers rolled down into the sea! Nature seemed to have turned scene shifter, so artfully were the phases of this glorious spectacle successively developed. 66 Although - by reason of our having hit upon its side instead of its narrow end the outline of Mount Beerenberg appeared to us more like a sugar-loaf than a spire, — broader at the base and rounder at the top than I had imagined, — in size, color, and effect it far surpassed anything I had anticipated. The glaciers were quite an unexpected element of beauty. Imagine a mighty river of as great a volume as the Thames, started down the side of a mountain, bursting over every impediment. — whirled into a thou- sand eddies, — tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quiv- ering cataracts of foam, then suddenly struck rigid by a power so instantaneous in its action that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened to the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of the contrast between the actual tranquillity of these silent crystal rivers and the violent descending energy im- pressed upon their exterior. You must remember, too, all this is upon a scale of such prodigious magnitude, that when we suc- ceeded subsequently in approaching the spot, where with a leap like that of Niagara one of these glaciers plunges down into the the eye, no longer able to take in its fluvial character, was content to rest in simple astonishment at what then appeared a lucent precipice of gray-green ice, rising to the height of several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel." sea, Contac 13 194 LANDSCAPE. At Spitzbergen the glaciers appear to be on a still larger scale, some of them being forty or fifty miles long by nine or ten in breadth, while their edges at the sea rise four or five hundred feet above the water, and great masses frequently topple over. "Scoresby himself," says Lord Dufferin, "actually witnessed a' mass of ice the size of a cathedral thunder down into the sea from a height of four hundred feet; frequently during our stay in Spitzbergen we ourselves observed specimens of these ice avalanches; and scarcely an hour passes without the solemn silence of the bay being disturbed by the thunderous boom resulting from similar catastrophes in adjacent valleys." As the characteristic which most impresses us in all the gla- ciers is, when we know it, simply the fact that the prodigiously heavy mass is all in motion, so the most impressive truth con- cerning the rocky pinnacles of lofty mountains is that they are always diminishing and have been diminishing during unnum- bered ages. The glacier compensates its waste by the addition of fresh snow; but nothing ever compensates a mountain for the stones that are carried away on the moraines or for the sand that is ground out of the glacier's bed and carried down to the val- ley in its stream. When we know this, every aiguille in the Aĺps, every rough crest of our British hills, gains, for us, the pa- thos of ruin and the dignity of long resistance to inevitable fate. For it is as certain as anything can be with regard to illimitable time, that the very largest mass of rock, whose financial affairs may be briefly stated as "steady expenditure but no income," must ultimately come to nothing. Other mountains may arise, but those we know are doomed. Yet the decay is of such a slow nature that the day of their final disappearance seems al- most infinitely remote. Among human institutions they remind me of nothing so much as the Papacy, which has always been losing since the dawn of the Reformation, yet seems no more likely to vanish than the Aiguille Verte. The beauty of the rock-pinnacles in the Alps is entirely the beauty of consumption. They are thinned and refined as they wear away, or as their own icicles meit and fall in an hour of sunshine in summer. We may look to them as examples of en- durance, for what, to them, are the tempests of a thousand years? - but we must look elsewhere for an example of the everlasting. Can anything in Nature be everlasting, unless, like the ocean, it is ever-renewed? Animal life renovates itself by OF HIGH PLAÇES. 195 feeding, and when the power to do this fails, dissolution speedily follows. An Alpine aiguille is not only unable to replace what it loses by food, but everything in Nature that touches it takes something from its substance. The very air consumes it, the frost loosens the stones of it, the hoof of the chamois sets them flying down to the distant moraine, and no builder ever replaces them. If the tip of an eagle's wing touches the front of a preci- pice as he sails past it, the atoms of mica that it removes fall down through the thin air,¹ and the precipice is, to that extent, demolished. The only gain of substance that I know of is when some adventurous traveller brings his bones up from the valley and leaves them to bleach on the ledge of an inaccessible precipice. 66 The temptation to scale those heights is natural to youth and strength; at least it seems so in modern days, though the strong- est and most active men of antiquity and the Middle Ages do not appear to have felt it. If ever there was one crowded hour of glorious life" led by a little group of human beings, it must have been that memorable hour on the summit of the Matterhorn, then for the first time ascended, from twenty min- utes to two in the afternoon of the 14th of July, 1865. For four of the party, Croz, Hadow, Hudson, and Lord Francis Douglas, it was the last hour of life upon this planet; and the scene which enchanted keen eyes so soon to be darkened, and made bold hearts beat faster, which an instant after were to be stilled for ever, is too impressive to be described in any words but those of the only English survivor: "The day was one of those superlatively calm and clear ones which usually precede bad weather. The atmosphere was per- fectly still, and free from all clouds or vapors. Mountains fifty All their de- nay, a hundred miles off looked sharp and near. tails - ridge and crag, snow and glacier-stood out with faultless definition. Pleasant thoughts of happy days in bygone years "" 1 This idea was suggested to me by an Oriental illustration of eternity that I vaguely remember. "If an angel," said the Oriental writer, "were to fly past a tremendous precipice once in a thousand years and brush it somewhere slightly with his wing, and never omit to do so after the same interval, the precipice would ultimately be destroyed, yet eternity would only be begun Geology really offers examples of slow yet now accomplished destruction in some sort com- parable to this, and yet eternity is only begun. One cannot call the Oriental illustration hyperbole, unimaginable as it may be, since, however slight the cause of destruction and however great the mass to be destroyed, destruction will cer- tainly be accomplished if the cause persists; and after its inconceivably distant consummation "eternity will only be begun." 196 LANDSCAPE. L All came up unbidden as we recognized the old familiar forms. were revealed, not one of the principal peaks of the Alps was hidden. I see them clearly now, the great inner circles of giants, backed by the ranges, chains, and massifs. Ten thousand feet beneath us were the green fields of Zermatt, dotted with cha- lets, from which blue smoke rose lazily. Eight thousand feet below, on the other side, were the pastures of Breil. There were black and gloomy forests, bright and cheerful meadows; bounding waterfalls and tranquil lakes; fertile lands and savage, wastes; sunny plains and frigid plateaux. There were the most rugged forms and the most graceful outlines, -- bold perpendicular cliffs and gentle undulating slopes; rocky mountains and snowy moun- tains, sombre and solemn, or glittering and white, with walls, tur- rets, pinnacles, pyramids, domes, cones, and spires! There was every combination that the world can give, and every contrast that the heart could desire." W • After this vivid description of a real and most wonderful ex- perience, which, if it has ever be enequalled, has certainly never been surpassed, the best thing to do is to abstain from any ac- count of inferior experiences and leave the reader, in imagina- tion, still on that perilous peak. The next chapter will bring him to the level of an island in a lake, whence we may, at our leisure, observe some of the great changes that occur in the as- pect of a mountain, and give it an apparent variety of existence having some analogy with the various moods of man. MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 197 CHAPTER XX. MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. Τ HERE is only one way to ascertain the true nature of the changes produced in the appearance of a mountain, and that is to live near to one for at least a year, and study it. In the present chapter I intend to convey, if possible, some of the results of such study, which in my case extended over several years. It may be worth while to explain the method of obser- vation on which the chapter is founded. Let me first be permitted to say something about topographic drawing, which is the necessary foundation of all accurate note- taking from Nature. It is not the outcome of the artistic spirit at all, but of the scientific. I never knew an artist who made topographic drawings, and I never heard of any being made by artists except in the cases of a few young Englishmen who were, at one time, working under the influence of Mr. Ruskin, which in this matter (though by no means in all other matters) was a strictly scientific influence. Now it is a very strange and wonderful thing, which for a long time seemed to me utterly unaccountable, that artists should have such an antipathy to topography. I understand their antipathy now, and will give the reasons for it shortly in their full force, but just for the present wish to explain why it is apparently so unreasonable. Artists are always insisting upon the value of accuracy in drawing, and yet if you draw landscape accurately they are sure to dislike your work. If, in making a study from a living, hu- man model, or from a statue, you make the legs proportionately shorter or longer than they are in the original, the master will blame your inaccuracy. If, in making a study from landscape Nature you draw things faithfully, the master will blame your accuracy. He will call it "mappy," to use Turner's word, or he will say, in Harding's language, that it is "unintelligent, 3 ام 198 LANDSCAPE. identical imitation." Whatever he says, his language will be that of disapproval, very likely of ridicule. And yet the pure topography that artists dislike and condemn is nothing else than the same quality of accurate drawing which they encourage in all students of the figure by giving them praise and prizes. Make an accurate study of a man, for which you will win appro- bation, then go and make a study of a mountain, with equal fidelity to curves and angles; the certain result will be that de- spised thing, a piece of pure topography. It would be interesting to make the converse experiment of drawing a figure on those principles that artists habitually apply to landscape. The artist would then express his interest in the natural swelling of a muscle by increasing it to the size of a wen, and his admiration of the forehead of Socrates by elevating it to the height of a helmet. If the legs of a Life-guardsman seemed rather too long, they might be reduced to the length of his femur, and it might be conventionally understood among connoisseurs that to represent the true proportions of the body was to give evidence of a matter-of-fact and inartistic intellect. At this point the reader may perhaps feel uncertain whether truth can be ascertained at all. He may say, "You make a draw- ing that you call topographic; you may say that it is faithful to the natural forms, but for anything I know to the contrary, Turner's drawing may be more faithful than yours, and is likely to be so, as he was an infinitely better artist." To doubts of this kind the answer is, that science affords us certain methods by which the really apparent size of objects, and also their shapes, so far as all apparent boundaries are con- cerned, can be accurately determined. But before we come to these it may be necessary to explain that there is a difference between the imaginary appearance of an object and its real ap- pearance. An artist will generally draw the imaginary appear- ance, when he does not wilfully go far beyond even that, by wilful exaggerations of interesting features; but a scientific to- pographer ought to confine himself to the real appearance. It is excessively difficult to make this distinction clear to any one who has not been prepared for questions of this kind, be- cause he will at once object that if a thing appears to him in such or such a way, it is a real appearance; and yet the probability is that he is mistaken, and that it is only an imaginary appearance after all. However, the demonstration can be made perfectly MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 199 "" clear to any one who understands what minutes and degrees are, and who knows how angles can be measured. The best elemen- tary example to begin with is the apparent size of the moon.¹ In the year 1869 a foreign magazine contained an article by a man of science, who, from his scientific point of view, had been led to make experiments which I have often made from the artis- tic, and the results were curiously the same. He had acquired a habit of asking people how big the moon looked to them. The answer was, in almost every case, “As big as a plate." I myself have heard an Englishman say, "As big as a Cheshire cheese.” A lady answered, “As big as a Dutch cheese;" another said, "Bigger than that; I should say the moon appears like one of those globe-mirrors that one puts in gardens. Here occurs a little difficulty. All these objects-plates, Cheshire cheeses, Dutch cheeses, and globe-mirrors appear larger or smaller in proportion to their distance from the eye, a fact of which nobody who has not studied drawing seems to have any distinct idea. People think that a plate two yards from them and a plate of the same size at three yards have the same apparent dimensions. The distance, therefore, must be fixed. When you try to fix it, a general audience will agree very readily that the plate shall be a person's own plate at a dinner-table. For a very tall man, sitting very straight, this distance is twenty-two inches; but it is much less for little men and ladies. However, you will find num- bers of people who will readily assent to the proposition that the apparent size of the moon is that of a plate at less than twenty- two inches. This is the imaginary apparent diameter. The real apparent diameter of the moon is thirty-one minutes, which in a circle with a radius of twenty-two inches, gives a diameter of one fifth of an inch; so that a circle with a diameter of one fifth of an inch, seen at a distance of twenty-two inches, represents the real appearance of the moon as seen from the earth; but the diameter of an ordinary dinner-plate is over nine inches. A com- parison of areas demonstrates that the imaginary appearance is an exaggeration of the real appearance by more than two thousand times.2 Stated in another way, the innocent eye of a spectator who has never studied the subject imagines that the The sentences which immediately follow are abridged from an article that I contributed to the Portfolio in 1875 on "The Apparent Size of Objects." 2 The account stands thus in superficial tenths of an inch: apparent area of the moon, 3.14; area of the plate, 6361.74. 200 LANDSCAPE. apparent disc of the moon occupies two thousand times more space in the dome of heaven than that which it really occupies. The truth is, that the real appearance of the moon is so small that a pea held on a needle's point will eclipse it. It follows naturally from this habitual exaggeration of the in- nocent eye that all artists who draw emotionally make the moon prodigious. In one of Samuel Palmer's Moonrises there is an overturned bucket quite close to the foreground; it is the object nearest to the spectator, yet the diameter of the bottom of it does not much exceed half the diameter of the moon's disc. In the moonlight scene illustrating Bamfylde's "Christmas" there is a cottage in the foreground, and we see the interior with plates on the shelf. Here the moon is smaller, because higher in the sky, yet its diameter is twice that of a plate.¹ In Turner's "Château Gaillard" the moon's disc is three times as broad as the casks in the boat, and twice as broad as the body of a man in the immediate foreground. But the best example I remember in Turner is the moon in his drawing of St. Denis, where her disc is made broader than the hind wheel of a carriage in the fore- ground. To prevent misunderstanding, or misrepresentation, I repeat that in these exaggerations the artists are perfectly justified, because the imaginary, and not the real, appearance is the proper object of art. At the same time the fact may be noted as re- markable that there are no corresponding exaggerations in the artistic drawing of the figure. The moon is the eye of the land- scape, and exaggerated because it attracts attention; but what figure-painter would make the eye of a pretty girl as big as a tea- cup? Neither do artists commit the same exaggerations when they draw things that we are accustomed to handle; for ex- ample, however inaccurate a draughtsman might be, he would never make the wheel of a wheelbarrow six feet high; and yet that exaggeration, prodigious and impossible as it seems, would be moderate in comparison with the common exaggerations of the moon. - And now we come to another most strange and inexplicable fact about imaginary appearances as contrasted with real ap- pearances, and that is the wonderful tendency to exaggerate the height of high objects. It is the more wonderful, when we 1 In making the moon's disc narrower when high in the sky than at moonrise, the artist has rendered the imaginary appearance accurately, but the real appear- ance does not show any diminution as she ascends the sky. MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 201 reflect upon it, that although the moon is certainly of all created objects the one whose apparent dimensions are most exagger- ated, the popular imagination does not alter the proportions of her height and width. If people saw the moon as they see mountains, she would present the appearance of a rather narrow oval, the shorter diameter always parallel with the horizon. The exaggeration of height in popular mountain-drawing is easily demonstrated by a measurement of angles. If the slope of a mountain is ascertained to be forty degrees in Nature, and an artist makes it sixty, and if the public believes the artist's drawing to be a faithful representation, then artist and public together have been deceived by the imaginary appearance. If a mountain-crest rises ten degrees above the horizon, and an artist (as he is sure to do) makes it twenty, then his drawing is unfaithful to the real appearance, and its unfaithfulness can be demonstrated by taking an angle with a sextant; but, at the same time, he might prove its fidelity to the imaginary appear- ance by getting popular suffrages in his favor. Topographic drawing, then, is not an artistic but a scientific kind of work, and the better it is done the more it disobeys the one rule of the artist, — to render the imaginary appearance only. Yet there are certain circumstances in which a little topographic drawing, or in other words a little really accurate drawing, may be necessary to the student of Nature, that his memoranda may have some positive value for reference. The present in- stance is a case in point. Memoranda of changes of effect on a mountain ought to be made either upon a careful topographic drawing, or else with the help of one for reference. It may perhaps be a convenience to some students if I ex- plain in this place the system adopted by myself long ago in the Highlands. It was not quite a perfect system, but it served me well for the unpretending usefulness of private study. I will first describe it briefly, and then show how it might be brought to greater perfection. me. I began by making, with the utmost care, a topographic draw- ing of Ben Cruachan as seen from a place easily accessible to This was done on clear days, and without anything that could be called an effect. The drawing measured eighteen inches by nine, a larger size than was necessary, and had no other object than simple accuracy of form, without any sugges- tion of effect. I had already made many very careful pen studies ! 202 LANDSCAPE. * of mountain lines on a much larger scale, some of them between three and four feet long, and had acquired a strong liking, almost amounting to a passion, for the laborious task of follow- ing out mountain lines in their finer modulations. Popular mountain-drawing, especially in water-color pictures, appeared to me in those days coarse, careless, and unobservant to an in- expressible degree, though I have since found out that if artists drew mountains accurately they would be very likely to miss those charms of color and effect (not to mention composition. that distorts every line in a landscape) on which their popularity depends. Well, the drawing being done, I made an etching from it, of its own size, also without effect, and had the etching printed, always keeping copies of it by me, and when a notable effect occurred I noted the changes produced by it with a pencil upon the etching by drawing and written words. I did this not only for Ben Cruachan, but for several other views on the lake shores round about my dwelling. This practice taught me a great deal, but I will now show how it might be improved upon. The etching (or any other kind of reproduction) might with advantage be in dotted lines, and printed in pale red or brown ink. These would then be understood to be the lines of sub- stance in any case, and those of effect might be added with pencil, pen, or brush, as each effect occurred. Again, it is not desirable that the drawing should be very large, as a small one would sufficiently answer the purpose and be more rapidly filled. Lastly, I should say that if the effect were roughly sketched in oil color on another copy of the etching, while it was still vividly fresh in the memory, that would be better than to depend on notes in pencil only, notes of which the full significance may be lost, even to their author, in course of time. Besides taking notes from one place, the student who desires to ascertain the true conformation of a mountain ought to observe it from many places, like the honest Japanese artist who drew Fusi Yama from a hundred points. By this method he will gradually ascertain which are really the highest points of the mountain, thereby delivering himself from the illusion produced by perspective, and he will know the real position and protu- berance of its bosses. But to complete his knowledge he must walk all over it, in different directions, and after having gained a complete familiarity with the mountain as a real thing, and MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 203 not as a mere edwλov, or phantom of the mind, it might perhaps be well if he made a model of it in wax or clay.¹ All this, I repeat, is desirable only when we want to know the truth, to gratify scientific curiosity. An artist knows enough for his purposes when he has seen a mountain under a single strik- ing effect, and there are even reasons for believing that it is better for him not to confuse and obliterate the first clear image by observing any subsequent effects, at least with any strain of attention. It is well for him to unite one mountain and one effect together, and not to have any more knowledge about the mountain than his recollection of what was visible at the time when the effect took place. Most of us who have any memory for mountains recall easily with some degree of distinctness those that we have seen on a single occasion during our travels, and in every instance of this kind (at least it is so in my own experience) the mountain is remembered with the effect that clothed or disguised it then. Since writing the preceding sen- tence I have recalled two mountains that I saw more than thirty years ago, and have never visited since. They are indelibly associated with evening effects because I saw them in the even- ing; and I have no doubt that if I had revisited those mountains at other times of the day those evening effects would have been completely obliterated, and by the confusion of other effects seen since, there would probably have remained no distinct recollection of any effect at all. The most effectless condition of a mountain is in broad but dull daylight, when there is diffused light everywhere under a monotonous canopy of cloud. This condition of things is often associated with great clearness; but as there is no brilliance, the clearness is not of a striking or obtrusive kind, and is not likely to be noticed by any but the most observant. Forms are not brought out well, except in outlines, as there is a certain flatness everywhere; neither are there any of those brilliant contrasts of massed color which are due exclusively to effect. Yet there is one advantage in this kind of lighting which is quite unrivalled 1 Even when a model is not by any means accurate in matter of detail it is still very useful for experiments in lighting. A lamp may be placed in any position relatively to it, and will cast shadows that have the advantage of remaining in their places. Even a very rough model of moderate dimensions will, in this way, give interesting and very suggestive results. The great defect of models is the want of a misty atmosphere, the air being always clear for any object that can be contained in a room. 204 LANDSCAPE. in every other, it presents such an opportunity for the observa- tion of local color. The most faithful studies of local color may be obtained at such times, but as there is no effect they have a map-like appearance which makes them unpleasing and un- popular. The only value of them is a purely scientific value, comparable to that of topographic lines. They show the color of rocks, even at a distance, which is interesting to the geologist, and they show the colors given by vegetation, as for example, the growth of flowers, the running to seed of plants over a con- siderable area of land, the reddening of ferns in their decay, not to speak of the immense variety of greens in summer foliage, or of gold and russet in autumn. I remember believing that it would be wise for an artist to seize upon these good opportuni- ties for the study of local color on mountains, and have myself spent some thankless labor in that way; but powerful artists are too synthetic in their methods to care much for an analysis of this kind, and the result of such study looks so dull, even when most truthful, that there is little encouragement to go on with it. An effect of simple diffused daylight under a cloudy sky, like that we have just been considering, is dull in landscape-painting, and yet it is very frequently adopted by figure-painters, espe- cially for works of a serious character. They neither want sun- shine nor shadows, as they can always make their pictures interesting by appealing to the ever-ready human sympathy for humanity. The painters of the figure are much to be envied for their advantages, and among the rest for these two: that if they have a tendency to draw correctly it is not counted against them as being topographic and inartistic; while if they are content to study quietly and deliberately in diffused daylight (which, on the whole, shows objects better than any other illumination), their works are not condemned for the absence of "vigorous" effect. We will now proceed to consider in what way full sunshine operates in revealing or dissimulating the forms of a mountain. Our first natural idea is, of course, that sunshine can do nothing but exhibit form, and that the brighter the light is the more clearly will forms be exhibited; but if we analyze the visi- ble shape of a mountain, we shall always find that it consists, primarily, of a few very large masses, and that upon these large masses a multitude of smaller masses are fixed in their places as the mountains themselves are fixed upon the globe of the earth. MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 205 Hence it follows that if the nature of the illumination is such as to bring some masses, large or small, into striking prominence, while others are left in shade and in apparent or comparative flatness, that illumination will be by no means a just, fair, or impartial exposition of the subject, however brilliant and frank it may appear. Sunshine seems to conceal nothing, it appears to be frankness itself, to send the rays of its glorious revelation into every nook and cranny; but the truth is that it resembles the argument of an advocate rather than a scientific statement, it exhibits some facts very prominently, and tacitly denies the existence of others at least equally important by the simple pro- cess of passing them over. To know how mendacious is this seemingly truthful splendor, we have only to watch a mountain on a very bright day from early morning till sunset, at least from hour to hour. A painter who is making studies can watch almost continuously and feel interested all the time; a simple observer could hardly do that, but he might have constancy enough, during one long summer's day, to revisit the same scene every hour and examine it carefully for a few minutes. If he did so he would first see, in the slanting light of the low early sun, very broad lights and shadows in great masses; and in all those parts of the mountain where a transverse light caught the minor masses, the bosses and crags and eminences which are on the slope of a mountain what ripples are on the side of a great wave, he would see a multitude of minor lights and shadows, conveying the idea that the mountain was exceptionally rugged in those parts. As the day advanced and the light struck those rough and rugged parts less obliquely, the observer would be inclined to think that he had been rather mistaken in his estimate of their nature, that they were not so rugged as he thought; and at the same time some of the larger masses, which up to that time had remained quiet in the repose of direct light or unbroken shadow, would exhibit varieties of form previously unsuspected. I have elsewhere compared the minor masses on a mountain to the position of the mountains themselves upon the globe of the earth. If the reader will transfer this compari- son from the earth to the moon, it will be a slight improvement for two reasons: first, because the moon is a much smaller planet with much loftier mountains; and, secondly, because we can see it through a telescope. It naturally happens that the surface appears roughest towards the edge of the space 206 LANDSCAPE. illuminated by the sun, the part that is fully lighted appearing less mountainous, while of the dark portion we do not see, by the dim earth-light, whether it is mountainous or not. About noon, on a bright day, the appearance of a mountain is generally at its dullest, but as the sun declines all the preced- ing phenomena of lights and shadows are repeated inversely,¹ till at sunset the shadows are what they were at sunrise, but in an opposite direction. Hence it follows that although the sun never at any one time reveals the truth about mountain form, he reveals it ultimately in a certain way by contradictory state- ments, as a brilliant writer fails to tell the truth at once, because he wants to be brilliant, and yet if you read him long enough you may gather a general notion of the truth from him, because he will say one thing at one time, and its opposite, just as bril- liantly, at another time. The differences of color between the lighted sides of moun- tainous masses and their shaded sides open one of the most difficult questions in the study of landscape. Nobody really understands them, though it often happens that an observant landscape-painter will hit the mark very accurately with regard to a particular well-remembered effect. I am unable to state any definite laws about the matter, but I may perhaps be able to point to a few truths ascertained, in a painter's way, by ob- serving the relation between the lights and shadows of a moun- tain in Nature, and by trying to get something like the same relation in experimental studies or sketches in oil color. The best entrance into the subject is in observing the treat- ment of drapery by figure-painters. The folds of drapery bear some slight resemblance to the ravines and projections of a mountain-side and to some of its steeper slopes. Lights catch its projections, shade lies in its hollows, cast shadows are thrown from a prominent mass across minor masses that are insignifi- cant for the time being. The local color of the mountain is more varied, but the very uniformity of drapery in this respect makes it a better subject for elementary consideration. The reader is, no doubt, aware already that some of the most fa- mous painters (Raphael is of the number) have not hesitated to make their draperies chromatically weaker in the lights, by the 1 All this description is founded on the supposition that the aspect of the mountain is favorable to observations of this kind. Ben Cruachan, as seen from Loch Awe, is so in the highest degree. MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 207 admixture of white in sufficient quantity to chill the tint, while they colored them powerfully in the shadows. This was done because draughtsmen in black and white had accustomed them- selves to the liberty of neglecting local color altogether (the classical school of Italian engraving is founded upon that neglect, and owes much of its brilliancy to it), and it is very difficult for a painter to deny himself the resource of the large scale of tonic values between white and black, and accept, in- stead, the limited scale between red and a darker red. Now, if we compare this system with that of Nature in the illumination of a mountain, we shall find it curiously the reverse of what Nature usually does. Her color is not destroyed in light, it is scarcely enfeebled, except when there is great distance or a misty atmosphere, but in the shaded parts of the mountain it is wonder- fully modified. It seems as if the illuminated parts had power to pierce the intervening atmosphere, and, if I may so express it, carry their color along with them, while the darker portions were somehow impeded and were unable to carry their own local color to the eye of the distant spectator. This is a very un- scientific way of stating the matter, but it may be intelligible. Even the most vulgar painters of mountainous scenery have learned the common trick of cooling their shadows with blue or bluish gray. Nature does this in some effects, to a wonderful degree, but what is still more remarkable is her easy obliteration of detail in the shadows, so that it seems as if the shadows re- ceded and the lights advanced. As an illustration of this I may again have recourse to the moon. Some critic may say that I am very fond of the moon in this chapter, but she is a conven- ience because many people have seen her.¹ Well, one of the most curious facts about the appearance of the moon is that the lighted portion and the shaded side immediately contiguous to it do not appear to be on the same plane. The lighted side advances, and when seen through a telescope has a form per- ceptibly globular; the shaded side looks like a flat disc set be- hind it. Something of the same effect is to be observed in the 1 An authentic anecdote may perhaps be tolerated in a footnote. A French examiner had been browbeating a clever youth who was rather irritated by the treatment he had received. At last the examiner said, "You have seen the moon, have you not? not?" and the youth replied, with perfect mock gravity, that he had not. "Do you mean to tell me that you have never seen the moon?" tainly heard of her, sir, but it would be affirming too much to say that I had seen her with my own eyes." "I have cer- 208 LANDSCAPE. "" illumination of our terrestrial mountains, and it is not at all sur- prising that skilful painters should look upon the the " lights as one thing, or class of things, and the shaded portion as a sort of flat ground on which the lights are to be boldly and massively painted. I need not add that the shadows require subsequent labor also, but of a much less obtrusive kind. - The color of mountain shadows is, no doubt, in some degree due to the mere effect of contrast with the lights. If the lights are warm in tone their very warmth will produce a coolness in the shadows, as in the common opposition of yellow and pearly gray. Perhaps the nearest approach to a general law on the subject attainable by us at present may be stated in the follow- ing terms: It may be said that the shadows on a mountain are of the same color that the whole mountain would have worn at that hour if no portion of it had been struck by direct sun- shine, except that they are modified by contrast in the direction of a hue complementary to that of the lights, and also modified by reflection from the illuminated portions in places that can receive such reflections. I need hardly add that a theory might be more complete than this without being of any great practical use to artists. Their work is considered to be successful when the relation between the lighted side of a mountain (or any- thing else) and its shaded side is agreeable to the eye, and does not, to the seeker of aesthetic pleasure, seem absolutely impos- sible. Now, to seek for two tints, a light one and a darker one, that harmonize pleasantly when laid side by side is, no doubt, a very interesting amusement, and to a clever artist it is a lucrative amusement also, but it may be entirely independent of the rela- tion that exists in Nature between the lights and shadows on a mountain. The color of the lights, in Nature, is due to a combination of causes, the most important of which are the local color of the rocks and vegetation, and the tint of the light itself. It is scarcely necessary to say anything, in this place, about the changes of vegetation; the subject is extensive, and would rap- idly develop our chapter into a volume like "The Sylvan Year;" but I have never yet dealt with the variety of tint in sunshine. There appears to be a difference of opinion among artists on this subject, which may be due to differences of idiosyncrasy. Leslie was opposed to the idea that sunshine was yellow, and gave as a proof the practice of Constable, who "fearlessly painted MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 209 midsummer noonday heat with blues, greens, and grays forming the predominant masses." He also held that the practice of certain artists was mistaken when they gave a yellow tinge to all objects in noonday sunshine, inferring that "so it must be because the local color of the sun is yellow. But in fact," he continued, "excepting in the morning and evening, white, in sunshine, is only a purer white, and blue receives not the least tint of green; indeed, in blue, even when lighted by the warm- est setting sun, it is not easy to detect any change." Samuel Palmer, on the other hand, who was a much more experienced student of landscape than Leslie, held that sunshine was distinctly golden, and believed that a little cadmium yellow was necessary to bring white to something like its quality. Turner was dis- tinctly on the same side. It is not possible to propose any question less capable of positive and absolute solution, because color is a mere personal sensation that differs with different individuals quite as much as taste. All that can be done is to record one's own experi- ence without insisting upon it as more authoritative than that of others. I should say, then, that the color of sunshine appears to be very different at different times, that there are times when it seems to be almost a perfectly neutral white light leaving greens and blues very cool, and other times when it certainly tinges everything with gold even in the middle of the day. In saying this I do not feel positively certain that when the light of direct sunshine seems to me perfectly neutral and white it ever is so really. I am inclined, rather, to suspect that if at such times we could compare it with absolutely colorless light we should still find it to be a little golden. As an illustration of the ease with which the eye adapts itself to tinted light, and of the readiness of the mind to forget that it is tinted, may be mentioned our sudden perception of the extreme yellowness of gaslight when a cold electric flare is set up suddenly in its neighborhood. Another example is in the use of papers which have a very slight tint of cream-color. We write upon them without thinking of the tint; but if a perfectly cold white paper is set beside them, then we perceive it. The proof of the rarity of crude blues and greens in natural sunshine is that the painted imitation of those colors in sky and foliage is never really satisfactory unless it is modified by complementary tints. Even those painted skies which are 14 210 LANDSCAPE. condemned by the public for the too great crudity of their blue have often been carefully, though perhaps not sufficiently, tem- pered by the mixture of red and yellow. Before leaving the subject of mountain scenery in full sun- shine, I may indicate a few conditions of its coloring among the many that we find in Nature. In very near hill scenery on a small scale (a large mountain can only be seen at some distance) the relation of shade to light is not very different from that on ordinary objects, as there is little intervention of atmosphere. A green hill is yellowish green in sunshine, and a darker and colder green in shadow. A field of ripe wheat on the hillside is pale gold in the light, darker gold in the shadow. Buckwheat is a golden brown in the light, a duller brown with a little gray in the shadow. Heather in flower is purple in the light, and a colder, darker purple in the shadow. These relations of tint are easily noted, and not much more difficult to render in painting than the tints of a piece of drapery, besides which they are plausible and in- telligible; they give rise to no doubt or controversy, they ex- plain themselves. It is when you have great intervening spaces of atmosphere that the real difficulty begins. Then the shade takes a new relation to the light, a relation which is natural, since it exists in Nature, but which if truly copied in art is not likely to appear natural. If the lights on the mountain are yellowish, the shadows may be a warm gray; if the lights incline more to orange, the shadows may be bluer, they will not be a deeper orange. The light of the setting sun, striking across a rugged mountain-side in late autumn, when the decaying vege- tation has reddened the local color, may, if the light itself is also red, turn everything it catches into the richest and most incredible crimson, and in that case all the shadows will be dyed with a magnificent purple. Suppose that it is winter, and that your mountain is covered with snow from crest to base, and all its swelling forms are as clearly and cleanly modelled as those of a marble statue; then the tints of the snow in light may pass from a creamy white to the purest and most delicate rose-color, and the shadows will be more like the pale, pure sky than anything on which human feet may tread. I know noth- ing in the visible world that combines splendor and purity so perfectly as a great mountain entirely covered with frozen snow and reflected in the vast mirror of a lake. As the sun declines, MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 211 its thousand shadows lengthen, pure as the cold green-azure in the depth of a glacier's crevasse, and the illuminated snow takes first the tender color of a white rose, and then the flush of a red one, and the sky turns to a pale malachite green till the rare strange vision fades into ghastly gray, but leaves with you a permanent recollection of its too transient beauty. This is the wintry condition of complete snow as I have seen it in the utmost perfection at Loch Awe, when the whiteness of the mountain was interfered with only by the emergence of the trees in its belt of forest and the dark rocks that the snow could not entirely conceal. Artists naturally prefer the intermediate condition, when a mountain of thirty-six hundred feet is clear of snow up to two thirds of its height, while the remaining third is covered. The color of the lower portion will then be rich in warm yellows, browns, and russets, owing to the decayed vege- tation, and there will be a pretty gradation from no snow to deep snow, through a debatable land where a sprinkled pow- der of snow becomes denser as the eye ascends. This is the condition of the Highland mountains in late autumn and early spring. As summer approaches the snow is left only in the upper hollows, and in the hottest days of the year there will be a small patch or two in some recess that looks to the north. I have spoken hitherto only of effects produced either in clear weather or in diffused light, when the sky is uniformly covered with a canopy of cloud. It is time now to consider some of the principal results of cloudy weather so far as the appearance of the mountain itself is concerned. The first notable consequence is the accidental shadows that are cast by clouds upon the steep sides of the mountain. They eclipse the mountain partially, but with such rapidity that the passing of the shadows is felt to be rather an addition to than a detraction from the liveliness of the landscape. A shadow will run up the steepest mountain at the rate of two or three miles a minute without being arrested by any obstacle whatever. During its rapid passage it will reveal much about structure by detaching first one mass and then another, when without its aid we should never have suspected the chasm. Those broader chasms whose existence is already known to us are often ren- dered far more imposing by the presence of a cloud-shadow that gives a striking prominence and distinctness to an impor- tant mass. You may see, for example, the shoulder of a near 212 LANDSCAPE. mountain splendid in full and glorious sunshine when the gulf of a great corrie beyond it is filled with an indigo gloom, and a minute or two later the shoulder may be dark against a re- splendent background. These sudden oppositions are of very frequent occurrence in the Highlands of Scotland, and are one of the reasons why the landscapes there are so much more lively and interesting than they can be in "cloudless climes." Another form of cloud-shadow is produced when the cloud is itself in actual contact with the mountain. It may touch the mountain-side and yet project from it considerably, so as to cast an extensive shadow when the hill is steep and the sun high. Sometimes the cloud covers the crest entirely, and spreads out from it widely, and as a man with a broad-brimmed hat has his face in shadow but light on his breast, so the upper part of the hill may be shaded and its lower slopes in sunshine. There are certain effects in Nature that seem contradictory, and would, of course, be censured as false or unintelligible in painting, but the delightfulness of Nature is that she does ex- actly as she likes. One of the effects (I have mentioned it elsewhere, but this chapter would be incomplete without it) is produced when the lower strata of the atmosphere are misty and the upper ones perfectly clear. Then you may see trees and other objects receding from you to the foot of the moun- tain, which seems a long way off, whereas if you look up you see the summit sharply defined with clear detail and apparently much nearer than the base. The explanation is, that you look through a greater thickness of mist straight before you than when you are looking up. Sometimes in northern climates the entire base of a mountain is hidden in thick, dark cloud, but the sum- mit becomes suddenly and clearly visible, for a moment, through an opening of the cloud. When this happens the crest is like a rock suspended in the sky, and wonderfully, perilously near. An effect that is less astonishing, but of the same class, is produced when the whole of a mountain on the other side of a lake is concealed by mist with the exception of its summit that rises clear above the mist. The juncture of land and water is entirely invisible, and there seems no reason to believe that you are not looking upon a misty ocean, except that, high in air, the solid mountain crest is to be seen, pale perhaps, and not very substantial in its aspect, but you know that it is a mass of granite. We may not be much disposed to hunt after MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 213 analogies, yet there is one analogy connected with this effect that I may pause to mention. The mountain-crest appears to be erected upon nothing, but in reality its foundations are the strongest and deepest that we know upon the earth, or can imagine. It is a tower of igneous rock, or rather an enormous monolith, never weakened by being hollowed into chambers, and it is not simply erected in a shallow hole for a foundation, as a post may be set up in a field, but the roots of it are the hardest portion of the earth's crust. Even so, when the igno- rant see the crown and summit of the strongest thought and deepest knowledge, but cannot see the mighty foundation by reason of the mists of their own ignorance, they think there is no basis, and yet the basis lies firm and deep in the everlasting nature of things. The lowest of all well-defined clouds, as distinguished from mists, is the low lake rain-cloud that may sometimes be seen at a little distance above the water; and the finest example of this that I ever witnessed occurred on the first of June, 1861, at half-past nine in the evening. I had time to take a sufficiently careful memorandum, which is lying before me. The summit of Ben Cruachan was entirely hidden in cloud, that descended also into the corrie; after that the hillside lay gloomily clear, except for the cloud that I have now to describe. It extended all along the visible base of Ben Cruachan and Ben Vorich, and the bottom fringe of it was from one hundred to three hundred feet above the level of the lake. It had three or four summits, varying in height, from its own base, between three hundred and fifteen hundred feet. The outline of these great billows was as perfectly defined against the dark mountain as any cloud ever could be against the sky. It was really what we call a cloud, and not an indefinite mist. I have often seen this on other occasions, but never quite with the same clearness of definition. The belt rain-cloud that girdles Highland mountains at the height of from one to two thousand feet is one of the common- est phenomena of northern lake districts. It may occur at any time of the day, but I have seen it most commonly in the even- ing, when the air is still and the rain has ceased. Sometimes it will divide the whole mountain quite clearly into two por- tions. It is perfectly opaque, and often very sharply defined, two great difficulties for painters, as opacity and clearness of 214 LANDSCAPE. definition are held to be faults in painted clouds.¹ Besides these objections, there is the further one that these belt-clouds are often very fantastic in their forms, having sometimes backs curved like those of fishes, while at others they are like festoons ending with a sort of flourish in the air. The appearance of opacity and definition seems to be due to quantity of cloud-stuff in the cloud itself and to its distance from the spectator. I find in a valuable memorandum that the belt-cloud on the nearest mountain is described as thin mist, that on a further one as thicker white mist, and that most remote from the spectator as a thick gray cloud with a very definite outline. Even the near cloud is quite opaque, as you can see nothing through it, but it looks soft about the edges. On a still nearer view the skirt of cloud is seen to trail and drag among the rocks and trees which are partially seen through it, and then, in popular lan- guage, it is called “mist.” The gray belt-clouds are often associated in Highland scenery with the most magnificent deep coloring of the mountain-sides in the increasing gloom of twilight. In the way of solemn gran- deur I know nothing to excel a Highland mountain on the even- ing of a rainy day when the rain is over and the sky is all gloomy still, except perhaps a streak of pale yellow light in the west. In the increasing darkness the blues, and purples, and dim greens of the mountain deepen, deepen, deepen, till the wonder is that any color can be visible at all; but there it is still, in sombre magnificence, mysterious, indescribable, darker far than black itself ever is in daylight. Scenes of that kind affect some natures to melancholy. Each of us can but describe his own impression. On me they produce the effect of solemn and mournful music, like the funeral marches of Beethoven and Cho- pin. Nay, it even seems as if the obsequies of any one mortal were too small a matter to be associated with the hours of the great sadness of the natural world, and imagination connects them rather with the extinction of noble races of mankind, the death of ancient civilizations, the irrevocable passing away of everything that seems to us so very well worth preserving, and yet so impossible to preserve. 1 Here is a good example of what has been already said about the superior conven- ience of literature for the plain statement of a truth. Nobody will accuse me of being a bad writer for having uttered a plain truth in this plain sentence, but if a painter were to put the same truth into a picture, he would certainly incur blame for the hardness and opacity of his clouds. MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 215 The crest-cloud, or "night-cap," as it is familiarly called with reference to our British hills, is so well known that it hardly needs description, at least in its commoner forms, but it some- times displays some novelty and originality. When the crest of the mountain is rounded, the cloud sometimes covers it very ex- actly, and ripples down like a periwig; or it may fit like the hair of a tonsured priest, the pate of the mountain just protruding so that if you stood upon the summit you would be able to see in every direction. Sometimes the crest-cloud sits on the summit and has all the appearance of clinging to it desperately as if it feared to be blown away; at other times it leaves the summit bare and poises itself in empty space on one side of the peak, a situation in which, as Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, it can only exist on condition of being constantly renewed. I refer to what he calls the "leeside cloud," and speaks of as "one of the most beautiful phenomena of the Alps." "When a moist wind," he says, "blows in clear weather over a cold summit, it has not time to get chilled as it approaches the rock, and therefore the air remains clear, and the sky bright on the wind- ward side; but under the lee of the peak there is partly a back eddy, and partly still air; and in that lull and eddy the wind gets time to be chilled by the rock, and the cloud appears as a boiling mass of white vapor rising continually with the return current to the upper edge of the mountain, where it is caught by the straight wind and partly torn, partly melted away in broken fragments." A very frequent incident in northern mountainous scenery is when a great cloud, not properly a crest-cloud, happens to be pierced by the crest of a mountain and to remain above it for a long time as if it were fixed there by the peak, like a balloon caught by the top of a tree. I have often been struck by the curious persistence of these clouds. They are very big, volu- minous things, but rarely add to the beauty or picturesque avail- ableness of the mountain to which they attach themselves. Another form of cloud, which is not the crest-cloud, yet has something to do with the appearance of a mountain, is the roof- cloud, which appears of infinite extent as it covers the sky from horizon to horizon, and is just low enough to be pierced by the summits of the mountains which are, as it were, decapitated by it. There is no beauty whatever in this cloud, which is merely a vast veil that hides the sky like the velaria in a Roman am- phitheatre, and it injures the mountains by diminishing them. 216 LANDSCAPE. Nevertheless, there is a certain sense in which it may be said to suggest an idea of grandeur, since the earth becomes under that cloud a sort of temple with mountains to support its roof, an idea that seems to have struck Shelley, as we find it expressed, with powerful brevity, in the fifth stanza of his immortal "Cloud:" "Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be." The bad weather for which the Highlands of Scotland have such an unfortunate and, I fear, merited reputation, is highly favorable to the beauty and interest of mountains, not only by producing the most splendid effects, but also because the mo- tion of clouds and showers, the flying shadows cast by the clouds, and the semi-transparent veils interposed by the show- ers, give such an aspect of animation to the landscape that it is difficult to think of it as unconscious and not alive. And indeed, in sober truth, all this motion and change, these alterna- tions of sunshine and shadow, of bright blue sky and dim rain- falls, the flash and foam of waterfall on the mountain and anger of dark wave, white-crested, upon the lake, — all these motions and energies are manifestations of that ceaseless natural energy, that great active power of the universe, which does not by any means confine itself to the actions of living creatures. To those who accuse landscape-students of neglecting humanity for dead matter, the answer is that we see motions that are both swifter and on a far larger scale than the massing of armies, while the power manifested is one with which no human strength, how- ever combined and organized, can sustain the slightest com- parison. The mere beauty of the effects produced excels the triumphs of the most ingenious theatrical contrivances. At one time a mass of rock and forest is glittering in full sunshine, with all its colors fresh and every detail clear; a minute or two after- wards it has become a gray phantom with a dim outline, re- moved to a greater distance, and separated from the world of substantial things. Contrast succeeds to contrast, by a series of astonishing counter-changes; the things that were dim have. become brilliantly clear, the things that were so plain have. become vague, and ghostly, and remote, like the fading impres- sions of uncertain memory. The color is bright and pure, with fresh green lights on field and forest, and purple shadows on heather and rock; the distances pass away into the loveliest - MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 217 grays, the most delicate azures; the flying clouds are of a dazzling whiteness, the sky bluer than lapis lazuli. It is all life and movement, splendor and glitter; and now if you wish to realize how much this life of Nature may be to us, think what the world might be without it, if it resembled the limbo so sadly and exquisitely described by Casimir Delavigne, in which the great element of melancholy was precisely the privation of these changes:- 'Partout cette demi-clarté Dont la morne tranquillité Suit un crépuscule d'été, Ou de l'aurore Fait pressentir que le retour Va poindre au céleste séjour Quand la nuit n'est plus, quand le jour N'est pas encore ! "Ce ciel terne, où manque un soleil, N'est jamais bleu, jamais vermeil ; Famais brise, dans ce sommeil De la nature N'agita d'un frémissement La torpeur de ce lac dormant Dont l'eau n'a point de mouvement, Point de murmure." The reason why mountains are so good for the exhibition of varied effects is because they are on such a large scale. A cathe- dral is a big object, and it gives some effects; one tower may be in light while another is in shadow, or one end of the vast build- ing may appear remote in mist, or the west front may be golden in the mellow light of afternoon, or flushed with the crimson glow of sunset. The artist who sits down to paint architecture is at the same time tormented and delighted by the continual changes in the illumination. A statue is at one minute in full sunshine, but soon a shadow steals upon it, and some other piece of sculpture that lay hidden in the obscurity of the pe- numbra has come forth into unexpected prominence. The mountain of masonry becomes mysterious in the twilight, and in the early morning it is seen stately, pale, and gray by the peasants in a hundred fields. But what are all these changes in comparison with the revolutions that occur in the aspects of a vast mountain, itself a world, with forests on its flanks, an arctic region on its icy heights, and room for a dozen different storms 218 LANDSCAPE. to disport themselves in thunder? The mere vastness of scale in a mountain produces atmospheric effects of inexhaustible interest and variety. On one part of it the detail may be all discernible, while on more distant parts it passes away, first into mystery, and then into a broad space of color without other detail than its own changes and gradations. In the soft and misty light great rays of sunshine may be cast across, these being always caused by the intervention of some other moun- tain or by the edge of a massive cloud. Sometimes an isolated mountain may itself interrupt the light of the low sun in such a way as to cast rays into the misty air. The degree of mist in the atmosphere has more to do with the visibility of detail than the presence of the sun, as details may still be visible clearly for a little time after sunset if the air happens to be transparent. It has often been a subject of curi- ous remark to me that real clearness (which can always easily be tested by the visibility of known objects on a mountain) is such a very different thing from brightness of light. I have often known the atmosphere to be marvellously clear on a dull day, and tested it by examining details on a distant hill; while noth- ing is more common than bright days that seem clear enough till you begin to look for distant detail, when you ascertain that it is lost in unsuspected haze. Mont Blanc, as visible or not visible from the Saône, is an excellent test of atmospheric clear- ness. The days when you see it do not seem to be clearer than many others, but of course they must be so. The days when you cannot see it at all often seem to be absolutely clear, but of course they cannot be so. On those falsely lucid days that cheat you like false frankness in mankind, I have often looked at the place where I had seen Mont Blanc as plainly as I ever saw the moon, and, though knowing it to be there, could hardly believe that it had not gone wandering away like a planet. It disappears like Aladdin's palace, and you may rub your eyes as the Sultan did on a fine morning, but no rubbing will bring it back again. Yet the deceptive sky seems as honest and open as if it were in a picture by Perugino. After the energetic life of a mountain, when the clouds have shattered themselves upon it vainly, and hurricanes have raged about its summits, and thunder has pealed and lightning played along its precipices, there may come a time of peace or truce, and with it the ineffable clearness of a purified atmosphere at MOODS OF A MOUNTAIN. 219 evening. There is nothing that is familiar to me in Nature more tranquillizing to the human spirit than this clearness in dying light. The darkness comes on steadily, but the clearness still remains. If we fail to see the details in the deepening shade, the line against the sky becomes more and more sharply de- fined. The stars that were dim, unfixed points at first, shine with an increasing brightness, and the dark peak rises among them as if it were nearer to them than it is. The poetry of this association between the peak that seems so high in heaven and the stars that look like fire-flies just above it, has been felt for thousands of years, and is, indeed, one of those associations that are inherently and everlastingly poetical, because they have a profound analogy with the processes of the human mind. We climb as high as we can upon the eminences of thought that are accessible to us, but they are dark eminences still, even when most clear, most free from storm and cloud; but we have at least this nobility in our nature, that we can be aware of the lights that shine above our darkness. 220 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXI. ON SCALE IN LAKE sceneRY. THE HERE are few things in the world so dependent upon mere size as lakes are for the effect which they produce upon the mind. In buildings the effect increases with the size, and however large a building may be, it still produces the effect of being a building. A large castle is a castle still, a vast cathe- dral is a cathedral still. So in human genius a great poet is still a poet, his poetical greatness does not promote him into another order of humanity; but however paradoxical it may seem, a great lake by the mere fact of its greatness loses all the charac- teristics of a lake, and becomes an inland sea. It is the same with the effects of diminution. In buildings diminution produces, no doubt, a loss of power over the spec- tator, but a building keeps the name which is borne by larger ones of the same character. For example, we say the pyramid of Cheops and that of Caius Cestius are both pyramids, we say that the cathedrals of St. Paul and St. Asaph are both cathe- drals, we call the royal house at Windsor a castle, and the same word is applied to the little feudal keeps in the Highlands of Scotland that would not contain a hundredth part of the room there is in Windsor; but if a lake is small, we call it a tarn when it is natural, and a pond when it is artificial. We see, then, that a lake loses its lacustrine quality and title alike by bigness and littleness, and the reason is not hard to find, for the idea associated with a lake is the idea of a cer- tain peculiar kind of beauty which is lost both in size and in smallness. I have sometimes amused myself by thinking what a very interesting lake the Mediterranean would be if the scale of it could be so reduced as to give a breadth of about fifteen miles from Marseilles to Algiers. It has all the characteristics of lake ON SCALE IN LAKe sceneRY. 221 scenery in great perfection, except that it is too big. It has a most varied coast-line, a great number of beautiful islands, with capes, bays, promontories, peninsulas, so delightfully arranged that it would be charming to explore them. Sardinia would then be five miles long, Sicily about the same, and the smaller islands of the Ægean would be like the islets of our Scottish and Irish lakes. This would be a great improvement from the artistic point of view, but I should not bargain for a correspond- ing reduction in the heights of all the mountains. We should still require good mountainous distances. The Mediterranean, such as it exists, is the finest salt-water loch in the world; but there is an enclosed sea in the far East .which has much more of the character of lake scenery, though geographers would not call it a lake or fiord, because it has outlets at both ends. In their language, I suppose, the Japan- ese Inland Sea ought to be simply described as a channel; but it is a channel of most various width, and the view is so constantly enclosed by many promontories and three thousand islands that, with the mountainous distances, the effect must be that of a long succession of lakes. There is a lake in Africa which is not called a lake simply because the river that enters and leaves it is of a large size. Stanley Pool, on the Congo, is twenty-five miles long and six- teen broad. It has all the characteristics of lake scenery, such as picturesque islands and fine mountainous distances, and would, no doubt, have been called a lake if its river had been of less importance. Great expanses of water are called lakes when the water is fresh, though they would have been called seas if it had been salted. I need scarcely observe that the "common salt, sulphate and carbonate of lime, magnesia, soda, potash, and iron," which, as Maury tells us, are "the distinguishing characteristics of sea- water," have no effect upon the prospect except so far as they may sometimes be unfavorable to vegetation. I need not ob- serve that fresh water rises in waves as dangerous as those of salt water, or that to be out of sight of land on a "lake" is much the same as to be out of sight of land on the salt sea. On the Lake of the Woods Captain Huyshe says that Colonel Wolseley and some other members of the Red River Expedition were confined for some time upon an island by the fury of the great waves. 222 LANDSCAPE. "To the westward not a sign of land broke the vast expanse of water stretching away to the horizon, as if it had been the ocean itself, instead of an inland lake in the centre of a continent; to the northward a 'traverse' of ten miles to the nearest island lay before us, with the 'white horses' rearing their angry heads and forbid- ding all hope of a speedy release from our little prison." At length they leave Detention Island, and although they are only rowing on a fresh-water lake, they might just as well be out upon the Irish Sea or the Mediterranean. “It was a bright, cloudless night, with a full moon, and the men with light hearts and strong hands pulled with a will, glad to get away from their island prison. To the west and north no land was to be seen, to the east we could just make out the dim outline. of a belt of islands several miles away, and behind us the island we had left was soon lost to view. We steered by the stars, shaping our course by the pointers of the Great Bear. Although the wind had gone down, there was still a heavy sea, a long, rolling swell from the N. W., which justified the refusal of the cautious Iroquois to venture out in their frail birch-bark canoe. After three hours' hard rowing we came to an island, where we put ashore at I A. M., made a big fire, and bivouacked till daylight. To me it had been a novel and curious sensation, which I enjoyed immensely; steer- ing a boat at night by the stars, out of sight of land, on a fresh- water lake, is not possible everywhere." ų Lake Superior is a vast fresh-water sea, on which the steam- ers soon get so completely out of sight of land, and among waves of such dimensions, that the feeling is that of being on the ocean. "Lake scenery" indeed! Why, even a single bay of Lake Superior is too big for lacustrine beauty. I need only re- fer to Thunder Bay, in which, although the features of the land are not without grandeur, the vastness of the water area takes so much away from them that they produce but little effect. In the following interesting description Captain Huyshe does not fail to notice this natural consequence of vastness: Tak ada “Thunder Bay, of itself an enormous lake, is but one of the nu- merous bays which indent the northern shore of Lake Superior. It runs in a N.N.E. direction for some twenty or more miles, and is from twelve to sixteen miles wide. In these regions everything is on such a gigantic scale that the effect of picturesque beauty is marred. The eye has to travel so far that it loses the idea of the picturesque in that of the grand, and can scarcely realize the enor- mous height of the hills, owing to the great distance from which ON SCALE IN LAKE SCENERY. 223 they are beheld. Looking from the western shores of the bay, the promontory sixteen miles off seems but like an ordinary hill; it is only when passing close beneath it, and looking up at it from the deck of a vessel, that the mind can form an adequate conception of its vast dimensions, and appreciate its solemn grandeur." Sheets of water alter even in the character of their own sur- faces by size. However violent may be the wind that passes over a small tarn, it produces only a ripple, "a tempest in a teacup ;" but as the lake gradually increases in size the waves increase with it, till you have those of the great American or African lakes, which are enormous. In this way the increase of dimen- sions causes lakes to lose the character of apparent safety and amenity that they have when on a small scale, and gives them in stormy weather a character of stern violence not generally as- sociated with lake scenery by those who are unfamiliar with it. The size of lakes has a remarkable effect upon their shores. A mountainous shore diminishes in importance as the lake in- creases in area. The peculiarly terrible character of Loch Coruisk, in the Isle of Skye, is due to the fact that the water surface is small in proportion to the height of the precipitous mountains that surround it, and it looks much smaller than it is. Macculloch describes it as follows: "A lake, that seems to be about two miles in length, occupies the middle, its still waters appearing black as jet from the shadow of the surrounding mountains. On all sides, the rocky faces of the including mountains rise with a rapid ascent, rude, brown, and bare. So steep and sudden is the acclivity, that, at one glance, you see the whole face of the mountains from the foot to the sum- mit; a continued irregular plane of solid rock, rising upwards on all hands for more than a mile, and presenting a barrier over which there is no egress." My The reader at once perceives that the awfulness of Loch Coruisk is caused by its being small enough to be shut up by its surrounding mountains as in a prison. They keep the sunshine out, they narrow the sky, they circumscribe the starry heaven. The dark lake lies in the bottom of a pit, and you see it all at once without any hope of turning a corner and getting into broader waters with a more open view. The scene is so de- pressing that it is unfit for human habitation; the healthiest mind would be overwhelmed by it. 224 LANDSCAPE. And yet the mountains round Loch Coruisk are not of any extraordinary elevation. Many a lake reflects higher summits. in its waters. The larger the lake-area the less does it matter how lofty may be its shores. On Lake Superior it matters hardly anything, the shore being generally either diminished by distance or else made invisible altogether, while if the sailor has the coast near him on one side he has the open lake, to the eye unlimited as an ocean, on the other. Even if Lake Superior were surrounded by far higher ranges than Loch Coruisk, if it could have the Rocky Mountains clasped round it like a belt, they would not, with all their summits, produce that effect of gloomy imprisonment which at Coruisk has such an awful effect upon the mind. The waves of the great lake would still roll and break in the unimpeded sunshine, the eye would still range over an area limited by the water-line of the horizon, the vast sky would still display all the glory of sunrise and sunset, and the mariner on that broad inland sea would watch the great moving dome of stars. A lake is never too small to be an object of interest to artists. One of the commonest titles for a landscape in French art is "une Mare," a little marshy pond or puddle often only a few yards in diameter. Small as it may be, it is still big enough to reflect the rocks or trees that stand around it; and is therefore as important in a picture as a looking-glass is in a room. Diaz, Corot, Theodore Rousseau, and a host of others have painted. such tiny ponds with quite a tender affection. They are lake scenery in its very humblest form. Has it ever occurred to the reader that what we call a pool in a river is really a little lake if the current is hardly percep- tible? Let me attempt to describe one of these as an example of a true lake on a small scale. It is on the river Arroux, one of the tributaries of the Loire. After rather a tumultuous course of about three miles through a rocky channel, the river suddenly falls asleep in a long rock-basin, which, if not of great breadth, is still three or four times as broad as the ordinary stream. Both sides of the pool are guarded by rocky shores, one of them being steep and richly wooded. In the pool there is an islet, and at its western extremity a beautiful island with rocks, heather, and Scotch firs, so exactly like the Highlands that one might fancy it had been transported from Loch Katrine or Loch Awe. ON SCALE IN LAKE sceneRY. 225 I despair of conveying to any reader who has not been a canoeist the least idea of the charm that belongs to such a place as this. Really to appreciate it one must have come down the dangerous rapids above, and felt the sudden change from the tormenting waywardness of rushing currents and the awkward obtrusiveness of a thousand obstacles, to the peace of deep and tranquil waters where effort ceases and anxiety is at an end. If the effect of peacefulness is increased by the state of the atmos- phere and the hour of the day, it becomes strong enough to at- tune the feelings like a poem. I remember arriving at that pool many years ago on a calm evening in summer, when the last rays of the sun were glaring through the woods and brightening the rocks on the opposite shore, the long pool itself lying in shaded peace and reflecting everything like a mirror. Lazy strokes of the paddle impelled the canoe gently over the beau- tiful surface, and there was nothing to break the solitude but the flapping of a heron's wings as he rose slowly from shade to sunshine. Here, then, you have the characteristics of a lake, but all in miniature. Now suppose that the pool could be greatly in- creased in size, by the subsidence of one of its shores, and that the shores themselves could be hollowed into bays and inlets, we should have something not much unlike one of the smaller lochs in the Scottish Highlands, such as Loch Avich, for exam- ple. It appears, then, that the difference between a pool and a lake is simply a difference of size, but of size relatively to the river. If that pool on the Arroux had been fed by a tiny trick- ling rivulet, it would have been called at least an étang, equiv- alent to tarn or pond; and we have already alluded to a case where a pool on a great river is called a pool on account of the importance of the river, though it is a lake of noble dimensions and good lacustrine scenery. Any sheet of water, however small or large, has its own artis- tic interest, but the nature of that interest differs greatly with extent of surface. A small pond is valuable chiefly for its re- flections and for the variety that water gives to a foreground; but when a lake is a mile wide and three or four miles long, certain interesting and remarkable appearances are produced upon its surface by breezes and winds of various degrees of strength, and these appearances are not produced upon small ponds. They will be described at some length in a chapter on 15 226 LANDSCAPE. Lake Surfaces. Finally, when a lake attains very great dimen- sions the interest of it becomes strictly marine, except that it has no tide. When "Lake Scenery" is usually spoken of, it is intended to imply that the sheet of water is large enough for pleasure navi- gation, and not so large as to cause any difficulty in seeing the opposite shore, in ordinary states of the weather. The English and Scottish lakes answer to this idea, and so do many lakes on the Continent; but those of Geneva and Constance and the Venern Lake in Sweden are already too large for the perfection of the true lake character. Lucerne avoids the fault of excessive size by being happily divided into several parts, which are, in fact, different lakes connected by channels, and are called so by the inhabitants. The bifurcation of the Lake of Como at Bellaggio really makes three lakes of it, including Lecco. There are three lakes also in that of Lugano, and three in Loch Awe. Loch Long bifurcates exactly as Como does. Even the Lake of Geneva, notwithstanding the simplicity of its plan, is divided by the inhabitants into two, le Grand Lac and le Petit Lac, the point of separation between the two being the promontory called la pointe d'Yvoire, nearly opposite Nyon. From Geneva the Grand Lac is not visible. In Lough Corrib (Ireland) there is also a great lake connected with a smaller one. The well- known Lake George, in the State of New York, is divided into two parts by the "Narrows," which are also apparently ob- structed by islands. Lake Champlain, in its broad northern part, is divided by long islands and a promontory, while the narrow southern part turns a little westwards and makes, no doubt, a separate lake so far as the view is concerned. A very good instance of division in a lake would be the Balkash Lake in Turkestan; but here the scale is so enormous that even the parts themselves must exceed what we mean by lake scenery. The Balkash has, however, its narrows, exactly as in Lake George, and it has a small lake at the southwestern end of it, just as Loch Awe has the little harbor-tarn at Ford communi- cating with the main lake by a narrow neck of water. These geographical facts are so important in their connection with the effect of lake scenery on the eye and the mind, that it is a great though a common mistake to overlook them. A great lake is not inconveniently great, from the artistic point of view, when it always presents the appearance of a small one, or ON SCALE IN LAKE SCENERY. 227 a succession of small ones. There are, in fact, no lakes so in- teresting as those which do not show too much of themselves at once, but allure the traveller from one beautiful scene to an- other without ever wearying his mind by too wide a prospect. The perfect lake, as to size, is that which shows a width varying from one to five miles, with reaches not exceeding a length of eight or ten. The longer the entire lake is the better, if its length is concealed by windings. So far as size and the shape of its plan are concerned, the most perfect lake known to me is Lucerne; but it is inferior to some others in certain qualities, which may be more appropri- ately discussed in other chapters. Finally, it may be observed be observed that clearness of climate has something to do with the size of lakes, as when the air is clear a distant coast may be easily seen. In misty countries it is de- sirable that the lakes should be comparatively narrow. In our own climate distances are often magnificently exaggerated by mist; and as mountains gain greatly in apparent height when the weather is hazy, our lakes seem broader than they are and our mountains higher exactly at the same time. On the other hand, when a lake is really very wide and a mountain really very high, perfectly clear weather will produce an astonishing illusion. A width of ten miles will look like a twenty minutes' row, and masses of rock as big as a large church will appear to be three feet square.¹ 1 Deceptiveness of Nature as to Scale. Nature is often like St. Peter's at Rome, which looks only moderately large until the visitor has begun to realize the bigness of what would be little details elsewhere. To make us understand the size of architectural works draughtsmen are in the habit of giving us the figure of a man to judge by, and so we come to understand the size of such a building as the front of Notre Dame. In natural scenery man is not always to be had, or he may be too small to be visible, and then we have perhaps nothing to go by but stones, which may themselves be a hundred times larger than we think. Even the most experienced are liable to be deceived in this way. Here is a very good in- stance of such deception from Macculloch, who was sailing at the time on a reve- nue cutter, himself an experienced traveller and geologist, and his companions professional sailors, whose especial business it was to know the coast of Scotland. He is off the coast of Skye :- C "Often deceived in judging of magnitude and distance on these western shores, I rec- ollect no place where we experienced more surprise. We had left the vessel to row to the shore, which every one thought was a mile off. That mile was not less than eight or nine; it cost us three hours of hard exertion. As we approached, I saw a stony beach, which seemed to admit of landing, and which appeared about a hundred yards long. The landing being effected, the crew soon disappeared among stones which they had purposed to convert into ballast, and it required the labor of an hour to traverse the imaginary hun- dred yards, which were not less than a mile and a half.” + 228 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXII. LAKE SHORES. E so commonly associate lakes with mountains, that we readily forget the existence of the flat-shored lakes which, nevertheless, have often a certain beauty of their own. The most opposite characters may be acceptable in the shores of lakes, provided only that there is a decided character of some kind. Modern Dutch artists even appreciate the flat shores of the lakes in Holland, which in the first enthusiasm for mountains attendant upon the awakening of the landscape sentiment would have been despised as altogether devoid of interest. In the Dutch lakes the sky becomes of very great importance, and all objects of any height, such as trees, cottages, windmills, distant towers, and the sails of boats, detach themselves against it in a manner that greatly enhances their interest, while the variety of their groupings affords just that degree and kind of change that amuses the mind without exciting or fatiguing it. A green shore coming close to water without any intervening barrenness of sand or shingle is in itself delightful, and a sedgy or marshy spot here and there is a variety after fertile pastures. The mere feeling of openness to the wind is a charm in flat-shored lakes, especially to a lover of sailing who has not to fear the al- ternation of dead calms and gusty squalls that trouble the sailor among mountains. The degree in which flat-shored waters have gained in favor among the lovers of landscape during the last twenty years is shown by the wonderfully increased fame of the Norfolk Broads. In my early days nobody had ever heard of them; at the present day their existence, at least, is as well known as that of the mountain-lakes, and they are visited every year by many artists and other lovers of aquatics and the pic- turesque. This tendency to recognize the merits of compara- tively humble scenery is, I think, a sign of increasing culture of lake shores. 229 those faculties by which landscape beauty is appreciated. The uncultivated sense answers only to a violent stimulus. A huge mountain is big enough to make its presence remarked by a dull tourist, but the tones of a delicate distance, or the changes of composition in trees, and sails, and villages, with the varieties of their color, are comparatively gentle stimulants, like quiet harmonies in music. The humbler kind of lake scenery is so refreshing as a relief from the overwhelming influence of the sublime that it is a great merit in a lake to have both varieties. Nothing is more agree- able than the gradual increase of stimulus in passing from the sort of scenery that unobservant people condemn for its dul- ness to scenery of a more exciting kind, which we then appre- ciate with far keener enjoyment than if we had come upon it suddenly at the first. Loch Lomond and Loch Awe are both excellent examples of graduated interest, and so in a minor degree is Windermere. At the southern extremity of Loch Lomond the mountains are as yet too remote to be powerful, and the great extent of the lake is concealed by its clustered islands; but as you go northwards the mountains increase in apparent grandeur, and every mile reveals new sublimities and unexpected combinations, till at last the lake narrows and you go into the very heart of the mountains themselves. A voyage on Loch Awe has the advantage that in its beginning you cannot see its sublimer scenery at all. You begin (or ought to begin) in the little basin at Ford, a small round tarn entirely sheltered by steep little hills, with an outlet only just sufficient to let your boat pass, and after that you have a long reach of scenery that is not exciting till you get towards Ardhonnel and are beginning to feel rather weary of the monotonous loch-sides, when suddenly you get a distant view of the Cruachan range, its pale gray peaks rising above their belt of cloud, and from that moment there is a constant increase of stimulus till you come under the shadow of Ben Cruachan itself and see the Pass of Brandir open- ing its gloomy outlet, and before you, at the end of the nar- rowed waters, stand the gray ruins of Kilchurn. The Lake of Lucerne has some variety also; that part of it which is near the town is not so much shut in by lofty moun- tains as the Bay of Uri; still there is too much sublimity about Lucerne itself to afford any complete repose, any perfect con- trast. It is a strange objection to make, but the truth is that 230 LANDSCAPE. 1 the lake of the Four Cantons is too uniformly sublime; you can- not quietly sail away from the grand scenery when you have enough of it, and in some parts the stern magnificence of the shores is really oppressive. The separate reaches are apparently enclosed by their mountains, so that it requires an effort of mem- ory when you are in the Bay of Uri not to feel shut out from the world by the pathless precipices around. The association of the place with heroic legends ¹ gives it a brighter aspect than that of our tragedy-haunted Glen Coe, but the scenery is equally desolate. I can imagine few situations more appalling, in lake navigation, than that of a boatman in the Bay of Uri who gets caught by the terrible south wind, the Foehn, and is driven on foaming billows between those iron-bound shores. In Great Britain we have nothing comparable to it, unless it be the eastern reach of Loch Hourn, which I have never visited. From the descriptions of others, we know that "the land on both sides is not only very lofty, but very rapid in the acclivities," while the water is narrow in comparison with its enclosing walls, and the scenery wild, desolate, and inhospitable. Mr. Black's descrip- tion of Loch Hourn in " White Wings" has for its purpose rather the concentration of the reader's attention on the little group of persons in the yacht, cosey, comfortable, and sociable in their little floating island in the midst of a great margin of soli- tude, than the production of an effect of terror. Nevertheless, the master of the yacht did not cease to represent "that in the event of bad weather coming on we should find ourselves in the lion's jaws. . . As the strange darkness of the loch increased, as these vast mountains overhanging the inner cup of the loch grew more and more awful in the gloom, we began to under- stand why the Celtic imagination had called this place the Lake of Hell." 2 • Wast-water, in the English Lake District, would have an equally terrible character if the size of it were greater and if both sides were equally precipitous; but it is like the small lake in Glen Coe, one side only is steep enough to be awful, so that the mind escapes, as it were, on the other, being conscious of it even when it is not seen. The want of size in these lakes is a defect fatal to perfect awfulness, as we do not dread the ripples on a 1 Legends which modern criticism is removing from history to leave to poetry and the opera. 2 Macculloch's "Highlands and Islands," vol. ii. LAKE SHORES. 231 pond, but a storm becomes really terrible when it rushes down through a corridor of gigantic mountains and concentrates all its fury on a space of water large enough to be lashed into white waves. The pleasantest lake shores have many bays and inlets where a boat may take refuge when hard-pressed. The bays them- selves should not be very big, or else they become lakelets, or even lakes, which we have seen to be the case with that vast Thunder Bay in Lake Superior, which has an area equal to sev- eral Scottish lakes together. Even in the Lake of Lucerne the Bay of Alpnach is the only one that accurately answers to the name. Küssnacht is a long inlet, and what the English call the Bay of Uri is really a lake of itself. The ideal of a lake bay is a space of between twenty and a hundred acres of water, open so as to give easy access to the lake, but sheltered from the prevailing winds. The land enclos- ing it ought to be high enough to keep it calm and snug, and if it is richly wooded the effect of shelter and comfort is increased. To cast anchor in such a bay is in itself a pleasure, and to sleep there on board your boat, in the most perfect security, while a storm-wind is raging outside, is enough to make you regard that particular bay with quite a tender affection ever afterwards. A lake bay has all the charms of a tiny lake or tarn, with a feeling of liberty that you never have on a mere pond; for whenever you feel disposed to leave, you can get out of your place of refuge, with the wind or against it. The grander scenery is perhaps hidden by the natural screens of your retreat, but this only adds to the general feeling of repose. I remember certain bays, in very noble lakes, where there is hardly anything to be seen but a bit of woody hill or a rough and stony slope; yet they are charming little corners to rest in, and the mind is perfectly con- tented, when in a restful mood, with the quiet surroundings that would be commonplace without the ever-poetical water. A wide lake sometimes gets narrower and narrower as it enters some gorge among the mountains, and this effect of narrowing, when the shores become steeper and more threaten- ing, has such a power over the imagination that even the least fanciful people are alive to it. The two best examples known to me are the upper end of Loch Lomond and the Pass of Brandir on Loch Awe, by which the overflow of the lake finds its outlet to Loch Etive and the sea. The effect of such places is 232 LANDSCAPE. enhanced by the state of the water, which is generally either of a gloomy and sullen calm, looking dark and dangerous under the shadow of the enclosing precipices, or else angry under a rushing wind that sweeps through the narrow passage, often with unexpected fury. To feel the weird influence of such a place in all its potency the reader should go the whole length of it at night, by himself, and in a very small boat. The comfort and security of a steamer, as well as the size of it (which takes up too much space in the foreground of the picture) are too good a protection against the influences of Nature. I have some- times been in the Pass of Brandir when the gloom of that remarkable place penetrated my mind with such an all-pervad- ing sadness, such a feeling of profound solemnity and awe, that I can compare it to nothing but the reading of Dante. The black water, known to be so deep, the frowning precipices on one side and the huge bulk of Cruachan on the other, dark clouds passing between the boat and the stars, and fitful wailing gusts filling the uncertain sail and driving the cutwater with a hiss through the perilous channel, these are influences not to be easily resisted or speedily forgotten. It is not exactly fear that they produce, or one would not seek them voluntarily, but they attune the nervous system to a pitch of imaginative tension that makes the trivial and the mean drop away from us and brings us into the presence of the eternal.¹ The beauty of lake shores, as compared with those of the ocean, is greatly enhanced by the closeness with which the vegetation approaches to the water. As there are no tides, and as there is nothing in the water itself destructive to vegetable life, but much, on the contrary, that is favorable to it, the result is often a degree of richness close to the water's edge far more agreeable than the barrenness of the sea-beach as we know it in northern latitudes.2 Trees grow freely on the rocks, and in many a park-like glade the fresh, green grass may be seen gently washed by the ripples of some quiet bay, while if the level of the water rises a little after rain you may see the blades half 1 I imagine that the railway from Oban through the Pass of Brandir must have had a destructive effect on the particular power of the scenery alluded to in the text, but the carriage-road had that already in a minor degree. Every visible facility for communication is destructive to the effect of desolate grandeur, because it suggests at once that the conveniences of civilization are accessible. 2 There are exceptions, however, even in the north, which will be noticed in their place. LAKE SHORES. 233 submerged, just their sharp points out, and the white petals of the daisies washed by the miniature breakers. On such a shore a boat lands softly even when her approach is swift. Her keel glides gently over the grass, and the motion is stayed so gradu- ally that you hardly know when it comes to an end. In many a place the pendulous boughs stoop over the water, sometimes coming so near to its surface that the waves catch the lower leaves and play with them. Even in Scotland, where the sea- coast is so bleak, so dreary and barren, the shores of the fresh- water lakes are often indescribably rich in vegetation, not every- where, but in parts. The shore of Loch Lomond abounds in these exquisite meetings of lovely water and luxuriant vegetation. Macculloch said of it long since: "Had it no other beauties than those of its shores, it would still be an object of prime attraction; whether from the bright green meadows sprinkled with luxurious ash-trees, that sometimes skirt its margin, or the white pebbled shores on which its gentle billows murmur, like a miniature ocean, or its bold, rocky promontories rising from the deep water, rich in wild flowers and ferns, and tangled with wild roses and honeysuckles, or its retired bays where the waves sleep, reflecting, like a mirror, the trees which hang over them; an inverted and softened landscape.' 99 The same writer speaks with enthusiasm of " one of Loch Lomond's most common features: the rich and graceful ash- trees hanging over the margin, and rooting themselves in the very wash of the silvery waves, while the bright expanse of water glistens between their trunks and through the intervals of their drooping foliage." A lake of the finest and most complete kind supplies in itself almost all the geographical interest of the Mediterranean, and the smallness of the scale on which the parts are reproduced makes the contrast between them the more striking. Headlands jut into the little sea and show a bold front to its rage. In some places the rock goes down sheer into the deep; in others there are delicate sands, sloping gently down into the clear water, fit bathing-places for the fairest lady ever imagined by the daring fancy of a poet. Then you have the mouths of many streams that come to lose themselves in the lake exactly as the great rivers flow into the all-receiving ocean. The lake is the ocean to them, they know not that there is any other, and they come softly or angrily to the same end. Sometimes, like the Nile or J. F. 234 the Rhone, the little lake-river has its delta in its own small plain of alluvial deposit. Everywhere the great sea is reproduced in the little one, and there are times even when to complete the illusion a mist prevents you from seeing across your small Scot- tish Mediterranean, and you may fancy that the unseen opposite shore is some far-distant land. As there may be in some small planet, like Vesta, a miniature of the physical geography of the earth, so may a lake no bigger than Derwentwater be like the reduced model of some extensive inland sea. LANDSCAPE. 2 LAKE ISLANDS. 235 CHAPTER XXIII. LAKE ISLANDS. A N island is produced simply by the emergence of a hill-top; but who ever thinks of the wide-spreading sub-aqueous foundation? For the poet, an island is a bit of enchanted land, defended by the water against the invasion of the prosaic and the commonplace; for the painter, it is a bit of ground so situ- ated as to be more frequently and completely mirrored than any other. There is nothing in landscape Nature so perfect as a lake island of the loveliest kind. It is a detached being, a bit of ground so separated from the rest of the land that it has gained individuality like a living creature. Most readers will remem- ber that exquisite little poem of Shelley, in which with a few sure touches he gives the main characteristics of such an isle in its summer glory: There was a little lawny islet, By anemone and violet, Like mosaic, paven: And its roof was flowers and leaves Which the summer's breath en weaves, Where nor sun, nor showers, nor breeze Pierce the pines and tallest trees, — Each a gem engraven : Girt by many an azure wave, With which the clouds and mountains pave A lake's blue chasm." I think Shelley has here included all the beauties of a lake island except one. It ought to have a bold little rocky precipice somewhere, showing a determined front to the waves in rough weather and glassing itself in the smooth water when it is calm. An island is all the more delightful for being itself a little hill, or, still better, two small hills with a rich lawny valley between them, 236 LANDSCAPE. and its coast line ought not to be too simple, but should have a decided promontory or two, and at least one little creek or bay. As for size, there are excellent reasons why a lake island should never be very big. A space of about thirty acres is enough, and more than enough for beauty. Inch Murrin on Loch Lomond is too important; it is a mile and a half long, and therefore not conveniently seen as an object unless it could be detached from the other islands and exhibited quite by itself. One effect of islands is very little foreseen by us until we have had some ex- perience of lakes. We fancy that because on looking at a map we recognize the insular character of a piece of land, that char- acter will always be visible to us in Nature; whereas if the island is large the shore of it will very likely appear to us nothing but the ordinary lake shore, and if there are many islands the con- sequence will be the subdivision of the water into many lakes, a fact clearly recognized in the Canadian name of the Lac des Mille Lacs, which Captain Huyshe thought should rather have been called the Lac des Mille Îles. It is clear, therefore, that if there may sometimes be too few islands (as in the Lake of Lucerne, where we have the solitary isle of Alstaad, neither large nor well-situated, being, in fact, only the end of a spur of land separated from the mainland by a narrow channel), so on the other hand islands may easily be too numerous for the perfection of lacustrine scenery; they may, indeed, be so numerous as to cut up the water-space into small sections almost without any character of openness or grandeur of distant effect. Speaking of the Lac des Mille Lacs, Captain Huyshe says:— "The islands are of a peculiar nature. What looks to be one enormous island at a little distance resolves itself, on a nearer approach, to an infinity of smaller ones, which, separated only by narrow channels, overlap and fit into one another like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle, so that the traveller may wander on from one little lake to another for miles. Hence the name given to it by the Canadian voyageurs. Even the guides frequently lose themselves for a time, and the only safe way is to steer a course by compass, which our maps were sufficiently accurate to enable us to do." "' 1 The effect of islands in blocking the view was graphically described by Mr. John Macgregor in his "Rob Roy on the Bal- tic." He had embarked by himself on the great Lake Venern in 1 The Red River Expedition (chap. vii.). By Captain Huyshe. LAKE ISLANDS. 237 squally and misty weather, not without considerable risk, and he soon found the islands embarrassing: < "The numerous isles were so perplexing that I had to land, first upon Sande Isle, and then on several others, climbing each time some lonely peak to see where I ought to go. A small com- pass would have been useless here (and a large one I could not afford to carry) for the islands are in the way of your seeing them, just as you cannot see the forest for the trees.' Even on the Malar Lake, which is far smaller, there are fourteen hundred islands. The thick undergrowth and slippery moss on the islands made it tiring work to climb them. . . There was nothing for it but to climb once more, for it was absolutely necessary to find out the island of Ouson among the numerous others in the Katt Fjord; and yet the only point that was unmistakable was the headland at the end of Hammaro, which stood out sharp on the far horizon of indigo blue." Mr. Macgregor would probably have lost his way altogether if he had not accidentally seen, in a glint of sunshine, a "white puff from a steamer's funnel," which he concluded must be in the direction of Carlstadt. In the same way Captain Huyshe lost himself among the islands in the Lake of the Woods, and only found his way again by catching sight of an Indian en- campment: "After trying a few more likely openings to the northward in vain, the uncomfortable feeling began to creep over us that we had lost our way; however, there was nothing for it but to persevere, so on and on we blundered, hopelessly exploring every channel, among the labyrinth of islands, which appeared to lead in the right direction. We wandered on in this disagreeable way for hour after hour until the sun began to get low in the sky, and we were still as far off the river as ever. This portion of the Lake of the Woods is a mass of islands; in Lac des Mille Lacs and in Rainy Lake we thought we had seen a few islands, but anything to compare with the myriads in Lake of the Woods we had never before met with. We might have been wandering about among them to this day, had we not fortunately caught sight of an Indian encampment." Among the lakes most fortunate in their islands may be mentioned that of Bienne (near Neuchâtel) which possesses only two; but one of them, the Île de St. Pierre, is a remarkably perfect example of everything that a lake island ought to be. 238 LANDSCAPE. It is well detached from the shore, being in the middle of the southern part of the lake, and it rises to a height of more than a hundred and thirty feet above its level. Rousseau, after living upon this island and conceiving an intense affection for it, de- scribed with enthusiasm the great variety of surface to be found in its limited area. He said that there were fields, vineyards, orchards, and woods, besides rich pastures shaded by trees and bordered with shrubs of many kinds, always well-watered by the lake. Rousseau's favorite excursion was to cross from the larger to the smaller island, where he indulged at the same time his disposition to rêverie and that intense delight in the beauty of Nature by which he was a forerunner of so many in our own time. In rough weather he remained on the Île de St. Pierre in a state of such deep contentment that he would willingly have accepted the fate of staying there till he died, and often afterwards he looked back with bitter regret to that island Para- dise from which an official edict had expelled him. It is quite as allowable to criticise the beauty of a lake as that of a human face, so I may observe that it is not every island that would deserve so much admiration as the Île de St. Pierre, and that some islands may even detract from the beauty of the waters that surround them. I cannot but think that Inishail is rather a misfortune for Loch Awe. It is a long piece of ordinary green land rising to a small knoll at its northeastern extremity, which is crowned with a poor little wood, and it im- pedes what might have been one of the finest views on the lake, that from Innistrynich down the Pass of Awe. When a lake is generally narrow its broadest part has a great importance on account of distant effects on extended surfaces of water, and it is therefore much to be regretted that it should be divided by a long piece of land. Inishail.is really such an impediment, so that the lake would gain in beauty if it could quietly subside beneath the waves. While we are imagining impossible changes, I may observe that the peninsula of Innistrynich, which is now an island only during floods, and is one of the most beautifully varied bits of ground in Scotland, with its little rocky eminences, its slopes of verdure, its ancient oaks, and the picturesque inden- tations of its shore, would have adorned the lake still more ef fectually if it had been better detached from the mainland with the broad margin of water all round it that such a little master- piece of Nature's art deserves. The other islands of Loch Awe LAKE ISLANDS. 239 are delightful spots of wild land, more or less happily situated, the very finest situation of all being occupied by the twin pair of isles called Fraoch Elan, which have bold little rocky cliffs and crowns of Scotch fir and ash, one of them bearing the ruins of a castle rather too much hidden in the abundant foliage. If the lake had really been planned for artistic purposes, Fraoch Elan would have been placed exactly where it is. I have passed those isles I know not how often, sometimes tearing by them in tempest when every branch was tossed wildly in the air and every leaf in a tumult of agitation, while the fierce short waves dashed themselves angrily against the rocks, — sometimes in glassy calm the boat glided insensibly, when the sail hung so listlessly that it seemed impossible that there could be motion. I remember one night especially rowing on perfectly still water in misty moonlight when those isles came into view like phan- toms and passed away into shadowy nothingness, looking as unsubstantial as a vision. It is hard, in words, to convey such an impression as that; for one needs the midnight silence, the absolute calm, the solitude in the middle of a great lake such as it was in those days, before the scream of an engine had been heard in the Pass of Awe. The choice of lake islands for defensive purposes appears to be a remnant of the prehistoric taste for lacustrine habitations standing on piles at a little distance from the shore. In Loch Awe the best example is the castle of Ardhonnel, which is built on a small rocky island close to the water's edge. The whole island makes a delightful study of reflections in calm weather, with the castle at one end and masses of foliage at the other. I need not do more than refer to Scott's description of the island in the "Lady of the Lake," with the habitation upon it, that "lodge of ample size, but strange of structure and device." The idea that was dominant in Scott's mind when he wrote that famous description was to respect the wildness of surrounding natural beauty by making human work as little of an intrusion as pos- sible; so the dwelling in which Douglas had taken refuge was roughly constructed from "such materials as around The workman's hand had readiest found.” This was not only poetical, but in good taste. The danger of insular buildings is that they may spoil Nature (easily spoiled I 240 LANDSCAPE. everywhere, but especially in a tiny islet), without substituting that beauty of art which might have been an acceptable com- pensation. Southey said of St. Herbert's Isle on Derwentwater, "How must the chapel have adorned that little isle, giving a hu- man and religious character to the solitude!" Rogers alluded to the chapel in "The Pleasures of Memory," and so gave Turner an opportunity of illustrating it by inventing rather a stately fane with very large windows strongly illuminated from the interior, and giving long reflections in the water. "Their shifting sail dropt gently from the cove Down by St. Herbert's consecrated grove; Whence erst the chanted hymn, the tapered rite Amused the fisher's solitary night; And still the mitred window, richly wreathed, A sacred calm through the brown foliage breathed." In Turner's vignette the island is simply a base for the ar- chitecture, which is important enough to overpower it, there being nothing of Nature visible but a few bushes. Even when an island chapel has almost entirely disappeared, or left, as on Inishail, insignificant ruins, the association adds a wonderful poetry of its own, especially if there are ancient tombs. The sense of poetic appropriateness which has vaguely and uncon- sciously existed in the rudest nations and times has often led to the choice of lake islands for purposes of interment, as if it were well that the dead should have a silent little kingdom of their own, severed by a space of water from the conflicting interests and noisy occupations of the living. When the dead are buried on an island there are touching funeral processions of boats that seem especially fitting for such a service. The reader may have felt, in reading poetical descriptions of a boat funeral or on seeing some picture of such a ceremony in Nor- way or Scotland, how very much more suitable is the equal gliding of a floating bier than the movement of the stateliest hearse on wheels. In "The Passing of Arthur," the effect of solemnity and dignity is immensely enhanced by the employ- ment of a floating couch for the pale king, who passes "to the island valley of Avilion" on a black hull moving from the brink. 1 1 Island cemeteries are not unfrequently met with in Scotland, and their sites are believed to have been chosen in early times to keep the bodies from the wolves. There is one on St. Mungo's Island, in Loch Leven, another on an island in Loch Maree, another on Sanda, at the extremity of the Mull of Cantyre. LAKE ISLANDS. 241 66 Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away." The degree in which islands may be injured or improved by building upon them will have to be considered in another part of this volume, in connection with the effect of buildings in landscape generally. For the present it is enough to take note of the intrusion of man upon these gems of the natural world as a possible event in their history by which their entire character may be changed; nor is there anything of equal importance that could occur to them, unless it were the subsidence or elevation of the land. 16 242 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXIV. · LAKE SURFACES. ΤΗ HE natural coloring of waters in large quantities is one of the most difficult subjects connected with landscape, because so few people are able to give reliable evidence on the subject. To be a good witness about the color of water, an observer should be able to distinguish clearly the hue belonging to the water itself from that which it borrows by reflection; and this is often difficult, the more difficult that the two colors are generally mixed so as to modify each other. It is impossible to get an opportunity of seeing the water quite unmodified by reflection, and there are times when reflection is so powerful that it almost completely subjugates the local color of the water itself. In the accounts given by travellers of blue water, for example, I always feel very much in doubt about the quantity of blueness to be attributed to the sky. A brown Highland lake, which is a reservoir of peat water, almost as brown as a glass of porter, in great depths, will look so fine a dark blue under cer- tain effects of light and sky as to resemble a piece of lapis lazuli; and a traveller may say, quite excusably, "We saw the dark- blue waters of Loch as we drove past it." A A wary observer knows how unsafe it is to trust to testimony of that kind. The testimony of painters I mean their painted testimony-is still more untrustworthy, for the traveller will fearlessly tell you how anything seemed to him, but the painter will be preoccupied with ideas outside of any witnessing to the truth of Nature. He will probably give the water the hue that "does best" with the other parts of his picture; and if he is tempted to paint what he has really seen in Nature, he has the haunting fear that it may offend his public and make his work unsalable. This im- pediment is the more to be regretted that painters ought to be Lake suRFACES. 243 our most valuable witnesses, as they cultivate the color-sense to a degree of refinement entirely unknown in other occupations. A distinction may, however, be established between studies and pictures. The studies that an artist makes for himself, without any view to sale, are often quite reliable so far as his color-sense may be relied upon. It would be a great convenience to believe, as some critics appear to do, in the absolute perfection of one's own color- sense and the imperfection of the sense in others. This is a matter on which it is not easy to obtain any positive data, except in cases where the defect is so obvious as to amount to color-blindness. Even eminent painters can hardly be infallible judges, as they always color differently from each other; and they would generally be tempted, by their love for a beautiful result, to prefer coloring which was harmonious to that which was strictly true. In what I may say about the coloring of water surfaces (a very important part of the subject) the reader will please understand, in a general way (to spare the need of repetition), that I do not rely with any absolute faith either on my own sight or on that of others, but believe, on the contrary, that there is a peculiarity of idiosyncrasy in every case which makes coloring always a per- sonal matter. It is, indeed, nothing but a sensation to which attention is consciously directed; and when we say that an artist colors truly, what we mean is, that his coloring produces in us sensations like those we receive from Nature. Nobody goes a step farther to inquire whether his eyes have reported Nature to him accurately. A friend said to me the other evening, "How blue the hills look!" They did not seem blue to me, but a warm gray, in which blue existed along with other colors. It is therefore probable that we should have painted them differently, while it is certain that we should not have de- scribed them in the same terms. Yet both of us were right, as each gave an honest account of his own sensations, and color is in each man's optic nerves and brain. Outside of a seeing organism there is no natural standard of color that can be referred to. Maury, in his description of the Gulf Stream, enters into the question of its color, telling us that the waters of it, as far out from the Gulf as the Carolina coasts, are of an indigo blue, and "so distinctly marked that their line of junction with the 244 LANDSCAPE. common sea water may be traced by the eye." Here, then, is local color of a very decided kind, and Maury accounts for it by a reference to the salt-works in France and on the shores of the Adriatic, where the salt is got in crystals by evaporation. "The longer it is exposed to evaporation the salter it grows, and the deeper is the hue of its blue until crystallization is about to commence, when the now deep-blue water puts on a reddish tint. Now the waters of the Gulf Stream are salter than the waters of the sea through which they flow, and hence we can account for the deep indigo blue which all navigators observe off the Carolina coasts." The same writer goes on to speak of several varieties of color in the ocean, of the “light green of the North Sea and other polar waters, also of the dark blue of the trade-wind regions, and especially of the Indian Ocean, which poets have described as the 'black waters.' """ This is interesting, but what of the blue that we believe our- selves to see in fresh water? Remembering my own sensations of color with regard to the waters of the Rhone and of Lake Leman, I go to De Saussure for confirmation or the contrary, and the more willingly to him because he simply noted what he saw without any view either to literary or pictorial art. In his first volume (par. 8) he says that the Rhone issues brilliant and pure from the lake where it has left its deposit, and comes with its waters limpides et azurées to pass through the town of Geneva. In the fifteenth paragraph he speaks of ses eaux bleues et pures, and in the thirty-fifth chapter he recurs to the subject when at Tarascon, and observes there the striking contrast between the yellow and troubled waters of the Provençal Rhone and the sapphire dont elles ont la couleur en sortant de notre lac. I find that Dr. Macculloch refers to the color of the Rhone at Geneva in connection with that of the streams in Arran. The Rhone color he calls blue, and mentions it as a “remarkable instance," an exception; " and he says, "It remains to be ex- plained why there are such exceptions as that of the Rhone, why any water is blue, or why it should possess two distinct colors in different situations; these, it is scarcely necessary to say, being quite independent of reflection from the sky." Mr. Ruskin wrote a description of it at Geneva from Nature, and noted its "general hue of aquamarine green," the reflection of a boat being cast in a transparent pea-green, "considerably darker than the pale aquamarine of the surface at the spot." 66 LAKE SURFACES. 245 He says also that "the surrounding water takes a lightish blue reflection from the sky." " 1 The difficulty in these cases (as in Professor Colvin's " sapphire wine," of the Saronic Gulf) is to be quite sure how much of the sapphire has dropped down from heaven and how much is real local color. I believe that the Rhone water in the Lake of Geneva is green, but of a green so naturally inclining to blue, that blue reflections of various degrees make it pass from aqua- marine to azure with great facility; and in this way we get a de- lightful variety of most harmonious transitions, the local color of the water not being hostile to the reflections, but friendly to them, and ready to welcome them, and play with them in the pleasant- est way.2 Dr. Macculloch's account of the deeper pools in the streams of Arran is that “with a depth of ten or twelve feet the color is a strong sea-green, and it is sensible even with two or three. It resembles the color of the sea most exactly, and is quite equal to it in intensity." The strongest green (considering the depth) that I remember to have observed in fresh water was in the Gardon which flows under the Roman aqueduct called the Pont du Gard. I have seen many green rivers and lakes, but if memory serves me well their greens were often dissimilar. It may be affirmed that the natural color of fresh water is green; but so long as the quality and shade of it cannot be determined, so long as there are differences so marked as that between the Saône and the Rhone, it is difficult to affirm positively what the natural color of fresh water may be. All that can be said is that it is green of some kind, the causes of the observed differences being as yet unknown 1 Mr. Ruskin is a better witness than Byron, on account of his studies in paint- ing. Byron says in a note to the verse "By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone." "" 'The color of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I have never seen equalled in water, salt or fresh, except in the Mediterranean and Archipelago." Childe Harold, canto iii. 61. 2 With regard to the local color of the Rhone the following note may be of some value. I observed lately with great care the color of the Saône from Mâcon to Lyons under very favorable circumstances, as the river was more than usually clear. The color was a fine rich green, not inclining to blue except in reflections. With this hue quite fresh in my memory, I went to see the color of the Rhone at the bridge of La Guillotière, and found its water of quite a different green, with a far greater predominance of blue, and much resembling an etching-bath moderately charged with copper when a plate has been bitten. - 246 LANDSCAPE. to us. We have seen that blueness in sea water is accounted for by the presence of more salt.¹ The effect of diversity of local color upon the character of lakes is of the utmost importance. It is difficult for peat-stained waters to have that brightness and gayety that belong to a Swiss lake; but, on the other hand, what they lose in gayety they gain in solemnity, and I know of nothing in green water, even under the darkest skies, that can be compared with the gloom of a peat loch when Nature has put on mourning. It is so dark, so depressing, so completely and unutterably dismal, that it seems as if it belonged to the dreariest regions of Erebus. It is im- possible on the shores of those black waters, in which the bottom immediately becomes invisible, to believe that in the same world. the limpid pale-green wavelets are glittering on other lakes whose white pebbles and silvery fishes gleam far down in their transparent bays. Peat water, on the contrary, is often beautiful in rock-basins, like those of some Highland stream from four to ten feet deep, when the pebbles show through it in a rich variety of brown, especially in bright sunshine. If green waters have been com- pared to emerald, and blue to sapphire, these pools have natu- rally suggested the cairngorm stone. They have often engaged the attention of modern painters, who are tempted by the beautiful asphaltum-like tones; the difficult and interesting problem being, to give the play of the brown transparence with the reflections from sky and vegetation. It is time now to consider the effects of wind upon lake sur- faces. They differ from that of the sea in being much more protected from the wind, and in receiving it often in a very peculiar manner, dependent upon the forms of the land. This, no doubt, is equally true of salt water that happens to be near mountainous shores, and especially of those marine inlets which, like the Scottish sea-lochs and the Norwegian fiords, are en- closed by hills almost as completely as any fresh-water lakes. Nevertheless, when we compare lake surfaces with sea surfaces, it is understood that the open sea is meant, and also that the lakes are of moderate dimensions so as not to resemble seas. 1 I remember an oil-shale mine in France, a long deep cutting below the level of the surrounding country, and it got flooded suddenly by heavy rains, so that the pumps and galleries were overwhelmed. After the water had cleared itself of sediment it became a rich emerald green. That was the purest rain water. LAKE SURFACES. 247 The reader has often found the substantive "lake" associated with the adjective "calm." Authors compare the sea when tranquil to a mountain lake, and no doubt the comparison is the best that can be made when the lake does happen to be calm, as it has no rippling shallows or swirling whirlpools like a river, but sleeps all of it together when it does sleep, with a wonder- fully perfect somnolence. The assertion has been made that a lake is never absolutely calm, that there is always a delicate stir somewhere upon its sur- face. I have seen all the surface of a lake that came within my range of vision absolutely calm occasionally, but this is rare. What we call a calm morning is a time when the surface is very delicately breathed upon by the lightest airs, first in one place and then in another, the slight effacement of reflection being very rapidly repaired. In perfect calm everything is reflected under certain condi- tions determined by the state of the light and by the local color of the water. This condition of things is seldom given in art, because we like to see that the water-picture is not a mere echo of the reality, but something with a character of its own, and also because the accurate painting of perfect reflection would be just as laborious as that of the things reflected, nay, even more laborious, as it would have to be a close copy with difficult calculated changes. Among Mr. Haden's etchings there is one of the village of Kidwelly, South Wales, which gives almost per- fect calm. Here and there a painter has tried it as an experi- ment or a tour de force. The degree of calm that Turner allowed himself was not absolute but that in which the reflec- tions are elongated, and they are not so at all in absolute calm. Turner required surface on water, which is quite lost when the reflections are perfect; and besides that he worked too rapidly to draw perfect reflections. A Highland lake reflecting accurately the minutest details down to the separate leaf-needles of the Scotch fir and the curled petals of the honeysuckle, and the map of each blotch of gray or golden lichen on the granite rocks of an island, shows in 1 In a book written by Baron Hubner (the well-known diplomatist), giving an account of his travels round the world, there is a large woodcut representing the "Mirror Lake and the Three Brothers." The Brothers are rocky eminences on a precipitous shore, and to justify the name of the lake it is made to reflect quite perfectly. I need not say that every lake or pond does exactly the same when there is absolutely no wind. 248 LANDSCAPE. its stirless bosom a world turned so completely upside down that it is hardly possible to look at it from a resting-boat without a feeling of giddiness. The scene is even more wonderful at night, when all the stars are in their places in the profound abyss, and it seems to you that your boat is hanging in empty space between the northern and the southern constellations. All that hinders the illusion is the circle of hills, but at night they seem low, remote, and insignificant. The most wonderful sight I remember as an effect of calm was the inversion of the comet, called Donati's comet, in the year 1858, during the nights when it was sufficiently near the horizon to approach the rugged outline of Craiganunie and be reflected beneath it in Loch Awe. In the sky was an enormous aigrette of diamond fire, and in the water a second aigrette, scarcely less splendid, with its brilliant point directed upwards and its broad shadowy extremity ending indefinitely in the deep. To be out on the lake alone, in a tiny boat, and let it rest motionless on the glassy water, with that incomparable spectacle before one, was an experience to be remembered through a life- time. I have seen many a glorious sight since that now distant year, but nothing to equal it in the association of solemnity with splendor. Perfect calm on lakes is often associated with mist, and then it may happen that the water is entirely hidden by the mist. If you are upon it the shores are hidden, which gives an idea of vastness not without sublimity. Any fresh-water lake of mod- erate dimensions and without currents may be navigated in a small boat safely and certainly in the densest fog with the aid of a compass, a patent log, and an ordnance map, but you can do nothing without them.1 With these aids one has a fine sense of the vastness of the unseen sheet of water, especially at night. I do not know of any case in which landscape produces such an effect on the mind without being seen. The lake seems in- finite and mysterious, sometimes terribly so, as in an adventure that happened once on the lake of Neuchâtel, when it was entirely frozen in the fearful winter of 1879. A young man living in the town of Neuchâtel went out skating in the evening, when a mist came on, covering the whole lake, which has a 1 This, of course, is written from personal experience. I did what I liked on Loch Awe in night-fogs. Not having an ordnance map in those days, I had made a chart for myself on a large scale. LAKE SURFACES. 249 surface of about a hundred square miles. He had no compass, and skated vainly about in circles all night long, endeavoring to find, first Neuchâtel, then simply land anywhere, but without success. It was a situation to try the strongest nerves. The cold was so fearful that to stop and rest meant certain death, and the search for land so fruitless that it seemed as if the lake was without a shore, and the skater was toiling uselessly on a planet of polished ice enveloped an in atmosphere of cloud.¹ The first effect of a slight disturbance in calm water is to elongate all vertical reflections. An amount of disturbance suf- ficient to effect this may be a slight tremulousness in a lake surface not amounting to any perceptible breeze. The elon- gation of reflections may take place very unequally over an extended area of water. The curious phenomenon of columnar reflections belongs to this state of the surface. The peculiarity is, that although the things reflected may have very irregular sides, they are all re- flected as if they had straight and vertical sides, while the reflec- tion is very much prolonged. The water seems to take no note of irregularities. A cloud with the most irregularly rounded and broken outline will be reflected almost as if it were a square white sheet; a bright opening in an evening sky, definitely out- lined and ending in a narrow point of light, will cast a broad band upon the water. I now approach some phenomena of reflection which, al- though more complex, are still very common on all sheets of water of any considerable extent; but before writing about them I desire to say a few words about that remarkable faculty by which we are able to pass without notice what is before our eyes. The power of not seeing is developed to a surprising degree in the inhabitants of great capitals, and a most desirable and even necessary power it is, for it spares them much cerebral fatigue. You go to London or Paris from the country, observe everything, and are wearied; but a constant resident sees only what he wishes to see, and spares his eyes and brain. A friend who has good taste in buildings tells me that he is able not to see the ugly houses in London. In the manufacturing districts 1 The young man did land on the opposite shore ultimately, after skating the whole night. He was tired almost to exhaustion, but being of a vigorous constitu- tion, soon recovered. 250 LANDSCAPE. • the permanent residents are able not to see the dirt that offends a stranger. After these examples,' the reader is prepared to hear that, with the exception of a very few studious observers, people do not see the phenomena of water. I remember the intense feel- ing of discouragement with which I first became clearly aware of this. A few more or less distinguished artists had visited me at Loch Awe, and found me studying these phenomena and trying hard to paint them. They said, "It is of no use, because however well you paint them nobody but a painter will under- stand them." This was said even of the simplest and com- monest appearances, such as the interruption of a reflection by a well-defined breeze. As for the rarer and more beautiful phenomena, some of which I now intend to describe, I was earnestly cautioned to avoid them and stick to the most com- monplace appearances that could be found. Hard advice to follow in a land of enchantment like the West Highlands, where Nature herself is in perpetual rebellion against the common- place! If I venture to write about them here, it is because the pen is a good combative instrument, a real weapon, which the brush is not. If, instead of writing on geology, Lyell had painted the earth with unacceptable veracity, he would have been laughed at and relegated to obscurity. You have first the perfectly polished calm surface that reflects brilliantly without elongation. Then you have this surface just dulled by a breathing of air so delicate that it can scarcely be recognized as a breeze even of the lightest. Now this dulled surface will not reflect an object as to its form, but it will take a tint by reflection, generally from the sky, and it will come. across the perfectly smooth water with a hard edge exactly like local ice, and that edge will often take bright color from some portion of the sky which is not disseminated over the rest of the dulled surface. I have before me a memorandum from Nature of an evening effect in which the dulled surface has a sharp edge against the reflecting part of the water; and though it is gen- erally of a pale ashen gray, the edge of it is bordered by a thin 1 Much more striking examples might easily be found. I have met with able and intelligent Frenchmen who stoutly affirmed that capital letters were never accented in their language. I referred them to the books in their own libraries, when, to their astonishment, they perceived the accents for the first time. The explanation is, that it is not the custom to accent capital letters in manuscript. LAKE SURFACES. 251 line of yellow from a yellow opening in the sky. Those parts of the reflected image which are severed from the rest by the space of dulled water are just what they would be if all were connected by the parts now hidden and obliterated. Now it frequently happens that the whole of a lake surface is dulled except a small space, which for some inexplicable reason the light air fails to touch, and then, of course, we have the curious phenomenon of an isolated calm. If the reader will imagine a sheet of looking-glass inserted in an immense floor of aluminium, he will have in his mind an image of the natural thing as near to the truth as it can well be made in terms of artificial things. The aluminium is rather too equal in tint to represent the dulled water, and the mirror too regular in outline for the isolated calm. In Nature, these isolated calms take an immense variety of shapes, so that after studying very many of them I arrived at the conclusion that almost any shape was possible for them except a mathematically regular shape, such as a square, a lozenge, or a circle. They were often elongated by perspective, and often presented the most curiously fanciful outlines with little bays and inlets of their own, as if they had been miniature lakes. Sometimes they were merely round basins of dark water appearing in the dis- tance like very well-defined spots. I need scarcely say that isolated calms, if repeated in art, are a great cause of offence to the unobservant, as it is not by any means easy to account for them in Nature itself. Of course the truth must be that the light air which dulls the rest of the surface does not touch those calms; but why does it respect those particular places, and for so long together? It must rise over them and leave a little dome of perfectly still air immediately above them. An isolated calm which, from its position, happens to reflect some portion of a dark mountain, will itself be apparently much darker than what it reflects, for two reasons. First, the reflec- tion is usually darker than the thing reflected, but in this case the darkness is still farther increased by the powerful contrast with the dulled surface, usually much lighter. If the reflection occurs in peat water, the three causes combined will sometimes make an isolated calm look perfectly black, as if it were a pool of ink in the middle of the lake, with edges as sharply defined as the dark blue of the Gulf Stream. Isolated calms often take the form of what in a garden we • 252 LANDSCAPE. should call walks or alleys. They look like tranquil canals in the midst of more or less disturbed water. You may choose such a canal and row along it intentionally when the water at oar's length to right and left is all dulled or positively rippled. The edges of the canal will be as sharp as if there were land on each side of it. The extreme capriciousness of breezes makes it most difficult to give any fixed laws about their outlines; but in course of time. we become sufficiently familiar with their character to have a sense of what sort of outline is natural, and then we are likely to draw something that will appear strange, eccentric, and unac- countable. A lake surface is a vast sheet on which the breezes register their presence as soon as they come into existence; but of all records this is the least permanent, for the water is no sooner left to itself than it recovers its own perfection, and the dead breezes leave no history. After long familiarity one comes to think of them as separate aerial, almost spiritual, existences coming down from the sky, where they are invisible, to make their presence visible on the lake. The water surface teaches us new and strange truths about these aerial beings: first, that they disport themselves in companies, often going in the most various directions, next, that they dive down from above, skim along the water for a little distance, and rise up again suddenly, like swallows. Sometimes I have imagined them like great gyrating wheels of air, that touch the water only with a part of their circumference; but no comparison answers exactly to their strange nature. They often touch the water quite delicately at first, then ruffle it into a ripple, and leave it suddenly and abruptly, the succeeding current of air doing exactly the same thing in the same place for rather a considerable time, and making a sort of drawing upon the water of a very definite character. The wonder is, not that a gust should strike the water, but that a light breath of air should be succeeded by a steady current just in its own direction, long enough to give a decided shape to the markings. There is every gradation in the strength of wind, from the breath that simply dulls the surface to the hurricane that carries off the crests of its waves in a cloud of flying spray ; but it is the faint breezes which offer the greatest variety of appearance. Different degrees of strength in these light airs produce quite LAKE SURFACES. 253 different colors with the same surroundings, which, I believe, is due to the different angles and slopes of the minute waves, causing them to reflect different parts of the sky or shore; but this part of the subject is as yet, scientifically speaking, obscure. If I had to account for everything I see, I should be particularly embarrassed by the very faintest airs of all, which produce a dulness not amounting to ripple, and are then frequently crossed by ripples of various degrees of strength and differences of color. It seems as if a zephyr were itself traversed and interpenetrated by a somewhat stronger breeze, as in architec- ture a moulding is sometimes supposed to force its way through others. Imagine a crowd moving slowly in one direction, and a small body of men traversing the crowd in another, you have a rude image of the interpenetration of breezes. In Nature, it occurs in the most complicated, the most various, the most unexpected ways. Sudden squalls are nothing but these local airs endowed with greater force. It is well known that on mountain lakes they often occur with dangerous violence.¹ I have had the most ample experience of them, and know their ways as well as most fresh-water sailors, which has not prevented me from getting caught occasionally, even as the inexperienced. Mr. Dixon Kemp says of Windermere, "Very heavy squalls are frequent, and they come down from the mountains without warning and with great fury." This is well known to be the great danger of lake sailing in all mountainous countries. I have twice seen every scrap of sailing-gear cleared away by a squall as if with a hatchet, and should probably not have been writing this page if the boat had not been a life-boat. You have a sheet of smooth water between you and the foot of the mountain whence the squall is to come. There is not the slightest apparent reason 1 And not only on lakes but on all narrow seas hemmed in by mountains, to the constant anxiety of sailors when they get into such places. The following de- scription, by Sir Samuel Baker, of Lord Dufferin as a boat-sailor ("Nineteenth Century," July, 1884,) refers to the squalls of the Bosphorus: " His tiny craft is well known upon the Bosphorous, in which, without the help of any individual, he trusts himself in boisterous weather to the dangerous waters of the Straits; it is his delight to challenge the rough eddies, and, unaided, to wrestle with the blasts that suddenly burst from the mountains and keep the sailor ever on the alert. That is his own boat, and he is skilled in the management of the helm and sails; he can ease off the sheet to a fair breeze, or bring her sharp up to a coming squall, or let all fly in case of absolute necessity; but should a solitary and inexperienced stranger be the unfortunate occupant of this handy cockle-shell, Found drowned' would be the verdict upon his body." 254 LANDSCAPE. to anticipate danger, when, with a suddenness like the swoop of a falcon, and an invisible falcon, a gust comes straight down from the hills and slaps the water just where you happen to be. The lake has not time to rise in great waves, but it is made rough for the moment, and there is more of the reality than the appearance of peril. A mile off it looks nothing but a touch of wind, in the middle of it the boat-sailor has need of all his nerve. When a steady wind is blowing from the land, but the land is high, the result for those on shore is an appearance of tran- quillity that is dangerously deceptive, for they do not realize the size of the distant waves, taking them for a mere ripple, and feeling a great sense of security on account of the smooth water that lies near them. This seems like an allegory of safely shel- tered youth looking out in disdainful confidence on the perilous sea of manhood. A steady breeze blowing over the whole surface of a lake, up it or down, is less favorable than any other condition of wind and water to the production of picturesque effects. The beau- tiful varieties of island, promontory, and mountain are no longer reflected, and instead of them we have a monotonous expanse of waves. Such an expanse is particularly monotonous when the sky is either entirely clear or entirely clouded. It is more varied by the accidents of sun and shower, as the sunshine may glisten on the waves in streaks or paths of splendor, and a shower may divide the surface by making one part of it appear much paler than the rest. There are effects of monotony that painters are careful to avoid on account of the narrow criticism which condemns every- thing in their art that does not pamper the sensual appetites of the eye; but these are not forbidden in literature, so I may describe an effect which I have often seen, and which seems to me the dreariest that Nature ever produces. Imagine a vast lake basin surrounded by wintry hills, with the snow on all their summits and far down in all their ravines, the visible land all purple-gray and russet down to the water's edge. The sky is one vault of gloomy cloud fissured with gray waves and bars, but not showing one glimpse of blue. The whole of the lake is in small waves, thousands and thousands of them ris- ing and falling with the most perfect sameness, to break at last with a melancholy repetition on a bleak and stony shore. Not LAKE SURFACES. 255 one reflection varies the vast expanse, there is not a sign of life upon it anywhere; no boat crosses it, no bird swims upon it; only now and then a sea-gull flies over it with a desolate cry, and the lake grows darker and darker, from a dull lead-color to mere deadness of gloom without a tint, till land and water lose themselves together in blackness of starless night. And even then the unseen waves come moaning to the invisible beach. There is nothing, that I know, quite so dreary as that; and if you go down into the causes of it you will find that the waves do much to produce the dreariness, by the monotony of their multitudes, by their destruction of reflection, and by the in- creased feeling of wearisome extent of surface which they com- municate to the mind. In storms, the effect of them is very different. They do not produce melancholy then, but strong excitement, arousing us to energy in sympathy with their own. A lake-storm, however, is not one of the best examples of the art of Nature, since instead of producing an appalling effect with small means, it produces an effect inferior to the reality of the danger. In the ocean the waves may be very grand without being very dangerous, but a lake- tempest may be terrible when the waves are small and short. The wind is equally strong on both, and more capricious on enclosed waters. I have been out with my boat in lake-storms of great violence, but always found the danger to be rather from the wind than the water. The waves are very steep-sided, and break soon, and the tops of them are readily carried off in spray; still, you may drive a decked boat through them if you are not afraid of a wetting; but the wind is irreconcilable, and one is often fain to get into the lee of an island and wait for some diminution of its fury. There one enjoys rest and safety as in “the whirlwind's heart of peace," while the storm tears through the branches above us and the boat heaves on the swell, which is all that comes to us of the wild tumult of the waters. : 256 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXV. LAKE SCENERY IN PAINTING. THE HE word "scenery" is very well applied to landscape in lake districts. It is, indeed, strictly It is, indeed, strictly "scenery," and therefore, perhaps, not quite so well adapted as less scenic material to the purposes of the landscape-painter. There is a very general conviction among artists that lake districts are perilous regions for their art; and although several distinguished literary men have delighted in them, and lived among them, you seldom find a famous landscape-painter who has devoted himself to the illustration of their beauty. One of my friends, who had never before visited the English Lake District, wrote to me from there and expressed his belief that the objection to scenery of that kind, which is so common among painters, was nothing but a fashion. It seemed to him so beautiful in Nature as to be necessarily good material for art. For many years I had the same belief, having a passionate de- light in lakes; indeed, it still seems to me that a really beautiful lake, not too big, and with mountains, bays, promontories, and islands, is, in its variety and unity, the masterpiece of natural arrangement in landscape. Still, it can hardly be the effect of a mere fashion that keeps distinguished landscape-painters so much away from lakes. În In the public art-galleries of Europe, among the works of the old masters, are there any pictures of lake scenery? In the National Gallery we have the little picture by Cuyp, representing a ruined castle on an island in a lake; and that, so far as I now remember, is the only decided piece of lake scenery by an old master that we possess. I have no recollection of any real lake scenery in the Louvre; there may be a few ponds in dull and common- place country, but there is nothing to recall the beauty of Como or the sublimity of Lucerne. Far from having any passionate LAKE SCENERY IN PAINTING. 257 love and admiration for the beautiful or magnificent lakes of Europe, the old masters, if we may judge by their pictures and drawings, appear to have regarded them with absolute indiffer- ence, as material unsuited to their art. There is a change, no doubt, in modern times. The increased interest in Nature gen- erally, the advent of geological science, the modern habit of travelling for pleasure, the practice of sketching in water-color, have led to a general investigation of landscape Nature from which lake districts have not been omitted; and in Great Britain a special attention has been directed to Loch Katrine by Sir Walter Scott, and to Windermere and its neighborhood by Wordsworth. There has even arisen a certain steady manufac- ture of lake scenes for the picture market; but if the reader takes the trouble to think over a list of the most famous modern land- scape-painters, he will be surprised to find what an exceedingly small proportion of their energy has been devoted to lake scenery. It is true that Turner had an affection for Lucerne, and made many sketches there but lake scenery occupies a very small place in the immensity of his production. In the Turner Gallery we find one Italian lake, but in a completely ideal picture (the "Golden Bough"); of English lakes we have a small and very early picture, “Buttermere with part of Cromack Water; and this exhausts the list, except that there is another early little picture connected with the Lake Avernus by its subject. Of the Swiss lakes we have not one, of Scottish lochs not one, of Como, Garda, Maggiore, Lugano, not a hint. Anything rather than lakes! A Sand-bank with Gypsies, a view of Clapham Com- mon, the Field of Waterloo, Hannibal Crossing the Alps, the Deluge, the Tenth Plague of Egypt, anything rather than lakes! In the collection of studies and drawings there is just enough lake scenery to show that Turner did not exclude it from his conception of the Universe. "" There is always a reason for the preferences of an artist, and in this case the reason is precisely because Turner was so much of an artist that he did not get carried away by the passion for natural landscape. There is a striking difference between him and Wordsworth in this respect. Turner's affection for Nature was of such a kind that he could easily live away from it, and he never sacrificed art to Nature; Wordsworth loved Nature so → passionately that town life would have been hard for him; and he often injured his writing, artistically, by making his descriptions 17 258 LANDSCAPE. too long, or too minutely faithful. The hold that Nature had upon the two idiosyncrasies was of a very different character. She possessed Wordsworth: she supplied materials to Turner. Since he always kept his artistic independence, and since he educated himself by the constant study of art, Turner was in no danger of falling into those traps that Nature appears to set for the unwary. He perceived the artistic dangers and difficulties of lake scenery. Like Turner, Constable attempted this class of subject early in his career, but soon abandoned it forever. Leslie says of him that in the year 1806 "he spent about two months among the English lakes and mountains, where he made a great number of sketches, of a large size, on tinted paper, sometimes in black and white, but more often colored. They abound in grand and solemn effects of light, shade, and color; but from these studies he never painted any considerable picture, for his mind was formed for the enjoyment of a different class of landscape." I am not aware that Linnell ever painted lake scenery. Samuel Palmer went several times to Wales, but never, I believe, to the lakes of the north; and the catalogues of his works that accompany his biography do not contain the name of a single lake, though the artist had travelled in Italy. This is the more remarkable, that he was by no means narrow in the choice of subjects for study, but would sketch hills, plains, rivers, cities, and the bays of the Mediterranean with much breadth of obser- vation and openness of mind. In recent times a young painter rose to fame in landscape before his premature death; but although Cecil Lawson had no doubt ability enough to grapple with the difficulties of lake scenery, he kept to an easier class of subjects. Among Frenchmen I do not remember a single notable artist who has been a painter of lake scenery. Claude often introduced a quiet pond, as in the etching called "La Danse au Bord de l'Eau," a small, artificial-looking sheet of water; or as in the composition entitled "Egérie pleurant la mort de Numa," but he generally took great care to have a foreground of earth, and to let the water occupy only a small space in the canvas, bringing masses of trees across it, or buildings, that it might be simply refreshing and not predominant. There is no evidence that he cared in the least for the manifestations of natural power in lake scenery. His ponds give simple LAKE SCENERY IN PAINTING. 259 reflections, and that is all; they show no special study of water surfaces. Among modern Frenchmen, Claude naturally suggests Corot, who had a real affinity with him. Corot dearly loved a small pond to be introduced in part of his picture, but, like his prede- cessor, he took care to keep the water very strictly subordi- nate. In some instances he went so far as to give a lacustrine title to a picture. A well-known work by him is called "Le Lac,” and it is interesting to see with how much art he has re- duced the water-surface to be actually painted, while giving the idea of a considerable extent. We are near a little creek, to the right and left of which are banks with trees, and two cows stand in silhouette against the water. The horizon is low, and the opposite shore of the lake is not elevated, while it contains hardly any detail. In Corot's mural painting of the “Lac de Némi," the same plan is carried still farther. We have the little creek in the foreground, but this time it is bordered by steep rocky sides with trees, and between these we catch a glimpse across the lake, with just enough of the shore beyond to let us know that it is mountainous.¹ The sort of lake that really suited Corot was a pond like that at Ville d'Avray. Daubigny's taste and experience alike led him to paint water in rivers. Theodore Rousseau, on the other hand, loved little marshy pools, and these were, I believe, the only lakes he cared about. There are several such in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where they serve to reflect a gray rock or a gnarled and an- cient oak. Diaz appears to have had the same taste. A little pool in a wood was enough for him. All these cases are those of men who really and truly loved landscape with the passionate landscape instinct. There may be differences of opinion about their success as artists, there can be none as to their love of Nature.2 Outside of this class may be found very distinguished artists, men of great imaginative gifts, who are indifferent to lakes sim- ply as a part of a general indifference to landscape. This seems to have been the case with Rossetti. His friend Mr. Caine tells 1 In this composition the water-surface occupies one fourteenth of the painted area. 2 One of the most distinguished living French landscape-painters, Hanoteau, loves Nature quite as much as Constable did, and studies out of doors as much as any landscape painter, but he has never painted a lake. There is a pond near his country house, and he has often painted that. 260 F LANDSCAPE. *** us that he " was no great lover of landscape beauty," and that he was never at any moment sensible that the scenery about Thirlmere and the vale of St. John affected Rossetti when he stayed there; "assuredly they never agitated him, and no ef- fort did he make to turn them to account for the purposes of the romantic ballad he had spoken of as likely to grow amid such surroundings." Wordsworth's passion for the Lake District and Rossetti's indifference to it are due to idiosyncrasy, and are not properly subjects for praise or blame. I have more than one friend of great culture and ability, and of delicate feeling too, who cares little for landscape, and has no special interest in lakes. Among painters heartily devoted to landscape the objections to lake scenery may, I believe, always be traced ultimately to this, that it is not easy to deal with, is not readily made pic- torially available. For this there are two reasons. The mate- rial presented by lakes is of a very difficult kind. We have seen how careful such artists as Claude and Corot have been to avoid large water-surfaces in their pictures, but a great lake cannot be dealt with like a pond or a puddle. A large water- surface is always a difficult thing to paint, and generally un- satisfactory when painted. The distances in the grander lake scenery are always composed of mountains; and these, again, are very difficult and very unrewarding, as great labor and great knowledge may result in what the public feel to be a piece of dry study, interesting only to geologists. The discouragement produced by these difficulties is increased by the consciousness that a landscape-painter can win little credit by overcoming them; as all landscape-painting is reputed, like the Italian lan- guage, to be a delightfully easy accomplishment. Painters find lake scenery not only difficult to copy but awk- ward to compose. You may stand on one shore of a long lake and see the mountains opposite, in which case you have four bands across your picture, the beach, the broad water, the dis- tant range of mountains, and the sky, exactly as in Mr. Hunt's study of the Dead Sea in the "Scape-goat," a study full of the rarest truth, but not a composition. Or again, you may give one of those lake views which succeed each other endlessly as you go up or down a lake. Thousands of such views are com- posed of an advancing piece of land on one side and another of less importance nearly opposite as side scenes or repoussoirs. LAKE SCENERY IN PAINTING. 261 Between the two you see a distant mountain, and there is perhaps an island or a promontory in the middle distance. In Nature we never tire of this arrangement, because the forms are infinitely varied and the things are beautiful in themselves. It is, in fact, like the arrangement of a theatrical stage before the actors come on. The sides scenes represent the masses of land on each side (usually surmounted with trees) and the end scene fills the same office as the mountain and the sky. The bare boards of the stage are like the level water. In theatrical enter- tainments the actors attract so much attention, even when they are few, even when two of them hold a conversation or one pro- nounces a monologue, that the tiresomeness of the boards is not felt by the spectators; and in a natural lake the beauty of the water, and especially its marvellous changefulness, prevent us from thinking that there is too much of it, but in art we very soon have too much of it. In marine subjects, shipping is employed to give composition to aquatic scenes; unfortunately there is very little shipping on lakes of moderate dimension: and if there were, the strong character of the precipitous shores would make it difficult to compose them well with masts and sails, so as to get a satisfying unity. The sailing-vessels on the flat-shored Dutch lakes and on the Norfolk Broads may be happily composed with shore objects of scarcely more importance than themselves. I should say, then, that the chief reasons why lake scenery is usually avoided by eminent painters are because there is a cer- tain sameness in the natural composition, and because a large sheet of water is in itself less interesting in art than in Nature, and also because there is a peculiar difficulty in arranging the material artistically; it does not seem sufficiently loose and movable, if I may say so, or sufficiently plastic, to be arranged with the freedom which landscape-painters like, and which they use without hesitation in dealing with trees, cottages, cattle, rus- tic figures, and shipping. In a word, lake scenery is found to be unmanageable. This is one of those curious results of experience which force the conviction upon our minds that Nature and Art, though ap- parently so closely connected, are two different realms. Some artists acquire a way of estimating things so strictly professional that they come to despise what is not available for their own purposes in Nature. This seems a strange and an undesirable result of the professional habit of mind. Nature Nature is grand and • • • 262 LANDSCAPE. delightful in herself, and it matters little whether her noblest scenery can be made up into salable canvases or not. Faith- fully drawn it may look awkward, faithfully colored it may look strange and perhaps outrageous; but let us ever remember that the glory of such scenery is completely independent of human imitative art. For unnumbered ages Loch Awe and Loch Lo- mond did without that "little human praise" which comes in the shape of a sketcher's summer toil; and while the great artists of the Italian Renaissance were drawing and dissecting the hu- man body, the "green chestnut and gray olive" glassed them- selves in the waters of Como, and the snows of the unheeded Alps dashed the dark-blue waves of Maggiore. RIVULETS. 263 CHAPTER XXVI. RIVULETS. A DROP of water runs down a pane of glass, but in what seems a capricious and irregular manner, as it keeps the form of a bag (in shape somewhat like a ripe fig) until it meets with a wet channel left by another drop that has descended be- fore; then the bag seems to burst and the water slips down the way prepared for it with magical rapidity. Professor Clifford used to maintain that every drop actually had a small bag of its own; but without pretending to understand really how a drop is made, one cannot help wondering what becomes of the bags, which always vanish at the same time with the water that they contained. The force of gravitation that pulls down the drop of water on the window-pane is Nature's great sculptor of the earth; the water that she draws along (whether in liquid form as in a river, or in solid form as in a glacier) being one of her most powerful engines, at the same time excavator and remover of excavated materials, itself lifted up by solar heat, and never going down again to the ocean without performing some labor by the way. On the window-pane nothing seems to be done by the water- drop except the removal of a little dust; for the glass is very hard, and will be broken before Nature has had time to wear it away. In dealing with her own materials she is more at ease, and can take her own time. If they are soft materials the water makes its channel rapidly, if they are hard it takes longer; but even popular observation has noted the fact that water falling drop by drop will ultimately wear away a stone. A few drops meeting together, and steadily replaced by others, are the beginning of a runnel, or tiniest of rivulets. It soon makes a way for itself in sand, and if the incline is steep it will 264 LANDSCAPE. carry millions of sand-grains downwards in its own body, and do a wonderful amount of excavating work in miniature. It is still, however, but a very small affair, where a minnow would be almost as ill at ease as a whale in a canal; and the only human industry connected with it so far is a child's toy water-mill that it turns with unflagging perseverance at the rate of a hundred revolutions a minute. Great numbers of temporary runnels are made afresh during every thunderstorm, and after a sudden, very abundant down- pour, a broad, gravelled carriage-drive in a garden may present a complete river-system in miniature, with channels very like the broad and capricious stony channel of the Durance. One of the best opportunities for studying the action of small runnels is afforded by a smooth sandy beach when the sea retires and a little rivulet, fed by some spring upon the shore, has to work its way to the ebbing salt water across the intervening tabula rasa. It cuts for itself a fresh little path, undermines its tiny banks of sand, is turned aside by a pebble, as the Tagus is turned by the granite rock of Toledo, spreads itself in divided streamlets, as the Rhone makes many rivers about its islands, and finishes in a delta that will be demolished by the next tide. If in hilly countries you take the trouble to trace a rivulet to its source (one of the most interesting of all pretexts for a walk), you generally arrive at an unsatisfactory sort of green boggy place, where the land is soaked by a spring, and you cannot get to any clear and definite fount, the only sure result being wet feet. The exact character of such places has been described with graphic accuracy by Mr. Archibald Geikie : "Beginning at the hill-tops, we first meet with the spring or 'well-eye,' from which the river takes its rise. A patch of bright green mottling the brown heathy slope shows where the water comes to the surface, a treacherous covering of verdure often con- cealing a deep pool beneath. From this source the rivulet trickles along the grass and heath, which it soon cuts through, reaching the black, peaty layer below, and running in it for a short way as in a gutter. Excavating its channel in the peat, it comes down to the soil, often a stony earth bleached white by the peat. Deepening and widening the channel as it gathers force with the increasing slope, the water digs into the coating of drift or loose decomposed rock that covers the hillside. In favorable localities a narrow, pre- cipitous gully, twenty or thirty feet deep, may thus be scooped out in the course of a few years.' "" RIVULETS. 265 Mr. Geikie notices the unintentional beginning of such gullies by human agency. Sheep-drains may be "incautiously made on steep slopes." The drains, originally cut, perhaps, merely in the peat, have become the channels of torrents during a rainy season. They have thus been torn up and turned into long yawning chasms which every winter digs deeper into the side of the hill. The lovers of analogies have a fine opportu- nity here. Man begins a little work, believing that he is cutting a small drain, but Nature sends more water into it than he ever bargained for, and converts it into a "yawning chasm." So we begin small enterprises that are to be kept, as we fancy, under the strictest control, but forces outside of us enlarge them, and we are astonished, after a few years, by the large un- foreseen consequences of our apparently insignificant decisions. There is not a country in the world whose history is so rich in great unforeseen consequences as that of England. Mountain rivulets are remarkable for the great differences in the volume of water that they deliver. Every one who has lived near a Highland mountain will remember the white lines of watercourses that appear quite suddenly on the slopes of it after a great black rain-cloud has discharged its contents on the crest. Nothing gives one a more impressive idea of the quantity of water that must be carried in such a cloud, than the sudden activity and strength of the hundred rills that it sets in motion. Very many of these are mere rain-channels, with no springs to feed them; but they have been gradually deepened by innumera- ble rain-storms in the past, so that the course the water must follow is settled for it beforehand. The filling of these rain- channels by sudden storm has been effectually introduced by Tennyson in "Lucretius": "Storm in the night! for thrice I heard the rain Rushing; and once the flash of a thunderbolt Methought I never saw so fierce a fork Struck out the streaming mountain-side and show'd A riotous confluence of watercourses Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it, Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry." M You have only to suppose this "confluence of watercourses,' to have the making of what Wordsworth called the "loud streams," the brooks that plunge in waterfalls audible at a distance. "" 266 LANDSCAPE. When we ascend a mountain in dry weather it seems incredi- ble that the trickling rills can ever have accomplished the work that geologists attribute to them, but this becomes more intelli- gible in times of flood. They are the sculptors of the ravines, first by undermining and causing falls of rock, and then by wearing and carrying it away in the form of sand, the sand again being a means of increased friction. The waterfalls, too, are continually receding, and so digging out ravines by a back- ward action. "The process," says Mr. Archibald Geikie, "is indeed an infinitely slow one. During a short visit we of course cannot see any change actually accomplished, nor even if we were to return after the lapse of a generation might we be able to detect any appreciable difference. But each successive stage in the progress of the waste is illustrated before us; and the evidence is not less convincing than if we could follow the his- tory of each block of stone from the time when, loosened by springs or frosts, it fell from the cliff into the stream, down to the time when, after a long rubbing and grinding on the rocks of the watercourse, it is at last reduced to mere sand.' Small rivulets appear to have attracted the attention of poets more than that of painters, as the scenery of them is on rather too petty a scale for landscape art, beyond studies of minute foreground detail; whereas poets are ready enough to mention them for their power to quench thirst, and also for their refresh- ing sound. They like to conduct them into gardens, and to tell us how the miniature stream, always flowing limpid and cool in the very hottest weather, was caught and led in a channel of white marble to a marble basin and thence fell in a little cas- cade and glided away into the wood. Every one who has a garden knows the infinite value of a clear rivulet. As rivulets make brooks and rivers by joining together, so by a converse process a stream may be divided into rills for pur- poses of cleanliness or irrigation. The effect of the tiniest arti- ficial watercourse in a meadow, during a season that would be dry without it, strikes the eye of every one by the freshness of the green that springs everywhere from its overflowing and gladdens the heart of the farmer. In French towns where water is abundant and the streets not too level, it is often made to flow along them by the curbstones or in the middle of the pavement. Sometimes it is clear and sparkling as well as rapid, and then looks as if it were the mountain rill visiting the city RIVULETS. 267 for its pleasure, but sometimes it is foul with black refuse that it can hardly clear away, and at other times after a great down- pour it rushes swollen and furious, a brown torrent laden with all manner of rubbish, down to the increasing river. Such is the rivulet tamed to the service of man; and, there is this to be said in its favor, that the sacrifice of its beauty is the sign of its greater, usefulness. Those who have seen it heartily at work, and sadly dirtied by its humble toil, may afterwards regret its absence in the foul streets of an Egyptian village, where day by day the stagnant pool is heated into more thorough corrup- tion, and the body of the dead horse lies macerating, and the men and boys bathe together, and the fellah women fetch water for domestic use. The one merit and quality of a rivulet is to flow quickly and do its work merrily, whether it remains as clean as a prince's child or blackens itself like a little chimney- sweep. The ancient Romans knew the value of a rivulet better than any other people; and if such streams had the consciousness that classic imagination attributed to them, they must have been proud to see what magnificent preparations were made to in- duce them to enter the Roman cities, what stately aqueducts were built with tier above tier of massive arches to carry on the top of them a narrow channel, smoothly lined with cement, that the rivulet might glide easily above the valleys and plains, till it was received at last with infinite honor in the magnificence of sculptured fountains and baths. Even in our own day the same spirit has animated the ediles of Marseilles, who have brought a stream from the Durance and built for it the wonderful aque- duct of Roquefavour,¹ and led it proudly to their city, where it falls at last in a beautiful garden between the advancing wings of the most elegant palace in the world.² 2 1 Twice as high and twice as long as the famous Roman aqueduct at the Pont du Gard, and at least equally beautiful in design. 2 The Palace of Longchamps, where the collections are kept. 268 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXVII. BROOKS. •E NGLISH lexicographers do not appear to establish any distinction between rivulet and brook. They explain "brook" by saying that it means a rivulet, and they explain "rivulet" by saying that it means a brook. I am rather afraid, too, if we turn to the derivation of the word "brook," that we shall find the true original meaning of it to be a spring or foun- tain. Webster says that the root is the Anglo-Saxon word bracan or brecan, which is the English break, and “signifies water breaking through the earth, spring, brook, as well as broken, swampy, and spongy ground, marsh." And Webster goes on to say that a brook means a small natural stream of water, or a current flowing from a spring or fountain less than a river. This, however, is just what I have been describing as a "rivulet," and I think it is a convenience to consider it a grada- tion of increasing size from rill and rivulet to brook and river. We are partly authorized to do so by the practice of the an- cients, who seem to have employed rivus for brook, and rivulus (our rivulet) for a smaller brook, a distinction which may not always be very easy to establish, but which, in a general way, is intelligible. It is to be regretted that we have not more terms to distinguish streams of different importance. I should have been glad to find an English word for that kind of river which has deep and long pools of considerable width separated by rapids and shallows. It is not a brook, it is too big for that; but if you call it a river you class it with streams of more regu- lar depth. Again, it seems to me that the French are happy in their distinction between rivière and fleuve. In its general sense, rivière means any watercourse bigger than a ruisseau, but in its restricted sense it means a river that falls into a fleuve, and a fleuve is a great receiving river that falls into the sea. BROOKS. 269 My use of the word "brook " will be at once understood by a reference to Tennyson's poem with that title. He described a lively running stream with pools and shallows, such as we are familiar with in all rather hilly countries, except where the arid- ity of the climate leaves the beds of small rivers habitually a desert of dry stones. It must be understood, however, that our "lively running stream with pools and shallows" is to be on rather a small scale (though bigger than a rivulet), because there are streams of considerable width answering exactly to this description which, nevertheless, we should not call brooks, simply on account of their size. & The essential characteristic of a brook is its liveliness. In some dull, flat countries there are small streams that move slowly and noiselessly through the meadows, and I suppose that they would be classed as brooks on account of their dimen- sions; but just as a sedate, serious, and formal boy, who walks in a solemn manner like an old hypocrite, is hardly a boy at all, except in mere age and size, having nothing of the vivacity of boyhood, so a brook that sneaks softly from farm to farm is des- titute of the merry brookish characteristics. I never can help thinking of a brook otherwise than as a boy-river. It was all very well for the ancients to represent a big river like the Rhone as an old man with a long beard (though he must have been a very vigorous old man to walk as fast and unweariedly as the Rhone does), but their brooks ought to have been represented by boy-statues. Perhaps it is a fellow-feeling that makes boys so fond of brooks. The writer of these pages had one or two intense affections of this kind in his youth, which seem to have lost very little of their intensity even now. His first love was a Lancashire stream that came from the moors and hollowed a ravine for itself in the sandstone, so that there was always a certain wildness in its surroundings, even when it passed through prim and fertile pastures. It is one of the great advantages of river action, that it does not simply carve a channel, but pre- pares the banks for the beauty that is to come. My brook was adorned richly enough with oak and alder, while abundant fern nestled in the crannies of the rocks, and creepers hung down before them. Constant changes produced by floods. undermined the little cliffs and caused some of the nearest trees to fall across the stream. I remember a feeling I had 270 LANDSCAPE. about all those changes. I was intensely conservative about every scrap of natural beauty known to me, and could hardly forgive Nature herself for altering it in any way,—not reflecting that her alterations had been going on from the beginning of time, and that the stream as I had first known it was itself nothing but one of their temporary consequences. Even the philosophy of mature age has a difficulty in reconciling itself to this terrible mutability of things. A brook alters greatly on most parts of its course in ten years, and in twenty years many portions of it become unrecognizable. The wonderful little rhymed verses by Tennyson that are set like jewels in the blank verse of "The Brook," contain all that is to be said about its modes of motion, and convey, as only such concentrated writing can, an almost simultaneous picture of the various incidents of its career. Mr. Ruskin generously says of that little poem that it is far beyond anything he ever did or could have done in beauty of description.¹ It may be said with exact truth that while Mr. Ruskin's descriptions are the essence of remembered observation, this is the quintessence. I will not quote a word of it, for who would break a diamond into bits? The life of the brook is an incessant alternation, rest and mo- tion, silence and noise, darkness and sparkle and glitter. Like wayward geniuses, it is alternately deep and shallow. Its gloomy pools have a deathful appearance, especially for people who can- not swim. There are places where it lies asleep under the trees for a considerable distance, then suddenly it awakens and be- gins to be noisy again like a child. In the course of its wan- derings it may come to a rough country with rather a steep decline, and then it has no peace; it must go on hurry-scurry till it gets through all that region, and it makes a great to-do about it, gurgling in the hollows of the rocks and not going really half so fast as it appears to go, with all that fuss and foam. In quieter and more level regions it lingers in many curves, and is always deepest under the bank that it cuts out, while it gets shallower on the other side, where it spreads the borrowed peb- bles and sand. Wayward as it is, and wild, being in fact an aggressive bit of pure Nature in the midst of artificial civiliza- tion, it is still heartily welcomed by all who care for the beauty 1 See the autobiographical Epilogue to the cheaper and separate edition of the Second Volume of "Modern Painters." * BROOKS. 271 that it brings. It is welcomed even in lordly parks, where it flows under stately oaks, and the fallow-deer come to drink of It is it, and the well-protected trout lie fattening in its waters. welcome at the village, where the horses drink at the old ford that was used before the bridge was built. It is loved and studied in little bits by the solitary artist who stops at the vil- lage inn, it is followed for miles by the angler who knoweth every pool. The naturalist delights in it, because he can find a little world for his observation on its banks. He sees the kingfisher flash between branches and water with a burst of sapphire light. He has seen the gray heron watching patiently in the evening, or slowly lifting himself in the air with his great curved flapping wings. Here is one of those little experiences, of no importance in themselves, that are full of charm to a natu- ralist. In the late evening, before twilight passes into night, you can often see the reflection of a thing in water when the thing itself on the river-bank is completely lost in obscurity. The reason lies in the different parallax of objects in the reflec-· tion and on the land. In consequence of this the reflection of an object may be clearly detached against the sky, while the thing. itself comes against the dark ground or bushes, and is so absolutely invisible that without the aid of the reflection you could never suspect its presence. It follows from this that a naturalist may sometimes detect the presence of an animal by means of the reflection that he would never suspect without it, just as Dutch ladies know when a visitor is at the door, and what sort of a visitor he is, by referring to a little mirror that hangs outside the window. In this way I once saw in a reflec- tion the image of an otter. He was reconnoitring the banks of the brook very carefully, and thought himself invisible in the darkness, as indeed he was, but the water betrayed him. I then crept down so as to get my face nearly on the level of the water (to have a parallax like that of the reflection) and saw my otter in silhouette against the sky most distinctly, and a very fine otter he was. This little experience is nothing, and yet it would have interested a naturalist. The devastation that can be caused by a brook in flood-time renders intelligible some of the great changes that geologists at- tribute to their instrumentality. We are too apt to think of the brook as the quiet agent that we see it in ordinary times, and to consider a flood as a rare accident, scarcely to be taken into 272 LANDSCAPE. account. But accidents that happen twice a year, or twenty thou- sand times in a myriad years, are so frequent as to be almost incessant in the great past of geological history. If one flood does work that is visible enough to the eye of an agricultural laborer, what must be the changes effected by twenty thousand floods? Each of them produces greater changes than a year of quiet flowing. Here, for example, is an account of one such alteration. In a small river that is well known to me there is rather a long reach of apparently still water, varying in depth from two to twelve feet, and shaded by foliage, so as to make in summer a very pretty bower of greenery from end to end, with a smooth reflecting water-floor, just the place where Shelley would have liked to compose verses in a boat. At the end of this reach the stream takes a sudden turn to the left, at a right angle, and begins to be shallow and noisy again. Just at the angle there used to be a deep pit in the bed of the river that was a very good bathing-place, as one could plunge from the perpendicular bank. The field on the right of the long smooth reach is lower than that upon the left, and there was a certain place where a little creek had been begun. It was entirely Na- ture's work, a little sandy inlet just big enough for a boat to take refuge in. That was the first hint of coming devastation, which might have been prevented if the land-owner had put fascines at the entrance of the creek and filled it up with stones; but he was an absentee, and the farmer was too much occupied with his daily tasks to concern himself about the future. There came a great flood, which made use of the creek as the begin- ning of a new river-bed. It dug a deep trench in the field, which looked as if it had been traced by an engineer to cut off the angle, and which rejoined the old channel lower down. When the flood subsided the new bed lay almost empty, a dreadful stony desert where excellent land had been, with a few little stagnant pools to mark the passage of the water. The bathing-place at the angle was filled up with stones, all the minor currents were altered, trees were uprooted and car- ried away. The whole place, in a word, had become scarcely recognizable. The effects of former floods may generally be traced in the neighborhood of brooks. Sometimes a string of stagnant pools will be found in the ancient bed of the stream, which it has now deserted for a more recent channel, but resumes occasionally in 273 the great floods. In France these pools are called noues,¹ but I do not remember any special English word for them. They may still preserve the appearance of a river so completely that a picture of them would be certainly taken for a river scene; but in Nature their stagnation is felt to be a melancholy sign of sev- erance from the current they originally belonged to. They are like people who still exist, but who are cut off from all society, and live apart from the great current of human life which passes by them at a distance. Shady trees still grow by their borders, water-lilies float upon their dark surface, the iris does not disdain their tranquillity, which is disturbed only by rippling breezes or the touch of the water-ousel's wing. They may curve and wind exactly like the river of which in old times they formed a part, but their waters have no life, no progress, no hope of joining the mighty river or of reaching the distant sea. Only when the flood comes, is the long-suspended river life resumed for a little while; but it is a fever of temporary excitement, and the waters flow thick, and turbid, and tumultuous, unlike the limpid stream of old in summers that will return no more. BROOKS. It might be affirmed that a brook in flood-time has changed its nature, and become something else than a brook. It is no longer the boy-river, sleeping in pools and chattering over shal- lows; it has become suddenly a giant, and a furious giant too, in a bed that is much too small for him. There is a brook that I know which is crossed by a bridge that seems of ample size, with massive stone piers and a roadway of great Swiss pine-trees. I remember a flood that demolished the piers and carried the wooden roadway bodily down the river, an event which in ordi- nary times seems beyond the limits of possibility. In all moun- tainous countries brooks are dangerous neighbors, as the floods in them occur so suddenly, being caused by some violent down- pour on the heights above that is scarcely suspected in the val- leys. Here is a brief account of one of these sudden floods by an eye-witness.2 It occurred close to Loch Borlan, which had been sleeping in the morning in the serenest sunshine, and on 1 Derived by Littré from the Norman noe, a marshy field; and from the low- Latin noa, and novium. Littré says: "The word appears to be the same as the old French noue, which means nage, and comes from natare by the intervention of a Latin form notare, to be found still in Italian.” 2 The quotation is from a modest little volume called "Wanderings by the Loch and Streams of Assynt and the North Highlands of Scotland," by J. Hicks. The author makes no pretension to science or fine sentiment, but he is a good observer. 1 P .. 18 274 LANDSCAPE. the Sabbath, too, which only increased the impression of peace- fulness and rest. Even so late as four o'clock in the afternoon the narrator “strolled," he says, "as far as the Aultnacalgach Burn, in whose waters I was glad to cool my hands and feet, as I sat upon a stone in the middle of its bed, which was almost dry, save here and there, where a few small puddles were supplied by what at this moment was a trickling rivulet, so small as to be almost noiseless. While the intense heat bespoke the presence of electricity, which must soon vent itself in a storm, not a cloud could I discern in any direction." Mr. Hicks walked back to his inn and began his dinner, when there was a tremendous burst of rain, and a little burn or rivulet close to the house rose in flood instantaneously, so that in a few minutes there was a depth of three feet of water in a neighbor- ing cow-house, where a calf had to be rescued with difficulty. I may now proceed with the quotation: -- "The naval lieutenant and his brother, already mentioned, had proceeded along the flooded road to the bridge, wading knee deep in the water, and were nearly 'in at the death' of a more impor- tant animal than a calf, namely, the landlord's brother. Poor Sandy, who had already distinguished himself in rescuing a wheelbarrow and other less valuable articles from destruction, had waded on to the bridge over the burn where I had been sitting in the afternoon. He had not been many minutes contemplating the tremendous tor- rent before the impetuous burn broke up the arch, through which he immediately descended, and was whirled along till he was close to the lake, when he fortunately saved himself by seizing the bank in stiller and deeper water. "The force of the water in this burn was so strong as to bear him along upon its surface, without allowing him to sink, in which case he must have been killed by the huge stones which were com- ing down. "Those only who are acquainted with mountain burns will be- lieve me when I say that, while I beheld the descent of this water, I heard stones beneath knocking each other like sledge-hammers, and that on the following day we found heaps of stones piled up in cairns and mounds, composed of fragments of rock, of which many were five and six feet in circumference." In the neighborhood of the same lake Mr. Hicks describes some caverns produced by the action of a mountain burn, and he warns the reader against the danger there is in trusting to the apparent peacefulness of such a stream in its quiet moods : BROOKS. 275 "I have endeavored to give a faint idea of this curious burn, whose water is as clear as crystal in its natural state, in which we beheld it so clear that a pebble could be plainly discerned at a depth of twelve or fifteen feet. If a heavy rain of an hour's duration were to fall upon the majestic mountain of Ben Mhor, in the immediate vicinity, this burn, now ankle-deep in its shallows, would descend in the torrent of a wall of water, rushing into the cavern which I visited, and whirling round and round, would sweep away ail light inanimate objects, and would carry the ablest swimmer to destruc- tion by whirling him impetuously against the pinnacles of a rock, or wheeling him round and round in an eddy, finally suck him down to an oblivion of this world and its associations." These are the most dangerous burns of all, because they are fed from mountains that have no forests to stop the sudden de- scent of the water. It slips down from the barren heights almost immediately into the gullies, and rushes furiously in its rocky channel to the lake. In the beautiful story of "Undine" the brook that flows through the wood rises very suddenly also; but it may be fed from barren heights, and as we are there in the land of pure ro- mance and poetry, the brook is not subject only to natural rages, but being really Ündine's uncle, Kühleborn, has purposes of its own to serve by wilful and apparently uncalled-for inundations. Do we not all remember how the knight and the fisherman heard the sudden rise of the torrent, and, springing to the door, beheld in the moonlight "the brook that flowed from the forest tearing above its banks and bearing stones and trunks of trees along in its rapid course"? At the same time a violent wind raised the waves of the lake to foam, the trees of the peninsula bent from root to branch, and both the anguish-stricken men cried aloud, "Undine! for God's sake, Undine !" V 276 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXVIII. CANOE RIVERS. * ΤΕ HE title of this chapter is not entirely satisfactory to me, as it seems to connect the subject more with pleasure navigation than with landscape; but there is no single term in our language to designate the particular kind of river that I mean, while the title adopted indicates it very exactly. The reader knows without farther preamble that we are going to talk about rivers having much the same character as brooks, but of a larger size. Such rivers have pools of tranquil water, often of considerable depth, and which would be navigable for large boats if they could be connected together; but, unfortunately for the purposes of commerce, these pools are separated by shallows, and often by dangerous rapids. To make such rivers entirely navigable by barges it is necessary to "canalize" them, which implies the removal of shallows by weirs, the institution of locks, and wherever rapids occur, the establishment of a lateral canal. So long as they remain in a state of nature these rivers are navigable only in canoes. They are equal to brooks in all the elements of beauty and variety, and greatly superior to them in sublimity, because a human being always measures the forces of Nature by reference to his own small individuality ; so that it is not the rage of a rapid, but the weight and power of the water delivered by it that impress his mind effectually. There is energy enough in the water of a street-gutter on a rainy day, but it only amuses children; a flooded river going at the same speed attracts the attention of the strongest men, and is a subject for poetry and painting. One of the very first lessons we learn in canoeing on a wild and picturesque river is the strength of the impact with which it attacks the bank on the inside of every curve. We soon dis- cover that the canoeist must learn the skill, and acquire the canoe rivers. 277 presence of mind, necessary to check the impetus given to his boat by the current, and its invariable tendency either to hurl him directly against the bank or to keep him so inconveniently near it that if there is any suddenly projecting point of rock he will scarcely be able to get clear of it. If he did nothing with the paddle, his canoe would probably be scraped on the pro- jecting pebbles and upset at the first obstacle. This gives a very vivid idea of the energy with which the stream is always undermining its banks, how persistently and immediately it at- tacks them, and at what portion of the curve the energy em- ployed is greatest. Another lesson about water-action that the canoeist is sure to learn in a very short time is, that there are different degrees of swiftness in the current of the same stream, that it runs most slowly on the shelving side, where the stones are spread out on beaches, and most rapidly at a point which is not exactly the middle, but nearer to the steep bank than the other. He also very soon finds out the meaning of a back-water or counter- current, where the stream goes frankly back again as if it had changed its mind, but not for very long. Besides these expe- riences, he becomes acquainted with the real nature of a whirl- pool, at least on a small scale; and it is an interesting thing to know intimately, though the danger of it is usually much exaggerated. What is really dangerous in the experiences of canoe voyagers is the angular turn of a river, just at the end of a fierce rapid, when it dashes itself bodily against a wall of rock, in a tumult of confusion, not having had time to get round the corner quietly. There is a place of that kind on a river that is familiar to me, and I have often passed it in a canoe, always without accident, yet always with fresh wonder at my escape. The speed of the canoe has to be checked suddenly, just before it reaches the rock, and a new direction has to be given to it in the midst of the most agitated water. As it has shot down into the pool with the impetus given by a steep rapid, and as the pool is full of different eddies and currents, there is every preparation for an accident where swimming might not be of much use.¹ But 1 A mere upset is nothing if the water is either shallow enough to enable you to wade, or, if deep, then quiet enough for you to swim. I remember being upset twelve times in a single day on an unexplored river and feeling all the better for the exercise. The dinner in the evening, the talk with my companion, who had 278 LANDSCAPE. the best account of one of these places (and on a larger scale) is to be found in Mr. Campbell's "Frost and Fire." He is de- scribing the descent of the river Muonio, that divides Swedish from Russian territory, and is, where Mr. Campbell struck it, about as broad as the Thames at Richmond, though still three hundred miles from the sea :— "We had not much time to look about us. The river had gathered force and speed for the last six miles, and here it made a final leap. The river-bed made a bend below us and the whole body of water dashed with a roar like thunder right against a perpendicular rock some twenty or thirty feet high. There were bad stones on the shallow side; it seemed quite impracticable. Our pilot only grasped his paddle the tighter, and set his teeth, and off we went. It was grand, but somewhat terrible, to feel the frail boat whirl round as we entered the stream; but it was worse when we got fairly into it, and dashed at the wall of rock. We were covered with spray in an instant. No one spoke, and no one could have heard for the noise. On we rushed over the waves, nearer and nearer, faster and faster towards the bank, the high bow slapping hard into the waves; but skill and coolness were at the helm. An eddy seemed to throw us bodily off from the rock into the tail of the stream, and the steersman knew all about it. The old boat writhed and cracked from stem to stern, and pitched headlong into the waves, till I thought she must part or founder. The man in the bow was nearly upset by a wave, which jumped on his back; and he nearly cut a crab; but the pilot was working his paddle with might and main, and we shot into a great boiling black pool safe, but well ducked. I know nothing grander than such a torrent, unless it be the rolling Atlantic; and nothing gives me such an idea of irresistible force as Atlantic waves after a storm." S This is an excellent piece of description, full of the sense of reality, and conveying it to the reader. The expression, "the high bow slapping hard into the waves," is most graphic. All high bows with a flat front do so.¹ The speed of a river in rapids is less than it appears. It would be impossible to row up them with oars, on account of been upset still more frequently, and the night's rest afterwards, had a charm only known to the adventurous. Yet our temporary resting-place was but a village inn kept by the local blacksmith. 1 Even when it is inclined at a sharp angle. I know the owner of a sharpee (an American improvement on the old flat-bottomed French river boat), who was so much put out by the perpetual slapping of the waves upon the flat rising floor towards the stem that he had a cut-water added beneath it to stop the noise. CANOE RIVERS. 279 · • the stones, and paddling is too slow a process for headway to be made against a rapid stream; but I have often tested the speed of rivers by throwing light objects into them and following, and the consequence has always been a feeling of surprise that the water, apparently so swift, in reality went no faster than it did. A current appears to be very lively if it has the speed of a good walker, and if it goes like a very ordinary carriage-horse it looks terrific. The feeling of speed in descending a rapid is much increased by the necessity for rowing or paddling the boat itself as fast as possible, to keep steerage way, which adds our own speed to that of the water under us. Mr. Campbell took some note of time in descending the Muonio, but it is difficult to have exact distances, and there is always an involuntary ten- dency to exaggerate them. Part of his descent, that which included the rapid just described, he estimated at about seven miles; and this was accomplished in less than an hour, including stoppages to bail, which interfere inconveniently with the exact- ness of the calculation. But in the day's work of twelve hours, during which there were many rapids, the boat only accom- plished fifty miles. One short rapid was got over in ten min- Mr. Campbell guessed its length at two miles, but it was not measured; and even this would not give the water the ap- parent speed, on account of the deduction to be made for the efforts of the men, who were doing their very utmost during a spurt " of violent exertion. If the men were doing three miles an hour, that would leave nine for the speed of this rapid; and if the men rowed only two miles an hour, on the average, during their twelve hours, we should still have to deduct twenty-four miles from the fifty, leaving twenty-six for the current, or the modest average speed of two miles and one sixth in the hour.¹ utes. 1 There are only two satisfactory ways of ascertaining the speed of a river. If you ascend it in a steamer, the speed of which is perfectly known to you, it is easy to see how much you fall short of what the steamer does (at such a pressure) in stagnant water, and the difference is the current. The other way is to fix a patent log in mid-stream and see what it registers. With regard to the first, I remember that a boat-captain on the Rhone told me he had sometimes descended that river between the Lac du 66 1 I do not know how often the boatman stopped to bail. The misfortune attending all attempts, except strictly scientific ones, to determine the speed of rivers, is that the data are never either perfectly exact or quite complete. 280 LANDSCAPE. Bourget and Lyons with a speed, during certain parts of the voyage, of thirty-six kilomètres an hour; but this must have been an unconscious exaggeration, due to the rapid passing of rocks and other objects, as the speed of his vessel did not ex- ceed eighteen kilomètres, and therefore he would have been unable to ascend the current in those places on his return voyage up the river.¹ We may infer that the rapids of the Nile (usually called "cataracts," a word that gives a very false impres- sion) exceed the rapidity of the Nile steamers, which have to be towed with ropes at the most difficult places; but we do not know exactly to what degree the speed of the current is in excess of that given by the engines. It is probable that when rapids are massive, like those on the Nile, that is, when a great body of water can make its way without interruption from rocks, the water towards the middle of the current may attain a far higher speed than it can in smaller rivers, owing to the absence of friction in mid-current.2 It would have been interesting if the officers in the Red River expedition had given us exact data of the speed attained by the great rapids on the Winnipeg River. Captain Huyshe described them very effectively in many pages that deserve to be quoted. Perhaps the following is the most appropriate here, as it deals with the rapid itself rather than with the wonderful skill of the Indians who managed the canoe : (L Many a dangerous rapid did we run in this way, but there was one that I shall never forget, the longest day I live; it scared us all, and was indeed enough to frighten the oldest voyageur. Com- ing on to it from above, we could not see what we were rushing into, 1 It is just possible that the captain may have descended the Rhone on some particular occasion during a temporary flood, and postponed the ascent till after the flood had subsided. 2 The following experiment, though it may seem of a trivial kind, will throw some light upon the subject. I happened to be in a town where the streets are very steep, when a sudden shower of the greatest violence produced a flood in a few minutes. I thought it a good opportunity for ascertaining the speed of water, and threw a piece of paper on the gutter in a steep street, where the current appeared to be rushing with great velocity. I followed it at a pace that I know exactly, which is four miles an hour, and this enabled me to keep up with the paper. But that street was far steeper than rapids usually are; indeed, I have only descended one rapid of that degree of steepness. The comparatively slow motion of the water in the gutter may probably be accounted for by the friction on the paving-stones, which in so shallow a stream would retard the whole body of water. If the gutter had been made of smooth porcelain or glass, its discharge would probably have been much more rapid. In a deeper stream the rapid water is contained in a channel of more slowly moving water. canoe riverRS. 281 • but followed the lead of the Colonel's canoe, and before we knew where we were, we were in the middle of it. Imagine an enor- mous volume of water hurled headlong down a steep incline of smooth, slippery rock against a cluster of massive boulders, over which it dashed madly with a roar like thunder, foaming along until it reached the level below, where its exhausted fury subsided into circling eddies and deep treacherous whirlpools. Into this fearful abyss of waters we dashed, old Michel boldly steering straight down the centre of it; and as we tore down the incline at railroad speed with the green, white-tipped waves curling their monstrous heads high over the gunwale of the boat, we held our very breath for awe, and for a second or two forgot to row, till the sharp admonition of Michel aroused us from our stupor. By a great exertion of skill on the part of the two Indians the boat's head was turned sharply to the left, and caught the back-water of the eddy, in which we floated quietly and in safety, and gazed in utter bewilderment at the mighty rapid we had just run, with no worse accident than a good ducking. It was the most danger- ous rapid that we ran; the slightest touch on one of those huge boulders, and the boat must have gone to pieces instantaneously, crushed like a cockle-shell, and the crew would have been beyond human aid, for the whirlpools and eddies at the foot of the rapid would have sucked down the strongest swimmer." • Whatever may be the speed of a rapid, there is always this to be said about it, that anybody who descends it in a boat is from first to last absolutely committed to his enterprise. Stop he cannot; go on he must: and now observe the curious peculiar- ity of his situation, which is that his one chance of safety con- sists in going faster than the swift waters that are hurrying him onward. I do not know a more perfect analogy than that which subsists between the descent of a rapid and the course of human life. The common old comparison of life to an ordinary river voyage is not nearly so accurate, since in travelling on a quiet stream you have liberty to stop when you like, to cast anchor, to lodge in some village on the shore; nay, you may even re- turn against the stream, but who may "remount the river of his years "? The descent of a rapid, on the other hand, exactly answers to the conditions of our existence. The boat is carried irresistibly onwards, there is no anchoring, no pausing, no possi- bility of returning against the stream. The travellers have but one chance of safety amid innumerable perils, and that chance is to accept their situation and to work with all their might in harmony with the natural forces that are hurrying them onwards. 282 LANDSCAPE. To anticipate the future by being prepared for the most imme- diate of coming dangers, to waste no thought on those that we have escaped, to be prompt, and quick, and ready in the nick of time, these are the secrets of successful living, as they are the wisdom of the Red Indian in the tumult of a Canadian river. Only one thing is wanting to make the analogy perfectly com- plete, and that may be supplied by an accident which exhibits the dignity of the Red Man at its best. It has sometimes happened that a canoe with its occupant has been carried over a great waterfall. I have read somewhere that this incident has occurred at Niagara, that a solitary Indian in his canoe was seen in the rapids just where the current began to be too swift for him to ascend it, and that after ascertaining the impossibility he paddled no more, but turned the prow of his little vessel down the stream, reclined with perfect dignity, and accepted his fate with resignation. Gently it floated on the smooth, quiet, swift, irresistible water, faster and faster, till fragile vessel and brave man went over the polished curve of the cataract, and were lost in the mist and the thunder. A remarkable distinction between rapids and sea-waves is, that in the rapid we have the permanent wave that can be stud- ied at leisure from the shore, the water of it being continually changed, the form remaining the same. These permanent waves are of two kinds, the round-topped wave that forms a dome of water over a sunken rock, and the leaping wave which has been stopped too suddenly to fold over in a quiet way, and so has to take a jump into the air, like some animal in a hurry. The round-topped wave often occasions very needless anxiety. The rock that causes it may be at such a depth as to offer no hindrance whatever to any ordinary boat.¹ The leaping wave may be occasioned either by the striking of the water against an obstacle or by the collision of two currents from different direc- tions. The first is dangerous in this, that the rock may possibly be near enough to the surface to do harm; the second is dan- gerous only because it may upset or swamp the boat, unless the speed of the current carries it straight through the mass of water, as happened to Mr. John Macgregor on the Reuss. The real 1 I know a wave on the Rhone which is of this permanent kind, the shape of it being affected only by the depth of water in the river, and it is perfectly harmless, presenting no more real danger than the smoothest water in a fish-pond; and yet it looks most alarming. canoe rivers. 283 size and strength of these permanent waves in rapids is only appreciated on the stream itself. Although everybody knows that objects diminish in apparent size by distance, few apply their knowledge to things that they are not familiar with close at hand. A man seen a hundred yards off is not taken for a dwarf ; but a wave in the middle of a lake or river is easily taken for a ripple. It is only canoe travellers who really know the size and strength of the waves produced by rapids, or who have studied their peculiar nature. I therefore call in Mr. Macgregor as a much more valuable witness than any safe observer on the shore. Here is his account of the permanent wave upon the Reuss. He had found himself engaged in a part of the river where the banks were steep and high, and the course of the stream in curves, which prevented the traveller from seeing far ahead, though he could hear the thunder of the rapids. The water ran in " a full body," and as it was broken by rocks at the sides, Mr. Macgregor thought it best to keep in mid-stream, notwith- standing its greater speed and the consequently increased dan- ger from the breakers. To stop was impossible; and as for landing, the shores of the river were precipices a hundred feet high! At last the adventurer saw the great permanent wave that he was destined never to forget: "Right in front, and in the middle, I saw the well-known wave which is always raised when a main stream converges, as it rushes down a narrow neck. The depression or trough of this was about two feet below, and the crest four feet above the level, so that the height of the wave was about six feet. "Though rather tall, it was very thin and sharp-featured, and always stationary in position, though the water composing it was going at a tremendous pace. After this wave there was another smaller one, as frequently happens. "The boat plunged headlong into the shining mound of water as I clenched my teeth and clutched my paddle. We saw her sharp prow deeply buried, and before she could rise, the mass of solid water struck me with a heavy blow full in the breast, closing round my neck as if cold hands gripped me, and quite taking away my breath." The hero of this exciting adventure got quite safely through, and after observing other waves of the same character arrived at the conclusion that " a sharp wave of this kind never has a rock behind it," which is a valuable result of experience. Unfortu- nately, the speed of the current in such places prevents us from 284 LANDSCAPE. ascertaining the position of the rocks over which the canoe passes, and their exact influence in determining the forms of permanent waves. In "Frost and Fire" Mr. J. F. Campbell tells us that he no- ticed the height of some permanent waves on the river Tornea in Sweden, and he estimates it at ten feet at least. He did not go through any of these waves, as the boatmen were able to skirt the shore and avoid them.¹ Though the current of a river increases danger by carrying a boat towards an obstacle, it at the same time diminishes danger, in most cases, by making the obstacle betray its own existence through some agitation of the surface. It may happen, how- ever, that the agitation is not of a very obvious character. A curious instance of this occurred to me on one of the large French rivers, and I mention it here as a digression illustrative of this part of the subject. I was with a friend, in a centre- board sailing-boat,2 when we perceived a peculiar glistening line going out into the river. He directed my attention to it, but I took it for a line of local calm. Shortly after we were upon it, and our centre-board was caught laterally on one of those sub- aqueous walls that are built by the engineers to deflect the cur- rent. Our vessel had great stability, and therefore did not quite capsize, and we were detained long enough over the wall to see it clearly in the transparent water. The lesson about that par- ticular appearance was quite worth the temporary vexation. On the other hand, I remember sailing straight over some rocks in a lake, their existence being suspected by nobody, and there was no appearance to give a hint of their presence. In that case, as we went straight at them, and were not carried laterally by wind or current, the centre-board struck them, but rose and fell without injury; a heavy deep-keeled yacht would have wrecked herself upon them. Now in canoe rivers there is gen- erally current enough to betray a sunken rock, at least by a slight trouble of the surface, a gentle seething of the water, as if something pushed it up from below like the rising of a spring, 1 The open Swedish boats would be swamped in waves of this description. Mr. Macgregor's canoe was decked, with the exception of the opening for his body, and this was covered with a mackintosh sheet. The water got in through the openings, but not in quantity sufficient to sink the boat. 2 For non-nautical readers it may be explained as essential to the clearness of the text that a centre-board is a sort of movable keel that can be raised in shallows or lowered in deep water at pleasure. CANOE RIVERS. 285 and there may be a little swirl or two just beyond it. I am, however, quite unable to give any precise description of appear- ances by which the reader may judge of the nearness of a rock to the surface. It is a matter of the greatest interest to canoe travellers, yet even Mr. Macgregor, one of the most observant as well as the boldest of that fraternity, admits that the appearance of the water does not always give a legible indication of its depth above a sunken rock. I remember once turning a corner in a rapid and coming upon one of those treacherous round black boulders that are often nearer to the surface than they appear, with the consequence of an immediate upset. My companion followed in a few minutes and repeated the performance on the same stone with the most ludicrous precision and exactness. Rivers of the class we are now considering have an advantage over those reputed navigable, in the far greater variety of surface which they present. The quiet parts of their course appear to gain a great restfulness from the contrast with the turmoil of the rapids.. In the absence of sailing-vessels and towing-paths trees are allowed to grow freely on both sides; and as the shores of such rivers are often rugged and useless for agriculture, there is no interference with a multitude of minor plants that would not have a chance of a natural existence on land accessible to the plough. Besides this, the dampness of the air in the neigh- borhood of streams is in itself a constant encouragement to all plants that love the water, so that the consequence of these united conditions is simply the creation of a long natural garden, through which the river winds, and which is constantly revealing to the canoe traveller fresh scenes of beauty far beyond anything that the most skilful human gardener could imagine or the wealthiest patron realize. Edgar Poe, in his tale of "The Do- main of Arnheim" felt bound to describe something that was not of Nature, because the subject of his invention was the power wealth to create artificial beauty; but in reading his account of the voyage of the ivory canoe, the "light canoe of ivory stained with arabesque devices in vivid scarlet, both within and without," which was impelled by an unseen agency towards the evening sun, I have remembered voyages of at least equal beauty, though there was nothing magical about them. Poe, in fact, appears to have felt some embarrassment about painting the lily of Nature and gilding her refined gold. He had to show the power of wealth in improving a canoe river, and the M 286 LANDSCAPE. means he adopted to that end was to remove all debris and have a wall on the river side "of one continuous rock, formed by cutting perpendicularly the once rugged precipice of the stream's southern bank." The costliness of such an undertaking is more evident than the improvement it might be supposed to effect. For me, I prefer the ruggedness of the natural precipice, and have no objection to the débris. A lover of Nature, with the wealth needed to create the Domain of Arnheim, might here and there remove obstructions; he might blast a dangerous rock or drag out a fallen tree, but he would respect the ruggedness of the precipice, and value its coloring of gray or golden lichen and green moss. Amid the many beautiful scenes passed through by the pres- ent writer on rivers navigable with a canoe, he remembers none more perfectly to his taste than those long-secluded pools of tranquil water, deep towards the steeper shore, and passing into shallows with yellow sands or clean pebbles on the other, and shaded by a long roof of summer foliage through which the green light filtered softly, while here and there a ray of un- broken sunshine glittered on some distant ripple. There are places of that kind as long as several cathedrals joined together, and so peaceful that no monastic cloister ever offered more perfect peace. Quite out of the lines of traffic, guarded by their own rocks and by distant rapids against all commercial naviga- tion, too remote from hotels to be visited by the tourist or studied habitually by the painter, inaccessible by steam-launches on the water or any wheeled vehicle on the shore, these lonely pools and bowers seem prepared by Nature for the one man in the canoe, who slowly floats from end to end of them in a trance of tranquil happiness, reposing himself after past perils, and husbanding his forces for perils yet to come. Only one other scene is more inviting to poetic rest. After a tortuous and anxious passage through gloomy shades at night, the canoe may sometimes emerge upon an open reach of still water that seems lengthened to infinity by mist, and (just working enough to keep a gentle motion) the traveller may float on and on in the moonlight till it seems as if all life were left behind, and as if the silent waters before him "Led on to the end of the world." CANOE RIVERS. 287 It is rather unfortunate, after what might have been a quiet ending of our chapter, to have to consider a state of things. that is destructive of all quietness; but I cannot omit some de- scription of floods on rivers of this class. The first and most obvious effect of a flood is to destroy the transparence of the water by charging it heavily with sediment in a state of suspension. This is destructive of beauty in two different ways, as it not only at once puts an end to the pleasure of seeing the bottom in moderate depths, but it interferes with the beauty of the reflections, which lose richness and truth when they do not cease to exist. The water is no longer the mirror that it was, but a surface of very liquid mud if the banks of the stream are of alluvial soils. In countries where the floods come from peat regions over granite the water is not so muddy, but brown from the peat-coloring, which passes into ochrous yellows when stirred almost into foam, while the foam itself, that may be seen circulating in large masses in the eddies, is of a warm white, like slightly discolored ivory. The loss of beauty by the destruction, total or partial, of re- flective power is accompanied by the loss of peace. In ordinary times a canoe river is tumultuous in some parts, but entirely peaceful in others, like those human lives that have the happy variety of energetic and quiet days; but in times of flood the disturbed and sullied water is utterly incapable of rest. The stream then hurries over those very places where most it loved to linger. Even its broadest surfaces, that might be expected to be calm in their swiftness, are vexed by swirls that tell of trouble below. The effect of floods on rapids is to increase their strength and tumult up to a certain point; but if the flood passes that point, the rapid appears less terrible, because most of its rocks are now hidden under water, and the level of the pool below the rapid is raised, so that it seems as if the current had not so far to fall. The danger of descending a rapid may thus be re- duced in flood-time, though it would not be safe to count upon increased safety in all cases, as the existence of new eddies might be not less perilous than the narrow passages between the rocks, and a rock that is hidden may be more dangerous than one that is clearly seen. However this may be, it is certain that the fury of the water is more visible in the intermediate stage of a flood when it rages against the rocks, than in a 288 LANDSCAPE. T C. subsequent and more complete stage when it has concealed them. The best of a flood is its fury. At a distance from seas and volcanoes, a wild river in time of flood is the grandest mani- festation of the forces of Nature that is accessible to us. We see it carry down trees and remove bridges, while now and then the body of some unfortunate animal bears witness to the ruthlessness of the blind power of water. In Mr. Graham's noble picture of "A Spate in the Highlands," as in that de- scription by Ariosto which has been already quoted, the indif- ference of the natural power is indicated by the destruction of the bridge. Mr. Graham has brought the peril still more home to us, without making a tragedy of it, by means of the herdsman who is not yet out of danger. A picture can convey a good idea of the motion of water, though on canvas it must be an arrested motion; but it inevita- bly misses one great expression of natural power, - the over- whelming noise. The roar of waters over rocks and against precipices has often been compared to thunder, a word much bet- ter applied to the occasional booming sound of the avalanche. Flood-waters make a continuous, steady, confused roar, in which it is impossible to distinguish the impact of one wave from another, and the general strength of the roar in the worst parts of a river is enough to make a powerful human voice inaudible. I know a house that happens to be situated on a little cliff very near to a tumultuous rapid, and one can imagine what it must be in the time of the winter floods to lie awake in one of its cham- bers and listen throughout the dark and dreary night to that ceaseless hurrying of the waters. When an army passes in the night-time there may be an interval between its regiments and a variety between the tramp of infantry, the trot of cavalry, the steady rumble of artillery; but here there is no interval, no variety, no relief. Through the long hours the roar of the waters goes on without one moment's pause or respite, and when the gray dawn comes the noise continues still. NAVIGABle riveRS. 289 CHAPTER XXIX. NAVIGABLE RIVERS. HE broad distinction between these rivers and all those that we have previously been considering is in the equa- bility of their course. It is not in the width of the river, as a river may in many places be ten times as wide as a canal, and yet not classed as navigable for barges. It is not in the speed, as there are mechanical means of hauling barges up swift cur- rents, and even the Rhone, which is reputed to be the swiftest stream in Europe, is navigable from the Lac du Bourget to the Mediterranean. Neither does the distinction consist in the quantity of water that the stream discharges. The Saône, in ordinary times, discharges but little water for a river of its size, and yet it is the most navigable of all rivers, because the current is almost everywhere equally peaceful and the depth sufficient. The equable continuity of a "navigable" river gives the trav- eller on its waters an assurance of peaceful progress, like that of settled prosperity. There is water enough beneath his keel; there will be water enough an hour hence, a day hence; the current will always allow room enough for easy navigation. Here the excitement and danger of the tumultuous rapid are unknown. The vessel will not be arrested by fallen trunks of trees, nor shattered upon rocks; it will float more or less swiftly, but in. safety always. These navigable rivers have from time immemorial supplied similes to preachers and moralists which, as I have observed elsewhere, might have been more appropriately taken from rapids, if ideas derived from canoe travelling had not been unfamiliar until recent years. The best expression that I re- member hearing applied to a navigable river was in a sermon by a French bishop, though possibly he may not have been the 19 290 LANDSCAPE. originator of it. "Un fleuve," he said, "c'est une route qui marche,” and he compared it with human life which carries the traveller along with it. The defect of the analogy is that the river voyager may cast anchor or fasten his vessel to the shore, while the stream that carries us to eternity has neither anchorage nor any shore that is of use to us. The idea that rivers are moving roads has, however, a certain grandeur in itself and an applicability that will endure as long as the human race makes use of them. There are no roads in the world so beautiful as their shining surfaces, no roads so broad as the bird's flight from shore to shore, and there is no travelling so stately in combined spaciousness and peacefulness as a boat voyage on some noble stream. The canoe is delight- fully adventurous, and affords an excellent pastime during the years of unimpaired vigor; but the absence of real security in rapids, and the frequent interruptions from shallows and other obstacles, deprive the traveller of all except a very temporary peace. The broad and navigable river accords better with the dignity of age. Colonel Wolseley, in the prime of life, might shoot the rapids of the Winnipeg in a canoe; but Richelieu, in the evening of his days, was drawn against the current of the Rhone in a barge "with a stately chamber hung with crimson velvet, à feuillage sur fond d'or.'" There is nothing in the history of boat voyages more strangely poetical than that slow progress of Richelieu from Tarascon to Lyons. He left Taras- con on the seventeenth of August, 1642, and did not reach Lyons till the third of September. Behind his boat was attached another, containing his prisoner, De Thou, whom the invalid in the gorgeous chamber was quietly intending to have executed when he arrived at his destination. Then came three other barges containing things necessary to the pomp of his Eminence, such as his gold and silver plate, his tapestry, and the furniture employed in embellishing his temporary resting-places on the shore. On each side of the river rode companies of light horse, with trumpeters "answering each other, and awakening the echoes of the rocks." Sometimes the Cardinal landed, and then he was carried ashore and placed in a chamber richly 1 1 Henri Martin, in his history, mentions one prisoner only as being in the boat, and says that Cinq Mars joined him afterwards. "Un Manuscrit du Temps." quoted by Joanne, says that Cinq Mars and De Thou were both in the boat. The details given above are derived from this source. ✓ NAVIGABle riverS. 291 prepared for his reception. If there was any difficulty about his litter it was taken in through a breach in the wall.' 1 This, I believe, is the most remarkable river voyage of which we have authentic record. The body of Richelieu lay half dead in the midst of his floating luxury (it died completely in the December of the same year), but the brain was as clear and masterful as ever. During all those days, when the swift Rhone washed without ceasing the sides of the Cardinal's barge, he lay thinking, thinking, feeling every minute the bitterness of physical decline, and foreseeing the inevitable end, but making his last journey in the undiminished pomp of his power, and scious that his enfeebled fingers still held a kingdom within their grasp. con- The serviceableness of navigable rivers to the convenience of mankind is curiously variable with different stages of civilization. In the beginning they are the only roads. Afterwards roads are made on the shore, and the river is a means of transit for heavy merchandise. Then steam navigation restores its former pre- dominance, and it is once again the great highway. Long quays are built at the riverside towns. From morning till night they are covered with goods and lively with the animation of traffic. This state of things looks as if it would be permanent, yet is, in reality, most transitory; for the increase of trade itself suggests the construction of lateral railways, and then the steamers rot at their anchorage, and grass grows between the stones on the landing-places. If the river is not quite absolutely and perfectly convenient for barges, the modern engineer has in reserve another great rival to its claims. He can construct a lateral canal, and when he has done this for the slow traffic, and made railways for the more rapid transit, the river is left to itself almost as completely as when the prehistoric inhabitant first. launched his hollowed tree. This progress and decline of com- merce on the great rivers is completely exemplified in France. After the employment of steamboats, and before the construc- tion of the railway from Paris to Marseilles, there was a great traffic on the Saône and Rhone, with Chalon2 for its tête de ¹ It seems probable that Richelieu enjoyed this demonstration of his power, for Henri Martin tells us that when the Cardinal afterwards travelled by land he had 66 a magnificent litter so lofty and so wide that the gates of the cities were too nar- row for it to pass, and it was necessary to demolish part of the walls to receive the Cardinal-King." 2 English writers generally, but incorrectly, spell Chalon-sur-Saône like Châlons- sur-Marne. ! 292 LANDSCAPE. ligne. That traffic is now so small a matter that the waves from a public steamer rock your sailing-boat just once a day. For half the year there is but one public steamer weekly from Avignon to Valence, for the Rhone has a railway on each bank. The people want a canal also ; and if ever it is made, the broad current of the Rhone will only be descended by the great rafts or crossed by the ferry-boats that go by the force of the stream.¹ By the Loire the lateral canal has been long established, and for many a league the river flows through a solitude of sand or a dreary waste of pebbles, the dominant feeling about it in the minds of the farmers being not any gratitude for its benefits, but a well-grounded apprehension of its floods. In the history of a very modern colony the river steamer comes immediately after the first explorers, and may retain its importance much longer than in a rich old country like France, where the civil engineer is so busy. The common practice of introducing a steamer in every view of the great American rivers is only an appropriate reference to the white man's way of link- ing the centres of civilization with its remotest outposts. The river steamer is the colonist's best friend, so that even when these vessels are entirely wanting in beauty we cannot wish them out of the picture. They are the least costly of all the servants of humanity, and therefore best appreciated by the poor. "If it were not for the boat," said a poor woman to me on the Rhone steamer, "I never could afford to go south to see my mother, as the railway is beyond my means; but now we meet from time to time." It is quite possible that a feeling of sympathy with the humble classes may have induced Turner to tolerate steamboats in his drawings. He often travelled upon them, and mixed with the common people in the most unpre- tending way. A public river steamer gives us landscape and humanity at the same time, so that when one of the two ceases to be interesting we have only to turn to the other. If, however, our object is to study landscape, or simply to allow ourselves to receive im- pressions from Nature, it is better to be more alone. The steamer makes a foreground in itself, and a populous one, in the midst of Nature's most perfect solitudes; besides obtruding itself 1 They are attached to a running wheel on a wire that crosses the river at a considerable height, and when the boat is kept in a diagonal position by the steers- man the force of the current impels it towards the opposite shore. NAVIGABLE RIVERS. 293 in every picture, it moves so rapidly that the length of the reaches has not time to impress itself adequately on the mind. A new class of aquatic travellers in the present day have a pas- sion for being entirely alone with Nature. This is a most remarkable result of our present social state, in which city life is becoming so predominant. Not only do people live together in towns, but they travel together in great numbers, and this be- gets the desire to be alone. Our ancestors were often alone on horseback in their health-giving necessary journeys, and no doubt they enjoyed the landscape in their own way without say- ing much about it. There is quite sufficient evidence in mediae- val romances to prove that if the knights-errant felt like the poets who described them they must have enjoyed their rides through the open country, along the narrow rough roads of those days. Even in "Don Quixote " there is a great deal of solitary, or all but solitary, enjoyment of travel through regions of very various character. This lonely travel, which formerly came to so many people of different station by mere accident, has, in our day, to be sought for consciously; and as the painters have taught us to admire the lakes and rivers, we want to go back, in our own way, to that independent, leisurely travel of which modern progress has deprived us. There has never been a time in the history of boat-building when so much thought and intelligence were expended on the construction of boats to be navigated by one person. In every country where yachting is practised at all the newspapers tell us of long, solitary voyages; and the heroes of them have in many cases preserved the results of their experience in books of travel which, if not always of much literary value, are sure to contain the record of that direct and personal observation which is only to be gained by a long intimacy with Nature. It would be out of place, in a work of this kind, to insert nar- ratives of boat voyages, but I may observe that all real knowl- edge of navigable rivers must be gained by their means. A river can never be understood by coming across the course of it here and there. A voyage on a public steamer is better, and is often the most that we have time to accomplish, but it is still far infe- rior to personal and independent investigation in a small boat. To make this plainer, let the reader imagine a place where the current becomes swifter than elsewhere, and of various degrees of swiftness in different parts of the river's breadth. You ascend 294 LANDSCAPE. it in the public steamer almost without a thought, the huge ma- chine that carries you makes you unaware of the motions in the water beneath its keel and paddles; but to sail up that place in a small boat, even with a strong and favorable wind, you have to study it. You have to find out the weak points of the current, if there are any, and after seeing your boat apparently stationary, though really sailing at a good speed, you discover that other parts of the stream are not running so swiftly, and that they may be ascended. If I went into minute detail and described real experiences of this kind with the help of diagrams, the reader would easily perceive what an education in the ways of currents is the habit of using small boats dependent on oar and sail. But to understand currents is to understand a great part of what has to be learned about rivers. Again, on the public steamer we easily fall into a state of almost complete indifference about the winds. On a boat that has no mechanical propeller we study the wind incessantly, and if we have any artistic turn we unite the nautical observation of the wind with an artist's obser- vation of its pictorial effects upon the water. On a small boat we are near the water and feel its motions, we become so closely associated with the life of the landscape that the poetical idea about actually sharing it is scarcely an exaggeration in our case. The true temper of a lover of rivers, or philopotamus, if there were such a word, is to feel happy anywhere on the river, and to have such a comprehensive conception of its interest that even the duller parts of it gain an ideal charm from the beautiful parts that may be far away. A river is not simply what the traveller can see at any single moment of time. The length of its course, the variety of the scenes through which it flows, the cities that it passes, the mightier river that it joins perhaps a hundred miles away, or the sea in which, it may be at a much greater distance, it ultimately loses all individuality,-all these are vaguely or clearly present in the memory whenever we see its waters or even simply hear its name. There are few rivers where positively dull and ugly scenery is more frequently met with, or for longer spaces, than on the Nile; yet it would be impossible for any educated traveller to come upon the Nile, even in the very dullest and ugliest league of it, without some thought of its ancient temples and pyramids, its cataracts famous in the days of Herodotus, and the mystery about its origin that endured so wonderfully long in spite of the keenest curiosity in the cleverest nations of navigable rivers. 295 the world. Even the very solution of that mystery, if it takes away the glamour of the unknown, has given a new glory to every league of the great river by associating it as closely with two enormous fresh-water inland seas as the Rhone is asso- ciated with Lake Leman. In the unfurnished and unstimulated imagination of some wretched fellah, whose monotonous days are spent in drawing water for irrigation, the Nile may be little more than the one dull reach of it that he sees; but an English- man thinks of it all at once, from the equatorial waters to the Mediterranean. I have taken the Nile as the most august example; but the same is true in minor degrees of every river that has magnificent natural or historical associations. There are parts of the Loire, for leagues together, that have no visible interest; and yet I have never come upon the Loire, in any part of its course, without an emotion that had little to do with the water and beach before me. The mere length of the Loire, more than a thousand kilo- mètres, is enough to impress an Englishman accustomed to the short rivers of his own country; but, besides this, we have a quantity of more or less confused geographical, historical, and artistic associations that cast, for us, a sort of enchantment over every mile of the Loire, and even over the very letters of its name.¹ We remember its birth among the mountains of the Ardèche, and how at first it seems as though it would join the Rhone, but turns aside in time to escape this obscure fate, and chooses the path that leads to a long course of existence and to fame. We remember how nearly in its early course it passes by the mysterious deep blue waters of the Lac d'Issartes, that have no visible issue, the wildness of its own passage through the mountains of the departments that take their names from it, the more peaceful progress through the plain of the Nièvre, and past the old ducal city of Nevers. After that, when the Loire takes its great curve to the west, the historic interest increases, and we think of Orleans, Blois, Tours, Angers, Nantes, with a degree of romantic interest dependent upon our knowledge of the past and our value for the visible remnants of its archi- tecture. The illustrations of Turner have greatly increased the 1 The power of such associations even over a single letter is curiously demon- strated by the nearly similiar names of the two rivers Loire and Loir, the first sug- gesting a host of ideas, the second not nearly so many, even to those who know, while it is absolutely without associations for most people. 296 LANDSCAPE. poetry of the Loire for every Englishman who is able to appre- ciate the fine arts. Even if we know how different are his dreams from the reality, that reality has gained a glory from the dreams. The comparison of rivers with lakes may help us to under- stand the effect of rivers on the mind. A lake impresses by unity, a river by continuity. In the abstract conceptions of geometry a lake might be represented by a circle or oval, a river by a line. A lake may be more impressive to those who see, a river to those who think, remember, imagine. The poetry of the lake may be intense, but it is soon told, in some canto like “The Island” of Scott, some verses like the stanzas of Lamar- tine. The poetry of the river is long though it is not endless, for it is sure to finish at last in the absorbing sea. From what has been already said, the reader may be prepared for the opinion that although many parts of a river might be thoroughly dull and uninteresting if each of them were a ditch without issue, they are never without majesty if they are parts of a great whole. This may be better appreciated by the descrip- tion of a remembered scene. I was with a friend in a sailing-boat on a river almost without current, when the stars came out and the very faintest breath of air just kept our little vessel in motion. The banks of the stream darkened quickly as the evening advanced and were in them- selves singularly monotonous, being merely the cutting effected by the river itself in an immense plain, with here and there a few bushes but hardly any trees. As for buildings, the only one to be seen for several miles was a gray old house on the water's edge that indicated a stopping-place for barges. This was slowly left behind, and then our solitude was complete. A thin, young moon gave us a little light; we spread all our canvas to catch the faintest breeze, and floated dreamily on for hours. In this way we passed through what is commonly believed to be the ugliest part of a long river, so ugly that people think it is to be avoided, and yet those hours were full of a deep charm that only a poet could adequately express. The monotony of the apparently endless shores that made a band of darkness between water and sky, the resemblance of one reach to another, as we passed through an uncounted succession of reaches, each like a long quiet pond, the difficulty of knowing exactly where we were in the absence of definite landmarks, the knowledge that we NAVIGABle riveRS. 297 # were slowly traversing a great plain that we could not see, the perfect silence, the solitude as complete as if we had been in some unexplored country, all these influences, and that of the quiet stars, may have helped to make the river poetical that night. Still, there were other influences also, and I believe that the most powerful of these had nothing to do with our imme- diate surroundings. We knew that the river flowed on for hun- dreds of miles before it reached the Mediterranean, that it passed through innumerable scenes of natural beauty and historical in- terest, that "castled crags" and "towered cities" were not rare along its course, that the complete absence of human interest which characterized it where we happened to be was by no means characteristic of the whole. We knew that Caesar had crossed it with his legions, and the extreme slowness of the cur- rent where we sailed was associated for ever with one of his rare expressions that indicate some observation of Nature. We knew that the dark shore to the right had been the frontier of the kingdom of France, and the dark shore to the left the frontier of the great mediaeval " Empire," so that to this day the barge- men neither say right and left, nor starboard and port, but "Empire" and "Royaume," still. Much may have been due to the mystery of a calm and beau- tiful night, and to "that clear obscure, So softly dark, and darkly pure," which remains with starlight when the moon is only a crescent and has not strength enough to destroy it; but I have sailed on the same waters in the early morning when there was no help from effect, and yet found another order of poetical suggestion. Then the sky was dull with uniform cloud, the day broke in dim gray light, the distance was pale and faint, so that the far-away villages looked like old water-color drawings, timidly tinted at first and faded for many a year. The river itself was of a pale green, rippled by occasional breezes, the banks reddish, with a few green bushes and edged with grass often overhanging or fall- ing down in sods where most undermined, the monotony of the reaches being broken only by the occasional flight of aquatic birds or the slow passage of a buzzard that took its station suc- cessively on points of land along the shore. The scenery was like some broad Dutch canal on a dull gray morning, yet it had 298 LANDSCAPE. still a great charm for me. I profoundly enjoyed the complete unity of quiet in light and color and slow motion, the freshness of the early morning air, and the happy fearlessness of the birds, who knew that we were not enemies. These effects of extreme peace on rivers, and many other effects of which peace is the dominant suggestion, are entirely incompatible with any great swiftness of current. I have never seen an effect of real quiet upon the Rhone; for however quiet the sky may be, however still the wind, the motion of the water that ceaselessly hurries to the sea is of itself such an example of the real restlessness there is in Nature, that it brings us too close to the truth for the illusion of repose to be any longer pos- sible. I say "the illusion of repose," because there is no real repose in the universe. Let a man be idly sailing at night by the feeblest breathings of the summer air on a stream whose cur- rent is imperceptible and under a cloudless sky, the very feeling of rest that he enjoys is due to the perfection of certain regulated motions. If his blood flowed irregularly he would feel agitated, if the nervous circulation were impeded he would feel distressed, his clear sight of the tranquil stars is due to an infinite number of ether vibrations that come to him with inconceivable swiftness. The river itself, with its banks and bridges, is flying eastwards ten times as fast as an express train; the stars are in motion, the atoms are rushing about everywhere. Rest there is none, but there may be the illusion of it, one of the sweetest of the de- ceptions that surround us, and it is a wearisome characteristic of the swift rivers that the feeling of rest is for ever impossible on their surface or by their shores. A boat on the Rhone is like a balloon in the wind; a house by the Rhone is like a rock in a rapid. I remember one with a pretty garden and lawn that comes down to the water, where it ends in a protection of masonry, that is incessantly washed by the green water. If the owner had a rowing-boat he could not pull back to his own stairs; if his child fell in, the body would be a mile away before help could be given. The one evil of the Rhone is its perpet- ual hurry, otherwise it is a delightful river. The water of it is beautiful, the shores are often grand and adorned by castles and towns, but the surface is enlivened by no pleasure-boats. No- body could sail against such a current and the wind together; nobody could row for any distance against the stream. The tugs that bring up the barges have a great wheel with big steel teeth NAVIGABle riveRS. 299 shaped like the claws of a lion, and it turns on the bed of the river, rising and falling with the varying depth and clutching the stones below. The only natural navigation on the Rhone is that of the great rafts that descend to the south. During the one voy- age of their brief existence they go with the stream, and belong to it as they once belonged to the forest. This opposition of character between the Saône and the Rhone, the two rivers that meet and marry at Lyons, is more complete than that between any other two considerable rivers known to me, and I may be excused for dwelling upon it a little in this place, on the principle that an author may give more room to what he knows by his own observation of Nature than to what he gets at second-hand from the recorded experience of others. The two elements are necessary, but I imagine that in order to give the second-hand element its full value, were quire a close degree of familiarity with one or two natural examples in each kind. I should hardly venture to write about anything in Nature without knowing at least one specimen well, not to speak of some slighter acquaintance with other specimens. The Saône is, I believe, the slowest river in Europe, and pos- sibly the slowest in the world; at least I never heard of any other to equal it in this respect. We have seen how Caesar noticed this "incredible slowness," and he would probably have been much surprised if he could have been told that in a future remote from him it would positively be increased; yet this has been effected in some parts of the river's course by the establish- ment of weirs and locks, which convert the stream above them, for a long distance, into something like an immense mill-pond. This laziness of the current is, however, looked upon as the greatest of merits by the lovers of sail and oar, who have an ad- ditional reason for liking the Saône, in the rarity of trees upon its banks and the general flatness of its shores. The wind blows freely in every direction, except as you approach Lyons, when the river is enclosed by hills, and consequently you have the up and down winds usual in such cases. If the Saône is the slowest of rivers, the Rhone is reputed to be the swiftest. There are less known streams of equal occa- sional velocity, and perhaps the Danube may be comparable to the Rhone for considerable distances; but the great character- istic of the Rhone is the steadiness of its pace. From Geneva to Arles it is rapid everywhere, in some parts more than others, 300 LANDSCAPE. yet always rapid. You never come upon a sleepy reach of the Rhone till you get nearly to the level of the Mediterranean. Here, however, the reader is asked to bear in mind that we are speaking only of the rapidity of water, which is not great in com- parison with that of wind, or even of animals. I have made a very careful calculation of the speed of the Rhone between Lyons and Valence, founded upon the difference of the time spent by the steamers in going up and down the river, and it gives me, at low water, an average current just exceeding four miles an hour.¹ Its speed at Vienne is given by Joanne at two mètres per second, which is about four and a half miles. At those places where the current is most swift I doubt if it reaches seven miles an hour, judging from the known speed of the steamers relatively to the water, and their effective speed rela- tively to the banks of the river. These rates are, however, much exceeded in times of flood, — how much I am unable to ascer- tain. The average of four miles an hour may be the ordinary speed of the upper Danube, as Mr. Macgregor considered thirty miles a day fair work in his canoe 2 when he descended a rapid part of that river. After writing the preceding paragraph I cannot resist a reflec- tion which often occurs to me, - how destructive of effect the love of exactness is in literature. I am uncomfortably conscious that I have just been spoiling what might have been rather a telling page on the appalling rapidity of the Rhone. A poet would have compared it to an arrow from the bow; one of those prose writers, who are admired for the vigor of their styles, would at least have utilized I know not what fierce and fiery coursers; but what chance of effect remains for an author who begins by admitting that the mighty river he is attempting to describe rolls its waters to the sea at the pace of a good pedes- trian? It is in vain for me now, when I have spoilt the subject, to assure the reader that the swirls of a river look quite formid- able at five or six miles an hour. He has seen railway engines do fifty, and cannot attach the notion of any dangerous rapidity 1 The reader will remark the curious similarity between the speed of the Rhone and that of water in a steep street-gutter, which I ascertained by experiment as narrated in a previous chapter. 2 If we suppose Mr. Macgregor to have been eight hours on the water, a prob- able average, and if we take the excess of speed over the current, gained by paddling, as a compensation for the loss of time from occasional stoppages, that would leave about four miles an hour for the speed of the river. NAVIGABle riveRS. 301 (6 to five. I will therefore say no more about the rush of the water, but have recourse to one of the other powers of Nature. It is remarkable about the Saône and the Rhone, that the speed of their winds is proportionate in some degree to that attained by their waters. On the Saône the winds are often persistent, but moderate in their persistence. The summer north wind or bise," is delightful for sailing purposes. The river is covered with innumerable little green waves that dance and glitter in the sunshine, the wind blows steadily down what seems an intermi- nable lake, and engages you to reduce your canvas by one reef, but gives you no real anxiety. You sail on for many a mile under a blue sky with white clouds, your white sails on the green water as they in the blue heaven, and the green shores glide away, separated by faint blue hills from the lower sky, and the sea-gulls play merrily in the pure air, and you pass a hundred fields and châteaus, and rich villages bright in the joyous light, the wind singing a merry allegro all the time. The reader may here object that such a wind is not slow like the water that flows incredibili lenitate. True, but everything is relative, and now let him see the mistral on the Rhone. It is generally a fine-weather wind, for the simple reason that cloudy weather is not very common in Provence. In the north of England, and in Scotland, we associate the ideas of sunshine and repose. Our tempests of wind are generally accompanied by flying rain-clouds, often by incessant rain, and we have no experience, in our own country, of a pure wind-storm lasting for many days together without a cloud in the blue sky. In the lower part of the Rhone's course this happens every year, and several times in the year. The people do not dislike their mistral, they tell me that they prefer it to rain: such is the happy effect of a patriotic local affection. It is less trying on the river than on the roads, where the wonder is how the cart-drivers can endure the glare and the dust together. On the river you have glittering light and storm-waves in the longer reaches (about the size of ordinary lake waves), and as there is no dust, nothing interferes with the intense brilliance and wild animation of Na- ture. I can imagine nothing more exciting than a boat-voyage down the Rhone during the mistral. I have never attempted it, because excitement of that kind would be too much prolonged for pleasure, and because if the wind reached its utmost intensity at any troublesome part of the river, driving the boat on a shoal, ❤ 302 LANDSCAPE. . one would have to remain there till it abated, without any possi- bility of shelter. The use of sails, however reduced by reefing, would be entirely out of the question; but the boat would scud well and keep her steerage under bare poles. Without making this wild experiment, one may ascertain what the mistral is by simply crossing the long suspension-bridge that joins Beaucaire to Tarascon; and even that is not a complete experience, as there is a bell on the bridge that is rung by the wind itself when it reaches a certain strength, and then the gates are closed. I happen to be able, however, to give some account of how the bridge was crossed on one occasion, while the wind-bell was ringing. An inhabitant of Beaucaire, who occupies a responsible public position in the town, and is, I believe, quite a trustworthy person,¹ told me that having had occasion to cross the bridge to Tarascon at a time when the mistral was blowing, he wished to return the same evening, but the bell had begun to ring and the bridge-keeper refused to let him pass. He then represented that it was necessary for him to be in Beaucaire that night on account of public business, and the gate-keeper gave a reluctant consent on the ground that he did not pass as a private person, but as a functionary risking his life in the service of the public. The first discovery he made was that it was impossible either to walk or stand, but he found it just possible to creep forward on his hands and knees, being a little sheltered by the causeway. Even then he was often compelled to stop, and progressed so slowly that it took an hour and a half to get over four hundred mètres. Neither was the crossing without danger, as the force of the wind striking up from below was powerful enough to tear up many of the planks in the roadway. About fifty of these yielded while the adventurer was on the bridge. After this ex- ample of the mistral's energy in Provence, the reader will per- ceive that a boat voyage under its guidance might be very excit- ing, very rapid, but could hardly be a prudent undertaking, and that the use of sails is not to be considered practical. Every place has its own most characteristic weather. A lake in our West Highlands is best seen under a changeful sky, with enough of rain and wind to give variety to the effects and life to the waters; or perhaps if the scenery is very desolate and wild, a drearier and more melancholy effect might bring out its 1 I may add that he comes from the north of France, and is therefore less likely to exaggerate than a Provençal. NAVIGABle riverRS. 303 character still better. The lake may either lie stilled in deepen- ing gloom, or be lashed by a raging tempest, when the dark waves whiten and the mountain grows pale behind the showers. The Saône is familiar to me under many phases; but the weather that suits it best is that of a splendid summer's day with a brisk and steady breeze, when there has been no flood to make the water turbid and it has its own fine semi- transparent green. In such weather the dominant expression of the Saône is an exhilarating brightness and openness. Its great characteristic is largeness of space, its waters are broad, its reaches long, and it has an ample margin of level country before the eye is arrested by the boundary of pale blue hills. Anything that interferes with this feeling of open space is a diminution of what is best in the river. With the Rhone the case is different. It is never a very open river until it reaches the plain of the Camargue. Its banks are often steep on both sides, as from Sarras to Tournon, or on one side, as from Tour- non to Valence, and during the whole of its course to Arles it has mountainous distances. It seems to me, then, that the Rhone is grandest when its hills look near; and I have never seen it so perfect as in the short southern twilight, after sunset, when the distant mountains are blue and the nearer precipitous banks very dark against the clear heaven, with some old castle cut sharply in silhouette. Then the swift waters flow away to the south with a steel-gray surface of ceaseless agitation, and the stars brighten in the unresting wind. It would be an omission to write a chapter about navigable rivers without alluding to their inundations. All Continental rivers that drain vast areas are subject to great floods. When a brook fills up its rocky bed, and removes here and there a little bridge, and vexes a few farmers by cutting a new channel through their fields, the broad, navigable Continental river overflows provinces and carries anxiety into a hundred cities. At every town there is a river-gauge, and the rising of the water is telegraphed day and night all along the banks. As the possi- bilities of disaster can be very accurately estimated by previous experience, the people know what they have to do as soon as the probable height of the water is ascertained. They evacuate the lower parts of their dwellings, or abandon them altogether while it is yet time. There are many places in the lowlands about the Loire where it would be only prudent for every 304 LANDSCAPE. family to have an ark, as Noah had, in anticipation of the next flood. The people have at least their rude but serviceable flat- bottomed boats, and they are often most skilful in the use of them. In the towns the river is confined at first between the well-built quays, but if the inundation is one of the great calami- tous inundations, it passes over the quays and fills all the neigh- boring streets. The picturesque and irregular square or place at Chalon-sur-Saône, where the old Renaissance church of St. Peter and the Museum are, was entirely inundated in a recent flood, and would have looked quite Venetian if the architecture had been more like "the stones of Venice" and the boats mis- takable for her gondolas. At Mâcon there are hotels on the quays, and one of them near the bridge has a balcony on the first floor, where the steamer landed her passengers in one of the great floods. What could be more convenient than to arrive at one's hotel so directly? The passengers stepped in by the window and found themselves at once on the level of the principal rooms. The familiar clatter of the omnibuses in the courtyard had ceased, and their place was occupied by a tank of muddy water that filled it from wall to wall. The effect of these inundations can hardly be realized unless you are familiar with local details. Then you remember the room where you dined in some riverside inn, and learn that when the flood came it was filled like the cabin of a sunken ship. In the heats of summer, when the river is low, and you are wandering in a village that seems at an unapproachably safe elevation on the bank, you suddenly come upon the name of the river, a date, and a short horizontal line chiselled in the stones of a building. Then some native tells you that he remembers seeing the water at that line, and you look round on the sunny gardens, the green plain, the quiet river in its bed rippling to the summer breeze and threatening nobody,—you look at this present reality and only by a strong effort of imagination can you realize that other reality, of a river without any visible bounds rushing over a devastated country under a gray and hopeless sky. The reader is familiar with floods in pictures and newspaper* illustrations. He knows how the street becomes a raging tor- rent, and the women are rescued from windows and balconies in boats; how some wretched man clings to a projecting gas- lamp, and it gives way; how a little crowd collects on the bridge that falls with a sudden crash and the people with it; NAVIGABle rivers. 305 how agonized cottagers in the country sit on their thatched roofs and see the deluge rising and rising till some boat comes just in time to save them; how the surface of the water is strewn over with floating household goods; how cattle swim for their lives; how in the intervals between the flying clouds a ghastly moon looks down on a desolation that is neither sea nor lake, nor anything resembling a river, but a vast, indefinite chaos of muddy water and everything that it can carry away. This is the tragic and sensational aspect of the great inunda- tions, only to be described with perfect force in fiction, because the reader never realizes scenes quite beyond common experi- ence, until his sympathies are engaged on behalf of individual actors or sufferers whom he can believe that he knows per- sonally. Those inundations that I have myself witnessed have not been in this extreme degree, but were still important enough as floods of the second order. There are rivers such as the Durance, and even the Loire, which are not in their perfection unless flooded, because their vast, stony channels look empty in ordinary times; therefore such rivers in minor floods have not any appearance of being flooded, but have simply the aspect of very majestic rivers flowing full from bank to bank. Among low- land streams I have seen nothing comparable to the Loire in this condition, when all its shoals and sand-banks are hidden, and the water flows under every arch of its interminable bridges. If the wind happens to be strong at such times the great reaches, with the marine birds flying over them, remind us of estuaries, though the Atlantic may still be far away, and it is difficult to believe that such noble expanses of stormy water are of little use for navigation. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ There are times when a minor flood produces no terror, but only a kind of resignation, the result of repeated experience, as people accept the attacks of maladies that have grown familiar from habit. I remember observing, during an inundation of the Seine, how the people kept up communication between the little spaces of ground that had become islands by slowly driving vehicles on submerged roads. The lower houses were aban- doned and full of water; those on higher sites were islanded. The flooded lands were of vast extent, but there was little ap- pearance of calamity. A full moon shone peacefully over what seemed a great smooth lake, nobody was excited or apprehen-. sive, as the worst was over, and we were free to admire the 20 306 LANDSCAPE. T watery world around us, without feeling guilty of any want of sympathy for human trouble. As a great river approaches the sea its current usually (but not invariably) becomes slower and its character changes. If it has the luck to empty itself into a marine inlet like the Clyde, the Thames, or the Severn, the transition from independent existence to the final absorption in the infinite is so gradual that it is impossible to say where the river really dies. There are few experiences more interesting than a voyage beginning in a river and continuing in the open sea. The subtle and gradual change of character from fluvial to marine existence can hardly be defined at any one place, and yet we feel it to be continually operating, till at length the change is accomplished. The river widens, the tide flows up and down, the air is full of odors of the sea, the shipping increases in quantity, and finally, almost before we are aware of it, the receding land has become of little comparative importance, and the sea is heaving around us. When a great river divides itself in a delta the impression pro- duced is one of the most unsatisfactory that can be imagined. Just at the very time when it ought to be majestic, when it ought to keep its forces well together and die with all possible dignity, it proceeds to scatter them in such a manner that in- stead of being a mighty and magnificent river it becomes several insignificant ones. The misfortune is enhanced by the usually monotonous character of deltas. As they are merely plains formed of alluvial deposits, they can offer little variety, and the only charm they are likely to possess is the melancholy charm of desolation. The great plain of the Camargue, in the delta of the Rhone, has this attraction for artists and writers inter- ested in all the aspects of Nature, that it presents melancholy effects with a perfection of unity not easily found in any civil- ized country. Imagine a space of more than a hundred and sixty thousand acres with no other variety than pools of brack- ish water, salty sands, wretched grasses, and thinly scattered tamarisk shrubs. "As you go farther into this solitude,' says M. Lenthéric, "the vegetation becomes poorer and more puny, there are more low marshy places, the sandy desert extends to the horizon. There is nothing to relieve the eye. The bare and flat soil glitters under the crude light of Provence; it is all sadness, desolation, fever, almost death." The southern French painters are fond of representing this region, sometimes "" NAVIGABLe rivers. 307 in the intolerable glare of noon when the white sand half blinds one and the few shadows cut upon it sharply, sometimes in the late evening when the long pools glisten under the dying light and the horizon is hot and red, and the herdsmen ride swiftly after the half-wild cattle as they do in Texas or Colorado. All this is dreary enough; and yet, when taken in some connection with the historic associations of Arles, the last city on the undi- vided Rhone, it makes a finish for a noble river that is at least well removed from the commonplace, and in that respect much superior to the ending of the divided Rhine in Holland, where the pastures are undoubtedly richer, but without any element of romance. The Rhine flows from poetry to dull prose; the Rhone from bright and animated poetry to that which is dreary, depressing, melancholy, but poetry still that touches all the chil- dren of the Muse. There is something in the ending of such a noble river which no prose composition can adequately describe. These themes need the assistance of some stately rhythmic measure; and, therefore, that this chapter may end in a manner worthy of its subject, I quote Arnold's description of the Oxus in "Sohrab and Rustum," which has always seemed to me the finest account in literature of the conclusion of fluvial existence : "But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon; — he flow'd Right for the polar star, past Orgunjè, Brimming, and bright, and large; then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foil'd circuitous wanderer till at last The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral sea." 2 308 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXX. MAN'S WORK ON RIVERS. THE HERE is this difference between rivers on the one hand and lakes and seas on the other, that the labors of men are often very conspicuous on rivers, while on lakes they are much less conspicuous, and the appearance of the sea is very little affected by them, except in estuaries and harbors. The narrowness of a river tempts men to the construction of bridges. The length of a river makes some kind of crossing inevitable (whereas traffic will go a long round to avoid the crossing of a lake ¹), and as the population is usually denser in the neighbor- hood of a river than at a distance from it, and the towns on both sides not very widely separated, the desire for easy com- munication has always been great, and has reached in modern times a degree of impatience unknown to previous generations. What modern people expect from their public authorities is simply that rivers shall cease to exist as obstacles, and be pre- served only as conveniences; the modern ideal is that you should find a bridge wherever you want it, and not be able to discover any appreciable difference between the road over the water and the roads upon the land. Besides the multiplication of bridges, we have a great increase in quays and embankments, which has been caused indirectly by the habit of great undertakings in railways, just as the great French aqueduct at Roquefavour was executed in our century less because such things had been done by the ancient Romans than because French engineers had been building long railway. 1 There are many instances of this. One that is very familiar to me is the road round the head of Loch Awe, from Inverary to Oban. Lakes do not usually in- tercept land traffic very much, they only increase mileage. I remember being told by a railway engineer who was planning a new line with what seemed to me an un- lucky roundabout, that it was "not against the interest of the Company, as the passengers and goods paid by the mile." *. MAN'S WORK on rivers. 309 viaducts. The desire for activity among engineers and their great influence with governments have placed the French rivers entirely in their hands. This subject has been touched upon in the chapter on French scenery, but must be recurred to here because the influence of French engineers has extended to other countries. The quays of Paris produced the Thames Embankment, the canals in France led to those of Suez and Panama. The "canalization" of a river does not mean that it is turned into a canal, but simply that the impediments to navigation are smoothed away by science. The means employed are all per- fectly familiar; every difficulty is known and has its own ascer- tained remedy. The action of currents is so far understood that the banks can be protected against them, which is done either by submerged walls or by lining the bank itself with a sloping case of masonry. The submerged walls have no effect. on the landscape, except that they produce a slight alteration on the surface of the water above them; their action on the natural bank of the river is simply conservative,' but the masonry along the bank itself is destructive of natural beauty. As there is a towing-path on one side of a canalized river, it often hap- pens that the towing-path and the wall are on the same bank, the one clearing away all trees, the other destroying the minor 1 The nature of these submerged walls cannot be well understood without a diagram. A River с Land protected water F River B D River E Let A, B, represent the natural bank of the river, then a wall C, D, E, F, is built under water to protect the bank. It will be seen that this wall encloses a space of water that remains quiet. I remember a steam-yacht rushing on the wall C, D, till the fore part of the keel rose high in the air. The owner, with great presence of mind, ordered his men to go forward, and their weight got the boat down into the enclosed space; but once in they had to get out again by making the boat climb over the wall F, E, which they accomplished in the same manner. If the yacht had not been very strongly constructed, and of rather small dimensions, she would have broken her back. In sailing, one has to be well on the lookout for these sub- aqueous walls, as they may catch a keel or a centre-board, and if the current over the wall is rather powerful you shortly discover that the enclosure C, D, E, F, has been converted, for you, into a swimming-bath. I may add that although these walls do not cross the river they are always called barrages, which gives an Eng- lishman a totally erroneous impression, as he is sure to think that barrage means a weir, which it does on small rivers where there are no subaqueous walls. 310 LANDSCAPE. vegetation of the bank, so that the engineer has been successful in shaving away all that Nature had done to make the water-side interesting. It is remarkable, too, how much the presence of human works deducts from the feeling of solitude. For me there is no perfect solitude where the results of human toil are visible, though I take at least as much interest in what men do as those who care nothing for unspoiled Nature. The engineers have a plan for dividing the current in order to weaken it, which when the river is low produces a result very remote from the picturesque. They find a long shallow in mid- stream and erect upon it a mole as long as itself, which is covered at high-water but exposed in times of drought, when it presents rather a muddy appearance as to color, with extreme monotony of form. At high-water the current rushes laterally over these moles, which are only less disagreeable than the barrages" because you are not a prisoner in an enclosed space on the other side. 66 The great weirs, with the long locks for steamers and trains of barges, are admirable achievements of engineering, and most useful institutions, but they do not directly contribute to the beauty of a river. Indirectly, however, they contribute to it very efficaciously by giving it a lake-like appearance, which in the slow rivers may extend for several miles. I remember an artist who declared that if he knew that water had been retained in any place artificially it would immediately cease to give him pleasure. I am not quite so difficult to please, and have often thought how much some of the prettiest scenes in Nature owed to their reflection in the still waters of some well-filled river-bed, which, in its turn, was indebted for its fulness to an unseen mill-weir or lock-weir lower down. I confess, however, that there is always rather a shock of disillusion when we actually come to see the weir itself, the too prosaic cause of what seemed to be Nature's own most authentic poetry. All the works mentioned hitherto sink into insignificance in comparison with the great dikes constructed to keep rivers from inundating plains. The classic land of dikes is, as we all know, Holland, and the effect of them that first strikes a stranger is that they completely conceal the surrounding country. It seemed to De Amicis, the first time he found himself between two dikes, that the boat was on a piratical expedition to take somebody by surprise. It was, in fact, situated like a body of MAN'S WORK ON rivers. 311 soldiers advancing in a military ditch with no sight of anything but the sky. Afterwards the boat came among the islands of the Zealand archipelago, but there was a mystery about them which consisted in this, that the islands were not really seen, but only guessed at: "To right and left of the wide channel, before and behind the vessel, nothing was to be seen but the straight lines of the dikes, like a green streak on the level of the water, and behind this streak, here and there, were the tops of trees and church steeples, or red ridges of roofs that appeared to play hide and seek while we passed. Not a hill, not a mound of earth, not a house was dis- coverable anywhere, everything was hidden, everything seemed to be immersed in water; it seemed as if those islands were on the point of sinking completely, and one looked again and again to see if they were still visible. It seemed as if we were crossing some country on the day of the deluge, and it was a pleasure to think that we had a boat under us." 1 This is the beautiful result of having large dikes; but in Hol- land the people have the consolation of knowing that they are useful and even indispensable for the protection of their green and fertile polders. In the lower Rhone the great dikes have not led to any such happy result. The desolation of the Ca- margue in the delta of the Rhone has been described in the last chapter. It is believed now, by M. Lenthéric ¹ and others, that all the enormous labor spent upon the dikes of the Rhone below Arles has been much worse than thrown away, because they prevent the natural flooding of the plain of the Camargue, which would ultimately have converted it, by deposits, into much more fertile land. The inundations of the Rhone, when unrestricted by the engineers, were as beneficial as those of the Nile, and besides depriving the land of this benefit, their labors have exposed the inhabitants to a new peril, there being no inundation so dangerous as that from a breach suddenly made in an embankment. Such a torrent does not simply cover a 1 M. Lenthéric is an Ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées, who has written several works on the south of France, which combine, in the rarest degree, topographic and archaeological knowledge with literary accomplishment. I do not know any works of that class so well done as his "Villes Mortes du Golfe de Lyon," his "La Grèce et l'Orient en Provence," and "La Provence Maritime, Ancienne et Moderne." These works are models of what topographic books ought to be, with their fulness of information, their sound style, and entire absence of pedantry. M. Lenthéric is not a traveller in the common sense of the word, but a close and thoughtful student of a region which is full of histerical and scientific interest. 312 LANDSCAPE. tract of country, but devastates it. "Au lieu d'une inondation lente, progressive et bienfaisante, c'est un véritable déluge qui balaye toute la plaine placée en contre-bas du fleuve et y pro- duit des désordres effroyables." The dikes entirely deprive the surrounding country of the fertilization from the smaller floods, and add a fresh anxiety to the anxious life of the people during the great ones. Altogether, there are about two hundred miles of these dikes upon the Rhone. The quays in towns are very gratifying to our love of neatness ´and convenience; they are a plain evidence of advanced civili- zation, because no rude people would incur such labor simply for the sake of order; but it is surprising that the engineers who have planned the river-quays should so very rarely have felt the touch of an architectural inspiration. The Thames Embankment is the only thing of the kind known to me which has risen above the line that separates engineering from archi- tecture. It is a noble work. London has gained enough from it in dignity to compensate for any loss of picturesqueness. Three things only are wanting to the perfection of the Thames Embankment, and the absence of these is not the fault of the constructors. They could not make Thames water aqua-marine, like the Rhone at Geneva, nor emerald like the Gardon; they could not give the transparent atmosphere of the South, nor a lively crowd of happy people enjoying themselves under a bright sky, all of which would be most desirable adjuncts to an archi- tectural riverside. Yet such as it is, with a foul river and a foggy atmosphere, the Thames Embankment is to the quays of the Seine what a lordly terrace is to a railway platform. River- quays are so entirely destructive of the picturesque that they make some degree of magnificence a necessity. In Paris this is not given by the river-wall itself but by the edifices above it. The finest river-quays in the world in proportion to the size of the city are, I believe, those of Lyons; yet even there it is a mechanical perfection only, a perfection of straight lines, smooth walls, and broad walks planted with several rows of trees, a great improvement from the practical and orderly point of view on the confusion of the riverside during the Middle Ages, and a work that gives all of us a feeling of satisfaction, the satisfaction of the desire for cleanliness and civilization, which has nothing to do with the fine arts either in their picturesque or severer aspects. MAN'S WORK on rivers. 313 The builders of bridges have done more than any other engineers or architects for the spoiling or the improvement of certain particular places on rivers, though the works we have been considering extend for much longer distances. When it happens that a place is not merely a part of a river's length, but has a character of its own, the erection of a bridge may destroy that character so completely that the place becomes simply unrecognizable. On the other hand, there are many river- scenes whose beauty and interest have been greatly enhanced by the construction of a bridge, which serves as a kind of nexus, joining together many lines of a composition that Nature ap- parently intended to suggest, yet left for man to finish. Again, there may be much more unity in a bridge, which is a structure of definite length, than there can ever be in chaussées that may extend for miles and have no more necessary ending than a piece of telegraph wire. For these reasons, and on account of the fine opportunity for the exercise of invention and good taste in the proportions of the openings, it has always been considered that a bridge ought to be something more than a specimen of good practical engineering; and even when there is little orna- ment, little display of architectural pretensions, a bridge is rightly held to be a work of architectural art if, in addition to soundness of structure, it has that elegance or nobility of pro- portion which permanently satisfies the eye. Besides this satis- faction of our taste, a bridge may win a powerful hold upon our affections. I never loved a quay or an embankment, but I have loved bridges, and if the reader happens to be troubled with the unreasonable and often painful capability of attaching him- self to inanimate things, he is very likely to remember several bridges that he could not cross without emotion. Burns went so far as to personify two bridges and make them talk, which appeared so natural to other bards that many other bridges in Scotland found a voice.¹ This is worth mentioning as an evi- dence of imaginative human sympathy with these structures; and if other evidence were necessary it might be found in the French expression which has been current since the time of 1 One of these imitators of Burns is said to have informed his readers that, "Once upon a day Dumfries' twa brigs stood still and nought did say," a degree of taciturnity less exceptional with our bridges than our politicians. + 314 LANDSCAPE. Henri IV., "Je me porte comme le Pont Neuf," attributing health to a bridge instead of simple stability. . The best contrast between 66 twa brigs" that I remember as characteristic of mediaeval and modern times is to be seen at Pierre-Perthuis, on the Cure, not very far from Vézelay. The Cure belongs to the class of streams that I have named "Canoe Rivers." After passing at the base of the height crowned by the fine old castle of Chastellux, it flows rapidly on a rocky bed through rather a wild glen, and then comes to an eminence with a church upon it, a small village, and the remains of a feudal castle. There is an old steep road from the village down to the stream, which it crosses on a little Gothic bridge, very narrow and awkward, and rising high in the middle over its single arch with a turn in the road when you get across, altogether a bridge quite unfit for driving, but good enough for horse- men and pedestrians. Nevertheless, this ill-contrived bridge, with all the ups and downs before it, upon it, and after it, is as perfect a piece of bridge architecture as anything I ever met with on that scale; and as it has gained much in dignity by age, we congratulate ourselves that the superior modern engineers have not thought it worth their while to remove it from the landscape. What they have done, however, has been to make the public road go straight from the eminence on which the village of Pierre-Perthuis is built to the top of the crag on the other side of the river; and to accomplish this they have erected an arch of what seems a perilous, and is certainly an amazing elevation, having its abutments in the rock on each side. I need hardly observe that the top of the new bridge is quite flat (according to modern preferences), so that people in carriages roll easily and unconsciously from one crag to the other, and only those who descend to the river's bed have any conception of the height at which the few stones in the middle are scien- tifically suspended in the air. It seems, however, that Pierre- Perthuis has not yet done with engineering enterprises, for there is now a great railway scheme involving the construction of a bridge that will dwarf the one just described as effectually as it dwarfed the mediaeval one. The railway bridge will first leap over the church steeple, and then clear the ravine in its own way, at what vertiginous height I cannot tell. When this is done, posterity will have the opportunity of comparing, at that little place on the Cure, three excellent examples of bridge- G MAN'S WORK on rivers. 315 building in different stages, the first aiming only at getting across a stream, the second clearing a ravine, the third flying in the air like a bird over village, and steeple, and every inequality of ground. A few miles higher up the same river the castle of Chastellux is now approached by a viaduct that stretches across the glen. That is hardly a bridge over a stream, it is a bridge over a valley where a stream happens to flow, like the suspension- bridge at Fribourg. A small one-arched bridge gains in poetical sublimity in pro- portion to the depth and danger of the ravine that is traversed by it; and if the bridge is itself apparently rather thin and slight about the keystone, with little or no parapet to give a seeming massiveness, the effect of sublimity is much enhanced. Turner's drawing of the Old Devil's Bridge is an excellent example. We see that the ravine is of great depth (of unknown depth in the drawing), that its sides are of hard rock, where a fall would not be broken by bushes, and that the bridge is not very massive. An artist like Turner has the keenest perception of everything that can influence a spectator, and it may not unreasonably be suspected that he made the arch thinner at the top than he saw it in the reality, as there is absolutely no weight whatever on the keystone. The more perilous a bridge appears to be peril- ous to build, perilous to cross the more it awakens in us those sympathetic fears for others which are poetical when suggested by the imagination. If we perceive that the bridge is narrow the effect is increased, because passengers must be nearer the parapet. The old bridge at Avignon, of which a part only is left standing, gains in various ways by its narrowness: it is both more elegant and more evidently destined for passage only, not for idling or merchandising. Our present Westminster Bridge is so wide that we lose the sensation of crossing water, and it is obvious that if the width of a bridge were indefinitely increased we should have the impression simply of an area of ground, as on the artificial ground over the Canal de St. Martin at Paris, which is really nothing but a bridge, though it does not in the least give the idea of one. In connection with this part of the subject I may tell the reader the story of a personal disappointment which illustrates in various ways the architectural and pictorial qualities of bridges. I had long desired to see the famous Pont St. Esprit on the Rhone, but it was at some distance from the old line of - • 316 LANDSCAPE. railway, and I had not at that time descended the river in a boat. By what seemed a strange accident (though the reason for it is intelligible now) I had never seen an engraving or even a photograph of the Pont St. Esprit, and so was left en- tirely to the devices of my own imagination, which revealed the structure << compassed murkily about With ravage of six long sad hundred years." All I knew about it was that it had been erected by a confra- ternity of monks called "Les Frères Pontifes," who were incor- porated for the special purpose of constructing it in the middle of the thirteenth century; that these monks were extremely clever men in their way, and being churchmen contemporary with the best Gothic architects who ever lived, might be ex- pected to have the architectural as well as the engineering fac- ulties. As to the bridge itself, I knew that it was three times as long as London Bridge,¹ that there were nineteen great arches and three smaller ones, and that the great arches varied much in span. I was also aware that they did not cross the Rhone in a straight line, but after 450 mètres went curving away to the south. A friend who had seen it many years ago told me that the roadway was extremely narrow, and I had romantic ideas of towers and a chapel ruined at the Revolution, but connected with the structure still in a vague, imaginative way; then there was the fact that the Rhone hurried through the old arches in a furious and dangerous manner, which heightened the poetry of the old bridge by proving its powers of resistance. From all these elements I composed a mental picture of the most de- lightful kind. The narrow old Pont St. Esprit went irregularly across a foaming width of water, its strong piers projecting boldly and crowned with refuges. The little old town adorned a rocky height with its crumbling towers, whence you could see the river with the wondrous old bridge wandering strangely to the distant opposite shore. One had but to add a fine pictorial effect of late evening, or moonlight, to make this fancy as poeti- cal as any dream possibly could be. In reality the Pont St. Esprit seems commonplace to our 1 In the "Géographie du Gard," published by Hachette, M. Joanne gives the length of the Pont St. Esprit as 840 mètres. If this is correct the proportions in English feet would stand thus: London Bridge, 928 feet; Pont St. Esprit, 2755 feet. MAN'S WORK ON RIVERS. 317 modern eyes. We are so accustomed to great railway viaducts that we have entirely lost the power of feeling astonished by a long succession of arches. The road on the bridge has been widened to suit modern requirements, and to effect this the whole structure has been cased with new stone on both sides, so that the work of the monks is hidden from our eyes, although the form preserved is still externally the same. The towered gates and the chapel have disappeared. For the safety of navi- gation the two arches next the town have been removed and re- placed by a thing in cast-iron. This sounds like an abominable vandalism, yet the reality does not offend the eye, so prosaic are the monotonous stone arches beyond. The chief impres- sion made by the real bridge is that the excellent road upon it is a great convenience for vehicles, especially for the omnibuses that go to the railway station at La Croisière. It may be worth while to consider what are the faults that make the Pont St. Esprit a failure from the artistic point of view. It is so long that it has no ensemble, but straggles away to a sort of endlessness like an unfinishable discourse. It greatly wants projections to break the monotony of its lines. The variety in the size of the arches is good, but it is not so perceptible as in comparatively short bridges. The Pont Neuf, at Paris, is the best river-bridge that I re- member. It has everything that is lacking to the Pont St. Esprit. It is happily separated into two parts, with a very marked division in the middle, upon the island, where there is a sort of bastion with the equestrian statue of Henri IV. and a rich mass of trees. Each of the two halves is a complete struc- ture in itself of reasonable length, and every pier is relieved by a semi-circular refuge that produces an effect not unlike that of a bartizan on a tower. These refuges were, in fact, formerly tur- rets that served afterwards for little shops; but when the shops were done away with, and the turrets reduced in height, the bases of them were still preserved as resting-places with stone seats. The value of them from an artist's point of view may be estimated by the importance given to them in Méryon's dry- point, and also by Turner's exaggeration of their size. I have observed elsewhere¹ that Turner made them three times as broad as they are in reality in proportion to the arches. This was only his way of expressing delight in them. 1 See "Paris in Old and Present Times," published by Roberts Brothers. 318 LANDSCAPE. The modern custom of removing the fortified gateways from mediaeval bridges is greatly to be regretted. Anything that rises well above the parapet is acceptable when not positively offensive in itself. Mediaeval fortifications were sometimes heavy and tasteless, but what they wanted in elegance they gained in grim sublimity; and every century of their age added to their dignity, and took them out of the category of things amenable to ordinary criticism. The desire for some erection of importance at each end of a bridge is not confined either to military works or mediaeval times. The ancient Romans some- times satisfied this want by building triumphal arches when for- tifications were not required. There is a charming instance of this in the bridge over the Touloubre, near the Étang de Berre, called the "Pont Flavien," a bridge of a single arch over a ra- vine, with a beautiful triumphal arch in Roman Corinthian at each end of it, the whole wonderfully well preserved, as it did not happen to be in a town, such things being rarely permitted to exist in the midst of modern civilization. Among mediaeval for- tified bridges I do not remember any existing example so good as that at Cahors over the Lot, commemorated in an etching by Mr. Ernest George. The piers have semicircular projec- tions like the round towers that are half buried in a Roman city wall or a mediaeval castle, and three lofty towers, besides a gate- way with a portcullis, stand upon the bridge itself, the passen- gers going under them through arches. It is possible that the builders may have thought about nothing but military defence ; and yet they employed means which might have been suggested by an artist as better calculated than any others for breaking the monotony which is the common defect of bridges. The space between the towers (which are about the same height) gives a most desirable measure of length; and whenever the atmosphere is the least hazy the aerial perspective of the receding towers is a great addition to their grandeur. There is a modern bridge at Chalon-sur-Saône in which the desire for some similar result has induced the architect to build eight obelisks on his piers. Of course we all know what he wanted, and the attempt is praiseworthy; but unfortunately his obelisks are too meagre and taper too much to harmonize well with what is otherwise a very massive structure, and besides this a built obelisk always looks poor, and these are built. The architect should have given monoliths, or nothing. MAN'S WORK on rivers. 319 There is a difficulty about elevated ornaments on classical bridges that was not felt in mediaeval ones on account of the readiness with which mediaeval architecture crowned itself with turrets and towers. For some reason that we have not leisure to inquire into at present the classical spirit did not take much delight in these ornaments,—an indifference not arising from ignorance, as they were known to classic architects, but from a certain severity in taste. Even at the present day it is hard to suggest any satisfactory way of breaking the line of a classical bridge, except by placing groups of sculpture upon it; and this is too costly an expedient for any places less wealthy than great cities, or for any persons less disposed to make sacrifices for beauty than the owners of great gardens and parks. Again, if the bridge is classical, the architect will not be so tolerant of imperfection in sculpture as a mediaeval architect would have been, so that if it is employed at all it must be the sculpture of artists and not of simple carvers. The places suitable for its employment are either the tops of piers (where the groups hap- pily interrupt the continuous line of the parapet) or on the piers between the arches, when what would else have been a large blank space of wall is filled with advantage as in the Pont d'Iena at Paris; or groups of sculpture may be placed on pedestals at each entrance, which has been done for the same bridge. The sphinxes at each entrance to the Britannia tubular railway bridge over the Menai Straits are a good example of the em- ployment of sculpture; indeed the whole of that bridge is ad- mirable as a work of art, though the art is very simple and severe. The long line of tube (which looks like a great beam) is fortunately broken by the piers of marble which are finished above the beam as towers, and the majesty that naturally be- longs to a work of colossal size and weight is enhanced by the prudent use of some architectural adornment. The tubular bridge over the river Conway, near the castle, is less fortunate, because the neighborhood of a great mediaeval building led the architect of the bridge to adopt a castellated style for the en- trances to the tubes, a style which might be more or less in har- mony with the fortress, but would scarcely, in any other situation, have been chosen to accompany a bridge that was nothing but two parallel beams. One of the most astonishing instances of a complete change of opinion in the civilized world is our entire abandonment of 320 LANDSCAPE. 35: the mediaeval notion that a bridge ought to be covered with houses. A result of that custom was to block the river-views in cities, so that when there were several bridges (as in Paris from the island) the river was divided into several oblong places, dif- fering from ordinary squares in having a watery and moving floor. Every one who appreciates a view and who feels im- prisoned in a street knows what an immense relief it is to come upon the quays of the Seine or the bridges across the Thames. It was not always so. The great cities of the Middle Ages were smaller than our great cities, but they were not so open, and the feeling of confinement must have been greater in those times. Not only did the bridge-houses block the view from other places, but they converted the bridge itself into a street, and a narrow street, not unlike the modern covered “passages. Where we see the finest city-views in the world, our forefathers looked into little shops. In the really picturesque mediaeval times, or in the time of the picturesque and pleasantly barba- rous Renaissance, the erections on bridges were often sufficiently interesting in themselves to compensate for the obstruction that they caused. It is impossible to imagine anything more per- fectly picturesque than Old London Bridge towards the close of the sixteenth century, when Nonesuch House and St. Thomas à Becket's Chapel existed still, and the mill-wheels, and the Traitors' Gate, and there were picturesque projections between the narrow pointed arches, and the descending tide rushed through them like the cataracts of the Nile. Was ever a Lord Mayor's extravagance so excusable as the pretty Nonesuch House, with its balcony and arcade, and mullioned windows and carvings, and its five gay turrets against the sky? In those times people do not seem to have taken bridge-building quite seriously; they were not careful to diminish as much as might be the rush of the current under the arches, and it is perfectly certain that with their very considerable architectural skill they could have given their arches a much greater span, yet they were contented with bridges that were strong, indeed, but obstructive; and although the thing itself was only half satis- factory, they proceeded to give it an adventitious or parasitic beauty by putting other things upon it that were quite uncon- nected with its uses. There is a childishness or a boyishness in this which is quite foreign to the serious modern spirit of util- ity. For us the best bridge is not that which has the prettiest Play "" MAN'S WORK on rivers. 321 edifices upon it, but that which gives the largest and easiest tran- sit with the least possible obstruction of the river. This need not prevent us, if we were a little less prosaic, from taking advan- tage of an islet here and there for making the pier larger than the others, and employing it as a site for a chapel like those on the old bridges of Wakefield and Avignon. The chapel at Wakefield is by far the richer and prettier of the two, and I cannot imagine any more delightful relief to the utilitarian ar- chitecture of a bridge than an ecclesiastical edifice of small dimensions and rich or elegant design. Bridge-chapels are, however, entirely foreign to modern habits. We cross rivers in a hurry, and should not make any use of the chapel unless there were public services, when we should complain that it was inconveniently small. A kind of bridge in the most perfect harmony with modern requirements is the suspension bridge, and it fortunately so hap- pens that bridges of this class contain in their own utilitarian necessities such obvious suggestions of beauty that the least aesthetic of architects can scarcely fail to take the hint. The piers have to be continued high above the roadway to support the ropes or chains, and they may answer aesthetically to the towers on the fortified mediaeval bridges, or to the triumphal arches at the entrances to such a Roman structure as the "Pont Flavien." The chains fall naturally in festoons of the most lovely curvature, and the rods that hang from them to support the roadway give perspective effects of the prettiest intricacy. The roadway itself is not a straight line, but is slightly arched. The almost inevitable beauty of a suspension-bridge is so great that it is not easily spoiled, yet this may sometimes be accom- plished by bad architecture in the piers, as in the unfortunate central pier at Trévoux, where an engineer with architectural proclivities indulged in some wonderful Gothic of his own, made all the more obtrusively visible by a trenchant difference of color between brick masonry and stone facings. It often happens in the construction of suspension-bridges that a pier is erected on some islet in the river, dividing the structure into two parts, and as the islet is seldom precisely in mid-stream the parts are almost sure to be unequal, which is favorable to beauty by giving different curves to the ropes or chains. A central pier is a stately object in a river, being seen with its reflection from both shores. 21 322 LANDSCAPE. The enormous span attainable by suspending a road in the air is in itself a great element of sublimity. In most cases, when the imagination of poets has been free to create bridges according to their own sense of the sublime, they have insisted upon greatness of span. The other most powerful element of sublimity is height, and here, too, suspension-bridges have greater possibilities, as they may be hung across ravines from points higher than the loftiest piers. Both superiorities are proved in their perfection at Fribourg, where the lower of the two bridges has a clear span of more than nine hundred feet, and the shorter bridge, that over the Gotteron ravine, is three hundred and eighteen feet high, more than twice the height of the Menai bridge in Wales. I need hardly observe that ravine- bridges of this kind are so far above the rivers or brooks in the ravines as to lose all connection with them. At Fribourg, the old covered bridge over the Saarine is still the real Saarine bridge. It is (or was when I saw it) a sort of wooden trough roofed over and supported on one low stone pier. S Even the ordinary suspension-bridges over the French rivers are lifted so much above the level of the water as to be very in- dependent of its troubles. The great floods touch nothing but one or two stone piers and the abutments, flowing freely and harmlessly under the roadway. The ice-floes pass untouched in endless succession. I only remember one suspension-bridge near enough to the water to be carried away by a flood. It was not upon a river reputed to be navigable. A spate rose a yard too high and demolished it, but even the spate could not clear away the wreckage which I came upon afterwards in a canoe, the most dangerous entanglement of twisted wire imaginable, going quite across the stream, and arranged, as if purposely, to catch one as a rabbit is caught in a snare. There is nothing finer in the existence of an old stone bridge than its steady opposition to descending ice. Many such bridges have sharp ice-cutters, iron bound, and the floes come against them only to be broken or turned aside one after another, a spectacle of ceaseless interest to muffled watchers gazing over the parapet. The slightness of structure in suspension-bridges makes them gain or lose very little from effect; indeed, one hardly thinks of effect in connection with them, but massive stone arches gain wonderfully in expression from effects of brightness or gloom. There is nothing more awful in river. MAN'S WORK ON RIVERS. 323 scenery than the gloom of a great old bridge at night, with enough light to make out the shapes of the arches, but not enough to reveal what is under them, when the gas-lamps, by reflection, show a few swirls on the Stygian current. There are two very short lines in "The Bridge of Sighs" which prove clearly that Hood had observed this effect like a painter : The bleak wind of March Made her tremble and shiver, But not the dark arch, Or the black flowing river: Mad from life's history, Glad to death's mystery, Swift to be hurl'd- Anywhere, anywhere Out of the world!" 324 LANDSCAPE. ** CHAPTER XXXI. RIVERS IN ART. R IVER scenery, as it concerns artists, divides itself into two categories. It is either pure Nature, or it is connected with human labor, often so closely connected that the only nat- ural thing to be seen is the water, the banks being entirely hid- den by engineering work or by houses, and the water itself does little else than reflect these artificial things. Before going farther into the matter I may do well to prevent misconception by stating briefly the argument about the natural and the artificial in painting, so far as it affects the subject of the present chapter. There is an old prejudice against all natural landscapes, con- sidered as subjects for painting, when they do not include evi- dences of man's presence. It has sometimes been plainly asserted that although pure Nature may supply good material for studies, a work of real art cannot be made from it, and that such a work requires what is called "human interest" in the subject, by which cottages, houses, churches, vessels, or mer- chandise are commonly understood. The answer to this prejudice, or theory, is that there must always be some human interest even in a painting that repre- sents the most perfect solitude, because there is always the sen- timent of the painter, which is human sentiment, and of a supe- rior kind. We maintain that the presence of a piece of mason's work, for instance, among the materials of a picture, cannot in itself do much to elevate the performance to the higher grade of artistic production, since the masonry itself may have been exe- cuted in a purely utilitarian spirit. On the other hand, we should say that if a tree or an animal, which is a natural object, were painted in such a way as to exhibit the artistic feeling of the artist, the result would be a work of art, because it would show the RIVERS IN ART. 325 presence of that particular human element which is the raison d'être of a picture. It will be seen from this that we do not at all deny the neces- sity for a human element in art, but that instead of placing it in the thing represented, we place it, as we believe more justly, in the human feeling which animates the interpretation of Nature. We go even a little farther in the same direction, by prefer- ring as material for painting, either pure Nature or else artificial things which are not in themselves works of any elevated art, in order that they may owe their artistic value almost entirely to the genius of the painter who arranges and modifies while he represents them. We think, for example, that the west front of a great cathedral, like that at Amiens, is not so good a subject for a picture as a few cottages that a painter is free to deal with as he pleases. The cathedral is a work of art, of architectural art, already, and a picture of it can be little more than a repeti- tion of the architect's ideas; but the sort of material that painters generally prefer leaves them free to express ideas of their own, if they have any. The opinions which have just been expressed are quite mod- ern. So far as we are able to judge by their works, all painters who flourished before the second half of the nineteenth century believed that it was necessary to the interest of their pictures that the works of men should be generally, if not invariably, in- troduced among the objects represented. There may have been a few exceptions. Ruysdael, for example, did not care about the products of human industry so much as other old masters, but the rule is as I have just stated it. Nobody seems to have been more thoroughly persuaded than Turner of the advantages of the old theory in this respect, and the reader may perhaps feel interested in examining his "Rivers of France," with especial reference to this part of the subject. The impression left with me after such an examination is that the rivers themselves were secondary, in his estimate, to the build- ings upon their banks. I find hardly any attempt to give the character of the great French rivers at a distance from cities. The artist does not seem to be familiar with the lonely places on such rivers,—I have said "places," but that is a very in- adequate and misleading word; what I mean is rather those leagues and leagues of solitude during which a great river trav- erses wide tracts of country, often of a character profoundly 326 LANDSCAPE. -" impressive, or felt to be so, by those who are alive to the influences of Nature. Even men who have no special landscape gift, and hardly any tendency to dreamy melancholy, are impressed by scenes of this kind when they pass through them in a boat. The reader may remember a book by Mr. Molloy, entitled "Our Autumn Holiday on French Rivers," a book that was only intended to be witty and amusing; but it told the story of real experiences, and therefore among the light-hearted tales of aquatic travel we meet with a little description here and there by Mr. Molloy, or a sketch by Mr. Linley Sambourne, which, in a quite unpretending manner, really conveys the influence of the river itself in its long and lonely wanderings. Here, for example, is an excellent little description of the Loire after it leaves Orleans: "It is difficult to conceive anything more desolate than this part of the Loire. No interest from the surrounding country, which had a dreary look and was almost monotonous. A few black hills were all we saw for five miles, except sand and water. Then came two or three houses at Saint-Ay, where the holy recluse of that name built himself a hermitage to be far away from the world. He could n't have chosen better on the banks of the Nile. Then on again through the vast waste of sand, a desert that seemed never ending." The travellers stop at a little town called Meung, twelve miles below Orleans, and then continue their voyage. In popular drawings there are invariably groups of boats, but the following is nearer to Nature : (( 1 Leaving the town, the river resumed its wild, black ¹ aspect, and the navigation of the sand islands became intricate. We had no means of ascertaining the channel, and there was no one to ask. Once, and once only, we sighted a barge, which seemed to have no occupation, but was imbedded in sand. Two men on board." Another short description very effectively conveys the impres- sion that is given by the broadest reaches of the Loire. When such river-views are broad and long at the same time, so as to give very remote distances, it is surprising what an effect of vastness they produce, - an effect far surpassing that of a lake equally extensive, as we know that the river has no end except in the distant sea : 1 It seems not unlikely that this word "black" may be a misprint for bleak. rivers IN ART. 327 "Then far ahead, in a haze of sunset, rose up the indistinct out- line of Blois. · "It was at such times we realized how grand was the Loire, the river of ancient cities. Beautiful as the Seine was, in many respects far more so than the Loire, it fell far short of the latter in expanse. Here was something of the breadth and distance of the sea. I feel the difficulty, the impossibility even, of describing the effect it produced on us. "" These little bits of description, written without any intention. of displaying artistic cleverness, but simply as rough notes from Nature, have the great quality of such notes in recalling instantly the kind of scenery referred to. Even if the reader is not ac- quainted with river-solitudes of that kind he may imagine them, and if he knows them well in Nature he will remember them very vividly.' It is an aspect of river scenery that Turner hardly ever noticed. I cannot at this moment recall to mind a single drawing by him which had for its purpose to remind us of the dreary solitude of a great river at a distance from men and cities. Neither does he seem to have cared for the special physical characteristics of such a river as the Loire. He did not draw one of its sand- banks, did not preserve any record of that which so particu- larly characterizes the Loire, a number of divided currents working their impetuous way among islets of shifting peb- bles. I do not remember any evidence that Turner had cared to study the banks of the Loire when it flows through quiet pastures and the earth is undermined, and the sods fold over and fall. He seems to have been indifferent to everything that was familiar and quietly characteristic in the life of the river, seeking only the cities, castles, precipices, and not being willing to accept even these as they were, but giving them fictitious elevation. W I have often regretted that Turner's attention had not been directed to the Rhone, which he never illustrated, instead of the Loire, which he illustrated so partially, as a lover of high banks and buildings in romantic situations would have found much to his taste upon the Rhone. To express the difference in a very 1 In describing a long and broad reach of the Seine where the boat got water- logged and upset, Mr. Molloy says, "A quarter of a mile to shore, and a sea that few swimmers would have cared to tempt in laced boots. Not a house or living being to be seen, not even a wild goat." 328 LANDSCAPE. brief and abstract manner, I should say that the horizontal line, is dominant upon the Loire and the vertical upon the Rhone. Those parts of the Loire which would have best suited Turner's genius for sublimity (so far as pure landscape is concerned) are not included in his "Rivers of France," and were never visited by him. The use that Turner made of artificial materials in his views of the Loire and the Seine preceded the same taste in modern etchers, but it is more remarkable in Turner's case, because he sketched in water-color, which deals with distant landscape as effectively as with artificial things in foregrounds, whereas etch- ing is naturally better adapted for picturesque foreground ma- terials, and besides this difference in the technical convenience of the two arts, the remarkable ability of Turner in dealing with large surfaces of water and sky made him personally more inde- pendent of artificial furniture than an inferior artist would have been. Here is a brief analysis of the drawings in the "Rivers of France," which may be interesting as a proof of the remarkable. predominance of human interest over pure landscape. There are sixty-one subjects altogether.¹ There is not one of them without buildings, but there are six without water. Of the re- maining fifty-five, twenty-nine include views of bridges, and there are sometimes two bridges in one drawing. The other draw- ings include castles, churches, or monasteries, and towns such as Honfleur and Havre. It is evident that Turner had a keen appreciation of the pic- turesque old French towns, and that it was these rather than the rivers which attracted him. The rivers were useful to reflect the towns and give a reason for the bridges, and they made a good connecting link between towns and castles, as the Moselle and the Loire have done since for Mr. Ernest George. A few of Turner's drawings, which show a length of river as seen from a height, are remarkable for the unapproachable skill with which he treated subjects verging on the panorama, and for his exqui- site sense of river-beauty when the view was extensive enough • 1 The engraving of "St. Germain en Laye" (R. Wallis) is not included in my copy of the "Rivers of France.” In that plate the materials are remarkably artifi- cial. There is a bridge and a small town, and the river-bank is faced with a great mass of masonry, including about forty arches, tier above tier. The foreground is crowded with figures. There is one tree, but the lower branches have been lopped. RIVERS IN ART. 329 ... to exhibit the great curves. The finest examples are the "Cau- debec," the extensive view from above the Château de Tankar- ville, the distant view of Rouen, and the Château Gaillard. The Caudebec, besides showing beautiful river curves, is a striking example of a contrast which happens frequently in French rivers when you have a steep coteau on one bank and a wide plain on the other. The beauty of towns is a subject that does not belong to this chapter, but it will not be out of place to give a paragraph on their relation to rivers, as connected with pictorial art. The history of a river-town is simple. Its origin is always to be found in early river-navigation, which established small halting-places or ports at or near some fishing-station or place of primitive commerce. It appears to be ascertained that this early river-navigation was in great part carried on in coracles and on light rafts supported by inflated skins of animals, such as are used in Asia at the present day. Even in times when a rapid stream could not be ascended, it would be easy to make the downward voyage, so that from the first a river would have a great attraction in an age when there were no artificial roads. But there is evidence that a regular system of fluvial navigation existed in times more remote than we are accustomed to im- agine. It is now quite accepted by archaeologists that there was an organized association of river boatmen on the Seine at a time that preceded the Roman invasion, though how much earlier cannot be positively ascertained.¹ These companies would exist on other great rivers and have their regular stations where the Romans, or Gallo-Romans, would establish buildings of a substantial kind which might have lasted till our own day had they not been replaced by mediaeval cities, and these in their turn have been invaded by the Renaissance and by the most recent modernism. Turner saw the old towns at a happy time, when much of the old work remained and the newer was less formal than it is now. He could draw the modern houses 1 "Le territoire des Parisii baigné par la Seine, la Marne et l'Oise, cours d'eau tous navigables, possédait aussi une riche association de commerçants par eau, nommés NAUTAÉ PARISIACI. L'activité qu'elle donnait au commerce devait être antérieure à la conquête romaine; César la trouva sans doute pleinement organisée, puisque Strabon, son contemporain, parle des nombreux produits transportés du midi des Gaules tant par les fleuves que par les routes. Les cinquante bateaux dont s'empara Labienus pour faire descendre son armée sur la Seine, depuis Melo- dunum (Melun) jusqu'à Lutèce, afin de se rendre maître de cette ville, devaient appartenir aux Ñautae." ALBERT LENOIR in "Paris à travers les Ages." A 330 LANDSCAPE. almost as contentedly as the old ones, and over a general confu- sion of architectures and ages he could cast the glamour of an art that revealed things very partially, without any unpleasant in- sistence on the commonplace. A town may have been first established on one side of a river, but as it extends along the shore there is always a tendency to build on the other side also. This has led to the existence of pairs of towns, such as Beaucaire and Tarascon, Tournon and Tain, Andance and Andancette. When both towns go by the same name they have still their own churches, giving a sort of symmetry to the view; and if they are beautiful, the effect is that of a pair of ornaments clasped across the river by a bridge. It is wonderful that so confused and accidental a creation as a town can ever be beautiful or have any artistic unity; and yet there are towns that suggest compositions by the accidental ar- rangement of their houses and churches, just as the purely acci- dental movements of children or dogs playing together will often suggest figure compositions. In both cases pure accident gives the idea, and yet genius itself could not invent so happily with- out the suggestion from the accident. Turner went to Blois, Amboise, Angers, for the suggestion only. His way of treating a town was to observe some of the leading features, especially the towers, and then to place them very much as he liked best. He generally made them higher than in Nature, but sometimes diminished them; however, so far as I know, he kept their character and then put crowded houses between in a delightfully confused way that gives the idea of uncountable houses much better than the clearness of a photograph. He liked the heavi- ness of the big houses on the quays, with their large roofs and dormer-windows, and he treated them with a certain laxity of drawing and a crumbling touch that quite express a degree of rudeness about them which is far preferable to the finished neat- ness of the new Haussmann style. Since Turner's day our interest in rivers has extended over their entire course. We have become familiar with their lone- liest reaches, a familiarity that we owe in great measure to the increased love of boating and to a taste for being out at all hours with a tent for refuge in case of rain, or perhaps a house-boat moored in different parts of a stream. These healthy tastes have revealed a new world of beauty and interest, the more rivers in aRT. 331 convenient for us that instead of being in some distant region it lies within the confines of the old countries. There are two distinct ways of studying a river, answering to the two well-known ways of studying Nature on land. The artist- traveller may take rapid memoranda, and be constantly moving from place to place in search of new impressions, or he may fol- low the example of a most able painter of river scenery, Mr. Keeley Halswelle, and become the proprietor of a house-boat, which allows him to change the place of his residence without changing the residence itself, giving him all the convenience of a home even in the solitudes of the great rivers. This may be done in a more fashionable form by having a steam-yacht large enough to afford accommodation; and I know an in- stance of a wealthy Frenchman who has such a vessel, not for speed, but simply for change of place. He fastens his ship close to some pretty river island, and remains there for weeks together, a kind of life most favorable to landscape painting, if he were a painter. The island serves as a kind of wild gar- den for his children.¹ Mg The painter who first used a house-boat was probably Dau- bigny, but he did not belong to the age of luxury, and was contented with a rude aquatic dwelling, a little hut built in a common heavy rowing-boat, which was celebrated in its day * upon the Seine. It was provided with all that was really neces- sary for an artist who painted from Nature, and all that a man of very simple tastes required for summer life upon the river; but it was too confined. He commemorated it in a series of sketch-etchings, which curiously demonstrated how much artistic merit of various kinds might coexist with perfectly formless draw- ing. Daubigny never was a draughtsman; he saw Nature as a painter only, and as a painter in a country where the utmost discipline about drawing in figure pictures coexisted with the most complete neglect of it in landscape. But, on the other hand, if he did not draw, he certainly found the means of com- municating in a broad and blunt way the impressions of a man who really loved Nature. Turner drew rivers in the towns, or where the romance of them was heightened by some feudal castle; Daubigny painted them in the country, not seeking for 1 Another rich Frenchman has developed nomadic luxury to the utmost by having ample lodging in one boat and a steam-engine in another, which is always in attendance to draw the dwelling from place to place. 332 LANDSCAPE. sublimity, but contented to enjoy rural calm and peace, and to float quietly in his slow and cheap little yacht, the "Botin." The tempers of the two men were as different as could be imagined. Turner, who was nearly destitute of simple rural feeling, almost invariably, when free to choose, sought the poetry of tower and town, and on rivers liked nothing so much as a bridge of many arches; Daubigny, loving the country, and not caring for any romantic excitement, had much the same happy attachment for the rural parts of the Seine and the Marne that our own Con- stable had for Suffolk. The Englishman painted the romantic human interest of the French rivers, and the Frenchman painted their peace, taking them simply as a part of rural France; but there is still room for some artist in the future who may paint the rivers themselves with a full sense of the grandeur of their noblest reaches, their farthest horizons, and under the effects that most powerfully enhance the impression upon the mind. There are occasional signs already of a tendency towards. a larger understanding of river scenery. The quiet and elegant. beauty of the Marne has never, I think, in the lonely parts of it, been interpreted so happily as by Edmond Yon. The Rhone above Lyons has been etched and painted by Appian with much poetical feeling, and Lalanne has often etched places on the Seine and the Marne, generally with much life and spirit, and a keen sense of the picturesque in human work, both afloat and· ashore. The tendency, however, of French landscape-painters is as much towards simplicity of subject as that of Turner was towards complexity; so that Frenchmen have the habit prudent habit of painting "little bits," and of treating even a large river-subject as if it were a "little bit" transferred to a bigger canvas. I remember an extreme instance of this sim- plicity in a picture by Corot very beautifully etched by Brunet- Debaines, which represented two cottages, themselves of the simplest form, two trees, and a bit of the most commonplace riverside. This contentment with the commonplace has pre- vented French artists from attempting to deal with the grandest scenes on their own rivers. They care more about pleasant relations of tone, which can be seen anywhere under a favor- able effect, than about grandeur of scale and line. From their a A g 1 I am thinking especially of his picture in the Salon of 1879, called “Le Bas de Montigny." It was admirably etched by the painter, and the etching may be found in "l' Art," vol. xvii., p. 188. • RIVERS IN ART. 333 professional point of view they seem to be right, as the public likes the commonplace in subject provided that it is treated with accomplished technical skill.¹ There is not space in such a chapter as this even to attempt to do anything like justice to the skill with which many land- scape-painters have expressed their affection for inferior streams. There are many reasons why artists should like them. They afford opportunities for the study of transparency, for the study of objects seen through a colored medium (water is never color- less) and passing away by swift gradation from clear visibility in the shallow parts to complete obscurity in the depths. The lively motion of water in swirls and eddies is a difficult but most attractive study; and the erosion of banks shows the stratification of rocks in places where it could otherwise be studied only in quarries where they have been violently blasted, and not gradu- ally worn through. Besides this, as I have observed elsewhere, Nature always decorates her rocks on a riverside with vegeta- tion, so that a painter finds much there to his taste; and as men seldom interfere with rivers that are not navigable, there is a wild- ness about them which is beyond all expression refreshing in a very civilized and cultivated country. The difference between a brook's free run of a dozen or twenty miles between shores of its own all in thickets of oak, ash, alder, and birch, and the Loire in that part of its course where a dike faced with masonry runs parallel with it for a hundred miles, is much in favor of the wilder and smaller stream. The greatest objection to brook scenes is that unless the artist is very careful in his selection he is likely to paint something without a distance, as scenes of this class are usually very much enclosed. Yet this defect, which makes them often insufficient for pictures, is a strong recommenda- tion when the purpose is only study. Every subject that is selected for prolonged study from Nature must be a foreground subject. - 1 This reminds me of a footnote to the new separate handy edition of the second volume of "Modern Painters." Mr. Ruskin says: "I had not seen at this time, and could not have conceived, the darkness and distortion of the vicious French schools of landscape." The words "darkness and distortion " are justly applicable to many French landscapes, but certainly not to all. There are French landscape-painters (I may mention Louis Auguin as an example) who study pale and luminous tones with great success. Others (like Victor Binet) work in a lower key, but are still as far both from darkness and from distortion as honest, open-air study can carry them. Both these men are incomparably better draughts- men than Daubigny. 334 LANDSCAPE. Although river scenes, which are river scenes and nothing else, may often be beautiful and interesting to the artist, they are so much composed of the same elements as to leave a not very definite impression upon the mind. We have a general feeling of gratitude to the artists who have so often recalled the beauty of Nature to our memories, but we do not long remember this or that river scene individually, unless it is asso- ciated with some definite object of Man's making, such as the Castle of Heidelberg, or the great tower at Beaugency. At this moment I remember in a general way the pleasure derived from pictures of English streams by Mr. Leader and other painters. of less note; and in some cases I clearly remember the pictures themselves, but not their titles, which indeed are usually without special significance. There are thousands of pictures in the world expressing the love of natural river beauty, many of them displaying great knowledge and much manipulative skill, but very few have any individual celebrity. The possible combina- tions of rocks, trees, and running water are infinite, they will continue to be painted as long as landscape art exists, and there is no reason why they should not be painted; but criticism will have little to say, except that the works are good or inferior in their kind. The exception to this rule is when the natural scene is of a very extraordinary kind, as in some great waterfall or river scene, remarkable, if not for the water, at least for its surround- ings. We remember easily the large picture of the Falls of Niagara by Mr. Church, a work evidently full of the most observant study; but the study and observation would have left an evanescent impression if the natural scene had been less wonderful. There are probably other pictures by Mr. Church himself, not less truthful in their record of all that a weight of green water may produce in the way of mist in the air and disturbance in the pool below, that are remembered only by their possessors. A great waterfall is not often selected as a subject for painting; and yet if the fall has a celebrity of its own, it may communicate something of that celebrity to the picture, when a painted study of equal skill and truth, representing an obscure scene on an unknown part of the same river, would remain as little famous as the scene that it represented. But in spite of the success of Mr. Church, which appears unquestion- able, the truth is that waterfalls, however interesting as studies, RIVERS IN ART. 335 trans- are not good subjects for pictures. Like all natural curiosities, they attract attention too much to themselves, so that the rest of the landscape, however beautiful, is inevitably accessory; and it is extremely difficult to paint them well, as they contain three elements that are three perpetual embarrassments, parence, mist, and arrested motion. Besides this, a waterfall inevitably closes the view. I should say, then, that, like some other things in Nature, waterfalls lie almost outside of pictorial art. Poets may describe them if they like. There is something very suggestive of poetical ideas in a waterfall, like two or three in Switzerland, that leaps into the air from a height sufficient to pulverize the water into mist, wetting the rocks to right or left, according to the direction of the wind, and, after keeping the mosses green by a gentle, perpetual irrigation, collecting itself again into flowing water that issues in a peaceful stream below. Since the modern revival of etching, river scenery has supplied excellent subjects for study from Nature in that art. There seems, indeed, to be a peculiar affinity between etchers and rivers, an affinity that may be explained by the readiness with which etch- ing expresses both the natural picturesque, which is everywhere abundant on unspoiled river-shores, and the artificial picturesque, which is almost invariably found by riverside towns. Of river- side etchers Mr. Haden is the most complete, because he takes an equal interest in the natural and the artificial picturesque. For the thorough understanding of river-banks, and for the power of making the commonplace in banks interesting by superior keenness of observation, Mr. Haden is without a rival. His strong and original way of summarizing foliage and of ex- pressing the growth of stems and branches has been of inesti- mable value on the upper Thames, while his interest in boats and in the accidental accumulations of objects about landing-places has been equally useful down the river. In America, Mr. Ste- phen Parrish has etched many plates of river scenery on the upper Delaware, the Schroon, and other streams, — plates which are executed in an easy, straightforward manner, and have the power of making us feel as if we were travelling among the scenes themselves. We never feel that in the presence of elabo- rately artificial compositions. C 336 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXXII. TREES IN NATURE. Τ HE inhabitants of Great Britain may be divided into three classes with respect to their knowledge of trees. Some of them have never seen any trees at all; others have only seen British trees; and others have seen what trees may come to be in the foreign climates that are most favorable to their growth. The British people who never saw any trees at all are, I believe, almost entirely confined to the western islands, though it may happen that there are dwellers in waste places in the north of Scotland who have never seen anything that an English- man would call a tree. There are also many places in north Britain where trees, without being absolutely unknown, are so rare that they have no more appreciable effect on the scenery of the country than they have in Iceland. A few isolated and unhappy trees, belonging to three or four very hardy species, can give no conception of the luxuriance of southern woods. To appreciate the value of trees in natural landscape it is necessary to have some personal experience of treeless wastes. This is easily within our reach on English moors and on many parts of the coast; but the experience is perhaps hardly complete, because we have the recollection of more cheerful scenery that lies at no very great distance, and to which we may soon return. To have the complete feeling of desolation in landscape from which sylvan beauty is excluded, we need, perhaps, to feel our- selves at a distance from anything less dreary; and for this there is nothing more suitable than a barren island in the barren sea. Human life goes on cheerfully in any place where health is possible; so that there is nothing to prevent the population of a treeless country from being happy in their own way if the air is good, the water pure, and food readily procurable. Neverthe- less, it has always been the custom of the poets when they TREES IN NATURE. 337 described a landscape intended to be pre-eminently agreeable, to tell us that trees grew there luxuriantly. I cannot think of a single exception to this rule. The poets of classical antiquity had not our modern notion of natural landscape as a series of pictures, and they were not aware that a sentimental association could be established between melancholy afterglows and the sorrows of the human heart; yet they mentioned trees and woods in connection with every pleasant place, and they had an im- aginative sympathy with trees, destined to be carried to the extreme by Dante when he made the branches feel and bleed. Wherever a poet is born, in Greece, Scotland, England, Italy, or the East, he speaks of the presence of trees with pleasure or delight, and notices their absence either regretfully or else as an important negative element of the stern and dreary effect that he is endeavoring to produce. The truth is that a solitude is not so solitary if there is a tree in it, and if there is a group of trees we feel it to be almost peopled. A tree is much nearer to us than a rock, it is already a sort of humble relation, not inferior on all points, but entirely at our mercy, which gives a sort of pathetic interest to its exist- ence. Wherever Man is, the tree can only live by his permis- sion, so that in all populous countries the tree expresses Man's desire that it should be there, and gains something almost human from his tolerance. He has often gone much beyond mere tolerance, by inviting the tree to live upon his land; he has planted it and become almost its father, its only conscious father, watching its growth year by year with a gentle paternal feeling. To cut down trees is felt to be a kind of slaughter; to protect them is the sign of a tender and merciful disposition. A brief comparison of the tree and the mountain in relation to man is enough to show how much nearer to us is the sylvan than the stony world. A mountain stands where it stands in absolute defiance of human will, and often in direct opposition to human convenience. For unnumbered ages mountain chains have separated mankind so as to make commerce either difficult or impossible. All the mechanical powers at the disposal of the most consummate science (which mankind have spent thou- sands of years in acquiring) have only resulted in making a few very small holes in the mountains, so far apart that most of the inhabitants have to go much out of their way to find them. The forest never offered a serious impediment to human intercourse. 22 338 LANDSCAPE. It is easier, even, to make a good primitive way through a forest than elsewhere, as the trees supply the wood for the plank road. In early conditions of society they give the most convenient building materials and the best fuel; in later and more advanced societies the finest woods, though less necessary, gain new values from the appreciation of their beauty. Man's feeling that the trees are friends to him increases as he learns the art of ship-building, and reaches its highest point at the time when wooden vessels have attained their perfection and the fatal dis- covery has not yet been made that "le meilleur bois pour les vaisseaux, c'est la tôle d'acier." In those times a maritime na- tion looks on its woods with a feeling of passionate patriotism, fondly believing that the quality of the oak grown there is vastly superior to that of all foreign oak. After being the pride of the woodlands, the great trees have a second and a grander exist- ence on the waves, to perish at last under some famous and heroic name. Or you may climb up into the roof of some great cathedral, and be told that a forest of oak or chestnut has been used up in that intricate masterpiece of carpentry. All these associations with services rendered by trees that have been cut down long ago lend an interest and a dignity to those that are still living. A very tall and straight pine-tree instantly calls to mind "the mast of some great ammiral." Where the woods have been destroyed, men learn to regret them in a climate that has become an alternation of drought and destructive floods. Forests are friendly in making rain and rivers more equable. As soon as this is understood, men begin to plant again to repair the havoc that they themselves have created, and a late reconciliation takes place between the human and the sylvan worlds. Then comes the existence of trees under Man's authority, when they are planted in regiments according to his good pleasure, a state of things to be considered in an- other chapter. For the present our subject is limited to the trees of Nature's planting. There are few productions of Nature in which the natural beauties and qualities are so independent of interpretation in the fine arts as they are in the sylvan world. It is intelligible that a man may have a passionate admiration for real trees without any artistic training, and be even hostile or contemptuous towards art for its imitative inadequacy, caring for it less and less as he appreciates reality more. I confess that there are times when I TREES IN NATURE. 339 am wandering in the woods and do not care about painting in the least, though one feels grateful to it in the city. What pleases me in the natural world is the indisputable perfection of finish that reigns there, from the earliest bud protected by its natural varnish, to the full leaf that is extended like a lady's parasol, and incomparably more delicate in construction. The delicacy of organization in trees is more visible than it is in animals, because the organs are more exposed. A rugged old tree that would resist the shock of an elephant has flowers that we examine with a magnifier. The elephant himself may have an equally delicafe anatomy, but it is all hidden under his coarse skin. Besides this, whatever the men of science may feel upon the subject, it is difficult for ordinary mortals to avoid the con- viction that Nature has done well to conceal the organs of animals, and well also to exhibit the far prettier organs of plants. The leaves of a tree are its lungs and its most ample adornment at the same time; the healthiest human lungs are not more beautiful than the ribs that enclose and defend them. The inferior rank of trees in the scale of creation makes them able to bear great injuries, and an infinity of small harms, with- out much loss of vigor, so that their most delicate organs, which exist in great multiplicity, may be external. The passage from strength to delicacy, by subdivision, is that from the trunk which is one, to the branches that are numerous and the slender sprays that are multitudinous. The unique thing, the trunk, is when fully grown strong enough to resist any power likely to be brought against it. The strength of the branches is less, but they are higher and safer, only likely to be bent by the light weights of climbing animals, and they are numerous enough for the loss of two or three of them to be without effect on the well-being of the tree. The most delicate sprays have only to bear the trifling weight of birds or the almost weightless touch of insects, and they are so infinite in number that the loss of hundreds or thousands of them leaves the tree not perceptibly the worse. It would be a mistake, however, to speak as if the tree had abso- lutely no concealed organs, since we know that he has his sap- seekers, his roots, not of much concern to us except that they are a necessity; but when, for some reason, the roots happen to be exposed, they give the tree a weird and ghastly expression of which we shall have something to say in the chapter on trees in art.. • 340 LANDSCAPE. Ban It may possibly have occurred to the reader to be present at a discussion about the beauty of trees, and to have the question put to him which species seemed to him the most beautiful. A friendly debate of that kind is useful in two ways: both because it makes us seek the reasons of our own preferences, and be- cause it makes us acquainted with the preferences of others and the reasons they have for maintaining them. Since I cannot know the reader's favorite tree, it may be a pardonable egotism if I tell him which is mine. As the French monarch said, “ Ex omnibus floribus elegi mihi lilium," so I would say, "Ex omni- bus arboribus elegi mihi castaneam." My great admiration is for the Spanish chestnut-tree, at least in the way of sturdy and massive trees; but among light ones I am in love with the birch. To my feeling we have not in our temperate European climates anything comparable to these two trees for the two opposite kinds of beauty. The birch is indigenous to Great Britain, the Spanish chestnut an exotic in England, but not in France and Switzerland, where I first learned to appreciate it. The mascu- line character is even more strongly marked than in the oak, the bark is more deeply furrowed, the trunk at least equally massive, and the branches apparently mightier in proportion to the trunk, though, in fact, they break off more easily than oak branches in the great tempests. The comparison of leaves is entirely in favor of the chestnut, which has them of a most beautifully simple cut and curve, and a fine rich green color with a gloss, the oak leaf being a poor little affair in comparison, and so cut as to have no completeness of line. The fruit of the chest- nut is as superior to the acorn as the leaf to the oak-leaf, and when the female flower is passing to maturity it enriches the dark and heavy foliage of the tree with light greens that have a splendidly decorative effect on the magnificent orbed mass. I may say over again what has been said in "The Sylvan Year," that while the fruit of the oak is acceptable to pigs, that of the chestnut-tree is greatly valued by mankind, and occupies the singular position of being at the same time a delicacy for the rich and common sustenance for the poor. Among human aliments it would be difficult to mention any other, unless it be the date, which belongs so decidedly both to the poetry and the prose of eating.¹ 1 The reader may remember Mr. Grant Allen's well-founded theory that eating is very difficult to deal with in poetry, and almost inadmissible except as dessert. TREES IN NATURE. 341 The chestnut is hardly to be left without an allusion to the quality of its wood. All human beings are utilitarian enough to estimate things with some reference to their own needs. It must be admitted that the peach and the orange among fruits, the pheasant among birds, the trout among fish, are not the less beautiful in our eyes for being welcome at our tables. Our ad- miration for the oak and the pine is closely connected with a sort of gratitude for their different kinds of usefulness. The chest- nut is less commonly known in England; but for some of us it is closely associated with the noble roof of Westminster Hall. There is, I believe, no European wood at all comparable to it for the quality of remaining sound under exposure to wet and dry. This comparison with the oak has the unfortunate effect of seeming to depreciate the acknowledged sovereign of British indigenous trees, so long bound up in our thoughts with the British navy, and loyalty, and Boscobel. There is even, per- haps, a remnant of the idea of its sanctity, coming down to us from the Druids. For our northern minds the oak is the sylvan representative of strength and longevity, and even in more southern languages robur and the words derived from it, such as the Italian roborare, the French corroborer, treat oak and strength as convertible terms. A boat-builder who strengthens his craft with a piece of oak literally corroborates it, while the politician who corroborates a statement does it metaphorically. There is a very pretty contrast in spring between the gnarled old limbs of an oak (so much more expressive of stubborn re- sistance than of grace) and the fresh light green of the young leaves, which is often a golden green. As the leaves darken they have less the effect of a fresh chaplet on the wrinkled brows I think, however, that he would scarcely object to chestnuts in a poem with an accompaniment of white burgundy, or with pure honey for a sauce, according to the practice of certain gastronomers. The eating of chestnuts by the Roman peo- ple as nourishing food is poetically introduced by Macaulay in "Horatius:" "When the oldest cask is opened And the largest lamp is lit; When the chestnuts glow in the embers And the kid turns on the spit; When young and old in circle Around the firebrands close; When the girls are weaving baskets, And the lads are shaping bows; and so on, a relief after the excitement and bloodshed of the heroic story. G -a pretty picture of Roman popular life indoors, which was charming as 342 LANDSCAPE. of age, and fall into a sort of harmony with the stem and branches, becoming impressive only by their uncountable multi- tude. The oak is slow in assuming his full vesture, and very tenacious of it in winter, when it is red and sere; in fact, he is slow in everything, as in his growth. The birch announces summer by her early foliage not at all in harmony with surrounding leaflessness, but it is a welcome dis- cord. The birch is always beautiful in herself, and not the least beautiful in winter, when all her light, woody structure is dis- tinctly visible, from the silvery trunk to the dark purple sprays. In spring her light green foliage strikes the eye as crude; but in autumn the thinly scattered little leaves of pale gold tell with the greatest brilliance among the darker shades of the forest, and the whiteness of the stems is brilliant against the russets and purples and dark grays. There are times when this bril- liance of the birch in autumnal sunshine goes quite beyond the powers of art. It is greatly heightened by the contrast of the black parts in the older trees, which occur in the fissures from the decomposition of dead cortical cells. Of our English trees the beech is remarkable for the beauti- ful gray coloring of its bark and for its smooth texture. Beech- bark seems to fit like a glove, having an appearance of neatness far surpassing that of the fissured barks, so that the rounded and swelling forms of the trunk and the great limbs approach nearer to the purity of well-formed human limbs than those of any other English tree. The leaves are light and small for so massive a body, the flowers (in catkins) unimportant, the fruit nothing to the eye; but the foliage is fine in mass and graceful on the sprays. In its early youth the beech approaches the elegance of the birch, while its light gray bark gives a certain gayety to the woods, though it cannot rival that of the birch in brilliance. In age this tree has in certain situations a sturdy strength quite comparable to that of many old oaks; but in other situations it spends its vitality more in upward growth, and is more expressive of elegance than power. There are so many kinds of willow that in a rapid review of this kind I must take one, the common Salix alba, as repre- sentative of the rest. The misfortune of this tree is to be gen- erally spoiled by polling, which is very destructive of its beauty, not entirely destructive, as the multitude of light sprays that grow from the polled head are not without the beauty of their TREES IN NATURE. 343 own simple curvature, and the leaves upon them are, no doubt, just as pretty as those on the natural tree; but the beauty of the whole, as a whole, is absolutely sacrificed. When the willow is allowed to attain its full height there is a perfect gradation of increasing lightness from the trunk to the topmost spray. The twigs are not a mere crop like stalks of wheat, but parts of an elegant structure, and from their extreme flexibility they bend and move more elegantly in light breezes than those of any other tree. Nothing in the way of natural motion among trees can be more beautiful than the rhythmic balancing of a tall well- grown willow on rather a gusty day. The whiter color of the under side of the leaf gives the liveliest change when it is turned over as the wind lifts it, and there is a silkiness on the young leaf that makes it glisten with sheeny brightness in the early summer. To see this in perfection one should contrive to get a well-grown willow-tree against a pure blue sky on a day when the breeze is fitful and irregular with many short lulls of calm. The color of the smooth twigs themselves often adds much to the liveliness of the spectacle. They vary from a bright yellow to green or a sort of purple. Notwithstanding their flexibility, they may be broken off by sudden squalls of extraordinary vio- lence. After one of these I have seen a field strewn over for a considerable distance with innumerable willow-twigs snapped off as if they had been broken by human fingers, but they may have been cut by hail. The poplar is a much more beautiful tree than careless ob- servers believe. I have said elsewhere, but repeat the expres- sion as the most accurate I am able to find, that the poplar is to other trees what a tower, in architecture, is to houses. This illustration may be followed out in some detail; for example, I should say that poplars show to the best advantage, exactly as towers do, when there are not too many of them, and when they are accompanied by trees of inferior elevation and fuller form. They then fulfil exactly the office of towers among in- ferior buildings, carrying the beauty of the sylvan world high into the air.¹ It is a common mistake to believe that poplars in a 1 The three finest poplars I ever saw used to be in my own garden, where they were planted together about the beginning of this century in honor of three little boys who were brothers. These trees were so near that their trunks joined at the base, but they still retained their individuality. They were blown down together in a violent storm. Half as tall again as the finest trees of their species in the neighborhood, they were not less distinguished for beauty than for height, looking 344 LANDSCAPE. Q natural state are monotonous. They may seem so to the unob- servant, just as sheep appear all alike to those who know noth- ing about sheep; but there are really great differences in beauty. between well-formed and inferior specimens. In autumn they become splendid in yellow, but the passage from green to yel- low is gradual. The perfect autumnal color lasts but a short time unless the autumn happens to be windless, which is very rare, and then the poplars are glorious till the first rude blast comes to strip them suddenly and all but completely, leaving only a few specks of gold among their pale gray, gaunt, upward- pointing branches. The reader is no doubt aware that poplar is the lightest of our woods, as heart of oak is the heaviest.¹ It has a bad reputation for durability, but I believe it is under- valued on account of its cheapness. In France it is abundant and despised, but much used for common purposes under the title of "bois blanc," being very easily worked. Some critic may tell me that these matters concern joinery and carpentry rather than landscape; but I am convinced that the popular estimate of trees is influenced by the beauty or utility of the wood. The cedars of Lebanon owe much of their power over the imagination to the beautiful and durable wood that they fur- nish for human use, and to its employment in Solomon's tem- ple. Part of the contempt which is attached to poplars is due simply to the poorness of the wood; and yet it has two merits, its unrivalled lightness, and a certain homogeneousness of tex- ture that makes it split less easily than many woods reputed to be its superiors.2 - The ash is one of the most graceful trees we have, especially when ornamented by her "keys" in the early months of the year. The toughness and strength of her wood, and its extraor- dinary weight, are not at all suggested by the elegant outward appearance of the tree, as the same qualities are by the stout noble and dignified at all times, but at their best, perhaps, when the full moon hung in the sky beside them and there was mystery enough in the atmosphere to increase the impression of their colossal size. 1 In Mr. Francis Galton's "Art of Travel" the specific gravity of poplar is given as .38, while heart of oak (which of course sinks) stands at 1.17. Ordinary oak has a specific gravity of .75. or about twice the weight of poplar. 2 I built a canoe of poplar many years ago for lightness, not at all counting upon durability, as I knew the bad reputation of the wood. After much rough usage the boat was neglected and left to rot on the shore of a pond, winter and summer. At last I told my joiner to break her up, but after examining her he reported all her timbers sound, and said she was worth repairing. She is now in perfect repair and quite serviceable. TREES IN NATURE. 345 and rugged character of the oak. The ash resembles some de- ceptive feminine organizations that attract admiration for beauty, while nobody suspects the toughness and resisting power with which the graceful being is armed against the difficulties of exist- ence. The foliage of the ash is light and pretty in small quantities, and masses handsomely when there is an abundance of it. The alder is one of the commonest trees in England and in the temperate regions of Europe, and has just the qualities that are suitable for a creature that is very commonly seen. Few trees obtrude themselves so little on our attention. One cannot pass a chestnut or a willow without being immediately aware of its species; but however familiar we may be with alders, we can think of them simply as trees or bushes, without noticing them unless there is some special reason for doing so. Nature seems to have provided them as the common garniture of streams. They are not ugly, but the foliage is rather monotonous and wanting in character; the time when the alder is prettiest is before the leaves are quite formed, when the tree is in flower and covered with innumerable catkins that hang well and have a light, agreeable effect like rather long tassels. The leaves are too round to be elegant, the bark is rather picturesque but in a mediocre way, having neither the brilliance of the birch, the smooth beauty of the beech, nor the masculine character of the chestnut. The character of mediocrity is maintained in the size of the alder, which does not reach imposing dimensions. Schacht observes with regard to the branches that the principal ones form an acute angle with the trunk, whereas the twigs upon them spread themselves horizontally. The elm has an advantage over some other trees in showing its trunk and limbs well, even when enriched with abundant foliage. It grows so well in height that Bentham says it will exceed a hundred feet in rich soils, so that in this respect it approaches the majesty of the poplar; but as it is much broader than the poplar it has not its towering effect. The leaves are small, but the foliage is fine in mass, especially when many elms are seen together. Of the pine family three species only, according to Bentham, are indigenous in Great Britain. These are the Scotch Pine, the Juniper, and the Yew. The Scotch pine, which is com- monly called the Scotch fir, is really at home in the Highlands, and finely completes the beauty of rocky foregrounds. The 346 LANDSCAPE. 1 trunk and limbs are even more visible in the Scotch fir than in the elm, and are more beautiful in color, their reddish purple tint being always welcome as a contrast to the head of evergreen leaves. In gorgeous red sunsets the bark turns perfectly crim- son, and the cold green is warmed without ceasing to be green. I like to see the woody structure of a tree, which is its strength, and do not by any means desire that superabundant foliage which conceals everything till one might think there was no more organization than in a haycock. Now, the trunk and limbs of a Scotch pine, if it is a handsome specimen, are grand in a certain combination of stateliness with wildness. The trunk is generally erect, but not stiffly so, and though the branches have always a definite character, you never exactly know which way it will please them to twist and turn. There is no tree which so perfectly adorns and completes a rocky lake island as the Scotch pine. It is always an intense pleasure to me when I meet with this old friend in England or on the Continent, and especially in situations that recall the wonderfully fine situations that it often occupies in the Highlands. The juniper, which in England is but a shrub, attains in the forest of Fontainebleau the importance of a small tree with trunk and branches that have a wild and picturesque character, and acquire a certain importance in the foregrounds among the gray rocks of the forest. But wherever the juniper occurs, it is valuable in the landscape for its own special quality of green, and for the texture and density of its peculiar foliage. One of the most picturesque places known to me consists of hilly ground, covered with soft green turf, almost like a lawn, and adorned with a number of the very finest old chestnut-trees, not crowded, but far enough apart to allow an almost perfect devel- opment for each. On this turf the juniper flourishes luxuriantly, and gives exactly the variety that is required, when without it there would be too much grass. Bentham says that the English juniper, when erect, is two or three feet high, or even four; with- out including the extraordinary junipers of Fontainebleau, I have often met with the common shrub in France, when it consider- ably exceeded these measures, and have a recollection of a few specimens that were as tall as a well-grown man. The yew is a most valuable tree in landscape, and it is to be regretted that we do not meet with it more frequently. The darkness and solemnity of its evergreen foliage are valuable for TREES IN NATURE. 347 themselves and for the brightness and gayety that they give to other trees by contrast. The branches are very numerous, the trunk becomes very substantial in old individuals, and the tree attains a wonderful age. It might, perhaps, be argued that the wood of the yew is the best of all our English woods. It is of a fine close texture, hard, and of a rich dark red color. It is very strong, very flexible, good for bows, and it takes a fine polish. A noble old yew was blown down at the Holme, near Burnley, many years ago, and the owner had much beautiful furniture made from it; but such opportunites are rare.¹ I had intended to confine this notice of trees in Nature almost exclusively to species indigenous in Great Britain; but as I began with my favorite the chestnut, which is an exotic, I will mention two or three other foreign trees that have been accli- matized in England, or that are familiar to British tourists in France and Switzerland. Of the pine family the most impor- tant members are the cedar of Lebanon, the spruce firs, and the larch. The cedar has the quality that has been alluded to in the cases of the elm and the Pinus silvestris, or Scotch fir, — it shows its trunk well, even when most rich in foliage. The cedar holds out its arms almost horizontally, the lower branches being de- pressed and the higher ones raised, the horizontal tendency being, however, generally dominant, as the vertical tendency is in the poplar. The characteristic habit of the foliage is, to be held out flatly as a strong man might hold a table at arm's-length, while in the poplar the foliage merely clothes the erect arms like a sleeve. The trunk and arms of the cedar are well to be seen in the openings between the tables or flakes of foliage, which seem to be arranged in successive stages, one above another, like the shelves of a dumb-waiter, though they are not strictly so. Sombre and grave in aspect, like its near relation the yew, the cedar of Lebanon is by far the more imposing and magnificent tree. There are forests of it on the slopes of the Atlas, which must be as grand a sight as the firs of Switzerland or the chestnut-trees of Thessaly. In writing English, with the desire to avoid the scientific nomenclature, one is rather embarrassed by the want of the 1 If my memory serves me, there were two dining-room tables, eighteen carved chairs, and some other furniture. The wood seemed less picturesque than oak, not having so much texture, but it was more refined, and appeared to supply the want that made our grandfathers like old mahogany, the love of delicate sur- faces and rich color. 348 LANDSCAPE. distinction expressed in French by "sapin" (abies) and “pin” (pinus). We have "fir" and "pine," but they are often used indiscriminately, as we inaccurately say the "Scotch fir" for the Pinus silvestris, which is a true pine; and I observe that Mr. Ruskin commonly speaks of his favorite tree, the black spruce, as a pine, though it belongs to the genus abies, and is a "sapin." No doubt the firs belong to the family of conifers, which is called the pine family; but it is a misfortune in popular and lit- erary, as distinguished from scientific nomenclature, that the word "pine" should be employed in a general way for the family and in a special way for a branch of the family, and that the general term should be occasionally given to members of a branch that bears another name.¹ The scientific distinction between trees bearing cones that thicken at the extremities of the scales (as in the true pines) and trees with thin scales to their cones, is perfectly observed in the common French words "pin" and "sapin." Firs and pines have been better celebrated in literature than in painting, and once they have been nobly and solemnly cele- brated in music. If natural religion had rites and ceremonies, its believers might go to the fir forests on the great mountains and sing together" Les Sapins," by Pierre Dupont. I make no quotation from words that are inseparable from the poet's own deeply affecting music, which has the grandeur of the forest in its harmonies... Firs differ from most other trees in their decided preference for a perfectly erect attitude, and they differ, I believe, from all other trees whatever in the conical form of their mass, which always, when unmutilated, ends in a point that a little bird may sit upon and overshadow with its small body. A fir forest has a character so entirely its own that no other forest bears any re- semblance to it. The trees are so round, so regular, so straight, and so much alike, that the result, when they congregate in thousands, is a monotony that seems as if it would be endless. If there is anything in landscape Nature that seems to me really tiresome and disagreeable, it is a long walk in a forest of firs. As you go on and on, the great army of stiff, unbending trees 1 There is something of the same difficulty in our nomenclature of nations. All the inhabitants of North and South America are in a general sense Americans, but we awkwardly use the word in a special sense for the inhabitants of the United States, so that to call a Canadian or a Brazilian an "American" is a sort of error, and yet not an error, at the same time. It is, at least, misleading. TREES IN NATURE. 349 seems to stalk past you in dark green uniform, silent and in- numerable. Will they never end?— will there never be any change in the regiments of them? — shall we never see the sky again except in glimpses between their heads? The ground is covered with their sheddings, the road goes on and on the same for miles that seem as if they were leagues. You may be on lofty mountain-ground and yet enjoy no prospect. A friend of mine, imprudently wandering alone in a fir forest in Savoy, and without compass, lost himself, and felt for many hours the over- whelming effect of monotony in multitude. I, too, have been lost in a forest, but not of firs, and I remember what a relief it was to find a variety of trees. The air in forests of pine or fir is impregnated with balsamic and resinous odors that we all feel to be healthy, and of late years it appears that consumptive patients go to breathe such air in the forests of the Adirondack. They live in tents that the air may always reach them, and it is said to have performed wonderful cures. In Savoy the Pinus silvestris has been made to yield a variety of products for clothing and other uses which are supposed to afford some relief in rheumatism. If a longer experience confirms these services of the pine family, they will have acquired a new interest for mankind. In the mean time they give us a wood that is unrivalled in its own way, graciously lending itself to all common employments, and to some nobler uses in masts and beams, or more delicate uses in the truly vibrating sounding-boards of stringed instruments. Where the pines grow the chalet is easily built, and I remember visiting a rich man's house on the edge of a Continental forest where all the rooms were wainscoted in pine and had pine ceilings and floors, quite untouched with paint or varnish or stain of any kind. The house was cheerful, and had a fragrance as of the woods themselves. It appears certain that a nation could do better without oak and chestnut than without deal. In those high or cold countries where Nature seems but a hard mother, she compensates for the rarity of her other gifts by sowing fir and pine in the richest profusion. The wonder still remains. how they live where they do, often on quite inaccessible ledges, or putting forth long searching roots on the steeply sloping rock till they enter some crevice where haply a little nourishment may be found. They are among trees what the reindeer and the chamois are among animals, healthy in the bitter cold, and < 350 LANDSCAPE. .. leading a life perfect within its own limits amid the tempests of the higher Alps or the desolation of northern Scandinavia. The larch, though not an indigenous British tree, is familiar to most of us, and differs from other conifers in having decid- uous leaves. It is the only conifer we know that ever puts on an appearance of real gayety. The evergreen pines and firs have a general and regular look of grave self-possession that seems to approach most nearly to cheerfulness in winter, when they are comfortably clothed, in comparison with the naked trees around them, but they have a gloomy look in summer, because they keep their old clothes and do not conform to the pretty spring fashions when light green is "so very generally worn." Each year, it is true, gives them shoots of paler green than their old leaves, but these are new patches on an old gar- ment. The larch, on the contrary, is sad enough in winter, like most of our English trees, and then a larch wood is nothing but an intricate confusion of gray stems and branches; but the time comes when, as the young leaves grow, the very air of a larch wood seems to be suffused with a delicate green light that seems rather to emanate from the innumerable multitudes of thin short leaves than to be only their coloring matter. Then appear the delicately colored catkins, the "rosy plumelets" of Tennyson. The walnut is a foreign tree, indigenous in Persia and India, but known in Britain and rather common in France. It is one of the finest trees we have, and may rank next after the chest- nut in some of the most important qualities of beauty. The trunk is round and strong, the branches very large in propor- tion, and thrown out far with a superb gesture. The bark is of a whitish gray, very beautiful in its cool tint, and giving a fine relief to dark mosses which often occur upon the tree; and be- sides beauty of tint the bark has an admirable texture, being slashed with many openings that give it some approach to the noble ruggedness of the chestnut. The walnut-tree is fortunate also in this, that its fine trunk and magnificent limbs are not hidden by its foliage. The foliage itself is of a noble character, the leaves of a handsome size and grave dark tint of green con- trasting finely with the light gray of the bark. The fruit is ac- ceptable, but not to be compared with the chestnut as a matter of alimentary importance. It is simply a dessert nut, having a 1 This is the reason, no doubt, why a fir is always chosen as a Christmas tree. - TREES IN NATURE. 351 place in poetry on account of an often-quoted line of Tennyson, and associated in the memories of most of us with the vintages whose merits it served to enhance and the desultory after-dinner talk that it accompanied. The wood of the walnut-tree is the common furniture wood for the peasantry in France, and so is rather held in contempt there; but the finer qualities of it are used for more valuable furniture, and are beautifully veined with capricious irregular markings of rich, dark brown. Although walnut-wood is excellent for indoor uses, it is valueless when exposed to water, which is the more to be regretted that if it could be persuaded not to swell and cockle, the leathery tough- ness of it, and its indisposition to split, would make it perfectly invaluable for boat-building.' A foreign tree that has not been acclimatized in England may be mentioned in conclusion on account of its importance in southern Europe, and because the name of it, at least, is famil- iar to every one who has read the Bible. Travellers from Lyons to the south of France will remember as a new experience the first sight of the afterwards familiar olivier. It is an im- portant tree in this respect, that it is a sure indication of cli- mate. Where grows the olive we are in southern air, and yet it is a very near relation of the hardy ash of Scotland. With its gray-green and poor foliage and its body of mediocre growth, the French olive-tree is welcome only because the arid land- scape where it thrives is otherwise so denuded. Gray olive, dark cypress, reddish rocky ground, and a little grass burnt dry by a pitiless sun, these are the elements of many a landscape in Provence. In Algeria, and even in Italy, the olive has more character. The trunk grows stronger and is twisted into strange weird forms that seem as if they implied some inward perplex- ity in its nature, as though the full freedom of African air and sun were not really freedom for this unhappy tree, tormented 1 Yielding to the persuasion of an intelligent man who had a professional knowledge of woods, I once tried an experiment in boat-building with some Swiss walnut of most exceptionally fine quality. The result was extremely curious and interesting. Some of the boards used swelled and cockled frightfully, and had to be at once replaced with oak, but some other walnut boards endured the water per- fectly, behaving as well as the best oak. I never could ascertain the cause of the difference. If all the walnut boards had been like the best of them, they would have been unrivalled for a canoe, as they would bear endless knocking about from their extreme toughness and flexibility. The conclusion was that a piece of walnut might be worthless or invaluable, and that the uncertainty made it a wood to be avoided. 352 LANDSCAPE. by constraints of a nature inexplicable to us. And however massive the old olive-tree may become in the course of many years, the leaves of it are still the same poor, thin, dusty-gray leaves that we know in the south of France, and the fruit the same small bitter fruit that seems so worthless and inacceptable at first and yet becomes, after a little judicious treatment, one of the most perfect gifts of Nature, a gift quite unrivalled and unapproachable in its own way, and better than many a luscious sweet, a real food and enhancer of other food, a gift to offer distinct thanksgiving for as men do for their daily bread. And then the generous oil! There is no oil in the world compara- ble to it for the service of man; and there is just one thing I want to say about it which has a singularly accurate application to the work we do in literature. The oil of the first quality, the really virgin oil (not that which is falsely called so), flows of itself with scarcely any pressure but the weight of the heaped olives themselves; then the second quality comes with a moderate pressure, and the worst oil with a strong pressure. The wood of the olive-tree is superlatively beautiful, with its fine close texture, its pale yellow color, and its fanciful, erratic brownish-gray veins, a wood for the most finished cabinet-making and for caskets with elaborate hinges and ornaments of gold. Who would be- lieve that it was first cousin to our own homely and useful ash, that is good for everything, from a wheelbarrow to an alpen- stock? And yet they come together in the thoughts of a bota- nist, even as they did by a happy accident in Spenser's famous stanza on the trees, where he sings, M "The ash for nothing ill; The fruitful olive." TREES UNDER THE CONTROL OF MAN. 353 CHAPTER XXXIII. TREES UNDER THE CONTROL OF MAN. Τ HE essential difference between the mineral and vegetable worlds, so far as Man's control is concerned, is that he is simply able to take possession of minerals where he finds them, and afterwards shape them to his requirements, whereas he can cause plants to come into being in places selected by himself, provided only that he conforms his plans to those conditions of soil and climate which are necessary to the health and vigor of the plants that he desires to propagate. It follows from this that Man's work may be present in results when it is perfectly invisible; for it is hard to say, in many cases, whether trees have been naturally or artificially planted in their present situations. In other cases the artificial planting is evident, and then the human art which has settled that trees are to be in such a place, and in such an order, becomes as legitimately a subject of art- criticism as composition in the art of painting. The mere act of removing certain trees from a natural forest and leaving others standing is a fine art if done with a view to beauty, although human interference, in this instance, adds nothing whatever that is tangible or material. It only adds beauty, or reveals beauty, by taking away the impediments that prevented it from being seen. Among the recognized fine arts there are two that consist entirely in removal. In sculpture and mezzotint no grain of marble dust or copper powder is added to the work; the artist does nothing but take away matter, at first in large quantities, and then in smaller and smaller quan- tities as his work approaches completion. The work of clear- ing in a wood is analogous to these arts when it is carried out with an artistic intention only. Man's interference with sylvan Nature may be of a kind abso- lutely undiscoverable except by the student of botanical history. 23 354 LANDSCAPE. • * Without the help of botanists we should be unable to discover which trees are indigenous in a country and which are the re- sult of importations, for it frequently happens that imported trees take so well to the soil and climate that they thrive as hap- pily as natives. I may mention as a case in point the complete success of the pseudo-acacia, or Robinia, in France. It was introduced from Canada in the reign of Henri IV. by a pro- fessor of botany, named Robin, who sowed seeds of it in what is now the Jardin des Plantes. Thence it gradually spread all over the country and now exists in millions. As its long roots are useful for holding earth together, it is planted on railway embankments, and as it is a light, elegant tree, that does not cast too dense a shadow, it is often planted by common roads. The extreme rapidity of its growth, and the serviceableness of the wood for many different purposes, increase its popularity in an age that looks for quick returns. Its beautiful and abundant yellowish-white flowers that hang so gracefully and fill the air with a sweet if rather overpowering perfume, and its long com- pound delicately colored leaves, make it acceptable for beauty in addition to its various kinds of usefulness;¹ so it has become a thoroughly French tree, though quite unknown to the France of the Middle Ages. There are other trees of which it is not easy to determine whether they are really indigenous or not when the history of them is not known like that of the Robinia. I have neither the space nor the knowledge that would be necessary to trace the effects of culture upon trees, but I believe that they are chiefly visible in orchards and gardens. I am not aware that the important landscape trees, such as the oak and the pine, have ever owed anything determinable to culture except their simple existence in some place where they would not have been planted by Nature. The highly artificial arrange- ments of fruit-trees nailed to walls and made to grow round hoops in various shapes were at first suggested simply by the desire to expose the fruit well to the sun and make it finer and more easy to gather; but a sort of perverted artistic instinct, or fancy, has led gardeners beyond the arrangements suggested by the scientific economy of fruit culture to the invention of devices that have no utility and only the foolish purpose of being as 1 The leaves of the Robinia are good food for cattle, and horses are extremely fond of them. The wood is better than any other for burning, and is very dura- ble in buildings, besides being pretty in furniture. TREES UNDER THE CONTROL OF MAN. 355 unnatural as possible, like the contortions of the india-rubber man in a circus. It is fortunate that the wretched trees which are so treated are generally in gardens enclosed by high walls that may be looked upon as hospitals for maimed creatures. I hope, for their sakes, that trees are really insensible of pain and uncon- scious of restraint and mutilation. The culture of fruit-trees that are left to grow freely has led to a great enlargement of their fruit, and at certain times this has a real effect upon the landscape. In the cider-producing coun- tries of England and France the apple has, in its season, a great share in the painting of innumerable natural pictures. The years when fruit is most abundant initiate us into a kind of beauty that the poets have often imagined, when the fruit is as important as the leaf, and the branches are so heavy that they droop under the rich burden and have to be propped and sup- ported. At these times the contrast between the globular fruit and the thin, beautifully curved leaves is one of the most effec- tive in Nature. It is sometimes enhanced, as in the orange- tree, by a striking difference in color; but here the contrast is needlessly powerful. To my taste the perfection of it is in the quince-tree, where the large fruit only gets yellower as it ripens, hanging heavily by a thin stalk from its involved and tortuous branches and shaded by its green leaves, downy on the under- side as if for the comfort of the fruit. Our forefathers scarcely admitted wild Nature close to their country houses. They evidently had a feeling, whether they were conscious of it or not, that a severe art like architecture required a gradation between itself and wild Nature, an interme- diate stage in which Nature itself should exhibit with the utmost plainness the authority and the handiwork of man. It was found that certain shrubs and trees, such as box, thorn, privet, lime, yew, and hornbeam, could be made to grow in a dense and close fashion, and be cut square like walls, or even made to take the shape of birds and beasts, so they became the materials on which the rude art of the country squire and his gardener freely exercised itself. The original desire for something orderly and formal near the house was not irrational, it even belonged to the higher artistic reason that an age of naturalism denies and sets aside, but it was pushed to an idle extravagance which led to an excessive reaction. The finest tree for walls and bowers of dark verdure is the 356 LANDSCAPE. yew. Unfortunately it is of slow growth and associated with melancholy ideas, a tree more frequently found in churchyards than elsewhere, as it poisons cattle and cannot be left within their reach. Besides this, the color of the foliage is so gloomy and sombre that the large class of people who are very easily depressed by anything that has solemnity dislike it as they dis- like the shadow of Death. For me, who have lived for years with six clipped yew-trees visible from my study window, the tree is associated with the peace most favorable to my pursuits, and it seems to me that an old house is never quite complete without some formally cut yew-trees in its garden. I like the gravity of the yew, and have no objection to be reminded by its tranquil longevity of the shortness of one human life, while the evidences given by it of past human interference make it a living link between the generations of mankind. The hornbeam is a convenient and cheerful tree for arbors, with its abundant light-green leaves and its close growth favor- able to privacy. It is easily planted so as to form dense walls of verdure in a few years that may be arranged on the plan of a room, to be a summer dining-room. In southern Europe there is a pleasant habit of dining out of doors in the delicious cool of evening that succeeds to the burning hours. The horn- beam may be trained to build not only walls of greenery but a ceiling of the same, and in this way a "salle de verdure be made of the living leaves, which is so closely protected from the external air that the heat in it may be stifling. The four walls are enough, and the best roof is the clear heaven when the stars are coming out. may Among the many proofs of the sure instinct with which a great territorial aristocracy has generally known how to deepen the impression of its dignity, it would be difficult to mention any more effective than the art by which the approaches to great houses have been ennobled by stately avenues of trees. Rows of magnificent oaks, placed as regularly as a line of soldiers, guard the approach to the hall; and as the humble visitor walks or drives between them he is made to feel that all this natural grandeur of giant bole and gnarled and knotted arms, all that wealth of foliage, all the strength of the good oaken timber that is there left standing, are but announcements of the power of the family which for generation after generation has held there its ancestral seat. Sometimes it is a triple avenue with the road TREES UNDER THE CONTROL OF MAN. 357 in the middle space and nothing but green sward in the two oth- ers where the fallow-deer browse in the shade, the nave and the aisles of a long natural edifice brought into being by the powers of Nature in obedience to the lamp of Aladdin, to honor the possessor of the lamp. We constantly see that Nature serves the rich man with her useful things, that she gives him stone and coal and iron, but in this obedient beauty of vegetation that comes at his desire, she adds the last finish of grace and honor to his fortune. Portraits of rich men may look imposing beside the traditional column and curtain, or statesman-like among papers and books; and yet I think that a land-owner looks most himself on a good horse and riding quietly under a great avenue of trees. The art of planting for useful purposes has a powerful effect on the appearance of natural landscape, but generally in the direction of monotony; in excuse for which it may be urged that the most natural planting in the world, such as that of the Alpine forests, is often equally monotonous, and that the full effect of certain trees is only to be judged of when they are to be seen in thousands. It appears to me, however, that so far as the charm of the landscape is concerned, the enterprise of the planter may go too far and his work may be overdone. Some valleys have been planted so completely that you can neither see the forest for the trees nor the trees for the forest; you have no view, and not a single tree attains its independent development. You feel as if lost in a crowd, or rather each tree may be sup- posed to feel so. As for you, the position you occupy is some- thing like that of a weasel in a field of wheat. Much might be said about the unpaintableness of dense and monotonous woods, but I leave that to the next chapter. All that needs to be said here is that a landscape entirely wooded and a perfectly bare landscape are both far from perfection; the bare landscape, how- ever, has the advantage in giving a free range to the eyes of a man, and (if not too precipitous) free range to his feet also.¹ 1 A friend tells me that I have not quite done justice in this chapter to the efforts of nurserymen in the direction of a perfect natural form. They pay a good deal of attention to the form of trees when young, by removing branches that grow in such a way as to strike against each other in a wind, and they are careful to favor the attainment of the best tree form by giving their nurslings the room neces- sary for their growth. The accidents of wild Nature often refuse this; as for example in a dense natural forest where few trees if any attain a complete and unimpeded development. 358 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXXIV. J TREES IN ART. ܀ 7. SON OME idea of the importance of trees in landscape art may be gathered from the elementary treatises on drawing which from time to time are published for the use of amateurs. The writers always appear to consider that trees are in land- scapes what human beings are in figure compositions, and they give as much attention to the earth on which the trees grow, and to the hills behind them, as a figure-painter gives to the floor and walls of the room where his personages are acting their little dramatic scene. I never met with an elementary treatise on landscape art that dealt with rocks and mountains; and yet it might be argued that they are more important than trees, for their greater permanence, their superior dimensions, and the obvious fact that the geological world is the very land itself which ought to be paramount in landscape. This overweening estimate of trees, which in comparison with rocks and mountains are but as the grass of the field, is con- nected with a slow historical development of ideas about land- scape that may be traced through literature and art from remote antiquity down to our own time. In the enumeration of the mental acquisitions and accomplishments of Solomon, in the first Book of Kings, there are distinct statements (expressed of course in language intelligible to people who lived in an early stage of culture) that Solomon was a philosopher, a poet, a botanist, and a zoölogist, but there is no statement that he took any interest even in the most primitive geology. The account of his studies of trees, though brief in words, is remarkably comprehensive, as well as emphatic, in expression. He was a dendrologist; he "spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." And from the days when Solomon spake of the hyssop, to the TREES IN ART. 359 day when a modern poet apostrophized a "flower in the cran- nied wall," and confessed that the true nature of it is unfathom- able by human intelligence, there have always been speakers about trees. It was natural, therefore, that when landscape- painting began it should have appealed to an interest in the sylvan world that existed before it and without it, just as painters of the figure appeal to an interest in men which exists inde- pendently of painting. But it is more remarkable that the pre- dominance of trees should have survived the full institution of geology. This may be explicable by two causes: first because we see plants live and grow, which makes us feel nearer to them than to dead stones, and secondly because they are more ac- cessible to most of us than Alps and precipices can ever be. The interpretation of trees in the graphic arts, and the slow development of it in art-history, can only be understood by first examining two opposite tendencies of the human mind that have reference, not to trees alone, but to the whole world of nature. There is the tendency to detach a thing from the confusion of accidental surroundings, and to represent that special thing with the utmost possible clearness, even to the extent of making the thing simpler than it is in Nature in order that it may be more plainly intelligible. If to this love of clear- ness the love of beauty is added, so that the representation of the natural thing is in some degree purified and elevated by the idealizing faculty of the artist, you have the Greek principles, which were to detach the thing for clearness and idealize it for beauty. Everybody who, whether in writing or drawing, likes to be very clear and simple in his statements or descriptions, and who at the same time has a taste for a chastened and ele- vated kind of expression, has the Hellenic spirit within him. The disadvantage of it, I do not say the defect, but the disadvan- tage so far as the influence of the artist or writer is concerned, is that in modern times the Hellenic love of clearness and sim- plicity incurs the imputation of shallowness, because all that it has to say or show is visible almost at a glance. When from this extreme clearness and separation of the thing described from all other things you pass to the opposite extreme of in- tentional mystery, intricacy, obscurity, confusion, full of hints, suggestions, allusions to a thousand things that are not explained or described, you arrive at a kind of art that is essentially not Hellenic but modern; a kind of art that has a nearer resemblance P 360 LANDSCAPE. to the world of Nature, at least in this, that Nature is full of in- volved and intricate detail that cannot be made to look simple without sacrifice. This kind of obscure and confused art, that is not easily exhaustible, is more in harmony with modern feeling than the Greek clearness, and it is said to be profound because it answers better to the modern sense of the vast entanglement of variety that there is in the universe, and to the general in- explicableness of all things. This is a very short account of the matter, and I regret not to have room for illustrations from poetry and painting; but the reader will think of examples. What relates to our present subject is that the Greek spirit might be favorable to the study of leaves, or of an isolated stem, but that the modern spirit is more at home in the forest. We may also take note of the very curious fact, which at first seems paradoxical, that the study of leaves is an accessory of figure-painting, and has very little to do with landscape-painting; nay, that it is positively inimical to landscape-painting. When the artist's attention is directed to leaves, he draws them clearly one by one and forgets to draw the tree; and as leaves in Nature exist in infinite multitudes, he fails to give the notion of multi- tude, and reduces them to a small fraction of their number in his need for individual definition. In the "Journal of Hellenic Studies" the second plate,¹ from a vase in the British Museum, has for its subject Peleus bringing the child Achilles to the home of Cheiron, and between the two figures is the usual thin Greek tree to represent the forest through which old Cheiron roamed. It has a slight stem without sprigs till the branches begin, and then there are seven of them, curving upwards and adorned with a countable number of leaves set flat on each side the branch, never crossing it. I do not profess to know exactly what species of tree was intended; archaeologists often call one very like it a laurel. We are more fortunate in the kylix (shallow cup) with the exploits of Theseus, also in the British Museum,2 because we know from the legend that the tree to which Theseus fastened Sinis was a pine. On the kylix it is represented as thin, long, and very flexible, with two large branches and a short one near the top. There is no attempt to render any characteristic of the pine. The leaves 1 The plates are numbered consecutively. in the number for April and October, 1880. 2 Journal of Hellenic Studies, April, 1881. The one here referred to appeared Plate X. TREES IN ART. 361 are much more like those of the willow, and are arranged in rows on each side the branch, which is more like the willow branch than the pine. It is noteworthy that in another subject on the same kylix the robber, Skiron, is sitting on a rock (with the tortoise at the foot of it), and out of the rock springs a tree which is exactly of the same species as the supposed pine of Sinis. Were it not for the little berries on the laurel in the combat between Ċadmus and the dragon of Mars, in another vase-painting, the two would appear much the same species of tree. There is a beautiful Etruscan mirror, representing Bac- chus and Semele,¹ on which Apollo grasps the authentic laurel, a thin stem about his own height, with three little branches and a few flat leaves on each side of them. In the Etruscan wall- paintings in tombs found near Corneto the figures are divided by thin trees beginning to be leafy near the ground, and the leaves are all arranged in the same flat decorative way, and though more numerous than in the other examples are still easily countable. Sculpture may help us a little towards an understanding of the Greek treatment of trees. There are a few statues, such as that of Apollo with the lizard, in which a trunk is represented close to a human figure; and in this case there is some realism in the swelling of the bark where the branches start, and in the creasing of it near the figure's uplifted arm. The unpleasant subject of Marsyas made the introduction of a tree-trunk in- evitable, as in the Louvre statue; but since the exigencies of sculpture always require that the branches of a tree shall be lopped (unless it be in a bas-relief), we miss the chance of ob- serving what the artist's conception of them may have been. There is more realism in the sculptured tree-trunks than might have been anticipated from the usual treatment of leaves; but this may be accounted for by the fact that a log of wood is as tangible and measurable an object as a man's leg, and therefore required no sense of mystery or multitude for the imitation of it. There is a bas-relief in the Louvre of the combat between Apollo and Hercules about the tripod; and here we have a complete tree consisting of a thick trunk with the beginnings of the roots visible and three short branches with the usual willow leaves (or whatever they may be); but here the leaves are not arranged in rows, they are rather in tufts or bunches, marking a decided Engraved in Woltmann and Woermann's "History of Painting," and also in René Ménard's "Mythologie dans l'Art Ancien et Moderne." 362 LANDSCAPE. step from decorative towards naturalistic art. Round the tree- trunk the serpent Python winds, exactly as in Christian art the serpent of Eden winds round the tree of knowledge. In another vase-painting the dragon of the garden of the Hes- perides is represented by a large thick serpent twisted round the stem of an apple-tree. The tree is cut off at the top, but five branches have had time to spring, and on these you may count exactly fifty-one leaves and twenty-two apples. This is the Greek system of dealing with trees, to reduce the myriads of natural leaves to a few that can be drawn separately and counted, and to avoid the intricacy of twigs and branches by simply lopping them off. It may, however, not be absolutely safe to conclude that the Greeks had no landscape-painting because we find only con- ventional and decorative representations of trees on vases. If it is true that the mural paintings at Herculaneum and Pompeii were not always essentially modern at the time when they were painted upon the wall, but rather in many cases copies or reminiscences of much more ancient art, it would seem possible that the painters of antiquity may have at least gone so far in the direction of true landscape-painting as to have attained the notion of mass in foliage. Some of the Pompeian pictures give large-leaved shrubs seen near the figures with much of the liberty and naturalness in the disposal of the leaves that were afterwards fully attained by the Venetians; while many of the landscapes really show foliage in mass, not so learnedly as in modern landscape-painting, but quite with the knowledge that masses had a light side and a dark side, and a roundness that might be painted without insisting on the form of each leaf. The same observation of mass is to be seen in the Campanian interpretation of mountains, which, though extremely simple and primitive and without any of the refinements of mountain form that are perceptible to ourselves, exhibit, nevertheless, the im- portant truth that the facets of a mountain catch the light. In mediaeval landscape-painting, trees were of great impor- tance from the first, on account of the free decorative inventive- ness of the mediaeval mind, that exercised itself in illumination and tapestry, and in patterns for dress; for all which, leaves and flowers were the best natural materials or suggestions. The history of tree-drawing in the Middle Ages is very like its history in Greece. As Apollo and Semele were placed on each side TREES IN ART. 363 the laurel, of which the leaves were few and distinctly individ- ualized, so Adam and Eve were placed on each side the apple- tree, which was often represented as a bare thin stem branching into a sort of flat oval at the top, that was filled with distinct leaves and fruit, and sometimes even surrounded by a line. In other drawings or paintings the tree was allowed to develop it- self more freely; but the artist still attended to the individual leaves, and the tree was usually kept small, like the young trees in our gardens. Even in hunting-scenes where a forest is repre- sented, as in the manuscript of the hunting-book by Gaston Phoebus,¹ the trees have short bare trunks and a few leaves, and are about the height of a man on horseback, often not so high. They answer, in short, to the trees in boxes of toys for children, except that they are more prettily designed. The nearest approach to foliage attained by the mediaeval love of the distinct leaf is in the backgrounds to tapestries and decorative paintings designed on the same principles, where the leaves, although individually perfect, are so multiplied that the mere numbers make them appear innumerable. In this way the distinct designers of the Middle Ages attained a sort of infin- ity, though it is not the same as the real infinity of Nature where details cannot be counted. One of the best examples of this is the background to Orcagna's fresco of the "Dream of Life" in the Campo Santo of Pisa, where the orange-trees stand behind the figures and fill the upper part of the picture from side to side with their dense foliage, studded with fruit, and between their thin stems every inch of space is filled with a diaper of flat green leaves to represent the close shrubbery or underwood in the gar- den. This is still quite mediaeval in spirit, because the leaves are distinctly drawn, and are all countable, however numerous ; they are also decorative, as primitive art was sure to be. It is difficult to fix with precision the date when the idea of mass in foliage began to acquire importance, and I know that if I give a date some earlier examples may be found which would seem to throw it farther back in art-history; but occasional pre- cursors do not invalidate the rights of a century in which an idea first takes effectual root. There is a very remarkable landscape background by Giovanni Bellini in his picture of the "Death of Peter Martyr," in our National Gallery, the most elaborate 1 The book is entitled "Des Deduitz de la chasse des bestes sauvaiges," and is in the National Library at Paris. 364 LANDSCAPE. ‚' } ; example of tree-painting among our older pictures. The idea is to show trees in a wood with stems crossing each other and sup- porting an immense quantity of highly wrought foliage. Well, in this picture the foliage is not flat, there is a sense of mass and yet to a modern eye it is easily visible that Bellini was still hampered by the mediaeval interest in the leaf, and driven by that to bestow prodigious pains upon the individual leaves that he portrayed by thousands. In the same fifteenth century a manuscript of the Epistles of Ovid, now in the National Library at Paris, was illuminated with subjects that have landscape back- grounds of a very advanced kind, and here the foliage is com- pletely massed with considerable breadth of shaded parts and only touches for the lights. We may remember, then, that classical tree-painting began with the stem and a reduced number of distinct leaves, but attained masses of foliage in the Campanian paintings or earlier; and that mediaeval painting began in the same way with the leaf and the stem, but led to masses about the fifteenth century, after passing through an intermediate stage in which there was a great multiplicity of distinctly painted leaves. In the sylvan work of Albert Dürer, who evidently took a great interest in trees, the love of distinctness is still the predominant feeling; but as he had fully realized the idea of mass in foliage, his distinctness is not obtained by drawing leaves where they could not be seen in Nature, but by separating one mass from another with hard outlines and strong contrasts of light and dark. In his near trees the masses are large, in the distant ones they are necessarily smaller; but he passes from one to the other with the same methodical resolution to make them plain. He was very fond of bare trunks and branches, often introducing a leaf- less branch among luxuriant foliage, and not unfrequently pre- ferring a wintry tree as in the woodcut of "Christ taking leave of His Mother." He would even be at the trouble of engraving a stem as bare as a sculptor's; for example, the tall trunk behind which Death partially hides himself, in the plate of "the Knight and the Lady." It is probable that these tastes were influenced in great measure by the technical exigencies of burin-engraving, which can deal with pure, decided curves so much more easily than with irregular suggestions of vague and mysterious detail. The etching-needle is much superior to the burin for the interpretation of foliage, so it is not surprising that an etcher like TREES IN ART. 365 Rembrandt should have drawn trees with more freedom and power than Dürer. The truth is, that so far as style is con- cerned Rembrandt could hardly be surpassed. His style unites the two virtues of strong delineation for massive and substantial things, such as the stump of a tree, and light handling for yield- ing things that may have motion, such as the leaves at the extremity of a branch. However slight may be his drawing of foliage, he never fails to indicate the broad division of its masses. The foliage behind "The Bathers," in the little sketch-plate that bears that name, is divided into projecting masses that catch the light and hollow places of shade, though the background was the work of a few minutes. In the "View of Omval," a com- paratively elaborate etching, the habit of seeing foliage in the mass is equally apparent, and is proved by the free use of diago- nal lines in the shaded parts which almost obliterate the detail. In the small and slight but fine landscape called "The Sports- man" (from the figure walking on the road), the trees to the right are summarized in a few powerful touches that sufficiently indicate the character of the trunks, and the branches are nearly bare; but we observe a distinct attempt to mass the little foliage that there is, by the artist's habitual method. Leaves are indi- cated in Rembrandt's system, but always in clusters and groups, never by the Greek plan of isolating them. He even carried the love of massing leaves so far that he did it for foreground plants, which Dürer would have engraved leaf by leaf. So far as style is concerned, Rembrandt's method is le dernier mot de l'art; but there is no reason why modern artists, without descend- ing to photographic minuteness, should not give more botanical truth, and a greater variety of species, of which Rembrandt illus- trated very few. The paintings, and especially the pen-drawings of Titian, are full of evidence that he loved sylvan scenery. He studied the trunk with an interest comparable to that of Dürer, and often drew the separate leaf, which Rembrandt avoided; but he also took pleasure in heavy masses of foliage. His trees are nobler, grander, more stately than those of Rembrandt, but they are not so natural. In his pictures the trees are almost invariably dark, according to his system (which was, to throw the landscape into twilight while the figures had rather a clearer light to relieve them); and therefore Titian's knowledge of trunks and foliage is, for us, more plainly set forth in his pen-drawings. He did 366 LANDSCAPE. y not make any use of the ink blot, or flat black, which modern draughtsmen find to be convenient; but his pen-drawings are, throughout, exactly like old woodcuts, expressing the knowledge of substance only, with a very little effect and no local color. The finest of them known to me is that of a clump of trees on rocky ground, with a mountainous distance, in the Uffizi col- lection at Florence (No. 813 in Braun's Autotypes). About a dozen large trees grow close together, the trunks of them being powerfully drawn, but without bark-texture, and the foliage above is very finely massed, but without mystery. The dis- tinctly drawn trees on the hill-slopes in the distance remind us of Dürer by their numerous small countable masses. Critics occasionally exalt Titian's draughtsmanship of trees at the ex- pense of modern work; but it is not probable that they would readily tolerate such abstract art in a modern landscape-designer, and unless he were allowed as much abstraction as Titian per- mitted himself he could not attain anything resembling Titian's results.¹ The drawings that are held up to admiration when they bear that illustrious name, would probably be condemned as hard and effectless if signed by a living Englishman. The essential superiority of Claude Lorrain over all his prede- cessors and nearly all who have come after him was in the quiet elegance of his taste, which is conspicuous in nothing so much as in the arrangement of his sylvan compositions. He was not so vigorous a realist as Dürer, nor so strong a draughtsman as Titian; but in a certain aptitude for seizing upon the more re- fined suggestions of Nature he was, so far as sylvan subjects are concerned, incomparably superior to both. His massive and full-foliaged trees express sylvan richness with a superb abun- dance, while the slender trees whose trunks prettily cross each other in lighter groupings are drawn with a rare appreciation of their grace, and in both cases equally the forms are controlled by an instinctive love of beauty in composition. As an example of Claude's heavier trees, I may mention the landscape in the Louvre that is numbered 230 in the catalogue;² as an instance 1 For the convenience of some readers I may briefly explain that abstraction in art means taking some qualities that exist in Nature while rejecting others that always exist along with them; for example, Titian's pen-drawings are abstract art, because they take form and refuse local color, mystery, and chiaroscuro. 2 It has no title. It is illuminated by late afternoon light catching one side of the great tree, and in the foreground a girl is following a cow and several goats that walk in a sort of procession, two by two. TREES IN ART. 367 of the lighter, the pen-drawing called "Narcissus," in the Pesth Museum, reproduced in Mrs. Mark Pattison's "Claude Lor- rain ; "¹´and as an example of the two combined, the etching called "Le Bouvier," of which a reproduction in heliogravure ap- peared in the third edition of “Etching and Etchers." Claude's sketches of trees from Nature do not represent him at his best. In the presence of Nature he seems to have desired nothing more than a rough memorandum, in which he often blocked out his masses with lights and darks of a crude simplicity that gives no notion of his real refinement, and his feeling for composition would not be guessed at when the drawing is an ungainly note of a commonplace tree or wood. It is a mistaken kindness to his memory to praise his studies too reverentially or indiscrimi- nately. Unlike many modern artists who make very close and minute studies but never compose a picture, Claude seems to have got rough and crude materials from Nature, but to have excelled in that art of idealizing and arranging them afterwards, which is the special function of the artist. I have not space to examine in detail the foliage of the Dutch painters. I suppose their system of small spotty touches was never carried farther than by Paul Potter in the " Landscape with Cattle," number 849 in our National Gallery, and I shall have something to say about that system with reference to mod- ern English painting. Dutch painting reached a wonderful me- chanical perfection which has gained for it much sincere praise, and it seems almost wrong to say anything in disparagement of so much patient industry; but it always appears to me that there was a barrier of some kind between the clever Dutch workmen and the reality of sylvan Nature, and that the barrier was their own too confident and assured skill in the handicraft of their art. Had they been able to forget themselves and think of the wild forest, they would have made a nearer advance to the strongest modern naturalism; but they lived in the most artifi- cial country under the sun, they had access to no forests, only seeing a wood here and there, and their minds were steeped in the bourgeois sentiment about Nature. Still, it must be admitted that their contribution to the study of trees may have been neces- sary as a preparation for the better naturalism of our own time, and I believe they did more for some trees, especially the oak, 1 "Bibliothèque Internationale de l'Art," Paris. Librairie de l'Art. 368 LANDSCAPE. T than any other of the old masters. Hobbema happens to be exceedingly popular at present among picture-buyers, whereas in the eighteenth century his works could be had for a few florins, and were almost unknown. This appears to indicate that the Dutch interpretation of foliage is more heartily accepted than ever.¹ Flemish painting is generally of a much broader character, as, for example, in the freely designed foliage of Ru- bens, which, though often very slight in execution, and careless of small truths, never by any accident falls into the sin of me- chanical detail. Cornelis Huysmans, a much less celebrated Fleming, who is scarcely even yet appreciated at his true value, had a fine and ample way of treating foliage in large masses, which in combination with rich color gives his works an almost southern nobility of style. The full development of modern landscape-painting was always likely to incur the loss of style which is neither compati- ble with details that are minutely false nor with details that are minutely true. It is time, now, to explain briefly in what the false detail of foliage consists. I do not exactly know who first made the discovery, but it was probably some painter of illumi- nated manuscripts, that leaves at some distance might be plausi- bly represented by little dots. Applied to oil-painting on a larger scale this meant little clots of rather thick pigment, and the most skilful Dutch workmen, by great practice, learned to apply these with wonderful dexterity. But however great the manual dexterity might be, the dots or clots of paint were wrong relatively to Nature when they were not correct in scale, so as to represent the points of light on the real leaves, and if they were correct in scale they were too minute to be compati- ble with style. Besides this very serious difficulty there was always the risk that the touches or dots might not be carried through in proportionate scale and perspective, and also that by their broken and scattered character they might destroy the modelling of the masses on which they were applied. If the reader will take the trouble to master this very curious part of the subject, he will find many things intelligible in the tree- 1 Even after the severe condemnation of it by Mr. Ruskin; but this is only one instance among many which seem to prove that the most influential art-critics have no power against a painter whom the public happens to like, though they have considerable influence in inducing the public to look at works that it previously neglected. TREES IN ART. 369 painting of good artists which are not intelligible until the real objections to mechanical dotting, or "niggling," are thoroughly understood. It looks so plausible, that the reasons for reject- ing it are not at first sight apparent; but the finest landscape- painters try to do without it when they can. There is none of it in Gainsborough; and though Gainsborough was not a botanical landscape-painter, he had a profound sense of sylvan beauty and majesty. There is very little of it in Turner, who always en- deavored to paint foliage in a most comprehensive way, and more for the grace or strength of the whole tree than for the details of leaf or branch. Nothing is more conspicuous in Con- stable than the entirely personal, non-mechanical character of his touch on trees. He admired some of his famous predecessors, yet did not imitate them; and he loved Nature without ever be- ing led into the vain pursuit of photographic accuracy. It is nat- ural to pass at once from Constable to the modern French school which he influenced. The best French painters of trees have summarized foliage as much as possible, in order to avoid the mechanical dot; but this does not imply that they would renounce the indication of a near leaf when conspicuously visible, like the light under-side of a bramble-leaf in a wintry hedge. The best art is to suggest innumerable leaves and paint only a few. Among Theodore Rousseau's studies, reproduced by Amand Durand after the painter's death, is one very fine example of trees in mass seen dark against an afterglow on rising rocky ground,' and another of large oaks with strong trunks and broadly massed foliage; 2 but he sometimes fell into a petty execution, as in cer- tain studies of oaks, which gave him an infinity of trouble and were not worth very much when done. The landscape back- grounds of Troyon and Rosa Bonheur, though subordinate to their cattle, are often strongly and comprehensively painted with a natural elegance in the saplings, and great judgment in the sufficient indications of leaves. As for Daubigny, he relied on a simple treatment of a theme as much in sylvan Nature as in everything else, and, therefore, of course, painted his foliage in broad masses. 3 Corot was more of an idealist, and though at one time he 1 No. 17. Soleil Couchant sur les Sables du Jean-de-Paris. 2 No. 7. Belle-Croix in the Forest of Fontainebleau. 3 As for example, Nos. 19 and 20 in the same collection, in which the artist has endeavored to draw each little bunch of oak-leaves separately. · 24 370 LANDSCAPE. painted minutely and was really a skilful draughtsman,¹ he after- wards formed a mature style which was an abstract of Nature rather than Nature itself; and it is most interesting to notice, with reference to our present subject, how entirely he aban- doned the attempt to render foliage minutely. His foliage is a sort of vague cloud, on which bunches of leaves are represented by broad strokes of the brush, while individual leaves are sug- gested by smaller touches in dark or light, not very numerous in themselves and quite devoid of any mechanical regularity in their application. Of course we at once admit that such paint- ing is not Nature, but neither is it a base mechanical substitute for Nature. It is at the same time an expression of the intelli- gence of an artist, and a confession of the impotence of art. For beauty and grace in the arrangement of sylvan masses, for skill in the transition from dense masses to lighter ones, and from these, again, to the most delicate tenuity of the thinnest trees, nobody since the days of Claude has expressed, in art, so much poetic feeling as Corot. The reader is referred to a very fine etching by Brunet-Debaines from a landscape entitled "Une Pastorale.' There is a great mass of foliage to the spectator's right, which, though dark and dense, is skilfully prevented from appearing heavy by the interposition of stems and a nearer tree in half-light, and by thinner and semi-transparent foliage between the opaque mass and the sky. All that one regrets about the success of Corot is that it should have been purchased by the sacrifice of substantial truth. The sense of sylvan grace is there, and at once communicates itself; but when you come to inquire what are the species of the trees you find them inde- terminate. You have light trees and massive trees; and although you may decide with certainty that such a tree is not a spruce- 11 2 1 An artist of my acquaintance, himself an excellent draughtsman of the naked figure, and formerly a pupil of Gérôme, told me that he had seen a painted por- trait of a girl by Corot, in which the drawing was quite irreproachable. Another French painter said, "On dessine plus que Corot, on ne dessine pas mieux," which expresses the peculiarity of Corot very neatly. His drawing was full of taste and style as far as it went, but it did not go very far. 2 To prevent a mistake I subjoin a formal description. To the right of the picture is a clump of massive trees, with four stems visible, three of which lean to the left. Under the farthest of these is a group of three girls, dancing. Farther to the left is an isolated group of trees with thin stems, and nearly under these a male figure with outstretched arm is running towards the girls. Behind the light trees is a large building with a low dome in the middle distance, and behind the girls a lake. The distance passes away in vague low hills. In the middle dis- tance near the centre of the picture, a church is dimly visible. TREES IN ART. 371 .. fir or a cedar of Lebanon, you cannot affirm positively that it is an ash, or a Robinia, or a young beech. If a tree has a large trunk, you try to make out its species by the direction of the limbs, as the foliage does not help you, and the result is uncer- tain, after all. A French biographer of Corot said that he was (6 a Greek" in his art. I should say he was exactly the oppo- site of a Greek. The Greek loved definition so much that he represented a tree by a few leaves, each leaf being carefully drawn; while Corot avoided definition so much that he would not even show the difference between the foliage of the oak and the walnut. Our English draughtsman, Harding, was careful to distinguish the species of trees which he drew according to his own appre- ciation of their characteristics; and so confident was he of the infallibility of his selecting faculty, that his method of interpre- tation appeared to him the one absolutely right method. No doubt it appears brilliant at first sight, and must always remain valuable and interesting as one of the many interpretative ex- periments of artists; but the clearness and certainty with which Harding exhibited some characteristics of trees was purchased by the neglect of others. His desire to unite foliage into masses led him, in many cases, to create a mass when the natu- ral beauty of the tree depended upon a delicate tenuity; and it was a consequence of the same tendency that made him clip away the light sprays from the summits and sides of his trees as a gardener clips a hedge. His system involved the sacrifice of beautiful detail everywhere; indeed, he went so far as posi- tively to substitute his artificial vegetation, which was coarser than necessary, for the delicate botany of Nature even when the natural thing was quite visible enough to be drawn. He laughed at his travelling companion, Mr. Ruskin, “for poring into the foreground weeds, which he thought sufficiently ex- pressed by a zigzag." 1 But in spite of these drawbacks Hard- ing's analysis of trees was so masterly that the thorough study of it must always be a valuable early discipline for landscape- painters. It has the immense advantage of clearing away before the learner the terrible intricacy and confusion of the natural forest, and of presenting, as it were, an easier Nature already simplified and analyzed. 1 Epilogue to the separate handy edition of the second volume of "Modern Painters." 372 LANDSCAPE. The present day is so late in the history of art that no new thing in the treatment of sylvan Nature can be reasonably ex- pected. The practical study of trees only can go in one of two or three directions. The painter must inevitably either have a tendency to breadth or minuteness of interpretation; he will either like mass or detail. The most extreme experiments have been already made in both these directions; and as for the Greek system of representing a tree by a few leaves on the top of a thin stem, it is impossible to go back to it after our mod- ern discovery of quantity and mystery in Nature. Nothing is left, then, but to express what each artist most strongly feels about the beauty or grace of trees, or what he knows botanically of their structure and life, or what he conceives to be their cheering or depressing influences. This power of moving the spectator by sylvan influences has really much more to do with art than the exposition of scientific verities concerning trees. I know how disdainful the higher English criticism is of the work done by Gustave Doré, and I know how much he ex- posed himself to such criticism by a prolific and unchastened productivity; I am aware, also, that with regard to our present subject he did not show any profound science, but he displayed a singular aptitude for enlisting the sylvan powers in the service of his art. In the works of the old masters, with few excep- tions, the trees are simply an ornament, they have nothing to do with the human action, and the painter makes no use of their expression to enhance the effect of his real subject. Doré never undervalued the auxiliary expression of trees. In the Inferno," when Dante meets the lion the scene is placed in a rocky gorge, where gaunt and leafless trees cling with wild, far- stretching, naked roots to the barren and inhospitable declivi- ties; but when Beatrice appears to Virgil, her more gracious presence has a rich sylvan landscape for a background. When Virgil and Dante meet the shades of the great poets it is close to a grove of magnificent height and foliage that enhances by its stateliness the grandeur of the august persons. In the love- scenes in "Atala," Chactas and Atala are surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation, with palm-trees gracefully bending over them; but when Chactas bears the dead body of Atala it is in a forest of grim firs. When Chactas himself is bound and guarded by the savages who intend to execute him, the background is a dense group of cheerless cypress trunks. The 66 TREES IN ART. 373 1 cemetery of the Indians of the mission is surrounded by tall firs, half peeled, and closing the view completely. The art of using trees to help the expression of a design may give them an in- creased importance in figure-pictures. In pure landscapes it may be said that trees are valuable by their presence and by their absence also, for when they are absent the sense of deso- lation is complete. It is impossible to foretell what men of genius may do in the future, but I think it is clear that the one great discovery, that of sylvan beauty and grace, was made by Claude Lorrain, the work of subsequent artists having been rather to apply that discovery to other materials than to make any decidedly new discovery. The progress of botanical sci- ence, and the advance of photography, have led some artists, especially Mr. Maccallum, to a much more literal and mi- nute veracity than was ever attained by Claude or would have been desired by him; and yet no sooner does a landscape- painter attempt to express an ideal, than the influence of Claude's ideal conception of trees is sure to mingle itself per- ceptibly with his own. You find it in Turner, Samuel Palmer, Corot, and a multitude of others. The task of the future will probably be to unite the expression of feeling and imagination to more thorough botanical knowledge; and though botany at one time appeared quite foreign to art and led to a hard and minute kind of scientific painting when first studied by artists, while Corot simply discarded it, there seems no reason to believe that it would be harmful if once it became easily famil- iar. I may mention as an example of what the future may have in store for us, the excellent illustrations by Mr. Alfred 1 I may mention as an example, though the figures are not on a large scale, an etching by Samuel Palmer in illustration of the fifth Eclogue of Virgil. The lines illustrated stand thus in his translation: - "" 'Untimely lost, and by a cruel death, The Nymphs their Daphnis mourn'd with falt'ring breath. O bowers of hazel, waters murmuring hoarse, Ye heard that mother's cry; she, the dear corse Embracing in a long, a last caress, Planets and gods rebuked as pitiless." The etching is one of Palmer's finest works, and it owes half its expression of in- tense solemnity to his very bold but not less judicious introduction of three or four grand Italian pines, whose twisted limbs and massive, far-spreading heads of foliage are dark against the gloomy mountain, the starry sky, and the glimpse of distant sea. By the help of these trees, so gravely noble in aspect and bearing, Nature herself is made to express, with majestic dignity, a seriousness which is at least in harmony with human sorrow, if not exactly in sympathy with it. 374 LANDSCAPE. T Parsons to Mr. Robinson's interesting volume "The Wild Gar- den." They are a series of foreground studies, containing as much botanical truth as if they had been done for botanical truth only; and yet the drawings are as easy, as artistic, as little strained, as the far less observant work of the ordinary land- scape-artist. Surely there is no more reason why truthful botany of this kind should impede the exercise of a painter's imagina- tion, than the mention of species should hinder the movement of a stanza! " Love, what hours were thine and mine In lands of palm and southern pine ; In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine." THE EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURE. 375 CHAPTER XXXV. THE EFFECts of agriCULTURE ON LANDSCAPE. I REMEMBER a French peasant lad, who was only a farm- servant, but with a great passion for rural beauty, and he told me that of all the sights he had seen in the world (and he had been to Paris) there was nothing in his opinion at all compara- ble to a fine field of ripe wheat just before harvest. On the other hand, I remember that when I was his age, agriculture seemed to me just as much a spoiling of the world for money as the building of factories in the pretty vales of Lancashire; and though, as the years pass, early prejudices are softened and opinions become more moderate, I confess that much of the early dislike to agriculture remains with me still, and is revived in its full force by the increasing science of agriculturists, which means the increasing ugliness of the earth. This is simply the honest confession of one who loves pure Nature, and it is not intended to be an attack on the oldest and most respectable of human occupations. I admire the skill of my good neighbors the farmers, who plant something that appears to be at first only a particularly crude sort of green grass, but it grows and grows, and turns yellow, and the stalk gets quite strong so that it will bear the weight of a field-mouse or a little bird, and the head of it becomes a heavy wheat-ear, and the millions of such wheat-ears that bow together when the breeze crosses a single field may be ground into I know not how many ponderous sacks of flour to be seen afterwards in goodly loaves at the baker's. The farmer's kind of landscape-painting, first with crude greens and afterwards with golden yellows, has certainly a most acceptable result. His art deserves to be rewarded with the new French order du mérite agricole. This being said, the reader who happens to be an agricul- turist, or a lover of agriculture, will permit me to pass to the 376 LANDSCAPE. point of view from which this book is written. It is better, no doubt, to have a large, industrious, well-fed population in a country entirely spoiled by agriculture and manufactures, than a small and starving population in the vales of Connemara; but the beauty of landscape and the money return per acre are entirely independent of each other. It is necessary, also, to establish a clear distinction between facts that are good for poetry, that tell effectively in melodious verse, and the real appearances of the facts described when they are not simply heard of, but seen with the bodily eyes. The simple verse "A rich and fertile vale," immediately awakens the most pleasing ideas. The mere no- tion of wealth and fertility is agreeable to human nature. We like to be rich, we like our land to be fertile, and yet 66 a rich and fertile vale" may be destitute of beauty; it may be occu- pied by a scientific agriculturist who tolerates no trees, who divides his fields with movable iron fences, and has only stall- fed cattle that pass all their days in a neat but ugly building. A steam-engine does the ploughing, and the old poetical work of the reaper is accomplished by a man sitting on a strange cast- iron invention and driving a pair of horses. Even a very moderate degree of agricultural proficiency is destructive of natural beauty. I remember a very lovely river- bank not far from an old water-mill. It rose in a steep slope about a hundred feet divided into a deep gully; and as the old- fashioned farmers had not thought it worth while to do anything there, Nature had enjoyed complete liberty and had created a little paradise of oak and chestnut and wild-cherry trees, with a natural garden of wild flowers down to the water. A new farmer came at an increased rental and cleared away this beauty as effectually as an Italian restorer knocks an old fresco from a wall. I have been watching for many years in other places the progress of agriculture at the expense of the lanes and streams. In old times they had margins that Nature made beautiful in her own way. The boundaries on the lane-side were irregular, sometimes so far from the actual roadway as to leave ample space for a wild lawn and a group of ancient trees. Weary travellers lay down to rest in these places in the cool green shade of far-extending branches, horses or oxen were then taken The EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURE. 377 ! from wagon and cart and left to graze for a quiet hour in peace. Gypsies would pitch their tents there and unconsciously com- pose many a natural picture worthy of Morland or Gainsborough. The clever farmer is the enemy of all such places as these. By a gradual rectification of his frontiers, by a stealthy advance to what he considers a scientific frontier, he annexes all this waste territory. The next step is to cut down the trees and replace the luxuriant irregularity of the old hedges by a tidy little straight fence as close to the road as possible. The riverside is dealt with nearly in the same way; but the river can to a cer- tain extent defend itself in floods, and objects to being shut up in a drain. · To this criticism of agriculture the reader may perhaps make the objection that more than one distinguished artist has painted cultivated ground. It is easy to suggest the name of Constable, for example, who appears really to have disliked wild scenery, and who loved Suffolk fields with the intensity of patriotic and artistic sentiments concentrated on the same objects. I am quite willing to accept the suggestion and to examine a few of Constable's pictures. There are two notable ones in the Na- tional Gallery, — the "Cornfield” and the " Valley Farm." We find a strong reminder of agriculture in the titles, but in the pictures themselves less than might have been expected. Noth- ing is more remarkable in the "Cornfield" than the extreme care with which the field itself, like one of Corot's lakes, is re- duced to the very smallest area consistent with its visibility in the picture. We have a rich foreground composed of a rough lane, a weedy bank, and a little stream, with sheep, a dog, and a boy drinking; there are two masses of trees, that to the left of most noble growth and proportions, and between them a hedge crosses the picture. Beyond the hedge is rather a hilly distance, and between the two you get just a glimpse of a cornfield, as Corot gives you a glimpse of distant water. The "Valley Farm" has also its grand clump of trees, and you see the farmhouse, but nothing whatever of the farm itself, the fore- ground being entirely occupied by the water of the river Stour, on which are two men in a boat. In these two pictures, as in many others, Constable was so little agricultural as to adorn his foreground with weeds, and to these he often gave a much larger space of canvas than to the most valuable crops. In all his pictures of cultivated England there are many elements of 378 LANDSCAPE. wildness which he easily found in sylvan and foreground vegeta- tion, and had always at his disposal in the free clouds and show- ers that diversified by flying shadows the dullest of the Suffolk fields. He had also the great resource of human interest in buildings and figures and human works of various kinds, with which, as in the picture of the "Lock," he entirely eluded the difficulty of monotonous land.¹ Those rustic painters who have given especial importance to cattle are little embarrassed by agriculture. Nothing on a farm is uglier than freshly ploughed land; and yet Rosa Bonheur in her picture entitled "Ploughing in the Nivernais" made even the turned earth interesting, because it was in perfect subordi- nation to her strongly painted cattle, brilliantly lighted by the sun of central France. A human figure so strongly attracts at- tention to itself that it will overcome even the barrenness of a field ready for sowing, as we see in many rustic pictures where a single peasant with some nobility of gesture casts the seed on the exposed and tormented earth. Linnell was a powerful painter of harvest-fields. His name at once calls to memory sheaves of golden wheat standing in the stubble, or the same wheat not yet entirely reaped; but in all such pictures of his that I am able to remember, the wheat was either contrasted with the rich dark greens of luxuriantly growing trees, or else the subject was half a figure-picture from the presence and action of reapers, or the wheat occupied but a small portion of the canvas, the foreground being rich in ma- terial of a wilder kind that a modern agriculturist would remove. Of course, under these conditions ripe wheat is acceptable enough. The color of it is marvellously rich and pleasant, and the contrast with dark trees, just alluded to, is one of the most delightful to be seen on farms in the neighborhood of woods. There is nothing in the way of perfectly serene landscape that can excel a windless evening when the round harvest moon is just brightening in the warm gray, cloudless sky, and the yellow wheat is ready for cutting, and the great trees are in their fullest foliage, their deepest green. Farm beyond farm, the country 1 Let the reader imagine that he walks forward a few yards into the picture so as to get the old wood-work of the lock behind him, and the weeds, and the boat, and the water, and the clump of trees. He will then be in the fields that extend between the canal and the distant church. Does he suppose that Constable would have painted them? They do very well as a narrow band of refreshing color in the middle distance. THE EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURE. 379 fades away into hazy distance till it seems lost in a vague, strange, beautiful unreality. Few artists have illustrated agriculture more lovingly than Samuel Palmer, who inherited the Virgilian spirit; but when we come to a strict analysis of his works we find that he was not less careful than Constable to limit the area of paper or canvas actually occupied by crops. His subjects are, indeed, very fre- quently taken from cultivated lands, yet it is remarkable how frequently the composition depends for its richness upon trees. One of the illustrations to his biography is "A Cornfield, Shoreham," in which, indeed, the foreground is occupied by sheaves, but the rest of the picture is filled with great trees and a house and a church spire. This is an extreme instance, and the drawing was done in youth, when the artist had not learned to compose. With the experience afterwards acquired he would not have left that foregound without diversifying it with other material. His interest in the things used by farmers, their wag- ons, ploughs, etc., was always of a poetical kind, and therefore attached to primitive ancient ways and far behind an age of patent new inventions. In short, the testimony of artists in favor of agriculture is of the most limited kind; it has a pathetic tenderness for old ways; it is constantly turning aside to admire what the agriculturist despises; and it is as remote from modern science as the Georgics of Virgil from the articles in an agricul- tural gazette. 380 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXXVI. FIGURES AND ANIMALS IN LANDSCAPE. Ε" VERY landscape-painter knows by experience the wonder- ful power of attracting attention that is possessed by any figure in a landscape, however insignificant may be its size, how- ever ordinary its appearance, however trivial its action. It is well known that one of the greatest practical embarrassments of landscape art is to decide whether to give pure Nature only, which looks desolate, or to introduce figures that may take the spectator's attention away from the scenery on which the painter has bestowed nearly all his serious work. It is also well understood that a very few figures attract more attention to themselves, individually, than many; so that it is not an escape from the difficulty to isolate figures, but the contrary. In figure-pictures an isolated personage is especially exposed to criticism; when there is a group, the personages distract atten- tion from each other. This may have been a reason for Turner's evident preference for numerous groups. He liked many figures, variously occupied, and when he had what seemed to him an uninteresting piece of foreground he did not shrink from the trouble and risk of covering it with people. The trouble is ob- vious, and there can be little compensating pleasure to a land- scape-painter who feels that all his personages together are not worth a little finger drawn by a master of the human form. The risk may be less obvious, but it is real. Figures are dangerous everywhere in a landscape, so that it requires either consummate skill or an instinctive tact and taste to introduce them in such a manner that they may belong to the scene. I have observed elsewhere that Girtin was less in the habit of introducing figures than Turner. Girtin's figures were always few, and in some of his most impressive drawings he dispensed with them altogether. He had a strong interest in pure landscape, and was so entirely FIGURES AND ANIMALS. 381 absorbed by the unity and effect of the scene that his attention was not diverted from it by men or animals. He did not exclude them, but he seems to have taken them as they came, if they came happily, and to have contentedly done without them if they were absent. The result is that no living creatures can be less obtrusive than his. They are always either quietly resting, when they form part of the scene itself, or else steadily going their own ways, never seeming to pose for an artist. A curious proof of the terrible power of figures to destroy the sentiment of a landscape may be found in the works of some cari- caturists who are by no means blind to landscape beauty, though they spoil it by the introduction of worldly or vulgar people who are out of harmony with it. A considerable number of drawings occur to my recollection in which clever men such as Leech, Keene, Caldecott, and Robida, have sketched scenery in Scot- land, England, Switzerland, and Italy, which the most serious landscape artist might have chosen for its sublimity or its charm, yet it was impossible to feel either so long as the obtrusive and ridiculous people remained there. One sketch by Robida will have for its background a scene in the Campagna of Rome, with the broken arches of a colossal aqueduct stretching far away; but there is no danger of any sentimental musing over a vanished past so long as that jolly fat monk is riding there on his donkey, shaded by his big parasol. On another occasion the artist trans- ports us to the steep, rocky slope of a mountain, whence we have a fine view over the Mediterranean with distant islands; but the prospect is interrupted by a fashionable French woman, who sits enjoying selfish ease in a chair carried on poles by four poor toiling Italians. Sometimes a serious artist, in a spirit very different from this, will place a human figure in such an attitude and situation as to enhance the significance of the surrounding landscape. Some readers may know the famous Provençal poem by Mistral, which takes its name from its heroine, Mireille. In her pilgri- mage to the Saintes-Maries, Mireille falls from a sunstroke. A painter who belongs to the south of France, M. Antony Regnier, selected this incident for a picture, and represented Mireille extended lifeless on the burning sand in the pitiless southern sunshine, with only the wavelets of the Mediterranean lapping languidly the tideless shore and three towers in the remote dis- tance, too far away for any human help to be hoped for. Now 382 LANDSCAPE. ! in this instance we have the remarkable result that the effect of loneliness and desolation is greatly enhanced by the presence of a human being. Without Mireille the distant towers would seem nearer, the desolate sands might be overlooked; but she lies helpless, and the glaring desert around her seems a terrible im- mensity. Now let us try the effect of other figures in the same scene. Suppose Mireille removed and two French officers in the foreground mounted on horses of Arab blood with evident powers of speed and endurance; the mere presence of these active men in good health, with the means of rapid locomotion at their command, would minimize the distance to the towers, and as the two officers would be society for each other the feel- ing of solitude would be at an end. Another great power of figures in landscape is, that they fix with some degree of precision the date at which the scene is supposed to be viewed. Nature herself has no dates except her immense geological periods, and these are beyond the sphere of art, which concerns itself only with the world as it has been known to mankind, and within this period natural landscapes are dateless; but a figure immediately determines the century, unless it is a naked figure. In this way landscapes come to be asso- ciated chronologically with the life of the human race, and trees which have really lived in the nineteenth century, sunsets that have delighted an artist contemporary with ourselves, may be invested with I know not what poetry of antiquity by associating them with figures in an antique garb. There is a famous picture by Français called "Le Bois Sacré," in which delicate and grace- ful trees show their thin stems and light foliage against an evening sky illuminated only by the last gleams of the afterglow. With- out figures this would be merely a piece of natural wood such as may be seen anywhere; but the artist has introduced three figures making an offering of sheaves and a garland to the statue of some goddess, and so we are carried back to classical antiquity at once. In Corot's beautiful "Danse Antique," ¹ the scene is a landscape that may be in any age; there are rich full-foliaged trees to the right, lighter trees to the left, and a plain between them passing away to a vague distance at the horizon with a pool of water gleaming in it like a mirage. This would be simply a "land- There is a good lithograph of this picture in the second volume of "l'Art " which makes us regret that lithography is not more frequently employed to interpret artists whose style of painting it would suit. figures and ANIMALS. 383 scape," but the presence of a few graceful dancers in what is supposed to be an antique costume immediately carries us to some vague poetical past like that which Virgil sang. Not only may figures suggest a remote date for a landscape, but they may entirely change its moral character. The reader may remember Turner's vignette of "The Garden" in the illus- trations to Moore's "Epicurean." Without the figures in the foreground this scene would be simply a view of some ancient city with an acropolis, as the foreground would not attract atten- tion; but the figures immediately suggest the two ideas of cul- ture and voluptuousness. These ideas, once suggested, extend their influence over the entire landscape, and even the sun itself does not simply light the city, but positively seems to favor the cultivated and voluptuous existence of the groups who play, or read, or bask languidly in his rays. Exactly the same effect of afternoon sunshine might be made to seem, in some picture of peasant life by Millet, an encouragement to humble rustics dur- ing their long hours of tedious and patient toil. In spite of the real indifference of all inanimate objects, they may be made to appear religious by being closely associated with some religious Before the expulsion of the Benedictine monks at "La Pierre qui Vire" it was their custom, when they heard the An- gelus bell tolling at eventide from the monastery, to drop down upon their knees wherever they happened to be, even between the plough-handles, and repeat their evening prayer. The land- scape is rugged and wild, the end of a field being sometimes blocked by a mass of granite or bounded by a gloomy wood, so that Nature is there anything but gracious or maternal; and yet when the monk knelt at evening in the midst of his labor, and the wearied oxen paused while he bowed his head, the whole scene took upon itself a religious character as the stones of a church do, though we know they are but senseless stones when- ever we reason and reflect.¹ Now remove the monk and put a sportsman in his place, and see the effect upon the landscape! It is the same and not the same. The field is still there, the rocks, the woods, but a new spirit has taken possession. Wher- ever a man is hunting or shooting, the landscape becomes what act. K ¹ Another example that may be mentioned is the procession for the Rogations which in Roman Catholic countries goes into the fields when the priest blesses thein. On that day the growing wheat appears to assume a sort of poetically sacred char- acter even when we have no belief in any effect to follow the priestly benediction. 384 LANDSCAPE. r our ancestors called a "chase;" and it is remarkable that how- ever small in scale may be the sportsman and his dogs, they seem to fill the whole scene, because we know that they are likely to ramble all over it. I remember an instance of this in a picture of moorland full of careful and laborious study, in which the artist had been imprudent enough to introduce a gamekeeper. Everybody looked at the keeper and overlooked the careful painting of rock and heather. Instead of being a landscape, as the painter innocently intended, the work had become a sport- ing picture. This is the reason why poetical landscape-painters are generally so careful to avoid the introduction of sportsmen. Peasants are not so dangerous because not so active and excit- ing; even their labors are slow, and they are capable of a wonder- fully perfect restfulness in idle hours. Besides, they belong to the earth which they till, by daily and hourly association, and their costume is so humble and homely that it does not jar with the rough simplicity of rustic things. It is easy to idealize them a little, easy to seize upon occasional unconscious graces and make them somewhat more evident without departing from the essential truth. They may seem awkward among fine folks, but in their own place they have more dignity than the equivalent ranks in towns. It is unnecessary to repeat what has been said elsewhere, and what painters have so often expressed in their own more convincing language, about the dignity of the great act of sowing. Almost everything that the peasant does is lifted far above vulgarity by ancient and often sacred associations. As for me, I have never seen a poor girl gleaning without thinking at once "Of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn.' The association of landscape with war by means of military figures presents the same difficulty which was noticed in the case of sportsmen; the soldier is too active, too adventurous, so that he attracts attention to himself and the landscape be- comes accessory. I remember, however, a picture by Bou- langer, of Caesar marching in Gaul at the head of his legions, where the landscape was made powerful by its extreme dreari- ness. The long column of Roman soldiers was advancing silently across a snow-covered territory without the slightest sign of human habitation, and in the most gloomy weather. Nothing could have better conveyed a sense of the stern and 1 FIGURES AND ANIMALS. 385 steady Roman determination than a landscape and climate so different from those of Italy. The same contrast has been marked in a converse manner by painting English crusaders clad in their hot chain-armor, under the burning sky of Pales- tine, or even our modern soldiers in the glaring landscapes of India and Egypt. When the landscape expresses any kind of extra hardship for the soldier it becomes important. A hard winter never seemed so miserable to me as when I saw the straggling cavalry crossing the hills of the Morvan in the deep snow, after their defeat on the Loire, many of them wounded, and all of them weary, cold, dirty, and discouraged. In Charlet's sketches of military life it is often associated with scenery that gains an interest from soldiers on the march. We rarely see the association that may seem to have been designed by Nature between the real human form, undisguised by clothing, and the beautiful sylvan forms. The relation be- tween the two is so close that all accomplished draughtsmen of the nude figure have drawn leaves with pleasure; indeed, it might be affirmed that the sight of the nude human form awakens in them the desire that the beauty of leaves should accompany it. In a picture like the "Adam and Eve” of Palma-vecchio the closeness of the apple-tree and the fig is delightful to the artist because he can draw them leaf by leaf. The same desire to associate human beauty with that of foliage led the painters of the Renaissance to choose such subjects as wood-nymphs and Diana hunting. In sculpture the association is so frequent as to include even common ornament, in which amorini are constantly seen playing with branches and garlands. The reader may easily follow out this subject for himself by consulting his own recollections of decorative work, in which he will find that, with a singular persistence through the ages, when nude human forms are given leaves are seldom altogether forgotten.¹ 1 It may be remembered that when Constable taught the Life Class at the Royal Acadenly he arranged a sort of bower of greenery behind the model, and M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, whose excellent system of educating the artistic memory has pro- duced wonderful results, used to take his pupils with living models to retired places in the woods, that the pupils might see the natural combination of the nude figure with leafy backgrounds. These experiments excited the greatest enthusiasm among the students, who for the first time in their lives began to understand "Man's place in Nature" as a really visible being. "Souvent, le modèle était arrêté par une exclamation des spectateurs qui l'invi- taient à rester quelques secondes immobile, tant l'attitude qu'il avait rencontrée 25 386 LANDSCAPE. As animals wear their natural clothing, the association of them with landscape is easy at all times, and often extremely interest- ing on account of certain well-known resemblances between the animal and the sylvan worlds, such as that which exists between the branching antlers of a stag and the branches of trees, or between the legs of an elephant and their trunks, or between its ears and some large tropical leaves, resemblances of which it would be idle to make too much, though they are hints of that general unity of plan which exists in the natural world. The simple ways of animals, which are very seldom ridiculous, make them associate easily with landscape, which is, I believe, in- capable of being comic. I have mentioned a sketch by Robida of a fat monk in the Campagna of Rome; there is a picture of the Campagna in the Luxembourg, by Camille Paris, in which the desolate grandeur of the same scenery is rather enhanced than diminished by the presence of noble long-horned bulls. I need not do more than refer to the good use made of red-deer in our own Highland scenery by Landseer, especially in such pictures as "The Children of the Mist," where they are well separated from suggestions of sport. They belong to the land- scape as essentially as the chamois to the Alps. Of purely do- mestic animals the association of indigenous breeds with their own landscape is perfect so long as they live in a hardy and natural state, and are not spoiled in form, as well as in vigor and courage, by the fattening processes adopted in an age of advanced scientific farming. The finest cattle, in landscape, that I have ever seen are those of the variously colored High- land breed. Though of small stature they have a noble bear- ing, and are unrivalled for the color and texture of their fur. The fine French Charolaise race, though of far superior size and power, produces only a number of cream-colored patches in the green fields. Sheep are too small to be of much importance était remarquable et saisissante; d'autres fois, passant sous la branche avancée d'un grand arbre, il s'était comme enveloppé dans une ombre d'une admirable transparence, ou bien encore, monté sur un tertre élevé il se détachait en silhouette vigoureuse et pittoresque sur les nuages lumineux." "Un moment l'admiration s'est élevée jusqu'à l'enthousiasme: un de nos modèles, homme de belle stature et ayant une barbe majestueuse, se reposait négligemment sur le bord d'un étang, près d'un groupe de roseaux, dans une attitude aussi noble que naturelle. Le prestige fut complet, la mythologie était là vivante, devant nous : c'était un fleuve antique présidant au cours de ses ondes dans toute sa sereine majesté." - Education de là Mémoire Pittoresque, par M. Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. figures anD ANIMALS. 387 away from the foreground, but they are constantly introduced there for the sake of pastoral associations connected with ancient poetry and religion. Texts that are known to us all have given the sheep a certain dignity and nobility in its humble station, and therefore a more important place in many rustic pictures than might have been otherwise assigned to an animal which displays less form than any other in our fields.¹ 1 Since this chapter was written, my attention has been directed to a passage in "Our River," by G. D. Leslie, R. A., in which he confirms what I have said about the beauty of the real human form when seen in conjunction with landscape. After mentioning Boulter's Lock, near Maidenhead, Mr. Leslie goes on to say: "The old view was extremely picturesque and I painted a small picture of it, which is now in America, in the possession of my friend, W. D. Morgan, with whom I have had many happy days on the river. While engaged on this picture of an evening, I could not help admiring the fine figures of the young guardsmen who usually came here for a swim, as they stood illumined in the sun's rays. It was a scene worthy of Titian himself. There is nothing, perhaps, finer pictorially than the effect of a nude figure in the open air, with trees and water and sunshine. It was the marvellous charm of this effect that induced F. Walker to paint his celebrated ' Bathers.'"' £ 388 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXXVII. ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE. NE of the most innocent amusements in which the present writer has ever indulged, and certainly one of the least expensive, has been the selection of sites for all kinds of build- ings, from cathedrals and feudal castles down to the humblest little churches and cottages. It is an equally cheap entertain- ment to criticise the choice of sites that has actually been made, and to think how much better a building would have looked if only the architect had possessed something of our own discern- ment, and had placed his edifice in what we know to be the most favorable situation. Very practical persons may consider these to be idle fancies, for it is clear that the project of build- ing on land that is not ours, and with imaginary money, is a project not likely to be realized. Yet our day-dreams may be a part of our education, and there is only too much evidence in the world that if the choice of sites had been a more habitual subject of consideration, many a lamentable error might have been avoided. To neglect the subject entirely until we have a house to build is like neglecting the military art until we have to fight a battle. I have entitled this chapter " Architecture in Landscape," because architecture in the interior of towns would be rather outside the subject of this book. Town sites, as a general rule, depend more upon surrounding buildings than upon the configu- ration of the land, although there are a few cities, such as Edin- burgh, Rome, and Marseilles, where the ground is hilly enough to produce very fine natural sites in the interior of the city; and if these were always fully taken advantage of, the landscape element would become important even in the streets. The positions of our own National Gallery and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris are well-known examples, and the new church on the heights of Montmartre will be another. Gun + ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE. 389 The first elementary idea concerning a site for any building is that of the pedestal, and the second idea is that of margin. Then you have a third idea which I hardly know how to ex- press in any single English word; but there is an excellent French one, adossement, which means the setting of an object against some kind of backing, as a piece of plate on a side- board is shown to better advantage when there is rather a stately reredos behind it. If we examine these three notions one by one, we shall have almost exhausted the elementary ideas about architecture in landscape, though the application of them may be infinitely varied, and the examples already existing are so numerous as to be quite beyond the scope of a single chapter. First, then, as to the pedestal. We all know that an object may be made to look more important by being set upon a kind of stand. This is done both for important works of art and for comparatively small ones. A colossal statue of bronze is set upon its heavy pedestal of granite, a little group in silver is put on a small piece of black marble; in both cases the work of art gains in significance from a material basis which in itself signifies very little, and the spectator is quietly deceived into the idea that the whole mass, casting and pedestal taken together, has the significance which in reality belongs to the casting only. This brings us a step forward; we see the necessity for a pedestal, but we have not yet inquired whether there may not be certain necessities of relation between the pedestal and the work of art. Is it not possible that the work of art might be too large or too small in proportion to its pedestal, and might it not happen that, quite independently of the question of mere size, the character of the work of art might be unsuited to the pedes- tal on which it was placed? The answer to these questions is obvious, and yet from the way in which buildings are often erected on their natural pedestals it would seem as if the whole subject was obscure. We are fortunate in having a very fine example of a building adapted to its situation in the great castle of the Kings of Eng- land. It does not stand upon a rocky height, like many a feudal fortress; its pedestal is nothing but a piece of chalk of very moderate elevation, and yet it is just enough. This sufficiency is due to the quiet character of the surrounding country which gives importance to a little hill. The castle itself is grand 1 390 LANDSCAPE. G enough to be perfect with limited help from Nature; but if the reader will imagine it transported to the playing-fields of Eton he will appreciate the immense value of the actual site. In a mountainous country such a site would not be sufficiently im- posing. There a royal castle ought to be perched, like that of Canossa, on a crag. Even the very site of Canossa added to the grandeur of Gregory VII. and to the humiliation of Henry IV. of Germany. To have to climb that steep, rough road and meet only contempt at the end of the journey was a combination of hardships far more perfectly devised than simple exclusion by the closing of a palace door in Rome. It is not merely the size of a building, but its character, that should determine the nature of its pedestal. If Windsor were really and simply a fortress-castle, a higher and more rocky site would be desirable. A fortress should be apparently inacces- sible, and in every way repellent. It can only lose in the ex- pression of grim and stern authority by being surrounded with the amenities of beautiful sylvan landscape and slopes that the gardener may adorn. I have elsewhere mentioned the castle of Crussol, opposite to Valence, on the Rhone. It is on the summit of a bare crag so steep that a stone dropped from the battlements would find no resting-place nearer than the flat piece of alluvial plain between the foot of it and the river. There is not a tree upon the arid rock, which is exposed to the full glare of the scorching sun and the fury of the persistent winds. So the castle of Ischia stands with its towers on the edge of a sheer precipice, and the sea-waves break below. In Scotland we have Tantallon "Tantallon vast, Broad, massive, high, and stretching far, And held impregnable in war; On a projecting rock it rose, And round three sides the ocean flows, The fourth did battle walls enclose, And double mound and fosse.” In Turner's drawing, the rudeness and desolation of the site are insisted upon to the utmost, and enhanced by waves leap- ing into spray on a ridge of rocks in the foreground. The Irish castle of Dunluce has an equally wild situation, and there the precipices are higher. These are fine military positions; but when peaceful residence is intended, a too great severity of ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE. 391 aspect is out of keeping; and this is the reason why the site of Windsor is so fortunate for a castle that has become the palace of a constitutional sovereign. Windsor Castle exactly represents the present condition of the English monarchy. It is associated with the remote past, and yet almost all of it that the eye sees It stands high enough for supreme dignity, yet does not in the least express hostility to the surrounding country or anything like inaccessibility. is recent. It is possible for a castle to combine the two characters of palace and fortress in its site. Culzean Castle,¹ on the Ayrshire coast, does this more perfectly than any other that is known to me. As you approach it from the land side, it is nothing but a great modern house with the usual facilities for entertaining guests, and a pleasant green park with trees and a carriage-drive to the public road from Maybole to Girvan. A faithful view of the castle from the land side does not convey the slightest sug- gestion of its imposing grandeur from the sea. Its towers stand in a long irregular line on the edge of a cliff, and although they are modern and not very logical in arrangement, either for defence or habitation, the effect is so picturesque, and from a little distance so poetical, that artists draw them as willingly as if they were some romantic old ruin, and this, I believe, could scarcely be said of any other modern castle whatever. If we inquire into the reason for this extraordinary modern success in castle-building, the answer is simply that the architect knew exactly how to combine his building in the most effective manner with a piece of seaside landscape. He positively adorned and improved Nature. If the reader doubts it, let him take the trouble to make a tracing of the cliff without the castle, and compare. The site of Inverary Castle, on a beautiful slightly sloping piece of green land near the mouth of the river Aray, by Loch Fyne, is one of the most perfect sites that could be selected for a palace, because of its fine adossement against the steep and richly wooded hill of Dunnaquoich and its opening to the loch, but it is not sufficiently commanding for a castle. This, how- ever, is of little consequence, as the modern edifice is too much pierced with windows to retain a military character, and is obviously a castellated house. Even the old Scottish castles 1 A seat of the Marquis of Ailsa. 392 LANDSCAPE. were frequently situated in low grounds, like the original strong- hold of Inverary. Duart is a small castle, and Castle Urquhart is still smaller, being scarcely more than a minor Peel, but the magnificence of their situations on the Sound of Mull and Loch Ness gives them a grandeur out of all proportion to their dimen- sions. The reader will remember what powerful use was made of the landscape by Scott to heighten the effect of Wolf's Crag in "The Bride of Lammermoor." It was necessary that the tower should be of narrow dimensions, that it might accord with the fortunes of the impoverished lord; but at the same time Scott felt and knew, as an artist, that although Ravenswood's home must be small in comparison with the mansion occupied by the Lord Keeper, it had urgent need of every element of sublimity except size. To attain sublimity without size in the building itself was possible only in one way, and that was by calling in the assistance of landscape. Now see with what art and craft this was done, and how Scott made the tower sublime by its situation, and heightened the natural sublimity of the situation by placing the old tower upon it. "The roar of the sea had long announced their approach to the cliffs. on the summit of which, like the nest of some sea-eagle, the founder of the fortalice had perched his eyry. The pale moon, which had hitherto been contending with flitting clouds, now shone out and gave them a view of the solitary and naked tower, situated on a projecting cliff that beetled on the German Ocean. On three sides the rock was precipitous; on the fourth, which was that to- wards the land, it had been originally fenced by an artificial ditch and drawbridge, but the latter was broken down and ruinous, and the former had been in part filled up, so as to allow passage for a horseman into the narrow court-yard, encircled on two sides with low offices and stables, partly ruinous, and closed on the landward front by a low embattled wall, while the remaining side of the quad- rangle was occupied by the tower itself, which, tall and narrow, and built of a grayish stone, stood glimmering in the moonlight like the sheeted spectre of some huge giant. A wilder or more disconso- late dwelling it was perhaps difficult to conceive. The sombrous and heavy sound of the billows, successively dashing against the rocky beach at a profound distance beneath, was to the ear what the landscape was to the eye, a symbol of unvaried and monoto- nous melancholy, not unmingled with horror." A much less sublime situation than this is still sufficient to give distinction to a narrow tower, as we see in the case of ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE. 393 Smaylholm, a building singularly poor in architectual interest, yet gaining much dignity from its site, which is a rocky mound of good form, and rugged enough to be associated with a border stronghold. A modern château like Abbotsford¹ is better with- out a rugged pedestal of this kind; but Turner gave Abbotsford a fictitious importance both by making the house look larger than the reality, and by placing it on a loftier and more com- manding site above the river. We have the truth, or nearly the truth, in Mr. George Reid's excellent series of drawings on the Tweed,2 which shows Sir Walter's home on its own unpretending site, and in the midst of the quiet landscape that he loved. I have before me an interesting series of sketches by Mr. H. H. Statham, intended to illustrate a paper on our present subject, and I observe that among them he gives an example from Claude's "Liber Veritatis," in which a temple is placed on the summit of a precipitous hill, and a large battlemented fortress, with towers, at the base of it. Along with this sketch from Claude Mr. Statham gives one of his own, in which the relative position of castellated and columnar architecture is reversed. In the second sketch the hill is crowned with battlemented towers, while temples and palaces are pleasantly situated near the quiet river at its foot. The second arrangement is unques- tionably much more logical than Claude's, as it establishes a harmony between architecture and landscape. This leads me to venture upon the remark, that although the Acropolis of Athens was a fine site for the Parthenon in the sense of making it generally visible, I am not sure that the temple was the best thing imaginable for the site. The fortifications of the Dukes of Athens which the present pedant-counselled Government have destroyed, were better in accordance with a military fastness of that kind. The ecclesiastical buildings on the Mont St. Michel are so closely connected with military architecture that the cases are not the same; besides which, the freedom of Gothic enabled the architects of the Mont St. Michel to give the place a sort of craggy finish much more in harmony with the mount than severe Greek art could ever be. Greek buildings of the classic 1 I borrow the French word in this case, because Abbotsford is exactly a château. The English word "castle" conveys the idea of a château fort, which Abbotsford is not, and the words "house" and "hall" do not necessarily suggest the feudal reminiscences that survive in the construction of Abbotsford. 2 "The River Tweed from its Source to the Sea," sixteen drawings by George Reid, R. S. A. Reproduced in fac-simile by Anand Durand. 394 LANDSCAPE. ages were sadly wanting in those accidents of spire and roof which bear some resemblance to the sharper natural rocks. Mr. Ernest George, when speaking of the wonderful Schloss Elz, insists on the importance of these features. "Schloss Elz is rising out of the lofty rock,¹ round which the stream of the Elz makes almost a circuit. Here is the most delightful cluster of towers, turrets, and gables, dormer windows and bartizans, making a broken outline against the sky. The rich green hills that encircle the castle form a background to the gloomy walls that break out so fantastically above. Through all the turmoils and changes of four hundred years this castle has been saved to delight us. All its neighbors have but their roofless walls to tell us where was once a noble pile. How the Rhine castles would gain in interest could we picture them in their former dignity, their towers and turrets crowned like this Schloss Elz with high- peaked roofs.” 2 When a site was not of itself exactly adapted to the building, it was often connected with it artificially in a manner that ex- tended the building into the landscape. This could be done by clearing away the natural inequalities of a rocky site and facing parts of it with masonry. The formal character of a Greek temple might in this way be carried out round it and below it, by terraces and stairs, till Nature was allowed to re- sume her freedom; and a great additional appearance of height and strength might be given to Gothic castles by cutting the solid rock to the shape of their towers and carrying masonry down the face of it till it was not easy to determine where the work of Nature ended and that of the military architect began. It is still easier to effect this connection with the landscape in the case of palatial country-houses which are not built on sites difficult of access. One can hardly conceive how an architect can ever neglect such an easy means of increasing the impor- tance of a structure as the apparent extension of it by stone- 1 Observe the expression, implying a close relationship to the rock. The writer does not say that the castle is set upon the rock as a book may be on a table. No- body would say that the Parthenon rose out of its rock. 2 In the well-known comparison of the rocks in the Trossachs with architecture, that occurs in "The Lady of the Lake" Scott freely uses the terms "pyramid, "pinnacle," "tower," "turret," "dome," "battlement," "cupola," "minaret,' "pagoda," which prove that he had almost exclusively Gothic or Saracenic archi- tecture in his mind; but the Greek temple is too remote from natural forms to suggest itself to his imagination even at a moment when it is wandering far in search of comparisons. 99 architecture in landscape. 395 work in the garden, an art thoroughly understood by the builders of Haddon Hall when they made the terrace that every English artist knows. The best lesson on the importance of margin for a building is a walk in such a place as Passy or Autueil, where a great deal of real architectural ability attempts to display itself on sites so small that buildings of the most incongruous character are hud- dled together and spoil each other by mere juxtaposition. A man of some taste and judgment, but limited means, purchases a small plot of building-ground at an astounding price, and then consults one of the many accomplished Parisian architects about his future residence. It is built and would do credit to all con- cerned, but unfortunately another man buys the next plot and erects a large house twenty yards off, after which the first is crushed into permanent insignificance, and is thenceforward really visible only in the architect's elevations. Not only is the neighbor's house injurious by its size, but the style of it is en- tirely different, so that it is impossible to get into the humor for enjoying both at once; it is like trying to read Shakespeare and Racine simultaneously. A house needs its margin of land quite as much as a print needs its margin of white paper, unless, in- deed, the house is one of a row, when it becomes part of a larger mass. Even a wood may be injurious if too near. When the writer of these pages desired to convey the impression pro- duced by a very dreary forest château in "Marmorne" he still felt bound to give it a margin, though he took good care that it should not be a space of land pleasant to the eye : "The table-land was of immense extent. Both it and the valley of Les Chaumes, and all the hills visible from it, were entirely cov- ered with dense forest. "No, not entirely. In the midst of the plateau there was a great space of barren land open to the sun, which had burnt all the life out of the coarse grass. Here the rough wood-path totally lost it- self, and I stumbled on the stony plain. But I needed the path no longer. In the centre of that dreary expanse stood the château of Boisvipère. "The open space in the forest was as nearly as possible circular. The mansion stood in the centre of the circle exactly. A single glance showed me that it was quite impossible that there should be any view from the windows of Boisvipère, any view, I mean, be- yond the monotonous belt of trees. The vagaries of human choice never selected a site so inexpressibly melancholy and oppressive.” --> 396 LANDSCAPE. The château of Boisvipère was imaginary, though suggested by a rough hunting-seat in the Côte d'Or, which has, however, one side close to the forest. Since "Marmorne" was written I have learned the existence of a château in the Sologne which is curiously like Boisvipère in situation, except that it is not on a table-land but in a plain. It is surrounded first by a moat, then by a margin of dreary ground, and then by miles and miles of dense forest in every direction, without even a hamlet.¹ A moat is a good margin, as it both isolates the building and reflects it, but almost all the old moats are now filled up or drained. The finest margin of all is afforded by an insular posi- tion in a lake. The island should be in such a proportion to the house as to afford a first margin of land round which the lake is a second and broader margin. A few of the best ex- amples are Isola Bella on the Lago Maggiore, Belle Isle on Win- dermere, and Innistrynich on Loch Awe. On Isola Bella, the palace of the Borromeo family is surrounded by the most artifi- cial gardens in the world, so that real Nature only begins in the water itself; but it is not an evil that there should be a margin of human work round a palace. Such a building ought not, like Smaylholm Tower, to have the rude rocks.close to its very walls. The circular house built in the last century on Belle Isle, in Windermere, is surrounded by an English garden and small park, the island bearing just sufficient evidence of care and cul- ture to make it a suitable land margin for the mansion. The house on Innistrynich was formerly too small for the island. It has since been enlarged, but there is a finer site on the higher rocky ground behind it, a site that ought to have been occupied long ago by a picturesque feudal castle; if this had been done there would have been nothing so perfect as Innistrynich in Great Britain. In that case the best treatment of the island itself would have been simple non-interference with its own nat- ural beauty, just as the most artificial terraces may best become the island-site of an Italian palace in the climate of the Lago Maggiore. Our forefathers often failed to perceive the necessity for a landscape margin, in consequence of their excessive desire for shelter. Gawthorpe Hall, in Lancashire, one of the most per- fect old mansions in England, looked with all the numerous 1 This depressing place is still inhabited by the owner, a widow lady, whom I have met. ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE. 397 windows of its noble front upon an upward-sloping piece of ordinary wooded ground, and when Sir Charles Barry enriched and renovated the building he enlarged its margin by excavating a level garden on that side and by creating a great artificial ter- race on the other, the effect being a remarkable increase of state- liness and dignity in the house itself. A few words remain to be said about what the French call adossement. If there is a rising ground behind a building, it is sure to have an effect upon it for good or for evil. In the first place, the tendency is to create decided difference between front and back, the back will be towards the hill, the front towards the open country. The house is no longer "four- square to all the winds that blow;" its situation has settled a frontage for it, as if it had been in a street. The hunting-tower on the hill behind Chatsworth may have four fronts; the palace itself, with its back to the hill, must inevitably front the park. As to the degree of advantage to be gained from adossement, that depends both on the nature of the hill and the character of the buildings. The finest example of adossement known to me is that of the city of Autun against the hills of Montjeu. The city is not built upon the slopes of the Montjeu hills, but on an elevation of its own separated from its background by a deep valley, so that there is some space and atmosphere between the city and the background which under certain effects is of im- mense value. The culminating point is occupied by the cathe- dral, with its tall central spire and two western Romanesque towers, while to the right of it, at some distance, is a tall watch- tower of the twelfth century at the angle of the Roman wall, and to the left the older tower of St. Leger, with many other build- ings. A series of truthful studies of the various oppositions between these edifices and the steep wooded hills of Montjeu that occur in a single year would be in itself an education in effect. Sometimes the cathedral is distinct in silvery light against a screen of dark purple wood; sometimes the cathe- dral and all other buildings are a dark gray silhouette against a mountain that seems pale and remote: but the most surprising thing of all is, that on certain days when the atmosphere seems clear enough and the light good, both spire and towers seem as if they had simply vanished, being so confounded with the various grays of the wintry trees behind them, that it is im- possible when you are in the plain to distinguish them, and 398 LANDSCAPE. # nothing but perfect local knowledge enables one to guess where they may be.¹ The Spanish royal palace of La Granja is (I suppose from Ford's description) a remarkable example of adossement, as the mountain scenery behind it is of the wildest description, while the gardens of the palace itself strongly contrast with it by their highly artificial finish. There are twenty-six fountains supplied with pure water in abundance from the hills, and the whole place appears to be a superior kind of Versailles transported into a superior sort of Scotland. "The localities," says Ford, (( are truly Alpine; around on all sides are rocks, forests, and crystal streams, and above towers La Penalara, rising, according to some, above 8,500 feet.” · Sometimes a landscape may gain greatly by being seen be- tween columns; a fact that appears to have been known to Van Eyck when he painted the exquisite river-view in the back- ground to the "Vierge au Donateur." In that landscape we have two mediaeval towns 2 on the banks of a river connected by a fortified bridge; and beyond the bridge is an island with build- ings upon it, while the river flows away in a curve towards a mountainous distance. Certainly the charm of this landscape is immensely enhanced by the beautiful architecture. The somewhat formal introduction of the river precisely in the cen- tral arch we feel to be of possible occurrence and therefore fortunate, while the painter has obviated a too complete for- mality by a happy curve to the left, which causes a small space of water to be hidden behind the pillar. The substantial though elegant architecture, so firmly and deliberately drawn in all its details, serves also to give the distant scenery a greater re- moteness, and we are led insensibly from marble columns and carved capitals to the wild landscape of the mountains by the intermediate stages of city architecture and cultivated fields. Exactly the same thing in principle (though the columns are without arches) was done by Claude in a drawing now in the British Museum. It is a very slight drawing, but it fully sug- gests a combination of landscape and architecture of the most 1 This curious fact may be attributed to failing eyesight in me, but my sight is very good; and, to put the matter beyond dispute, I have tried the experiment with young people who on a clear day, at one o'clock in the afternoon, were unable to distinguish the cathedral and the "Tour des Ursulines." 2 Or one town divided by the river. ARCHITECTURE IN LANDSCAPE. 399 delightful kind, and Claude has added the luxury of a fountain with water falling from the lip of its basin. In connection with this drawing of Claude's, let me say that if Gothic architecture gains by the neighborhood of landscape, classical architecture positively needs it. Gothic may be pic- turesque in itself, but classical columns and architraves are so severe, that they create in the mind a sort of hunger for the more supple and easy forms of foliage. Even the mere softness of foliage is a relief after the hardness of the classic line. The Renaissance architecture of the Louvre, which is far from the severity of Greece, or even of ancient Rome, is immensely benefited by the trees in Visconti's square, and the new pavilions of the Tuileries are fortunate in their nearness to the garden. The effect of railroads and their engineering architecture upon landscape is evil rather by its suggestion of hurry and business to the mind than by real offence to the eye, except in certain places where an embankment shuts out a view, or a viaduct crosses a stream. The degree to which the mind in- terferes with the ocular impression may be realized by simply imagining that the embankment is an ancient military earth- work and the viaduct a Roman aqueduct, when they both immediately become much more easily harmonized with the landscape until the illusion is destroyed by the rush of the next train. A long succession of well-proportioned and lofty arches crossing a rocky valley is in itself beautiful, and a fine expression of human power, whatever may be its antiquity or its use. There is even a certain poetry already attaching itself to the older lines of railway, such as that from Paris to the Medi- terranean, which has been used by many famous persons, has served for the conveyance of armies, and has itself been the scene of stubbornly fought battles. As for the "rolling stock" on railways, a locomotive is a most imposing creature of man's ingenuity, and its long cloud of steam often adds greatly to the beauty of a landscape. I have seen the beauty of an ancient city completed, when wreaths of mist rose from the hills above it, and a passing train supplied its own wreath of the purest steam below. 400 LANDSCAPE. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE TWO IMMENSITIES. IN N this concluding chapter I shall speak of the oceans of air and water, but desire to explain, in anticipation of a probable criticism, how it happens that so great a thing as the sea is to occupy a smaller space in this volume than the lakes and rivers, which are so inferior to it in importance. A book of this kind, though it may contain many references to the observations of others, is and ought to be in reality founded upon the personal experience of the author. It is well that he should not be continually bringing forward that per- sonal experience in a direct form, but it must underlie all that he has to say, and without it he could have no real authority. Now, with regard to lakes and rivers, my personal experience has been of the most ample kind. I have lived for years on a lake island, sailing in winter and summer, and in all weathers; and since then I have acquired an almost equal familiarity with rivers of the various classes mentioned in this volume, having navigated them in all the various ways known to an Englishman of strongly aquatic tastes. My experience of salt water, on the other hand, has been limited to coasting and to short crossings of narrow seas. I have seen the Atlantic from the Western Islands, but that is all. I have never seen the real blue water of the ocean, and have never experienced the sensation of being on waters deep enough to engulf the Himalayas, and a thou- sand miles from a growing tree. On the other hand, there is this to be said in my favor; that if my experience of salt water has been narrow, I have always been able to profit by it, being blessed with complete exemption from a malady which must be a serious impediment to artistic or scientific observation. Let me confess, too, once for all, that the sea appears to me more wonderful than lovable. Like the higher Alps, it is too THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 4CI tremendous a manifestation of natural forces to come readily within the sphere of our affections. One may get passionately attached to a lake or river, or even to some bay or inlet of the sea; but to the great ocean itself which has continents for its islands, and wrecks a fleet of vessels every year, I hardly know how the human heart can ever tenderly cling. Even the poets, who feel more intensely than we do, have seldom chosen to live at the seaside. He who loved Nature with the most enduring affection lived nestled in a narrow vale beside a little lake; and yet he was in a maritime county, and could have gone to the sea- shore without hearing any other accent than that of his friends and neighbors. The poet who described the real Tantallon and the imaginary Wolf's Crag, and who made all Europe hear the thunder of the Shetland tides, chose for his own residence a home by a peaceful lowland river. Even that other poet, who lost his life in a Mediterranean squall, preferred those Italian shores where tideless waters reflect a beautiful land, and where the inlets of the inland sea most closely resemble lakes. The singer who praised the ocean most enthusiastically, who declared his love for it most vehemently, usually kept his yacht on Italian harbors, and the utmost extent of his nautical experiences took him no farther than the Bosphorus. The two immensities of Victor Hugo are, "la Mer" and Paris, and of the two he pre- fers "la Ville-lumière." There can be no doubt whatever that Horace liked the trickling of the Bandusian spring far better than the mare naufragum." His thoughts about the sea were those of a very timorous old lady. "C He never mentions the sea without some reference to ship- wreck or drowning. He is inexpressibly astonished when he thinks of that bold man who first committed his fragile bark to the waves regardless of the wind from Africa. Nay, he has even a theological disapprobation of sailing, and considers it a flying in the face of Providence to cross in impious vessels those spaces of the sea that a prudent Deity hath placed between the divided lands. Most authors praise the courage of sailors. Horace speaks with shameless sympathy of their fears. If he apostrophizes the republic as an allegorical ship of state, he urgently recommends it to remain safely in port, that being ob- viously the wisest thing for every ship to do. Timidus navita ! What an epithet for a sailor! And what advice to avoid the waters that flow between the shining Cyclades! It is impossible 26 402 LANDSCAPE. FAB to imagine an English poet writing in such a strain. Even when our sailors are going to be wrecked and drowned, we still have sympathy with their courage. There is a tone in Campbell, Allan Cunningham, Tennyson, nay, even in the gentle Cowper, which shows that we are not islanders in vain, and that some- thing of the vigor of our northern seas has entered into our English blood. In "Ye Mariners of England," the storm-wind, instead of inspiring fear only, serves to increase the sense of patriotic exultation:- "Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell Your manly hearts shall glow, As ye sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow. While the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow." That is the true English note about the sea, for the royal navy, where tempest and cannonade may be heard together. Merchant-vessels and yachts hear the natural music only, but there is a wild delight in it not inadequately expressed by Allan Cunningham:- "A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast And fills the white and rustling sail And bends the gallant mast; And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While like the eagle free Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee. "Oh for a soft and gentle wind! I heard a fair one cry; But give to me the snoring breeze And white waves heaving high; And white waves heaving high, my lads, The good ship tight and free The world of waters is our home, And merry men are we.” The English sailor, in poetry and fiction, is hopeful if young and jovial in maturer years. In Tennyson's "Sailor Boy" the note of hope is struck in the first line, the lad is not the "timi- dus navita" of Horace : THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 403 "He rose with dawn, and, fired with hope, Shot o'er the seething harbor-bar, And reach'd the ship and caught the rope, And whistled to the morning star." The sea is rough on the bar, but that does not deter him. It is rough, too, in "The Voyage," so that it does not simply move the buoy about languidly but tosses it, and yet the sailors are joyful, anticipating nothing but pleasure. We know that the poem is an allegory, but it is an intensely English notion to make a breezy voyage represent hopeful, energetic, and joyous human life in quest of the unattainable ideal, just as it was an intensely Roman notion to make a ship in port represent the republic prudently avoiding danger : "We left behind the painted buoy That tosses at the harbor mouth; And madly danced our hearts with joy, As fast we fleeted to the South: How fresh was every sight and sound On open main or winding shore! We knew the merry world was round And we might sail for evermore.” These various extracts show one side of our English appre- ciation of the sea. An Englishman whose powers of enjoyment are not put in abeyance by seasickness will naturally, and almost inevitably, experience "The exulting sense- the pulse's maddening play That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way.' This is the communication of the sea-energy to ourselves. It is simply a stimulation, but certainly the strongest stimulation that we are capable of receiving from any part of nature that is not itself animated. To ride a swift and powerful horse, not on a road but across an open country, is the only other excite- ment comparable to that of sailing in a good breeze. "Give me the yachtsman," says Vanderdecken, "that, tiller in hand, can stand on his own quarter-deck every inch the captain as well as the owner; who with one eye on the weather and the other on his canvas, can make his little ship talk to him in her own silent fashion, and who seems to impart to her movements a life, an almost breathing, bounding life, the counterpart of his own gallant and determined spirit, revelling in and enjoying the 404 LANDSCAPE. ? · rapid rush through the foam-capped sea, the wild excitement of the hurtling squall, or the fierce battle with the strong gale through which he can carry her with the confidence and skill of a daring sailor." I have purposely left this to be expressed by a yachtsman of great practical experience, having been myself little more than a quietly observant passenger on the sea; but in all this quota- tion, vigorous as it is, I find, on analysis, nothing deeper than an enjoyment of the energy of Nature and an exultation in the writer's own well-proved courage and skill. It is a condition of feeling which may be described as poetical, since it has certainly suggested fine passages to the poets, especially the famous opening of the "Corsair;" but there is more in the sea than this. - When Byron misanthropically expressed his satisfaction in the ocean's independence of human control, he touched, in his ill- natured way, the essential grandeur in it that overawes all man- kind. There is no animal so powerful as to be anything more than large game for man, there is no tree so sturdy as to resist his axe, there is no river that he cannot bridge or deflect, no mountain that he cannot pierce or quarry; but the utmost extent of his conquest of the ocean is simply to cross it and place his life in jeopardy all the time. Gradually, in the long course of the ages, he has increased the speed of his motion on the sea; but it is still far inferior to the swiftness of his land transit, and any of the migratory birds can beat him. The strongest vessel, manned by the best-trained crew, can do no more than simply divide the waters, which immediately close again after its passage. and are as if it had never passed. The last ship that sank in a storm is as completely effaced from the world as the war-ships of the Spanish Armada. At more or less frequent intervals a vessel is reported as "over-due," and after agonizing anxieties is given up for lost. There is a dreadful list of ships of all nations that lie in unknown places at the bottom of the darkest deeps. Almost anywhere on land their vigorous crews would have made a good fight for life; they would have built huts, raised crops, and existed, but none can lay foundations in the unquiet waters or dig the sterile plain. As the sea bears upon its surface absolutely no trace whatever of the history of the human species, it remains, in a certain sense, prehistorical, so that when we go out upon it we feel THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 405 outside of human time, and brought into the presence of that Nature which existed before our remotest ancestors. To say that the Channel is as it was when Caesar crossed it, that its short waves toss as in the days of William the Norman, that the long roll of the Atlantic is the same as that known to Columbus, is only to recall human actions, and therefore to give comfort to ourselves by connecting the sea with human history. It is a thousand times more awful to know that the ocean waves rose as they do to-day when there was not a single human being on the planet, perhaps before there was any animal existence what- ever; and that when no sail is visible within the shoreless cir- cle of the horizon, and we can forget for an instant the ship that carries us, the natural picture of water and sky before us lies outside of all human chronology. Nay, it even lies outside. of geological chronology also; for while the land bears record of successive changes, the ocean bears no record whatever, and for anything we see to the contrary, the water and sky before us may belong to any geological period, or to an antiquity before geological periods began. This is the real awfulness of the sea, to be so completely outside of history. There is nothing on the whole surface of it for the human spirit to cling to. The poets who represent its waves as hostile miss the true horror of it, which is the combi- nation of the most terrible power with absolute unconsciousness. It seems to me, when reading the Odyssey, that the interven- tions of irritated deities have the effect of rendering the sea it- self less terrible; for the heart of Poseidon may be accessible to pity, or, if not, Leucothea may rise from the waters and be kind to us, or great Pallas Athene may interfere at our dire extremity. Poets never can endure the indifference of the real sea, and so they make it furious, according to the natural human ten- dency which attributes life to everything. 66 "I have known an old fishwife," Lord Tennyson wrote in a letter, who had lost two sons at sea, clench her fist at the advancing tide on a stormy day, and cry out ، Ay ! roar, do! How I hates to see thee show thy white teeth !'” This com- parison of the sea to a savage animal, like a wolf or a furious dog, that displays its white teeth in anger, may at first sight ap- pear to increase the terror of the storm-waves; but I think the reader will not fail to perceive, on reflection, that their real in- difference is more fearful still, and for this simple reason, that if 406 LANDSCAPE. you attribute animal anger to a disturbed sea, you must attrib- ute appeasement of wrath to a calmer one, and even cheerful- ness, playfulness, and a kindly, happy temper to waters that ripple in the sunshine. In the reality there is no change of temper, nothing but an inevitable and indifferent submission on the sea's part to the wind that raises the waves and the moon that draws the tide; and this indifference is so foreign to our natural conception of things, that we can hardly use the com- mon expressions about the sea without denying it. In poetry the expressions that attribute volition and a changeful temper to the sea are inevitable, and must continue to be employed even in the most scientific ages. Mr. Morris, in the fine song of the Argonauts in "Jason," attributes sympathy with evil-doers to the sea, and a diabolical spirit tempting to destruction : "O bitter sea, tumultuous sea, Full many an ill is wrought by thee! Unto the wasters of the land Thou holdest out thy wrinkled hand; And when they leave the conquered town, Whose black smoke makes thy surges brown, Driven betwixt thee and the sun, As the long day of blood is done, From many a league of glittering waves Thou smilest on them and their slaves. "The thin bright-eyed Phoenician Thou drawest to thy waters wan; With ruddy eve and golden morn Thou temptest him, until, forlorn, Unburied, under alien skies, Cast up ashore his body lies." In these verses the spirit of the sea is represented as malefi- cent, cruel, and coldly treacherous. When Lord Dufferin wrote a poem addressed to the figure-head of his own yacht "The Foam" (and a very beautiful poem it is), the temper attributed to the sea-waves is at first joyous and afterwards eager, passion- ate, presumptuous. "Now tinkling waves a peal of welcome rang Against the sheathing of our brazen bows, - No gladder hymn the rosy Nereids sang, When, clad in sunshine, Aphrodite rose. "Anon, a mightier passion stirr'd the deep- Presumptuous billows scaled the quivering deck; Up to your very lips would dare to leap, And fling their silver arms about your neck.” S THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 407 A deeper note has been occasionally touched by one or two recent poets with an under reference to the modern oppressive sense of the immense spaces of time before and behind our lives. Rossetti, in "The Sea Limits," said that" since time was, this sound hath told the lapse of time;" but here, I think, the poet rather misses the main characteristic of the sea, that it does not mark time and is outside of time. Swinburne has made a finer use of it, and one more in accordance with reality in associating it with the persistent silence of the natural universe when we question it about the past and future of conscious existence. He asks the two Immensities, and gets only silence for a reply: "Friend, who knows if death indeed have life or life have death for goal? Day nor night can tell us, nor may seas declare nor skies unroll What has been from everlasting, or if aught shall alway be. Silence answering only strikes response reverberate on the soul From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea." It is time now to pass from the poetical to the pictorial aspect of the great world of waters. Let us begin with the simplest effect of all, that of a perfectly calm ocean in perfectly cloudless weather. There is no sight on the planet so nearly approaching empty space as that. The eye has no object to rest upon except the unendurable sun himself, and if the time is noon, and the place on the equator, the sun is so much above us as to be completely out of the picture. Imagine, ther., a breathless calm, a cloudless sky, and not a sail anywhere on the horizon, nothing but blue in gradation from zenith to water-line, and deeper blue in gradation from the horizon to our vessel. The isolation of the vessel under such circumstances is like that of a star in space. It hangs suspended between the two infinities of sky and water; and it may slowly revolve as a planet revolves upon its axis without conveying to those on board the slightest con- sciousness of motion. There is nothing for the painter to repre- sent except simply color and gradation with one dividing line. The scene is the nearest approach to nothingness that can be found in clear weather and bright light. Not an ounce of solid substance is to be seen, absolutely nothing but a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen above, and a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen below. After this monotonous spectacle the smallest cloud is a relief, and if the peak of a distant island emerges beyond the horizon, 408 LANDSCAPE. # all eyes are turned to it at once, and go to it as a bird flies to the shore, seeking rest for its weary wings. The heart of man endures monotonous immensity, but does not love it. He desires the recognizable, the tangible, that which has features to be observed and remembered. What are the sea and the sky? Mere quantity of water and air, so many quintillions or sextillions of tons, not even localized, being in constant fluid motion and unrecognizable, in one latitude to-day and another to-morrow; but Ailsa Crag is an old friend, and we go on deck to see it when the steamer passes in the raw early morning. Clouds and waves greatly relieve the monotony of a sea voy- age. They make the sea so much more pictorial, that although artists will not paint a calm sea and a cloudless sky, without ship or shore, they do not hesitate to paint storm and clouds without any human interest. Waves may offer sufficiently large masses to be capable of arrangement in composition, and clouds have all the grandeur of the highest mountains, with a variety of color and character excelling the variety of mountains. The sun and moon are even more important at sea than in views upon the land, I mean as visible objects in the picture ; for at sea everything is so unstable that the steadiness and ap- parent fixity of the great heavenly bodies offer a rest for the eye in the midst of disturbing motion, and they convey to the mind a sort of unexpressed assurance, being accepted by it as typical of the permanent order which presides over the flux of things. Even at sunset, when the red sun appears to sink into the waters, we are reassured by the majestic regularity of his motion. The moon shining clear and calm over a stormy sea at midnight is the most striking contrast of tranquillity with commotion that is known to us. Calm and bright in the clear heaven, far above rushing winds and tumbling waters, she fulfils her appointed course, and rules even the agitated ocean itself by her marvel- lous invisible influence. These thoughts which I have tried to express in words were not less clearly expressed in Mr. Dana's large picture "Solitude,"1" consisting," as I wrote when it was exhibited, "of nothing but an inky sea and a misty, cloudy, moonlight sky. Here we have nothing but desolation, with- out locality, for it may be anywhere on the sea; without date, 1 Exhibited in the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878. THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 409 for it may be at any time since the moon shone upon waters agitated by the wind; without history, for what historian has concerned himself with the transient existence of a wave?" for no per- In spite of its want of definite localized history, son born at sea can be said to have a birthplace when it is a mere mathematical combination of latitude and longitude, the ocean has in a certain vague way a connection with the history of the human race, and especially with that of the maritime nations. This association, though so indefinite, is of great senti- mental importance in the fine arts, where sentiment goes for so much. You cross from France to England, and think of Norman William's crossing with his fleet of little vessels, though the waves are not the same waves, nor the water the same water. You go to America, and looking to the western horizon, can see it still, if only you have imagination, with the eager eyes of Columbus, for whom it was the ever-receding boundary of the unknown. The nearer European seas are haunted by phantom fleets of Blake and Nelson; and not a wave breaks upon the shores of Britain without reminding us that they are still to be defended, as of old, upon the decks of our men-of-war. The forms of clouds and waves are too various and complex to be treated satisfactorily in a volume that refers to so many subjects as this. They could be properly dealt with only in special treatises intended to be studied rather than read, and copiously illustrated with engravings of a strictly scientific kind. Since the art of instantaneous photography has been brought to its present wonderful perfection, the study of transient form has been made so much easier, that we are allowed an indefinite time for the examination of forms that in the reality of Nature existed only for the fraction of a second. I had accumulated a certain quantity of material for use in the present chapter, in- cluding memoranda from Nature, and instantaneous photographs executed by others: but one can only take the very roughest notes on ship-board in a stormy sea, and therefore it turned out, as might be expected, that all the real form was in the photo- graphs. The practical difficulties in drawing waves from Nature are insuperable, on account of pitching and rolling, frequent wetting from spray or more massive water, and the rapidity with which the vessel passes beyond the wave you are trying to study, not to mention the one supreme difficulty of transience in the form of the wave itself. The swiftest pencil-sketching is all that M 410 LANDSCAPE. · "" can be done, and the only real use of it is to recall to mind the curious variety of size, shape, and character, there is in the real waves. This variety is strikingly conspicuous in the collection of rough memoranda before me. Sometimes the back of the wave is rounded like a lowland hill, at others it rises into a top- pling precipice of water with a sharp, serrated edge; then the precipice topples over perhaps on one side, and at some other part of the wave, where you least expect it, the water suddenly leaps up in a confused way. If this leaping of the water takes place at the crest of a wave when the wind is strong, the leaping crest is sure to be carried off in spray. When the wind is very regular and very strong at the same time, the "white horses will be out, or, in other words, the sea will appear to be covered almost exclusively with breakers; but they are less crowded in reality than they appear to be when brought so close together in perspective. Imagine a level plain, where the fields are divided by hedges; if the spectator is just high enough to see over these, but not high enough to see the land between them, the country will seem to him to consist entirely of hedge-tops. A still better comparison, because there is motion, is that of a regiment marching towards you in companies. There is a con- siderable space between each two companies, but so long as the regiment is coming towards you they will seem to be all in one mass. If, however, you were situated like a reviewing officer when the companies are marching past him, you would see the intervals plainly; and if you can get into the same position with regard to storm-waves, you will perceive that they are separated by long spaces of comparatively level water, and also that the waves themselves are of very unequal height. I have before me an instantaneous photograph of storm-waves entering a bay in Scotland. The photographer had taken an excellent position from which the waves could be seen laterally, and he caught one just as it was passing him. Before and behind it are ex- tensive spaces streaked with ripple, and heaving uneasily, but not rising into anything like a crest; and yet the wind is so powerful that on the opposite side of the bay a breaker dashing against a rock shoots in a heap of spray into the air as if from the explosion of a torpedo. The reader may have been sur- prised occasionally by the extreme ease with which a boat that is properly handled will take a dangerous-looking wave; the fact is, that the ascent of the watery hill, like that of a mountain, is THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 4II longer than the foreshortening makes it appear, and the incline is not so steep. Another condition favorable to safety in rough seas is the interval that occurs between each series of great waves. I am not much of a believer in fixed numbers, as when a sailor tells you that there are three big waves and then a stretch of calm, or another sailor affirms that the ninth wave is always the most formidable; but I do see that the waves proceed by a sort of series, and that at intervals you have a bigger wave or a longer respite than before. There is even time for sharp and active sailors to do something for safety between the co- lossal waves. The owner of a little yacht, "The Pet," which circumnavigated Great Britain, after describing a scene of con- fusion in terrible weather, said: "To crown all, a huge sea was on the point of coming on board. For a moment I thought she was gone. One flew to the jib-sheet and let it go; another seized the tiller, shipped it, and clapped it hard-a-lee; and then we all held on by the first rope we could catch, till the sea had passed. Happily the great monster went by us without mis- chief, and” observe here the good use made of the interval— before another came the main-sheet was got in, the hatches were secured, the head-sheets were sheeted home, and the Pet' was stalking away to windward as merrily as ever." 66 6 The forms of a breaking wave will be known to the reader in Nature, and now they are preserved for our leisurely study in photographs. I believe nobody quite understands the exact reasons for the forms; but for such partial understanding as may be attainable it is essential to remember that no wave ever exists in river or sea in which the water is not constantly being changed for other water, which incessantly replaces it. The stationary wave of rocky streams, so well known to canoe travel- lers, is not composed of the same water for more than one or two seconds of time, and yet it seems almost motionless until some small floating thing is carried, in a twinkling, over it. On the open sea it is the wave that moves, but the water remains nearly stationary, except so far as it may have motion from the tide or a marine current. We cannot answer for the estimates of wave-speed made by others. The highest known to me is that made by Quatrefages, of waves in the Bay of Biscay during a tempest in 1822. He estimated their speed at twenty mètres a second, or about forty-five miles an hour. Half that speed would demolish the strongest vessel if the body of water were 412 LANDSCAPE. carried forward, instead of being constantly renewed. It is the confusion of the two ideas, the motion of the wave and the mo- tion of the water, that makes the position of a ship having to beat to windward in rough water so much less perilous in reality than in appearance. The sailor knows that if her keel is deep enough to hold well, and her ballast heavy enough to enable her to strike powerfully against a wave, she will get to windward still. The moment when a breaker is just beginning to curl over, before it takes its toppling plunge, is the most interesting in its existence. At that moment the water seems alive and con- scious; it seems to gather itself as for intended action, to rise quivering with excitement to the utmost height possible to it, and then to poise and bend and bow itself till it falls with a curve and a crash and rushes in white foam down the slope of the dark wave-side, like a sudden cataract down a mountain. The moment of the overhanging curve, just before the plunge, is imitated, as Mr. Campbell has pointed out in "Frost and Fire," very accurately in overhanging snow-drifts, which are produced by the wind in the same way, the difference being that they are stationary, and that their substance is not changed. The same writer pursued the subject of wave-formation in sand, showing that sand, when dry, makes waves as steep as the sand talus will allow; but that "when it is wetted and acquires more cohesion, it copies the form of the breaking sea-wave more nearly.” i 1 Instantaneous photography is not so valuable for stormy seas in sunshine as in dull weather, because it confounds foam and glitter; but the fidelity with which it renders minor waves is quite beyond all human rivalry. The excellent photographs of yachts in motion, which are now so common, contain endless and most authentic information about all kinds of minor waves and rip- ples. A collection of them is even better than Nature itself, so far as form only is concerned, for no memory can retain the nat- ural forms with any approach to photographic accuracy. Paint- ers make constant use of these invaluable memoranda, and by their help and the education they give to the eye in preparing 1 "Near a pool of water damp sand forms a perpendicular or overhanging wall on the sheltered side, and a slope where the bank is exposed. All these sand- forms are but modifications of wave-forms, and copies of air-waves; and they may be seen wherever there is drifting sand.” Frost and Fire, chapter xlix. THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 413 it to see Nature itself, a greatly increased veracity in the drawing of water has penetrated even our current newspaper illustrations. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the effects of light breezes upon a calm sea, as they are exactly the same as upon lakes, which have been treated with some fulness in this volume. When the sea is almost entirely enclosed by land, as in the fiords of Norway and the salt-water lochs of Scotland, its sur- faces are subject to precisely the same changes as the surfaces of fresh-water lakes. The only essential differences are in mo- tions caused by tides, and in the greater desolation of salty shores. There are, however, some salt-water lochs where the wood is rich enough for the boughs to overhang the sea. Mac- culloch observed this in Loch Killisport, "rich with rocks and wood; trees growing from the very sea and feathering over the green wave." Loch Swin, too, is rich in fir woods that descend to the water's edge in its picturesque rocky bays. In Loch Craignish the islands are finely adorned with ancient oaks, "perched about the rocks or high on their summits, or stuck in some fissure of a cliff and hanging down their knotted and bending branches into the very sea. "" When the woods flourish well and the scenery is rich in mountains and islands, there is nothing to mark the difference between a fiord and a fresh-water lake except the margin of shore left bare by the tide, and the odor of the sea. Even the presence of sea-birds does not mark the distinction, as they are common on fresh-water lakes at no great distance from the sea, and even far inland on the long Continental rivers. Everything, therefore, which has been said in this volume about the scenery of fresh-water lakes is applicable to inlets of the sea when the local geology is of the same kind; and such inlets are frequently so shut in by their windings as to seem perfectly enclosed by land. Macculloch said that Loch Duich suggested the sea so little, that were it not for the weeds that skirt the rocks at low water it would be difficult to imagine that it was a branch of the sea. Loch Scavig exactly resembles a lake among precipitous mountains. “This singular basin affords an anchorage, the most extraordinary perhaps in the world. Embosomed in the midst. of high mountains, excluded from the sight of the sea, sur- rounded with lofty precipices far overtopping the mast, and floating upon the dark and glassy surface, on which not a billow 414 LANDSCAPE. heaves to betray its nature, we seem suddenly transferred to some mountain lake, as if anchored among the ridges of the Alps. The "dark and glassy surface on which not a billow heaves to betray its nature" does not visibly differ from that of a fresh-water lake overshadowed by gloomy mountains. Much might be written about the color of the sea; but to describe that is a painter's business, or if some account of it is given in literature it should be occasional only, as the effort of imagining colors must very soon weary the reader. The best descriptions of the sea, so far as color is concerned, are those of William Black, who has ventured more boldly than any other writer into that wonder-world of magical effects which seems unreal while it is before our eyes and quite incredible after- wards. "1 Since a water-surface takes coloring by reflection more easily from the sky than a land-surface, there is always the probability that a marine view will be colored more harmoniously than a land view. The only obstacle to complete harmony must come from the color of the water itself, and this is antagonistic to beauty only when charged with sand and mud in shallow seas near land. Whenever sea water is clear it is sure to be either green or blue, or an intermediate color that changes easily to either and affords the loveliest play of uncertain tints. My experience is limited to green seas that turn blue by reflection; those that have an intense azure of their own will probably modify sky-reflections more decidedly. Still, in any case, pure sea water will accept from the sky the laws of its incessant change; it will follow the sky's fashions with a difference, and the difference will not diminish either the interest or the beauty of the picture. Our green seas look blue under an azure sky, on a bright day with clouds they will show streaks of green, under a gray rain-cloud they are of a greenish gray, under a black thunder-cloud the green and the gray deepen, but still are not comparable to the fearful gloom of peat water. The powerful colors of sunset have strength enough to overcome local color in calm water and be reflected in all their intensity of crimson and gold till the sea-surface is like flame, as in the "Ulysses deriding Polyphemus," of Turner. On such occasions the most complete and magnificent harmonies are established 1 Macculloch's "Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland,” vol. iii. THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 415 between sea and sky, and the most elaborate of Nature's color- symphonies are played à grand orchestre. Besides its reflection of color, a great water-surface reflects light with great intensity and multiplies it on many luminous points, producing the very familiar but always splendid and striking ap- pearance of a glittering path along the deep, reaching from the spectator to a point beneath the sun or moon, and spreading often to right and left in streaks of brilliance, according to the state of the surface-ripples. In absolute calm this does not exist, the image of the orb is simply reproduced in the water; and in rough weather the reflections are no more than a discon- nected scattering of unquiet light upon the waves. The perfec- tion of this gilding or silvering of the sea is to be found, in calm weather, with faint local breezes that gently disturb the surface here and there, and produce capriciously changing de- signs upon the water, sometimes in broad streaks, sometimes in separated spaces, and sometimes breaking away to right or left in points of sparkle, less and less concentrated. The effect is so beautiful that it suggests the notion of a shining path leading to some land of the ideal. This was prettily expressed by Moore in one of his "Irish Melodies: "" "And, as I watch the line of light that plays Along the smooth wave tow'rd the burning west, I long to tread that golden path of rays, And think 't would lead to some bright isle of rest.” The only effect of sparkle upon the sea at all comparable to this is the sparkle produced by phosphorescence; but this, though extremely beautiful, is not on a sufficiently large scale to affect the broad views of the sea that concern us, except when on a dark windy night the crests of breaking waves show them- selves in a pale light of their own, which is not without a cer- tain weird and awful beauty. At the same time the wake of your ship is filled with a succession of sparkling diamonds that shine with an intense though transient radiance in the luminous foam, and in the black water on each side of it. The finest phosphorescence I remember seeing was during a little voyage 1 The proper way to take memoranda of these effects is to take them in nega- tive; that is, to consider dark as representing light. Every dark pencil-touch then stands for a touch of light, and memoranda of considerable fidelity may be ob- tained with little trouble. White chalk is too blunt, and Chinese white, which requires a brush, is not so handy as the pencil. 416 LANDSCAPE. in an open boat off the west coast of Scotland. The wind had fallen, and all night long we had to trust to our oars; there was a long trail of diamonds behind the rudder, and every time an oar was dipped it rose luminous and dropping lambent fire : "The elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes." I have spoken hitherto almost exclusively of the open sea, but in pictorial art it is usually avoided. The calm, open sea, with- out ships, under a sky without clouds, is never painted; a disturbed sea, under a clouded sky, is sometimes painted ; a sea, with shipping and coast scenery, is the usual subject of the marine artist. Here, again, we come upon that ingenious craft of the painter by which he conveys the idea that he has for his principal subject something that occupies but a small part of his canvas. As Corot would paint a lake and avoid it at the same time, as Constable would paint. a cornfield that really occupied but a few square inches in a large canvas where trees and rough ground were predominant, so the marine painter often enriches his picture with so much shipping and so much landscape that the sea itself becomes scarcely more than an ex- cuse or a vehicle for the rest. It floats the ships, it beats upon the shore, it explains the action of busy groups of fishermen, the danger of those upon a wreck, the admirable energy of the crew that are hurrying to the life-boat. Lands and lives that would be tame and dull without the ocean are made picturesque and heroic by its neighborhood. Gently undulating chalk downs are cut into perpendicular precipices that have a sublimity com- parable to mountains. Sandstone hidden under Yorkshire farms is made manifest in the headlands of the coast, the granite of Cornwall seems built like a bulwark in the sea. In the Western Isles and elsewhere many a basaltic cliff owes its majesty to marine denudation that has made its columns visible, and the grandeur of Staffa is enhanced by the deep-green billows that thunder in its inmost caves. The very dulness of level sea- shores is not like inland dulness, it has still a character of sub- limity. Imagine miles and miles of level sand, like the Lancaster sands when the tide is out; can anything be more dreary, more desolate, more perfectly in accordance with the sad traditions of those who have perished there? Is any landscape in England so melancholy as the flat and treeless coast, is anything in C THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 417 France so depressing as the long gray stretch of land that ter- minates in Cape Grisnez? When you have turned your back to the village of Scheveningen, and have before you the North Sea, the cheerfulness of the green Dutch fields is over. "For one who has only seen the Mediterranean," says De Amicis, "the sight of this sea and this beach awakens new and deep feelings. The shore is all covered with pale sand of the very finest texture, on which advances and retires, like a carpet con- tinually unrolled and rolled again, the last border of the wave. These sands reach to the feet of the first dunes, which are steep hillocks of sand, broken, corroded, and deformed by the eternal washing of the sea. Such is all the Dutch coast from the mouth of the Meuse to the Helder. There is not a bush or a blade of grass, nothing but water and sand, sterility and solitude." The Italian writer intended this description to be simply dreary and sad; but is there not far more of real sublimity here than in all the fat polders of the Dutch farms, and is it not good evidence of the sublimating power of the sea that it is able to produce such an intensely melancholy landscape on the border of such a comfortable country? The intense melancholy that is possible in coast scenery can rarely have been more powerfully felt than it was by one of my friends on the coast of Peru. He wished to reach a certain vil- lage, in a very thinly inhabited part of the country, and he set off imprudently alone for a ride of two days along the shore of the Pacific. He carried bags of provisions and water fastened to his saddle, and having never attempted the journey before, had nothing to guide him but this direction, that on the after- noon of the second day he would meet with an opening in the cliffs, and must then strike inland. He missed the opening, used up his food and water, and lay down to die on the sand, when he was saved by a mule-driver going to the very village that he sought. I have not space to tell the story as my friend tells it, but I may observe, that its most impressive element is the constant presence of the great Pacific on one hand, and the sterile, impenetrable wall of cliff upon the other. These two great presences come to weigh upon the hearer like a night- mare, though the sky was pure, the vast azure ocean heaving quietly and breaking with a gentle, monotonous murmur on the unending shore, and the lonely nights were illuminated by a resplendent moon. 27 418 LANDSCAPE. It is not, however, these lonely coasts that painters most will- ingly illustrate. They prefer the evidences of man's presence in buildings on the shore and in ships upon the sea. It need hardly be observed, that human construction of any kind at once relieves a landscape from that absence of chronology which is so oppressive in the open sea and sky. The painter who rep- resents such a subject as Dover includes an ancient castle, a modern fortress, and a town which is at the same time ancient by its history and modern by its present buildings. The ship- ping must be inevitably of our own time, as the generations of ships are renewed not less frequently than the generations of men. It follows as an inevitable necessity that all marine sub- jects which include shipping are sure to have chronology, and that their date will be that of the painter's lifetime. Claude may adorn his landscapes with the columns and shattered archi- tecture of an antique temple, but his shipping is that of the seven- teenth century. Turner may feel a romantic interest in the old ecclesiastical ruin that crowns the cliff at Whitby, or in the military remains that adorn the headland at Scarborough, but in his drawings of both places the waves will bear shipping of the glorious Nelson days. In this way the work of the marine painter is not dateless like water and sky, but is often more visibly chronological than that of one who studies inland land- scape. It is remarkable, too, how much less frequently a marine painter will represent the shipping of past centuries than a painter of what is called "genre "will attempt to resuscitate their ceremonial or domestic life. For one picture of mediaeval shipping you have a hundred of personages dressed in mediae- val costume, and surrounded by mediaeval furniture. I am not aware that Stanfield ever painted one of those magnificent, high-pooped vessels that were the pride of Henry VIII. of Eng- land or Francis I. of France, with their richly patterned sails and their rows of emblazoned shields; but he painted the "Victory with shattered masts and wounded sides as she was towed to Gibraltar with the body of Nelson on board. This love of what is contemporary, or nearly so, gives to the works of marine painters a peculiar interest as records after a certain lapse of time. William Vandevelde may be intending simply to paint an effect of calm at sea; but to make the tranquillity of the sur- face more strongly felt he paints a man-of-war firing a gun, and you see the high old-fashioned poop rising over the smoke, and ,, THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 419 you have the great prow, and the upward inclined bowsprit, and the quaint little vertical mast perched at the end of it, a com- plete piece of maritime archaeology that the painter did not con- sciously intend to place on record. In the same way Turner's great English ships of the line have already become archaeological. They have vanished from the real sea to live in future only on silent seas of art. Nobody will ever hear again what our grand- fathers understood by a broadside. If there is any available pic- torial poetry in the massive ugliness of our costly and ponderous ironclads, it is time for it to be placed on record, as the day may not be very far distant when they will roll and plunge no more. 1 There is not space in a book on landscape to enter into the questions that concern the elements of beauty in ships and boats, a subject which has an especial interest for me, and which I have treated at some length elsewhere, with the help of necessary illustration. I may briefly observe, however, that on sea as on land we find the two opposite and incompatible qualities of classical and picturesque beauty. The ancient Greeks never possessed anything like a modern sailing yacht, and yet it might easily be shown that it is constructed in the Hellenic spirit. The beauty of it, like that of the nude human figure, is in the good form and harmonious proportions of its necessary parts; the splendor of a ship in the days of Henry VIII. was due chiefly to added ornament in carving and gilding, rich banners and painted sails. The principle of the one is that of a Greek statue, the principle of the other is that of Queen Elizabeth's costumes. That was the splendid picturesque, but in our time the splendid picturesque has entirely vanished from the sea, and nothing is left to us of any artistic interest but the pure and severe beauty of yachts and other vessels designed on their principles, or else the impoverished picturesque of fishing-boats and other hardly used craft, which is in great measure dependent on their being more or less out of repair. These boats are on the sea what picturesque cottages with thatched and patched and mossy roofs are in village scenery, delightful to look upon, and never so delightful as when the owners are very poor. Among the figures that the picturesque artist seizes upon in coast scenery, none are so agreeable to his taste as the poorest fisher- folk going about their battered old boats. This is not simply La p 1 In a series of illustrated articles which appeared in the "Portfolio" for the year 1881, and were afterwards reproduced in the French nautical journal," Le Yacht." 420 LANDSCAPE. because the boats offer interesting shapes and good color of red tanned sails and tarry hulls; there is a deeper reason, which is the pathos of the hard and struggling lives, a pathos that is entirely absent (so far as anything visible, and therefore paint- able, is concerned) from the lives of the luxurious people who keep tidy and well-appointed yachts. I remember seeing this pathos of the fisherman's existence in its most touching form. On a wild morning in winter, at the height of a great storm, two fishing-boats were cast on a shoal, near enough to the coast to be distinctly seen, but too far for any chance of safety. The great pale yellow, yeasty waves broke over the boats, and the men took refuge on the masts. It was clear they could not hold out for long, and their wives and daughters stood in a piteous group, helplessly watching. It was, however, a life-boat station, and from my post at the end of the jetty I could see the rapid preparations, the hasty launch, the struggle against the first great breakers, all for the time invisible by the fishermen and their friends. They were saved, and I witnessed with dimmed eyes a meeting never to be forgotten. I have also seen the pale corpses of the drowned taken home to their poor cottages by grave bearers in the chill gray early light, the wind still fiercely howling, and the wild sea plunging behind them. These are but commonplace experiences on our coasts, yet they are enough to make us feel a pathetic interest in the fishing popula- tion ever afterwards. There are two states of the sky in which cloud-forms are not visible, the pure open sky and the perfect cloud-canopy which roofs in all the visible earth from horizon to horizon. I happen to be writing this page on a day when this cloud-canopy prevails, and in a house commanding wide views in every direction. The gray sky is absolutely devoid of form, and there is even less variety in it than in the cloudless blue of summer; for then there is strong gradation, and the sun is visible somewhere. To-day the gradation is so slight as to be almost imperceptible. Now these two formless conditions of the sky are certainly more weari- some at sea than on the land; because on land we have the forms of earth and vegetation to interest us. When we come to those skies which present strongly designed forms, and coloring that is always varied and often splendid, with powerful opposi- tions of light and shade, — in a word, a combination of all the qualities that give interest to a sky, then the effects on sea and ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 421 land will differ in another way. At sea the cloud-forms are the only forms except those of the monotonous waves; on land they come among or above other forms which are permanent and so familiar as to be sometimes even wearisome. It is by the relief given to the tiresomeness of permanent objects that the moving scenery of cloud-land is so valuable to mankind. If the reader has ever lived six or eight weeks at a time under a blue southern sky, with no change but the creeping shadows in sharp-cut hill and heated aridity of rock, he may have begun to suffer from the nostalgia of cloud-land, the painful longing for that change- ful magnificence of the heavens which relieves the tedium of the earth. But this is not all. It constantly happens that cloud- forms enter into combination with land-forms of such a nature as to conceal their defects or greatly to enhance their beauties. Many a landscape in mountainous countries is unpaintable with- out clouds, from the pictorial awkwardness of its lines; whereas it suddenly becomes beautiful when the lines are broken by a rain-cloud which substitutes a far better outline of its own. A mountain, in fine weather, may be unfortunately isolated; but clouds may rise in the distance that may give it the needed repetition or companionship. A great steep front of mountain may be simply oppressive, when a belt of rising mist may relieve. its oppressiveness at once and give its higher parts an all but aerial lightness. The restless outlines of distant purple peaks against a yellow western sky may be tranquillized into evening peace by the long straight edge of quiet gray cloud above them. There is, indeed, hardly any service of the artistic kind that clouds may not render to the landscape of hill and plain. They come to the dullest and dreariest of scenes like the splendid cortége of an Oriental sovereign who traverses some miserable village. We, in our time, have been especially and exception- ally favored. For some reason that men of science have not hitherto been able to explain in such a manner as to establish any agreement among themselves, the condition of the atmos- phere in the late autumn of 1883 was so exceptional as to pro- duce afterglows that seemed to us almost supernatural. They did, at least, bear the same relation to the afterglows we had known before, that the most extraordinary gifts of genius may bear to the common abilities. of men. Their essential quality was a marvellous increase of glowing light that changed mere color into moving and living flame. The afterglow has always 1 422 LANDSCAPE. been interesting, and readily associated in the human spirit with feelings of tender regret and yearning aspiration; it has often been a time of rich and glowing pictorial effect; but never in the experience of living men has it been comparable to what we have now learned about its possibilities. I have been a careful observer of skies for thirty years, and am able without the slight- est risk of error to affirm that the afterglow in the evening of Christmas Day, 1883, was, in the essential qualities of glowing light and combined splendor and richness of color, the most wondrous that I ever beheld. I saw it in a hilly country, and the luminous greens and saffron of the sky were made brighter by contrast with the richest purple in the mountains, while the whole earth seemed to be lighted with a palpitating, powerful, and almost supernatural rosy radiance as of some new and won- derful aurora. I took no notes, being far too completely over- whelmed to think of taking notes, and did not even mentally record the order of the changes. The effect on my mind was that of the profoundest awe, mingled with ineffable gladness. It is a great thing to have lived during that year and seen Nature surpass herself so far. In the autumn of 1884 there was a feebler repetition of the same phenomena, and I took some notes of afterglows that were slow enough in their phases to permit a few hasty memo- randa. Here is a rough but faithful description of one exactly as it occurred on the 28th of September in that year. 1. The sun has disappeared for about twenty minutes, and the afterglow is just beginning to display some intensity of ef- fect. The sky is of a suffused lemon-yellow, the distant hills are a pale beautiful gray, harmonizing wonderfully with the sky, as if the sky color suffused the magical atmosphere and bathed the distant gray, which is still gray, notwithstanding. At this time the sky is full of bright internal light, not dead, but moving and changing, now brighter, now duller, almost as the aurora borealis changes, or like the crescendo and diminuendo in music. 2. The yellow deepens gradually, the earth darkens. Rays or pencils of light begin to be visible, softly arising from what was the place of the sun. A tinge of the faintest rose-color is beginning to appear above the yellow. 3. The yellow has deepened to orange. The rose-color has increased in intensity, and now, by contrast, rather strong greens THE TWO IMMENSITIES. 423 begin to appear in the sky, especially between the afterglow and the moon. Round about the horizon there is a good deal of rose-color, but it is generally tender and delicate; that above the place of the sun is extremely luminous and powerful. 4. The rosy color fades, the yellow becomes more and more orange, till finally it is completely orange. The leaves of trees show against it in dark, and all small twigs, etc., are distinctly detached from it. 5. The orange becomes red at the horizon (not rose), grad- uated upwards through orange and yellow to green and blue. 6. The red and orange fade very gradually, losing their lumi- nosity until finally a comparative darkness comes on, leaving only a soft, low-toned glow, like an old picture. The hills change color with every change in the sky, losing their magical gray, and becoming darker and more purely blue. In this last phase that just precedes the brightening of the moon, the hills in the west are colored like a distance by Titian. ** Į INDEX. Abbotsford, Scott's love for, 24; Tur- ner's treatment of, 393; George Reid's drawing of, 393 and note. Abulfeda, the lunar valley, 10. Adossement, the term, in connection with architecture, 389; examples of, 397; palace of La Granja, an instance of, 398. "Aeneid," the, compared with "Orlando Furioso," 82, note. Affection, for Nature, 21; for animals, 21; instance of, for a toad, 21; breadth of, 22; poetic, instanced, 22; for places, in connection with persons, 22; instance of place-affection, 23, 149; personal, in relation to scenes, 23; in Scott, 24; for Nature in Byron and Tennyson, 25; in the artist, 26; the artist Chintreuil, an instance of, in natural scenery, 26. Afterglow, the, of 1883, 421; of 1884, notes on, 422. Agriculture, Virgil's knowledge of, 76; effect of, on landscape, 375; treatment of, by Constable, Linnell, and Palmer, 377, 378, 379. Alarcon, the city of, 144. Alcinous, King, 68. Alesia, Caesar's mention of, 50. Aligny, in comparison with Titian, 141. Alpine forests, 357- Alpine scenery, Ruskin on, 146, 147; photography and, 147. Alpnach, Bay of, 231, Alps, as distinct from other mountains, 120; of New Zealand 151; fascina- tion of, 189. Alstaad, Isle of, Lake Lucerne, 236. Amboise, town of, 330. Amicis, De, quoted, 417. Analogy, value of, 43; in Alexander Smith's poems, 43. | Anatomy of Nature, necessity of, 161. Andance, the town of, 330. Andancette, the town of, 330. "Angelus, The," by Millet, the landscape in, 136. Angers, town of, 330. Animals, affection for, 21; in landscape; 380. Annecy, lake of, 130. Appian, etchings and paintings of the Rhone by, 332. Aqueduct, of Roquefavour, 267. Aqueducts, the Roman, 267. Arc de Triomphe, an instance of advan- tage of natural sites in cities, 388. Architecture, of bridges, 319; in connec- tion with landscape, 388; adossement in, 389; position and character, in connection with, 390; Greek, 394; the terrace of Haddon Hall, 395; at Passy and Auteuil, 395; moats in connection with, 396; lakes and, 396; and land- scape, instance of, in Claude, 398; of the Louvre, 399; engineering, 399. Ardèche, mountains of, 127 and note. Ardhonnel, the Castle of, Loch Awe, 24, 239. Ariosto, the landscapes of, 77; compared with Raoul de Houdenc, 77; power of description in, 79, 80 and note; love of calm in, 80, 81; influence of Vir- gil on, 81; pictures of female beauty in, 82. Arles, 307. 311. Armytage, the engravings of, 145. Arnold, Matthew, "Sohrab and Rus- tum," quoted, 307. Arroux, the river, lake formation on, 225. Art, geography of, 134; influence of ex- hibitions on, 143; trees in Greek, 361; of Herculaneum and Pompeii, 362. Art-faculty, strength of, in Turner, 41. 426 INDEX. II. Asturias, the scenery of, 144. "A Artists, importance of truth in the works | Black, William, color-sense in, 14; of, 242. Daughter of Heth," quoted, 57; color- ing of Highland scenery in, 108; de- scription of Loch Hourn, 230; "Black Isles," the, 70. Arts, the graphic, and landscape, 102. Asceticism, of Lacordaire, 36. Astronomy, the forerunner of landscape, Athene, 68. Athens, cause of present interest in re- gard to, 18; the Acropolis of, 393. Atmosphere, of Greece, 147; varying effects of, 218. Atmospheric changes, lakes under, 302. Atmospheric effect, at Autun, 397 and note. Augustodunum, 50. Aultnacalgach Burn, the, flood of, 274. Auteuil, architecture of, 395. Autun, cloud phenomenon in district of, 187; the city of, an example of adosse- ment, 397. Avalanches, ice, of Spitzbergen, 194. Avaricum, Caesar's account of, 50. Avich, Loch, 225. Avignon, old bridge at, 315. Awe, Loch, 70, 121, 125; Innistrynich, on, 396. BAKER, Sir Samuel, 149. Balkash Lake, the division of, 226. Baris, the, home of, 149. Barry, Sir Charles, 397. Bathers," by F. Walker, 387, note. Bay of Uri, the, 229. Beaucaire, the town of, 330% Beaugency, the tower of, 334- Beauty, geography of, 134. 66 Ben Cruachan, Turner's treatment of, 107, 127; the corrie of, 186; topo- graphic study of, 201; rain-cloud on, 213. J Ben Lomond, 127; sunrise from, 186. Ben More, barrenness of, 188. Ben Nevis, 120, 127 and note, 187. Ben Vorich, 107; rain-cloud on, 213. Bentham, on the elm-tree, 345; on the sar, 50. Bienne, lake of, 237. Bièvre, the river, 26. (C Bise" on the Saône, 301. Blake, and Wordsworth, 37; idea of Atheism, 37. Blois, town of, 330. Boats, use of house-boats by artists, 331. Boisbaudran, Lecoq de, 385, note. Boisvipère, imaginary château of, 396. Bonheur, Rosa, foliage in work of, 369; Ploughing in the Nivernais," by, 378. (6 Boulanger, treatment of scenery by, in connection with Caesar's army, 384. Bourget, the lake of, 130, and note. Brandir, the pass of, 229, 231, 232, note. on, 270. Beerenberg, Mount, Lord Dufferin's de- Brooks, derivation of the word, 268; scription of, 193. Belle Isle, Windermere, 396. Bellini, Giovanni, treatment of trees by, 363. Bridge, the Old Devil's, 315; fortified, over the river Lot, 318. "Bridge of Sighs, The," Hood, quoted, 323. Eridge-chapels, 321. Bridges, public demand for, 308; and river scenery, 313; human sympathy in connection with, 313; on the river Cure, 314; comparisons of, 314; Pont St. Esprit, 316; ancient Roman treat- ment of, 318; ornamentation of, 318; change in architecture of, 319; sus- pension, 321; at Fribourg, 322. British Islands, the, Caesar's account of, 50. Brook, The," Tennyson, 270; Ruskin characteristics of, 269, 270; instance of love of, 269; variety in, 271; changes in, 272; in flood, 273; care necessary in study of, 333. Brunet-Debaines, etching by, after Corot, 332; etching by, after Corot, of "Une Pastorale," 370. Building, elements of, 389; importance of character in connection with posi- tion, 390. Bulliot, M., 183, note. Burke, the "Sublime and Beautiful" mentioned, 106. juniper, 346. Beuvray, Mount, 50. Bibracte, absence of account of, in Cae- Burns, danger of, in flood, 275. Burns, Robert, love of natural scenery, 26. Butcher and Lang's translation of Ho- mer, 65. Byron, Lord, 23; passion for wild scen- ery in, 33, 34; in contrast with Words- INDEX. 427 worth, 90, 94, 95, note; dislike to artistic rules, 108; love of mountain scenery in, 155; "Manfred," quoted, 156. CADORE, country of, in connection with the work of Titian, 140. Caesar, lack of landscape description ir, 49; mention of the Saône by, 299. Caius Cestius, the Pyramid of, 220. Calame, and Swiss landscape, 145. Caldecott, Randolph, effect of the carica- tures of, cn landscape, 381. Calm, in lake surfaces, 247; in Turner's work, 247; instance of, in Loch Awe, 248; associated with mist, 248; iso- lated, 251. Calypso's Island, Homer's description of, 67. Camargue, the plain of, 131. Campbell, J. F., on the permanent waves of the river Tornea, 284. Campbell's, J. F., "Frost and Fire," 167, 278; referred to, 412 and note. Campo Santo, the, Pisa, Orcagna's fresco in, 363. Canal de St. Martin, Paris, 315. Canals, development of, 309 and note. Canoeing, experiences in, 277, 278 and note; on the Muonio, 278. Canoe rivers, 276. Canossa, the Castle of, 390. Caricaturists, in connection with land- scape, 381. Carlyle, Thomas, and landscape descrip- tion, 48. Castle Urquhart. 392. Castles, in connection with landscape and associations, 390; treatment of Gothic, 394. Cattle, in connection with landscape, 386. Cauteretz, Tennyson quoted in connec- tion with, 23. Chalon-sur-Saone, 291, note; bridge at, 318. Champlain, Lake, 226. Charcoal, use of, for tones, 116. Charybdis, 69. Château, the, Abbotsford an instance of, 393; description of a forest châ- teau, 395. "Château Gaillard," Turner, 200. Chatsworth, an instance of adossement, 397. Charlet, military sketches of, 385. Chaucer, love of Nature in, 87. Cheops, the pyramid of, 220. "Childe Harold," love of Nature in, 34. "Children of the Mist, The," Landscer, 386. Chintreuil, love for Nature in, 26. Chopin, the music of, compared with treatment of landscape, 109. Church, Mr., the work of, 334. Cinq Mars, 290, note. Circe, 68. Cities, advantage of natural sites in, 388. Claude, gentleness in, 32; influence of Italian landscape on, 140; treatment of water by, 258; the landscape work of, 366; example of, in the Louvre,. 366; "Le Bouvier," by, 367; treat- ment of architecture in connection with landscape, by, 398. Claude, "Liber Veritatis" of, mentioned, 393. Clifford, Professor, 263. Climate, of Great Britain, 122; effect of, cn landscape, 131, 132; the French, 132 and note; of Spain, 143; variety of, in mountain districts, 155; influ- ence of, on lake scenery, 227. Clouds, appearance of, in the district of Autun, 187; effect of, on mountain scenery, 211; lake-rain, 213; opacity of, 214; the crest or "night-cap, 215: Ruskin on the "leeside-cloud," 215; movement and change of, 216; Shelley's "The Cloud," quoted, 216; difficulties with connected treat- ment of, 409-420; the afterglow, 421. "" Cloud-forms, instance of entire absence of, 420; on land and sea, 420; in combination with land-forms, 421. Clovis II., 137. Col Dolent, the, 192. Collier, John, "The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson," by, 138. Color, the sensation and cultivation of, 13; contradictory opinions on, 14; perception of, in Homer and Scott, 14; in William Black and Tennyson, 14, 15; illusions in, 15; difficulties of definition in, 15; confusion in ideas of, 70; essential to certain landscape painting, 115; value of, in landscape, 115; instance of excess of, 116; effect of, in the vineyards of France, 128; of Scotch and French landscape com- pared, 132; Lyell on geological, 166; in the draperies of Raphael, 206; of sunshine, 208; in light and shadow, 1 210; of lake surfaces, 242; of the 428 INDEX. | Gulf Stream, 243; variety of, in the Rhone, 244; importance of, in lakes, 246; of peat water, 246. Color-sense, absence of, in Homer, 70. Colvin, Professor, on the atmosphere of Greece, 147. Como, lake of, 226. Compte Calix, landscapes by, 33. Congo river, 221. Coningsby," Disraeli, quoted, 52. Coniston, 130. Constable, devotion of, to certain scen- ery, 39; love for home scenes in, 146; and the color of sunshine, 208; and lake scenery, 258; likened to Daubigny, 332; treatment of foliage by, 367; the "Cornfield," "Valley Farm," and "Lock," 377, 385, note. Constance, Lake, 226. • Daubigny, treatment of water by, 259; use of the house-boat by, 331; com- pared with Turner in river-scenery, 331; treatment of foliage by, 369. Daughter of Heth, A," Black, quota- tion from, 57. Dawson, E. S., letter from Tennyson to, 60. De Amicis, impression of dikes upon, 310. Cooke, E. W., R.A., geological truth in Definitions, of landscape, 11; difficul- the work of, 163. ties of, in color, 15. Delavigne, Casimir, quoted, 217. Delaware, the river, etchings of, by Ste- phen Parrish, 335. Deltas, general character of, 300; of the Rhone, 307. Derwentwater, 121. De Saussure, love of landscape in, 40, 145; "Voyages dans les Alpes," 145, 147; on movement of glaciers, 191, 244. "Des Deduitz de la chasse des bestes sauvaiges," 363, note. Description, minuteness of, in Homer, 66-68; of the sea in Homer, 68; sim- ilarity of natural, in Virgil, and in Homer, 75; power of, in Ariosto, 79; absence of landscape, in Ariosto, 83; of a lake in Wordsworth, 87. Description of landscape, industry nec- essary to, 48; absence of, in Caesar, 49; cultivation of, necessary, 51; in Dickens, 52; rules for, 55; quoted from Ruskin, 57; necessity of truth to Nature in, 58. Detention Island, 222. Cormon, landscape by, 137. Corneto, paintings in tombs near, 361. "Cornfield," the, by Constable, 377. "Cornfield, Shoreham, A," by Samuel Palmer, 379. Corot, cause of success of, 104, 224; treatment of water by, 259; instance of simplicity in picture by, 332; treat- ment of foliage by, 370 and note; "Une Pastorale," by, 370 and note, 377; the "Danse Antique," by, 382 and note. Corrie, the, of Cruachan, 186. Coruisk, Loch, Isle of Skye, 223. "Cottage destroyed by an Avalanche," by Turner, 146. Cowper, love of quiet scenery in, 34. Craiganunie, 248. Craignish, Loch, trees on, 413. Crest-cloud, or "night-cap," 215. Croz, Michel, 178, 181, 195, note, 195. Cruachan, Ben, 127. Crussol, the castle of, on the Rhone, 390. Cuenca, the city of, 144. Cuff, engravings by, 145. Cultivation, and landscape, 128. Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, 391. Cunningham, Allan, 162. DALIPHARD, "Mélancolie," by, 110. Damascus, scenery about, 149. Dana, "Solitude," by, 408. Dante, dread of forests in, 75; imagina- tive sympathy with trees in, 337. Danube, the, the current of, in compari- son with the Rhone, 300. Daphnis, 74. Cure, the river, bridges over, 314. Currents, treatment of, in canalized rivers, 310. Custom, effect of, instanced in dress, 17. Cuyp, lake scene, by, 256. Cyclôpes, the land of, Homer's descrip tion of, 67. Darkness, and light, in relation to the sight, 16. 66 De Thou, 290 and note. Devonshire, the scenery of. 122, 123. Diaz, 224; treatment of water by, 259. Dickens, Charles, and natural descrip- tion, 52. Dikes, effect of vastness in, 310; of the lower Rhone, 311. Dilke. Sir Charles, quoted from "Greater Britain." 55. Disraeli's "Coningsby," quoted, 52. Djebel Shomer, 149. INDEX. 429 "Domain of Arnheim, The," Edgar Poe, 285. Domenico dalle Grecche, engraving, after Titian by, 139. Don Quixote, and monotony of scenery, 144. Donati's comet, 1858, 248. Doon, the river, 123. Doré, Gustave, treatment of trees by, in Dante's "Inferno," 372. Douglas, Lord Francis, death of, on the Matterhorn, 195. ¦ Drapery, study of, in connection with lights and shadows of mountains, 206; of Raphael, 206. Drawing, result of accurate, 106, 107; topographic, 197; landscape and fig. ure, 197; mountain, 201. Dress, effect of custom in relation to, 17. Duart, Castle of, 392. Dufferin, Lord, account of Jan Mayen, 193, 253, note; poem by, quoted, 406. Duich, Loch, 413. Dunluce, the Castle of, 390. Dupont, Pierre, 348. Durance, the river, 264, 267. Dürer, Albert, resemblance to, in Aligny, 141; trees in the work of, 364. Dutch art, foliage in, 367, 368, note. Dutch scenery, likeness to, in east of England, 122. "EAGLE'S NEST, THE," Landseer, wild scenery in, 189. Earnshaw, Mount, New Zealand, 151. Earth, the, Milton's picture of, 10, 11. "Egérie pleurant la Mort de Numa," by Claude, 258. Eildon Hills, the, Scott's affection for, 25. Eliot, George, 33, note; her avoidance of sublime scenery, 90, 122. Emerson, on landscape, 12. "Enervé," 137, note. England, character of the eastern scen- ery of, 122; Midland scenery of, 122. English. the, ideas of French scenery in, 128. "Enoch Arden," Tennyson, quoted, 188. "Epicurean, The," Moore, Turner's vignette to, 383. Esquisse Géologique du Terrain Erra- tique,” etc., A. Falsan, referred to, 170. 66 1 Dutch lake scenery, 228. Dyce, W., R.A., geological truth in pic- Forests, Alpine, 357- tures of, 163. Étang de Berre, the, 130 and note. Etching, use of, in foreground, 328; the affinity of rivers and, 335; of Sey- mour Haden, 335. "Etching and Etchers, Hamerton, third edition, referred to, 367. Etruscan wall-painting, trees in, 361. Etty, devotion of, to flesh-color, 39. "Excursion, The," Wordsworth, quoted, $6. "" Exhibitions, in relation to art, 143. Eyck, Jan van, the "Vierge au Dona- teur" of, 398. FASHION, in dress and person, 17. Figure-drawing, and landscape, 197; human sympathy with, 204.. Figures, in landscape, 380; chronologi- cal value of, in landscape, 382; rustic, 383; military, in landscape, 384 ; treat- ment of nude, 385 and note. Fiords, scenery of the Norwegian, 121. Flemish art, foliage in, 368. Floods, instance of, 274; effect of, on rivers, 287; in pictures, 288; Conti- nental rivers under, 303, 304; the Loire under, 305. Foliage, mediaeval treatment of, 363; in Dutch art, 367; in Flemish painting, 368; treatment of, in landscape, 368, 369. Fortifications, value of, in bridge archi- tecture, 318. Form, difference of sight as to. 16. Français, "Le Bois Sacré," by, 382. France, the scenery of, 126; plains and mountains of, 126, 127; the climate of, 132 and note. Francia's "Portrait d'Homme," 109. Fraoch Elan, the isles, Loch Awe, 24, 239. French, the, opinion of, as to landscape coloring, 109. French painters, avoidance of mountain scenery in, 146; simplicity in land- scapes of, 332. "Frères Pontifes, Les," confraternity of, and the Pont St. Esprit, 316. Fribourg, bridges at, 322. "Frost and Fire," J. F. Campbell, 167. Fusi Yama, the Japanese Alps, native drawings of, 154, 202. ! 25. Galilee, scenery in, 149. GAINSBOROUGH, foliage in work of, 369. Gala, the vale of, Scott's return to, 24, 430 INDEX. 'Garden, The," quoted, 35. Gaston Phoebus, 363 and note. Gateways, fortified, value of, in bridge architecture, 318. "( Gawthorpe Hall, Lancashire, 396. Geikie, Archibald, "The Scenery of Scot- land," quoted, 125, note; on rock paint- ing, 163; on the rocks of Colorado, 167; on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, 168; on sources of rivers, 264, 265. Geikie, James, "The Great Ice Age," quoted, 168; on the lakes of Scotland, 172. Geissler, G., engraving by, 145. Geneva, Lake of, 23, 31; local divisions of, 226. Geography, of beauty and art, 134. Geology, and landscape, 159; relative position of, to landscape, 160; and art study, 161; J. P. Pettitt, an instance of minute study of, 163; value of study of, in painting, 164; Lyell quoted on art in connection with, 166; Archibald Geikie on the rocks of the Colorado river, 167. George, Ernest, on the Schloss Elz, 394. George, Lake, 226. Girtin, figures in landscapes of, 380. Glacial theory, in connection with Glen Roy, 168, and the rock-basins of Scot- land, 174. "Glacier d'Argentière," the, 192. Glaciers, the movement of, 190; Ploquet on, 191; De Saussure on the move- ment of, 191; estimate of action of, 191; characteristics of, 192; of Spitz- bergen and Jan Mayen, 193, 194. Glasgow, position of, favorable to its ex- tension, 157. Glen Coe, 230. Glen Roy, the Parallel Roads of, 168. Glen Spean, 169. Glen Treig, 169. Goldsmith, effect of Highland scenery on, 108. Graham's "Spate in the Highlands." mentioned in connection with Ariosto, 83, 288. Grandeur, effect of experience in ideas of, 17; diminished by modern inven- tions, 31; of Highland scenery, 214. Graphic arts, the, and landscape, 102; in relation to landscape, 111. 'Graphic Arts, The," Hamerton, 117. Great Britain, the scenery of, 120; lakes of, 121; variety of scenery in, 122; difference in climate of, 122. (L Great Ice Age, The," James Geikie, quoted, 168, 172, 174. "Greater Britain," Dilke, landscape de- scription in, 55- Greece, the landscape wealth of, 143. Greek art, in connection with landscape, 147; trees in, 359, 360. Green, W. S., on the Alps of New Zea- land, 151. Gregory VII. (Pope), and Henry IV. of Germany, 390. Grisnez, Cape, 417. Gulf Stream, the, Maury, on the color of, 243. 66 HADDON HALL, the terrace of, 395. Haden, F. Seymour, etching of Kidwelly by, 247; success of, in etching, 335. Hadow, Mr., the death of, on the Matter- horn, 178 and note, 195. Haeckel, Ernest, on the intellect of sav- age races, 160. Hall, James, geological coloring in pic- ture by, 166. Halswelle, Keeley, mode of studying river scenery, 331. Hamerton, P. G., "Etching and Etch- ers," 3d edition, referred to, 367. Hamerton, P. G., Paris in Old and Present Times," 317. Hamerton, P. G., "The Graphic Arts," 117. Hamerton, P. G., "Thoughts about Art," 48. Hamerton, P. G., "Word Painting and Color Painting," 48. "Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps," Turner, 146. Hanoteau, treatment of water by, 259, note. Harding, 197; treatment of trees and foliage by, 371. "Hart-leap Well," Wordsworth, place association in the poem, 92. Haussmann, 330. Hector, 70. Heidelberg, the Castle of, 334- Hellenic spirit, the, in art, 359. "Hellenic Studies, Journal cf," referred to, 360. Helvellyn, 127. Henry IV., of Germany, and Pope Gregory VII., 390. Henri IV., statue of, on the Pont Neuf, 317. Hera, 70. Herculaneum, mural paintings of, 362. INDEX. 431 Hicks, Mr., description of a Highland flood by, 274. Highland scenery, effect of, on Goldsmith and Scott, 108; richness of color in, 121. Hobbema, modern taste for pictures by, 368. Homer, color perception in, 14; the sentiment of Nature in, 67; accuracy of local' knowledge in, 67; compared with modern travellers, 68 and note; description of the sea in, 68; color- sense deficient in, 70. Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs," quoted, 323. Horace, love of natural scenery in, 26; in connection with Claude, 32; com- pared with Virgil, 74; distaste of, for the sea, 401. House-boats, use of, by artists, 331. Hubner, Baron, 247, note. Hudson, death of, on the Matterhorn, 195. Hugo, Victor, wideness of grasp in, 9ɔ; quoted in connection with mountains, 155, 401. Humboldt, Alexander von, love of land- scape in, 41; breadth of study in, 150. Hunt, Holman, "The Scape-goat," 260. Huyshe, Captain G. L., account of the "Lake of the Woods" by, 221; de- scription of Thunder Bay, 222, and of the "Lac des Mille Lacs," 236; ac- count of the Winnipeg rapids, 280. Huysmans, Cornelis, foliage in work of, 368. ICE AVALANCHES, of Spitzbergen, 194. "Idylls of the King, The," quoted, 44, "Intimations of Immortality," Words- worth's knowledge of Nature in, 85. Inverary Castle, 391. Ischia, the castle of, 390. Island of Jan Mayen, 193. Island cemeteries, 240, note. Islands, lake, 235, 236. "Islet, The," Tennyson, quoted, 188. Isola Bella, Lago Maggiore, 396. Italian landscape, influence of, on Claude, 140; modern study of, 141; love of, in Titian and Aligny, 141. Italian painters of landscape in compari- son with English, 141. Ithaca, 67. JAN MAYEN, the island of, Lord Duf- ferin's account of, 193. Japanese inland sea, the, 221. Jason," by William Morris, quoted, 406. Jerusalem, character of scenery near, 149. "Jocelyn," Lamartine, 96, 97; the plot of, and natural description in, 98, 99, • 100. Joppa, character of scenery about, 149. Judaea, the wilderness of, 149. Jura, the, mentioned in Caesar, 49. KATRINE, Loch, 121. Katt Fjord, the, 237. Keene, Charles, effect of the caricatures of, on landscape, 381. Kidwelly, etching of, by F. Seymour Haden, 247. Killisport, Loch, trees on, 413. Kilchurn, Turner's treatment of, 107. Kingsley, Charles, quoted, 53. LA BRESSE, 46 and note. La Camargue, the plain of, 306. Lacordaire, asceticism of, 37. "La Danse au Bord de l'Eau," by Claude, 258. note. Île St. Pierre, Lake of Bienne, 237; Rousseau's love for, 238. Illusion, in landscape, 13; in color, 14; of grandeur dispelled by experience, 17; of perspective, 18; the past an1 present compared in connection with, 18; sentimental, 18. "In Memoriam," affection for Nature in, 25. Inch Murrin, island on Loch Lomond, 236. 239. Indian ink, use of, 116. Industry, modern, effect of, on landscape "Lake of the Woods," the, experience beauty, 124. Ingleborough, 184. of the Red River expedition on, 221. Lake Champlain, 226. Lake George, division of, 226. Inishail, Loch Awe, 24, 240. Innistrynich, Loch Awe, 238, 396. Lake Leman, 244. La Granja, palace of, an instance of adossement, 398. La Mancha, scenery of, 144. La Penalara, 398. (6 'Lac de Némi," by Corot, 259. Lac d'Issartes, 295. "Lac des Mille Lacs," the, Captain Huyshe's description of, 236. "Lady of the Lake, The," Scott, quoted, 432 INDEX. . ? Lake formation, on the River Arroux, 224. Lake islands, 235; Shelley's picture of, 235; Captain Huyshe and John Mac- gregor on, 236, 237; Île St. Pierre, 237; as defences, 239. Lake scenery, the scale of, 220; of the Mediterranean, 220; the term, as generally understood, 226; Lucerne an instance of perfection of, 227; climate in relation to, 227; Dutch, 228; in painting, 256; instance of, in picture by Cuyp, 256; absence of, in the Louvre, 256; Turner and, 257; desertion of, by Constable, 258; ab- sence of, in Linnell and Palmer, 258; absence of, in French artists, 258; avoidance of, by artists, 259; in- stance of, in Holman Hunt's "Scape- goat," 260; reasons of the avoidance by painters, 261. Lake shores, 228; Dutch artists and, 228; varieties of, 229; of Loch Lo- mond, 233. Lake surfaces, 242; effect of light and sky on, 242; the coloring of, 243; effect of wind on, 246; reflection on, 247-249. Lakes, of Great Britain, 121; rarity of, in France, 130; James Geikie on, 172; definition of, 220; stormy character of, 221; effect of size on the appear- ance of shores, 222; British and Con- tinental compared, 226; in comparison with rivers, 296; under atmospheric changes, 302, 308, note; advantages of, to architecture, 396. Lamartine, 94; as a close observer of landscape, 96; "Jocelyn," 96; birth- place of, 96, 100, note. Lamos, description of the harbor of, in Homer, 68. Land, and sea, in the "Odyssey," 65. Landscape, origin of the word, 9; senses in which used, 10; breadth of the term, 10; in relation to astronomy, 1; Milton's description of the dawn of, 10; defined, 12; Emerson on, 12; illusions of, 13; in mass and detail, 15; sight and feeling in relation to, 15; love for, independent of personal recollections, 23; Scott's passion for, 24; influence of, upon happiness, 29; physical condition and, 31; poetic use of, 32; of Salvator Rosa and Claude, 32; of Compte Calix, 33; in relation to physical strength, 40, 41; a re- flection of the moods of man, 44; English, and English sentiment, 45; sympathy in, 45; the art of describ ing, 48; knowledge of, necessary to the military, 51; power of describing, necessary to travellers, 51; descrip- tion, in "Greater Britain," 55; truth to Nature necessary in describing, 58; Tennyson's method of noting, 60; observation of, in Shelley, 61; descrip- tion of, and literary critics, 63; evil of false sentiment in describing, 63; Virgilian, 72; of Ariosto, 77; value of change of, in romance, 77; Words- worth's knowledge of, 85; Lamar- tine's association of, with human life, 96, 98; and the graphic arts, 102; Turner's success in, 104; probable future feeling with regard to, 105; effect of truthful drawing in, 107; dif- ficulties in grasping the beauties of, 108; Goldsmith's and Scott's views of Highland, 108; treatment of, com- pared with certain music, 109; causes of disappointment in treatment of, 110; value of color in painting, 115; characteristics of English Midland, 122; of West of England and Devon- shire, 122; effect of modern industries on, 124; result of vine cultivation on, 128; towns in relation to, 131; effect of climate on, 131; M. Taine on the color of, 132; modern destruction of, 135; beauty of natural, 136; artistic inclinations as to, 136; of Millet, 136; of Cormon, 137; in picture by Pedro Lira, 137; in picture by Luminais, 137; of John Collier, 138; of Titian, 139; in Shelley, 139; influence of Italian, on Claude, 140; of Ruysdael, 142; beauty and monotony of Spanish, 143; absence of knowledge of, in en- gravers, 145; Swiss, 145; Greek art in connection with, 147; description of Greek, 147; variety and distribution, 149; and geology, 159, 160, 161; rock-painting in, 162, 164; knowledge and sentiment in relation to, 171; glacial action on, 175; from Mont Beuvray, 182; from Pendle Hill, 184 ; from Ben Lomond, 185; barrenness of, in the Western Highlands, 188; from Ben More, 188; in Landseer, 189; of Glen Coe, 189; objections to accuracy in drawing, 197; and figure drawing, 198; coloring of mountain, 207; simplicity of French painters in, 332; fruit trees in, 355; place of trees in, 358; trees in mediaeval, 363; treat- INDEX. 433 ment of foliage in, 368; effect of agri- culture on, 375; figures and animals in, 380; caricaturists in connection with, 381; comparative effect of fig- ures in, 382; chronological value of figures in, 382; effect of religious cere- monial in, 383; danger of figures in, 384; military scenes in connection with, 384; the nude figure in, 385; cattle and, 386; architecture in, 388; instance of, by Van Eyck, 398. Landscape-art, neglect of, in Spain, 144; and in Switzerland, 145. Landscape-painting, difficulties of the artist in creating sympathy in, 1c3; the fields of, 142; knowledge of places increased by, 150. Landseer, use of wild landscape, 189; the "Children of the Mist," 386. "Landskip," 9; Tennyson's use of, 9. Language, in connection with locality, 97. Laprade, Victor de, and the study of Nature, 37. "Last Voyage of Henry Hudson," by John Collier, 138. Lawson, Cecil, success of, in scenery, Light, and darkness, relationship of, 16. Linnell, landscapes of, 122; love for home scenes in, 146; absence of lake scenery in work of, 258; the harvest fields by, 378. Lira, Pedro, landscape of, in "The Remorse of Cain,” 137. Literature, Samuel Palmer's love of, 118; knowledge of places increased by, 150. Loch Avich, 225. Loch Awe, instance of attachment to, 23; difficulties of reproducing the scenery of, 107, 121, 105 and note, 226; effect of calm on, 248. 258. Leader, work of, mentioned, 334- "Le Bas de Montigny," by Edmond Yon, 332, note. "Le Bois Sacré," by Français, figure effect in, 382. Loch Borlan, 273. Loch Coruisk, Isle of Skye, Maccul- loch's description of, 223. Loch Etive, 187, 231. Loch Hourn, "The Lake of Hell," Macculloch's description of, 230; pic- ture of, in "White Wings," 230. Loch Katrine, 23, 121, 257. Loch Lomond, 121, 186, 229, 231; the shores of, 233. Loch Long, 226. Loch-na-Keal, 188. Lochs, Sea-, of Scotland, 121. "Lock," the, Constable, 378 and note. Loire, the, 292; associations of, 295; Turner and, 295; the lowlands of, under flood, 303, 305. Lomond, Ben, 127. Lomond, Loch, 121. London, situation "Le Bouvier," by Claude Lorrain, 367. Le Keux, the engravings by, 145. "Le Lac," by Corot, 259. "Le Sentiment de la Nature avant le Christianisme," Victor de Laprade, 37, 38, note. Leech, John, effect of the caricatures of, on landscapes, 381. Leman, Lake, 24; mentioned in Caesar, 49, 130. Lenoir, Albert, "Paris à travers les Ages," 329, note. Lenthéric, M., on the delta of the Rhone, 306; on the dikes of the Rhone, 311. "Les Frères Pontifes," and Pont St. Esprit, 316. Leslie, G. D., R.A., on the color of sun- shine, 208, 258; on the nude figure in landscape, 387, note. "Life Drama," Alexander Smith, criti- cism of, 44. "Life of D. G. Rossetti," William Sharp, 62, note. "Life of Samuel Palmer," referred to, 117. of, favorable to growth, 157. London Bridge, Old, picturesqueness of, 320. Longfellow, 115. Lot, the river, fortified bridge on, 318. Lough Corrib, 226. Louvre, the, absence of lake scenery in, 256. Lucerne, Lake of, 227, 229. "Lucretius," Tennyson, quoted, 265. Lugano, lake of, 226. Luminais, scenery in a picture by, 137. Lunar scenery, position of the earth in connection with, 10. Lyell, "Manual of Elementary Geol- ogy," quoted, 166, 250. "Horatius," quoted, MACAULAY'S 340, note. Maccallum, Mr., minuteness in land- scapes of, 373. Macculloch, Dr., description of the moor of Rannoch by, 138; description 28 434 INDEX. of Loch Coruisk by, 223; on the color of the Rhone, 244; on color in the Arran streams, 233. Macculloch's, Dr., "Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland," quoted, 413. Macgregor, John, "Rob Roy on the Baltic," by, quoted, 236; account of permanent wave on the Reuss, 282, 300 and note. Macon, the birthplace of Lamartine, 96. Maggiore, Lago, Isola Bella on, 396. Magnus, on color in Homer, 70. Man, contrast of Nature and, 19. "Manfred," Byron's, contrasted with "The Task," 33; quoted, 156. "Manual of Elementary Lyell, quoted, 166. Marine Painters, chronological value of the work of, 418. Marne, the river, Edmond Yon's studies of, 332; Lalanne's etchings" of, 332. Geology," Martin, Henri, 290, note. Matterhorn, the, ascent of, July 14, 1865, 195. Maury, on the characteristics of sea water, 221; on color of the Gulf Stream and salt water, 243. Mediaeval art, treatment of trees in, 363. Mediterranean, the, 149; lake-scenery of, 220. Melancholy, the art of imparting, in literature and painting, 110. "Mélancolie," by Daliphard, 110 and note. Menai Straits, the bridge over, 319. Menelaus, 67. Mer de Glace, the movement of, 190. Meraugis de Portlesguez," Raoul de Houdenc, 77. " Méryon, treatment of the Pont Neuf by, 317. Millet, J. F., the landscapes of, 136; poetic effect in rustic scenes of, 383. Milton, quoted in reference to land- scape, 10. Mist, and lake-calm, 248. Mistral on the Rhone, 301; adven- ture during, 302. | Mistral, subject from "Mireille" of, by Antony Regnier, 381. Moats, as margins to buildings, 396. "Modern Painters," Ruskin, 145, 160, 333, note. Molloy's "Our Autumn Holiday on French Rivers,” quoted, 326. Monochrome, use of, 116. Mont Beuvray, description of, 182. Mont Blanc, 158; under atmospheric change, 218. Montjeu, the hills of, 397. Moods, of man, reflected in landscape, 44, 45; of mountains, 197. Moon, the, scenery of, not classed as landscape, 10; comparative size of, 199, 200; in Turner's in Turner's "Château Gaillard," 200, 207, note; appear- ance of, 207. Moore's 66 Epicurean," Turner's vig- nette to, 383; "Irish Melodies," quoted, 415. Morgan, W. D., 387, note. Morris, William, "Jason," quoted, 406. Morvan, district of, 46. Mount Beerenberg, description of, 193. Mountain, ancient and modern use of the word, 120. Mountain Gloom, Glen Coe," by Al- fred Newton, 189. Mountain scenery, avoidance of, by French artists, 146. Mountaineering, Whymper on, 179; fascination of, 179. Mountains, of France, 126; of Ardèche, 127; influence of, on mankind, 152, 154; climatic advantages of, 155; Victor Hugo quoted in connection with, 155; influence of, on Byron, 155; practical and intellectual objec- tions to, 156; reasons of impres- siveness of, 157; fascination of, 177; experience of isolation on, 183; bar- renness of, in west of Scotiand, 188 gradual destruction of, 194; moods of, 197; the drawing of, 201, 203, note : first impressions of, 203; under sun- shine, 204; lights and shadows of, 205; coloring of, 206, 207; cloud ef- fects on, 211; under mist, 421. Muonio, the river, canoeing on, 278. Mural paintings, of Herculaneum and Pompeii, 362. Musset, Alfred de, 41. ; NANTUA, lake of, 130, 150. National Gallery, the, an instance of advantage of sites in cities, 388. National Park, U. S., the, scenery of, 171. Nature, contrast of man and, 19; affec- tion for, 21; the power of, 36; Victor de Laprade on study of, 37; and science, 39; order of, 40; the inces- sant change of color in, 108. INDEX. 435 " Nature, human, effect of scenery on, 31; strength and weakness of, instanced, 31. Nausicaa, 69. Navigable rivers, 289; variable stages of, 291; study of, under sail, 293. Neidmeyer, music of, in connection with poetry, 101 and note. Nejed, landscapes of, 149. Nestor, 68. Neuchâtel, lake of, adventure on, 248, 249 and note. Nevis, Ben, height of, in comparison with the mountains of France, 127 and note. Newton, Alfred, "Mountain Gloom, Glen Coe," by, 189. New Zealand, the Alps of, 151. Niagara, the, anecdote connected with, 282. Nile, the, ancient interest of, 295. Nonesuch House, 320. Norfolk Broads, the, increasing in- terest in, 228. North, Miss Marianne, landscape- painting of, 151. Norwegian fiords, scenery of, 121. "Notes on England," Taine, 132. Noues, or pools, 273 and note. Novelists, association of characters and landscapes by, 32. "Ode to FideLITY," Wordsworth, 91. Odyssey," the, land and sea in, 65; natural sentiment in, 65. "Old Devil's Bridge," the, Turner's drawing of, 315. Orcagna, fresco by, in the Campo Santo, Pisa, 364. "Orlando Furioso," compared with the "Aeneid," 82, note. Osteology, in comparison with geology, 160. "C "Our Autumn Holiday on French Rivers," Molloy, quoted, 326. "Our River," G. D. Leslie, 387, note. Ouse, the river, Cowper's description of, 34. Ouson, the island of, 237. Oxus, the river, picture of, in Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum,” 307. Palmer, Samuel, Life of," referred to, 117; love of literature in, 118, 122, 200; and the color of sunshine, 209; absence of lake scenery in work of, 259; note on an etching by, 373; agricultural sentiment in, 379. Panama, canal of, 309. Par.oramas, not classed as landscapes, | PAINTING, the technical difficulties connected with, 105: labor of, in contrast with that of writing, 105; causes of disappointment in, 105. Palgrave, W. G., charm of Arabia to, 149. 10. Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, the, Archi- bald Geikie's description of, 168; James Geikic on, 168. Paris, Camille, picture of the Cam- pagna, by, 386. Paris, compared with ancient Athens, 18; National Library of, instances of mediaeval art in, 364. "Paris in Old and Present Times," Hamerton, referred to, 317. "Paris à travers les Ages," Albert Lenoir, 329, note. Parrish, Stephen, the river etchings of, 335. Parsons, Alfred, illustrations of, to "The Wild Garden," 374. Parthenon, the, Athens, 394 and note. Passy, the architecture of, 395. Pattison, Mrs. Mark, "Claude Lorrain," by, referred to, 367. Peat water, color of, 246. Peele Castle, Wordsworth's stanzas on, 88. Peisistratus, 68. Pendle Hill, 121, 184. Pennyghent, 184. Perspective, effect of, a cause of illu- sion, 17; landscape and historical, compared, IS. Peru, monotony of coast scenery of, 417. Pettitt, J. P., geological study in the pictures of, 163. Phosphorescence, instance of, 415. Photography, and Alpine scenery, 147; instantaneous, and waves, 410; value of, for study, 412. Physical condition, and love of Nature, 30. Pierre-Perthuis, examples of bridges at, 314. "Pilgrim's Dream, The," Wordsworth, 90. Plains, importance of in French scen- ery, 128; French cuitivated, 128. "Pleasures of Memory, The," Rogers, 240. 'Ploughing in the Nivernais," Rosa Bonheur, 378. Plouquet, opinion of, on glaciers, 191. " 436 INDEX. Po, the, mention of, by Ariosto, 83. Poe, Edgar, "The Domain of Arn- heim," 285. Poetry, love of landscape in, 25; value of simile in, 43; advantage of the English over the French language in, 95, 96, and note. Poets, association of characters and landscape, by, 32; inclinations of, as to residence, 401; instances of love of the sea in, 402. Pompeii, mural paintings of, 362. Pont d'Iena, the, 319. Pont du Gard, the, 245. Pont Flavien, on the Touloubre, 318. Pont Neuf, description of, 317; Méry- on's and Turner's treatment of, 317. Pont St. Esprit, on the Rhone, in com- parison with the Pont Neuf, 317. Pools, as distinct from lakes, 221; the importance of rivers in relation to, 225. "Portrait d'Homme," by Francia, 109. Poseidon, 69. Potter, Paul, "Landscape with Cattle," by, 367. Poussin, 142. Prose, subdued love of landscape in, 255. Puvis de Chavannes, landscape back- grounds by, 119. Pylos, 68. QUAYS, effect of, on rivers, 312 RABELAIS, 31. Railways, effect of, on landscape, 399. Ramsay, Professor, on rock basins, 174. Rannoch, the Moor of, description of, by Macculloch, 138. Raoul de Houdenc, compared with Ariosto, 77. Raphael, coloring of draperies in, 206. Rapids, the Winnipeg, 280; and sea waves, 282. Reclus, mountain estimate of France by, 127. Rembrandt, treatment of trees by, 365. "Remorse of Cain, The," by Pedro Lira, 137. Renouf, M., method of painting sea- piece, 105. Reuss, the river, permanent wave on, 282. "Revolt of Islam," quoted, 61. Rhine, the, mentioned in Caesar, 49. Rhone, the, mentioned in Caesar, 49; engineering experiments on, 131 and note; variety of color in, 244, 245, note; representation of, by the an- cients, 269; permanent wave on, 282, note; navigable part of, 289; Cardi- nal Richelieu's voyage on, 290; traffic of, 291; rapidity of, 299, 300, 301; the mistral on, 301; adventure dur- ing a mistral on, 302; picturesque course of, 303; the delta of, 306; engi- neering results on, 311; Pont St. Es- prit, on, 317; studies of, by Appian, 332. Richelieu, Cardinal, voyage of, on the Rhone, 290 and note. River scenery, of Devonshire, 123; effect of quays on, 313; bridges and, 313; human interest necessary to, in art, 324; examples of, in Turner, 327, 328; modes of studying, 331; Edmond Yon's work on, 332. Pyramids, of Cheops and Caius Cestius, River-towns, origin of, 329; instances. of pairs of, 330. 220. Red River Expedition, the, experience of, on the "Lake of the Woods," 221. Red River Expedition, The," by Cap- tain G. L. Huyshe, quoted, 221, 236. Reflection, on lake surfaces, 247, 249 Regnier, Antony, "Mireille," by, 381. Reid, George, R.S.A., drawing of Ab- botsford, by, 393; "The River Tweed," 393, note. · Rivers, of France, 126; engineering re- sults on French, 131; the Congo, 221; the sources of, 264; canal, 276; speed of, 278, 280 and note; rocks in, 284; natural beauty of, 285; effect of floods on, 287; navigable, 289; effect of commerce on, 291; associations of, 295; impressions formed by, 296; poetic influence of, 296; Continental, under floods, 303-305, 306; Arnold's description of the Oxus, 307; man's work on, 308; canalized, 309 and note; in art, 324; the Loire and its reaches, 326; Turner's treatment of, 327; increase of knowledge of, 330; modes of studying, 331; charm of, 333; affinity of etching and, 335. "Rivers of France," Turner, 328 and note. Rivulets, 263; formation of, 263; moun- tain, 264; ancient Romans' love of, 267. "Rob Roy on the Baltic," by John Mac- gregor, quoted, 236. • INDEX. 437 Robida, effect of caricature by, on land- scape, 381. Robinson, Crabbe, and Wordsworth, 85. Robinson, Crabbe, Diary of, reference to, 37, note. "Robinson Crusoe," in comparison with the "Odyssey," 66. Rock-basins, formation of, 174. Rocks, the study of, 159; in the work of the old masters, 162; Wilson's study of, 162; Archibald Geikie on the painting of, 163; the real and ideal in painting, 166; of Colorado, 167; changes in, 169; in relation to scenery, 170. Rogers, Samuel, 240. Romans, the, love of, for rivulets, 267; and bridge architecture, 318. Ronda, the city of, 144. Roquefavour, the aqueduct of, 267 and note. Rossetti, D. G., absence of interest in landscape in, 62 and note; "The King's Tragedy," quoted, 62; indiffer- ence to scenery, 259. Rousseau, Theodore, 145, 224; affec- tion of, for the Île St. Pierre, 238; treatment of water by, 259; treatment of foliage, 369. Rubens, foliage in work of, 368. Rural sentiment, in Virgil, 73: Ruskin, John, landscape description from, 57; "Modern Painters," 145; on the difficulties of treating Alpine scenery, 146; importance of natural anatomy advocated by, 168, 197; de- scription of the "leeside-cloud," 215; on the color of the Rhone, 244 and note; on Tennyson's "The Brook," 270. Ruskin's "Modern Painters," vol. ii., quoted, 333, note. Ruysdael, the landscapes of, 142, 325. SAARINE, the river, covered bridge over, 322. St. Asaph, the cathedral of, 220. St. Bernard, asceticism of, 39. St. Esprit, Pont, 316 and note. St. Herbert's Isle, Derwentwater, 24^. "St. Jerome in the Desert," by Titian, 139. St. Martin, Canal de, Paris, 315. St. Michel, Mont, 393. St. Paul's Cathedral, 220. St. Thomas à Becket's Chapel, 320. Saône, the, mentioned in Caesar, 49, 299, and in Ariosto, 83; slowness of, 299; the "bise " on, 301; character- istic of, 303. Salvator Rosa, natural power in, 32; landscapes of, 141. Scale, of lake scenery, 220; deceptive- ness of nature as to, 227 and note. Scandinavia, 123; the artists of, 143. Scape-goat, The," by Holman Hunt, 260. Scavig, Loch, 413. Scenery, lunar, 10; delight of poets in natural, 26; the painter's love for, 26; Chintreuil an instance of devotion to, 26; effect of, on temperament, 27; of Great Britain, 120; richness of color in Highland, 121; of the Norwegian Fiords, 121; of the Scotch sea-lochs, 121; Dutch character of, in east of England, 122; Midland, 122; west of England, 122; of Devonshire, 123; of France, 126; contrast of English and French, 126; English ideas of French, 127; plain, of France, 128; in relation to human existence, 134; of La Mancha, 144; beauty in Span- ish, 144; Byron's love of mountain, 155; of the National Park, U. S., 171; from Ben Lomond, 186; gran- deur of Highland cloud and moun- tain, 212; the scale of lake, 220; effect of quays on river, 313; of coast of Peru, 417: Scenery, lake, in painting, 256. Scenery, river, of Devonshire, 122; northern, 123; modern industry and, " 124. "Scenery of Scotland, The," Archibald Geikie, quoted, 125, note. Schloss Elz, Ernest George on, 394. Schroon, the river, etchings of, by Ste- phen Farrish, 335. Science, and Nature, 38; result of devo- tion to, 40. Scott, Sir Walter, color perception in, 15, 23; landscape affection in, 24; re- turn to Abbotsford, 24; effect of Highland scenery on, 108, 257; de- scription of Wolf's Crag, 392. Scott's "Lady of the Lake," referred to, 239. Scott, William Bell, 62, and note. Sculpture, Greek, trees in, 362. Scylla, 70. Sea, the, and land in the "Odyssey," 65, 68; instances of the love of, in poets, 402; in connection with human his- tory, 404; picture of a calm, 407; 438 INDEX. importance of objects at, 408; asso- ciations of, 409; sky reflection on, 414; effects, 415, note; phosphores- cence of, 415; influence of, on coasts and people, 416; treatment of ships in connection with, 418. Sea-lochs, scenery of the Scotch, 121. Sea-water, Maury on, 221. Segovia, the city of, 144. Seine, the river, under flood, 305; an- cient traffic on, 329 and note; La- lanne's etchings of, 332. Sensation, of color, 13; limit of, in man, 14; probable development' of, 14. Sentiment, illusions of, 18; evils of false, in description of landscape, 63; natu- ral, in Homer, 65; rural, 72; in Vir- gil, 73; success of, in Turner, 104. Sepia, use of, 116. Sharp's, William, "Life of D. G. Ros- setti," 62, note. Shelley, landscape observation in, 61; "Revolt of Islam," quoted, 61; "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," 90, note, 139, 235; "The Cloud," quoted, 216. Shipping, value of, in sea-scape, 261. Ships, in Turner's and Stanfield's work, 418; treatment of, 419 and note "Siccar Point," by James Hall, 166. Sierra Nevada, 144. Sight, in connection with light and dark- ness, 16; and form, 16; and custom, | 17. Simile, charm of poetic, 43; in Tenny- son, 44, note. Sketching, topographical value of, 114; compared with painting, 115. Skiddaw, 185. Sky-reflection, on sea water, 414. Smaylholm Tower, 393, 396. Smith, Alexander, analogy in his work. 43; "Life Drama," 44 "Sohrab and Rustum," Arnold, quoted, 307. "Solitude," by Dana, description of, 408. Solomon, King, knowledge of trees in, 358. Southey, Robert, 240. Spaders, The," by Millet, the land- scape in, 136. (C Spain, wealth of, to the landscape- painter, 143, 144. Spencer, Herbert, on the order of Na- ture, 40. Spenser, Edmund, mentioned in con- nection with Ariosto, 77; quoted, 352. Spitzbergen, ice-avalanches of, 194. Stanfield, the "Victory," by, 418. Stanley Pool, on the river Congo, 221. Statham, H. H., series of sketches by, referred to, 393. Sublimity, Turner's sacrifice of truth to, 107; in connection with mountains, 120. Suez, canal of, 309. Sunshine, effect of, on mountains, 203; the color of, 208; Samuel Palmer and Turner, and the color of, 209; color of, a personal sensation, 209. Superior, Lake, 2.2. Suspension-bridges, beauty of line in, 321. Swin, Loch, trees on, 413. Switzerland, lack of artistic representa- tion of, 145. "Sylvan Year, The," 208. Sympathy, absence of, between France and England, in art and literature, 95; lack of artistic, a cause of disappoint- ment to the artist, 103; difficulty in creating, in landscape-painting, 103. TACITUS, and the German land, 149. Tacitus, the lunar circus, 10. Tagus, the river, 264. Tain, the town of, 330. Taine, M., "Notes on England," 132; cn landscape color in the Highlands, 132. Tamar, the, 123. Tantallon, the castle of, 390. Tarascon, town of, 330. ، "Task, The," compared with "Man- fred," 33. Telemachus, 67. Temperament, in connection with scen- ery, 27, 28. Tennyson, Alfred, compared with Words- worth as a colorist, 15; instance of place affection in, 23; use of simile by, 44, note; quoted, 47; habit of noting landscape in, 60; force of land- scape description in, 60; and certain critics, 81; "The Islet " and "Enoch Arden," quoted, 188; "The Passing of Arthur," quoted, 240; "Lucre- tius," quoted, 265; "The Brook," 269; extract from letter of, 405. Thames, the, scenery of, 123; the Em- bankment of, in comparison with Con- tinental quays, 312. INDEX. 439 Thunder Bay, Captain Huyshe's descrip- tion of, 222. | Tiber, the, Virgil's description of, 75. Titian, "St. Jerome in the Desert," landscape of, 139; in comparison with Aligny, 141; treatment of trees by, 366 and note. Toledo, the city of, 144. Töpffer, engraving by, 145. Topography, artistic objection to, 197; scientific nature of, 201. Topographic drawing, scientific bearing of, 201; instance of, and result, 201. Tornea, the river, permanent waves on, 284. 347, note, associations connected with, 356; in Greek art, 361. Trévoux, bridge at, 321. Trossachs, the, comparison of, with archi- tecture, 394, note. Troyon, treatment of foliage by, 369. Turner, J. W. M., art-faculty in, 41; the sentiment of, 104; method of, in landscape-painting, 107; Alpine sce- nery of, 146, 197; the "Château Gaillard" of, 200; color of sunshine in, 2c9; the "Golden Bough," 257; and lake scenery, 258; the "Old Devil's Bridge," 315; treatment of the Pont Neuf, 317; treatment of rivers, 327; "Rivers of France," 328 and note; attraction of old French towns for, 328; examples of river-scenery in, 328; treatment of towns, 329; com- pared with Daubigny in river-scenery, 331; treatment of foliage, 369; figure- groups in landscapes of, 380; vignette of "The Garden," in Moore's "Epi- curean," by, 383; treatment of Abbots- ford, by, 393 ; "Ulysses deriding Polyphemus," 414; ships in work of, 418. Tweed, the, Scott and, 24, 123. "Tweed, the River, from its Source to the Sea," by George Reid, R. S. A., 393 and note. Tycho, the lunar valley, 10. Touloubre, the river, Pont Flavien on, 318. Tournon, the town of, 330. Towns, in relation to English and French landscape, 131. Towns, riverside, 329; instances of pairs of, 330; Turner's treatment of, 330. Traitors' Gate, the, 320. Travelling, ideal, 30; past and present, 293. Trees, their place in French scenery, 129; treatment of, by Aligny, 141; in Nature, 336; absence of, in parts of Britain, 336; the poets and, 337; Dante and, 338; place of, in the stages of civilization, 337; varieties and uses, 340, 352; under the control of man. 353; unnatural treatment of, 354; suit- able for fences, 355; in connection with ancestral dignity, 356 ; in art, 358; Solo- mon's knowledge of, 358; in Greek art, 359, 361; in a bas-relief in the Louvre, 361; in mediaeval landscapes, 362, 363; in work of Albert Dürer, 364; Rem- brandt's treatment of, 365; in the pen drawings of Titian, 365; in landscapes of Claude Lorrain, 366; in Dutch art, 367; in the work of Doré, 372; on salt-water lochs, 413. Trees, alder, 345; ash, 344; beech, 342; birch, 340; variety of color in, 342; cedar, 347; chestnut, 341; elm, 345; fir, 348; hornbeam, uses of, for train- ing purposes. 356; juniper, 346; larch," 350; laurel, in Greek art, 360; oak, 340; reverence for, 341, 343, note; olive, 351; in Algeria and Italy, 351; pine, 345; (Scotch), 345, 349; poplar, 343, 344, notes; robinia, introduction into France, 354 and note; walnut, 350 and note; willow, varieties of. 342; yew, 346, value of, in landscape, 346, UFFIZI GALLERY, the, instance of Titian in, 366. Uhland, Longfellow's translation of, quoted, 115. Ullswater, 130. Ultima Thule, 123. Ulva, 188. "Ulysses deriding Polyphemus,” Tur- ner, 414. Undine, 275. "Une Pastorale," by Corot, 370 and note. Uri, the Bay of, 229. Urquhart, Castle, 392. VALAIS, 47. Valcarres, Lac de, the, 130 and note. Valley Farm," the, by Constable, 377. Valleys, of the moon, 10; glacial action on, 174. Values, 114 and note. Vandevelde, William, 418. Venice, Turner's pictures of, 146. "Vierge au Donateur," by Jan van Eyck, 398. Vierzo, the, 144. 440 INDEX. Venern, Lake, 226. Vesontio, mentioned in Caesar, 49. Virgil, 26; mentioned in connection with Claude, 32; the landscapes of, 72; and Horace compared, 74; minuteness of description in, 74; love of trees in, 74 ; similarity of description in, 75; agri- cultural knowledge of, 76; influence of, on Ariosto, 81, 159. Virgilian landscape, 72. Voltaire, 23. "Voyages dans les Alpes," De Saussure, 145. WAKATIPE, Lake, New Zealand, 151. Walker, F., "Bathers," by, 387, note. Wast-water, 230. Water, difficulties in the coloring of, 242; causes of depth of color in, 244; treatment of, by Claude, 258, and Co- rot, 259, and by Daubigny, Rousseau, and Diaz, 259, by Holman Hunt, in the "Scape-goat," 260. Waterfalls, difficulties connected with the study of, 334. Waterscape, as distinct from landscape, 10. Waves, permanent, 282; instance of, on the Rhone, 282, note; on the Reuss, 282; on the river Tornea, 284; dif- ficulties in treatment of, 409; photog- raphy and, 410; instance of danger from, 411; currents and, 411; speed of, 411. Weirs, effect of, on river scenery, 310. Westminster Hall, the roof of, 341. Wexelberg, engraving by, 145. Wharfe, the river, 123. "White Doe of Rylstone, The," Words- worth, the poem associated with sce- nery, 92. Whymper, Mr., 125; on mountaineering, 179. Whymper's "Ascent of the Matter- horn," 190, note. Wilson, the rock study of, 162, 165. Wind, effect of, on lake surfaces, 246, 250, 251, 252; on the Saône and the Khone, 301. Windermere, Lake, 121, 253; Belle Isle on, 396. Windsor Castle, position of, 390. Winnipeg River, the rapids of, 280. Wolf's Crag, Scott's picture of, 392. Wolseley, Colonel, and the Red River Expedition, 221. Wordsworth, William, compared with Tennyson, as a colorist, 15, 23; and Blake, 37, 39; love of exercise in, 41; classed as a prose-poet, 59; "The Prelude," quoted, 83, ncte, 88, 89 and note; knowledge of landscape in, 85; "Intimations of Immortality," 85; lake description by, 87; early love of Nature in, 88, 257; love of plants and flowers in, 91; in contrast with Tennyson, 92. World, the, distant picture of, in Milton, 10. YARROW, the river, 123. Yellow-stone river, 167. Yon, Edmond, "Le Bas de Montigny," by, 332, and note. University Press, Cambridge: John Wilson & Son. I ! 1 1 MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS. Our Editions are the only American Editions published with Mr. Hamerton's sanction and on which he receives copyright. All other American Editions are piratical, defrauding the Author of his just rights in his own property. ROBERTS BROTHERS. "The style of this writer is a truly admirable one, light and pictur- esque, without being shallow, and dealing with all subjects in a charming way. 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Then man's work on rivers and their use in art are considered; then trees, under their various aspects; then the effect of agriculture on landscape, of figures and animals, and of architecture. The Nation. The two immensities,' sea and sky, conclude."- 6 Ma • Mr. Hamerton's Works (not including "Etchers and Etching ") may be had in uniform binding. 12 vols. Square 12m0. Cloth, price $24.00; half calf, price $48.00. A cheaper Edition, 12 vols., 16mo, cloth, Oxford style, $15.00; cloth, gilt, $18.00. For sale by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of adver- tised price, by ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, Boston. FROM THE LIBRARY OF Moott tuRNER ها. Rd From the Library of SCOTT TURNER 90 1 | 1 MAR 2 1978 THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GRADUATE LIBRARY at amand APR 18 1973 i DATE DUE T categor FI i 誓 ​ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 3 9015 02811 5197 DO NOT REMOVE OR MUTILATE CARD