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PHILIP
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PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON

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1837
SCIENTIA
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LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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CIRCUMSPICE

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81
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1880
MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS.
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. Whenever our readers see or hear of one of
Mr. Hamerton's books, we advise them to read it." — SPRINGFIELD
REPUBLICAN.
THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE.
Square 12m0.
Price $2.00.
"Not every day do we take hold of a book that we would fain have always near us, a book
that we read only to want to read again and again, that is so vitalized with truth, so helpful in
its relation to humanity, that we would almost sooner buy it for our friend than spare him our
copy to read. Such a book is 'The Intellectual Life,' by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, itself one
of the rarest and noblest fruits of that life of which it treats. (Here we must beg the pardon
of our younger readers, since what we have to say about this book is not for them, but for
their parents, and older brothers and sisters, though we can have no better wish for them
than that they may soon be wise and thoughtful enough to enjoy it too.)
"Just how much this book would be worth to each individual reader it would be quite impos
sible to say, but we can hardly conceive of any human mind, born with the irresistible instincts
toward the intellectual life, that would not find in it not only ample food for deep reflection,
but also living waters of the sweetest consolation and encouragement.
"We wonder how many readers of this noble volume, under a sense of personal gratitude,
have stopped to exclaim with its author, in a similar position, 'Now the only Croesus that Í
envy is he who is reading a better book than this.'"- From the Children's Friend.
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. New Edition, Revised, with
Notes and an Introduction. "Fortunate is he who at an early age knows what
art is." - GOETHE. Square 12mo.
Price $2.00.
"The whole volume is adapted to give a wholesome stimulus to the taste for art, and to
place it in an intelligent and wise direction. With a knowledge of the principles, which it sets
forth in a style of peculiar fascination, the reader is prepared to enjoy the wonders of ancient
and modern art, with a fresh sense of their beauty, and a critical recognition of the sources of
their power."- New York Tribune.
"Beginning with a recommendation to capable artists to write on art, and illustrating his
arguments on this point by some forcible illustrations, Mr. Hamerton proceeds to discuss the
different styles of painting, defines the place of landscape among the fine arts, treats of the
relation between photography and painting, makes some curious comparisons between word-
painting and color-painting, speaks of the painter in his relation to society, and finally offers
some practical and valuable suggestions concerning picture-buying and the choice of furniture
of artistic patterns for our houses. All these subdivisions of the general subject are touched
airily and pleasantly, but not flippantly, and the book is delightful from beginning to end."
New York Commercial Advertiser.
2
MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS.
A PAINTER'S
CAMP.
A new edition, in 1 vol.
I
Price $1.50. Square 12mo. Price $2.00.
•
•
16mo.
"We are not addicted to enthusiasm, but the little work before us is really so full of good
points that we grow so admiring as to appear almost fulsome in its praise. It has been
many a day since we have been called upon to review a work which gave us such real pleas
ure - Philadelphia Evening Telegraph.
"If any reader whose eye chances to meet this article has read The Painter's Camp,' by
Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, he will need but little stimulus to feel assured that the same
author's work, entitled 'Thoughts about Art,' is worth his attention. The former, I confess,
was so unique that no author should be expected to repeat the sensation produced by it. Like
the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,' or the 'Swiss Family Robinson,' it brought to maturer
minds, as those do to all, the flavor of breezy out-of-door experiences, an aroma of poetry
and adventure combined. It was full of art, and art-discussions too; and yet it needed no
rare technical knowledge to understand and enjoy it." - Joel Benton.
"They (A Painter's Camp' and 'Thoughts about Art') are the most useful books that
could be placed in the hands of the American art public. If we were asked where the most
intelligent, the most trustworthy, the most practical, and the most interesting exposition of
modern art and cognate subjects is to be found, we should point to Hamerton's writings."
The Atlantic Monthly.
THE UNKNOWN RIVER: An Etcher's Voyage of Discov-
ery. With an original Preface for the American edition, and thirty-seven plates
etched by the author. One elegant Svo volume, bound in cloth, extra, gilt, and
gilt edges. Price $6.00. A cheaper edition, square 12mo. Price $2.00.
1
"Wordsworth might like to come back to earth for a summer, and voyage with Philip Gilbert
Hamerton down some Unknown River" I If this supposition seem extravagant to any
man, let him buy and read The Unknown River, an Etcher's Voyage of Discovery,' by
P. G. Hamerton. It is not easy to write soberly about this book while fresh from its presence.
The subtle charm of the very title is indescribable; it lays hold in the outset on the deepest
romance in every heart; it is the very voyage we are all yearning for. When, later on, we
are told that this Unknown River' is the Arroux, in the eastern highlands of France, that
it empties into the Loire, and has on its shores ancient towns of historic interest, we do not
quite believe it. Mr. Hamerton has flung a stronger spell by his first word than he knew.
6
"It is not too much to say that this book is artistically perfect, perfectly artistic, and a poem
from beginning to end; the phrasing of its story is as exquisite as the etching of its pictures;
each heightens the other; each corroborates the other; and both together blend in harmonious
and beautiful witness to what must have been one of the most delicious journeys ever made by
a solitary traveller. The word solitary, however, has no meaning when applied to Hamerton,
poet, painter, adventurous man, all in one, and with a heart for a dog! There is no empty or
barren spot on earth for such as he. The book cannot be analyzed nor described in any way
which will give strangers to it any idea of its beauty." -Scribner's Monthly.
CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS.
With Twenty Illustrations by
Price $2.00.
J. VEYRASSAT and KARL BODMER. Square 12m0.
This is a choice book. No trainer of animals, no whipper-in of a kennel, no master of
fox-hounds, no equine parson, could have written this book. Only such a man as Hamerton
could have written it, who, by virtue of his great love of art, has been a quick and keen
observer of nature, who has lived with and loved animal nature, and made friends and com-
panions of the dog and horse and bird. And of such, how few there are! We like to amuse
ourselves for an idle moment with any live thing that has grace and color and strength. We
like to show our wealth in fine equipages; to be followed by a fond dog at our heel, to hunt
oxes and bag birds, but we like all this merely in the way of ostentation or personal pleasure.
But as for caring really for animals, so as to study their happiness, to make them, knowing us,
ove us, so as to adapt ourselves to themselves, is quite another thing. Mr. Hamerton has
bserved to much purpose, for he has a curious sympathy with the 'painful mystery of brute
MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS.
Works.
3
creation,' as Dr. Arnold called it. He recognizes the beauty and the burden of that life which
is bounded by so fine and sensitive a mortality. He finds in the uses of the domestic animal
something supplementary to his own manhood, and which develops both the head and heart of
the good master. We have been often reminded of Montaigne in reading this book, as we
always associate him with his cat. We never shall hear the name of Hamerton without think-
ing of that little polished skull of the terrier which for so many years Hamerton has preserved
in love of the creatures whom God has made but as little lower than man, as He has made
man but little lower than the angels."- Boston Courier.
THE SYLVAN YEAR. Leaves from the Note-Book of
RAOUL DUBOIS. With Twenty Etchings by the Author and other Artists. 8vo.
Cloth, gilt edges. Price $5.50. A cheaper edition, square 12mo. Price $2.00.
"With every successive book by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, his American audience becomes
larger and more appreciative. His 'Intellectual Life' has been one of the best read and
most often quoted books of the last two years, and the quiet charm of his style has won its
way to a more cordial appreciation than almost any latter-day English essayist has received
among us. . . . The book comprises the account of this year of daily wanderings in search of
beauty. To artists it will be invaluable, for it will educate them in the habit of minute obser-
vation. No writer so detects the changing expressions, as well as the features, of Mother
Nature, as does Hamerton. He knows the color of every twig and leaf. every bit of moss or
lichen, the formation of every rock. No light or shade on the face of the day escapes his
anointed vision, he sees the soul of things as well as the surface; and he has the rare art to
inspire others for the time being with the gift of his own clairvoyance."-L. C. M. in the
N. Y. Tribune.
46
·
•
•
The Sylvan Year' is one of Mr. Hamerton's best books; and Mr. Hamerton, at his
best, is one of the most charming modern writers. A record rich in intelligent observation
of animals, trees, and all the forest-world; rich, too, in the literary beauty, the artistic touches,
and the sentiment that mark Mr. Hamerton's style.” - From the Boston Daily Advertiser.
Among the holiday books there is none more charming than Hamerton's 'Sylvan Year.'
It attracts at first by its outside, which is uncommonly pretty, and its contents win increasing
interest. Its author lived a year in the Val Sainte Veronique, watching the forest through all its
changes, and adding to his already large stock of woods lore. He has enough scientific knowl-
edge, but, in talking of nature, he adds to that the observation of the artist, and the sentiment
of the poet and the man of true feeling. Then he knows the literature of the woods, the
flowers, and the seasons; and his pages are enriched by quotations from Theocritus, Virgil,
Chaucer, and modern poets. The style is very quiet, one reads it with a slow sort of delight
that nothing else gives, and the enjoyment of it grows with every new book that the author
writes. These out-door books of Mr. Hamerton are more attractive than his graver works
which treat of the Intellectual Life and of Art, although those are admirable in their way.
But The Unknown River,'' Chapters on Animals,' and 'The Sylvan Year,' have a simpli-
city, a delicacy, a depth of feeling, and a wealth of literary beauty that are very rarely found
united. A new volume, just come, 'Around my House,' probably belongs to the same class,
and promises more days of pleasure in the reading." — Boston Correspondent of the Worcester
Spy.
ETCHING
AND ETCHERS.
Illustrated with Etchings
printed in Paris under the supervision of Mr. HAMERTON. A new, revised, and
enlarged edition. 8vo. Cloth, gilt and black. Price $5.00.
"We are not in the habit of overpraising publishers or authors, but we have no hesitation
in saying that Mr. Hamerton's 'Etching and Etchers' will henceforth deserve to have, and
certainly obtain a place, in every gentleman's library in the country who can afford to buy the
pook. The subject is treated so conscientiously, there is such a maturity and repose of thought
and exposition, and in every page, whether you agree or disagree, so much to think over with
luxurious reflection, besides which the illustrations are so valuable and delicately chosen for
the object in view, that the book rather resembles the medieval labors of life-long devotion,
than a nineteenth-century forty-steam-power of ephemeral production. In his Painter's
4
MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS.
Camp,' a small gem of composition, Mr. Hamerton says somewhere, that his notion of art
study is not rapid travelling, but crawling through a country like a snail with your house or
your back. He could not have given a more beautiful illustration of his own ideal, or of the
truth of his theory applied to authorship." The Spectator.
ROUND MY HOUSE: Notes of Rural Life in France in
Feace and War. Square 12m0. Price $2.00.
"Whatever the subject he chooses, and he is at home with a good many, Mr. Hamerton
is pretty sure to write an entertaining book, and this one, which gives an account of his life in
France, is no exception. He takes the reader into his confidence, and tells him just how hard
it was to find exactly the sort of house he wanted.... After describing this tempting place,
the author goes on to give his readers just that full record of what he saw in his daily life,
which is most interesting and useful to an outsider. The merit of this part is, that it so exactly
resembles the talk of a sensible man whose tact enables him to know just what his hearers.
would like to hear." Atlantic Monthly.
WENDERHOLME: a Tale of Yorkshire and Lancashire.
Square 12mo. Price $2.00.
"To those who are familiar with other works by Mr. Hamerton, it may be sufficient, in a
general way, to say that 'Wenderholme' is characterized by the same thoroughness, the same
simplicity, the same artistic flavor that make Round My House' so delightful; by the same
love of nature, the same appreciation of the beautiful, the same refinement that mark 'The
Unknown River' and 'A Painter's Camp;' and there are not wanting evidences of the wide
reading, the proofs of culture and earnestness that are conspicuous in Intellectual Life.'"
Cincinnati, O., Times.
MODERN FRENCHMEN.
Five Biographies: Victor Jacque-
mont, Traveller and Naturalist; Henri Perreyve, Ecclesiastic and Orator; François
Rude, Sculptor; Jean Jacques Ampère, Historian, Archæologist, and Traveller;
Henri Regnault, Painter and Patriot. By PHILIP GILBERT Hamerton. Uni-
form with "The Intellectual Life," &c. Square 12mo. Price $2.00.
"Philip Gilbert Hamerton has the faculty (not common to all authors) of making every
thing he touches interesting. Best known as a writer on art, his works upon that subject have
come to be recognized as standards His novels and essays are always full of meat, and his
works generally are characterized by a fairness and impartiality which give them peculiar
value. His latest work, Modern Frenchmen,' is made up of five biographies." - Boston
Transcript.
"We know these men for what they did; Mr. Hamerton tries to make us know them
rather for what they were, and his study of their lives is literature of permanent worth, inde-
pendently of the importance, or the reverse, of their works in the world. Indeed, we may
safely say that Mr. Hamerton has done few things of greater or more lasting value than this."
N. Y. Evening Post.
Mr. Hamerton's Works (not including "Etchers and Etching ")
may be had in uniform binding. 8 vols. Square 12mo. Cloth,
price $16.00; half calf, price $36.00.
For sale by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of adver-
tised price, by
ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
Boston.
THE SYLVAN YEAR.
THE UNKNOWN RIVER.

Illustrated Editions.
THE SYLVAN YEAR. With 20 etchings by
the author, and other artists. 8vo. Cloth, gilt
edges. Price $5.50.
THE UNKNOWN RIVER.
etched by the author. 8vo.
With 37 plates
Cloth, gilt edges.
Price $6.00.
ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers.
THE SYLVAN YEAR
LEAVES FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF
RAOUL DUBOIS.
BY
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON,
etchers,"
AUTHOR OF "THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE," "ETCHING AND ETCHERS," etc.
"Non canimus surdis: respondent omnia silvæ."- VIRG. Ecl. x.

BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1880.

QUI
LEGIT
REGIT
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
JOHN WILSON & SON, CAMBRIDGE
!
Lilo
Pattis.1
8-3-25
12197
PREFACE.
N order to give more unity to these pages, it was
IN
decided, after some hesitation, to introduce one
or two fictitious personages and an element of human
interest. Whatever Nature may be from the strictly
scientific point of view, it is interesting to the artist
(whether literary or pictorial) mainly as it is related,
in
ways more or less mysterious, to the world of feeling
which lies hidden within our own breasts. Therefore,
although a man of science might have written about the
forest without reference to human sorrows or satisfac-
tions, an artist could not do so except at the risk of
sacrificing his most effective forces, those which have
influence by means of sympathy and association. The
principal personage of the narrative was in some degree
suggested by the 'Obermann' of De Sénancour, a crea-
tion which has been, if not precisely popular, certainly
very influential amongst the more sensitive and studious
minds of Continental Europe during the earlier part of
vi
Preface.
the present century, and which has not even at the pres-
ent day altogether lost its attraction; for 'Obermann'
is still read by persons of culture, though the mental
condition which De Sénancour painted in that work is
much rarer in these days than it was in the days of
René and Childe Harold. The fictitious personage who
tells what there is of story in 'The Sylvan Year' is,
however, a conception quite distinct from the dissatis-
fied hero of De Sénancour, and is intended to leave a
very different impression upon the reader. The domi-
nant note of 'Obermann' is ennui; the ennui of a char-
acter capable of long, indefinite suffering, but not capa-
ble of passing out of such suffering by the discipline of
active sight and thought. The following narrative, so
far as it paints the character of the imaginary narrator,
is intended rather to exhibit the value of external nature
as a refreshment to a spirit which, though it has suffered
greatly, has still strength enough to take a hearty and
healthy interest in everything that comes within the
circle of its observation.
THE SYLVAN YEAR.
THE SYLVAN YEAR.
I.
A Woodland Estate- Le Val Sainte Véronique-Scenery of the Valley.
N the heart of the forests between the vine-lands
of Burgundy and the course of the river Loire my
mother's family had for centuries possessed a property
which had descended to myself, but which I had visited
only on rare occasions. It required singularly little care
from its proprietor, being nearly the whole of it forest-
land, and the cuttings took place only once in twenty
years. The estate had been divided into five portions,
and the times of cutting had been so arranged that one
such period should recur every fourth year; so we came
to the place each Leap-year, like the 29th of February.
There were about four hundred acres of woodland, and
it would be difficult to find, except on the slopes of the
Alps, a similar extent of country with so little that was
level. Seven miles from the nearest public road stood
our ancestral habitation. It occupied the bottom of a
little valley, and had for its title the name of the locality,
le Val Sainte Véronique. The house was not a château,
nor was it (I rejoice to say) an ordinary maison bour-
geoise. It consisted of the remains of a monastic establish-
2
November- A Woodland Estate.
ment which had never been either extensive or splendid,
but our religious predecessors had left upon the place
that which suits my taste and temper better than either
size or splendor- the impress of a quiet feeling, in
harmony with the perfect seclusion that reigned there
from year to year. They had left, too, a lovely chapel
of perfect fourteenth-century work, which had been used
by the farmer as a barn, and so little injured (for the soft
hay did no harm to the delicate sculpture), that when
I restored it some years since the walls and vaults
required nothing but a careful cleaning, and the only
serious outlay was that for a new pavement and the
repair of the external roof. The monastic buildings pro-
vided a capacious residence for one of my tenants, and a
house for my own family; but, as our visits had been so
rare, we had gone to no expense in luxuries, and the
furniture consisted of a few old things that had been
left there by my maternal forefathers, who were people
of simple tastes. Beyond the repair of the chapel which
had not been costly, I had laid out scarcely anything on
these old buildings in the Val Sainte Véronique, but I
thought of them always with a certain quiet affection,
and sought their shelter willingly in the time of my
deepest sorrow, going to that secluded place with a half-
religious feeling, as if its monastic associations invited
me, and made the retreat more perfect and its tranquillity
more serene.
I have said that the buildings were situated in a little
valley. Three tiny meadows occupied the bottom, like
a carpet of greenest velvet, and in the midst of them
November - The Val Ste. Veronique.
3
flowed a stream, about four yards wide, whose water
was of the most lucid purity, and abundant even in the
fiercest heats of summer. The hills around were so
steep that they derived some sublimity from their steep-
ness, but they were not exceedingly lofty, the highest of
them not rising to more than seven hundred feet above
the stream's level. Entirely clothed with wood, they
offered an appearance of great richness, especially in the
golden weeks of autumn, when the little valley became,
for a brief season, a glorious study for a landscape-
painter.
II.
Arrival at the Val Sainte Véronique - Plans for the Employment ot
Time- Paternal Education — Companionship between Father and
Son Sad Associations.
WHEN
my boy and I
HEN we came to the place
after the lamentable events of the war, it had
not this temporary splendor, but was gray under a gray
and rainy sky; and it seemed better so, more in unison
with the sadness of our hearts. Our first visit was to
the chapel, which, when we had last stayed here, my
wife had decorated with some delicate needle-work of
her own; and here, as we knelt together, my boy and I
had leisure to feel both the nearness of our lost ones
and their remoteness. We chose two rooms that com-
municated with each other, and, before evening, had
given them an appearance of tolerable comfort. This
4
November - Employment of Time.
can never be very difficult in a place where firewood is
inexhaustibly abundant. Logs were heaped on the old
rusty fire-dogs, and the most cheerful beams illuminated
the red-brick floor and the naked, inhospitable walls.
That night the good fire sufficed for us, but the next
day we busied ourselves very actively in furnishing our
little apartment with the least inconvenient of the old
things that were scattered about the mansion. This
activity was beneficial to both of us, and I was pleased
to see how Alexis suddenly regained his boyish cheer-
fulness in the toils of this novel occupation. Far from
endeavoring to repress this happy elasticity of youth,
I did my best to sustain and encourage it, for there is
gloom enough between infancy and age without adding
anything to it by the wilful refusal of whatever gleams
of sunshine may be permitted to us.
We passed a whole day in arranging the two rooms.
that were to be, in an especial sense, our home, and
gradually they came to wear a pleasant and familiar
aspect, as we unpacked our luggage and surrounded our-
selves with our little personal belongings. We set up
some book-shelves, and a rack for my pipes, and another
for our fowling-pieces; we hung up, with a melancholy
satisfaction, the photographs of those who would come
to us no more. The juxtaposition of these details is
typical of what was going forward all the time in our
innermost thoughts, for whilst we were busy about our
things the images of the beloved ones were always near,
always ready to rise vividly in the imagination.
I had not come to the Val Sainte Véronique with-
November-Paternal Education.
5
out a definite plan for the employment of our time.
Employment is necessary to us all, and in all circum-
stances, but it is most especially necessary to those who
have to bear some poignant and constantly-recurring
sorrow. In the solitude that death had made for me,
I felt myself drawn nearer to my remaining son, and
resolved to have him with me for a whole year in that
lonely dwelling of the Val Sainte Véronique. If this
arrangement retarded his school-work, there might be,
it seemed, an ample compensation in the constant exer-
cise of a beneficent paternal influence, whilst the life he
would lead with me was in the highest degree favora-
ble to his physical growth and health. Nor was it
inevitable, either, that his studies should be neglected
during the months he. passed with me. Though quite
without ambition, I had employed a life of leisure in
maintaining and extending my own culture in various.
directions, and might reasonably suppose myself capable
of teaching what my boy, at his age, could have learned
in an ordinary public school. The two disabilities which
so commonly make paternal education practically an
impossibility, the want of leisure and the want of the
necessary scholarship, did not exist in my case.
I par-
ticularly desired to associate in my boy's mind the love
of nature with the love of literature, and art, and science;
being firmly convinced, and knowing partly from my
own experience, that these pursuits enhance the value
of wealth to those who possess it, and are in themselves
true riches for many who have little material gold. I
determined, therefore, that we would not pass our time.
6
November- Sad Associations.
in the forests like wild animals, but that some light of
culture should brighten our sylvan year.
I indulged myself, further, in the hope- though this
may have been, to some extent, a common parental
illusion that by the constant but gentle exercise of
paternal influence, whatever degree of that influence I
already possessed over Alexis might be increased during
the year that we were to live together in such close and
uninterrupted cómpanionship. It is the misfortune of
public education that our sons are separated from us
in their youth and delivered into the hands of teachers,
who, however conscientious they may be, cannot, in the
nature of things, take that earnest and complete inter-
est in their whole mental and physical well-being which
incessantly occupies the mind of every father who is
worthy of the name. Since this boy alone remained to
me, I desired to establish between us relations of inti-
macy and friendship of a kind which cannot be incom-
patible with respect on one side and dignity on the other.
His brothers had loved me well, and when their life-
blood flowed out upon the miry ground at Gravelotte,
their last thoughts, so far as they related to anything
in this world, were, I doubt not, thoughts of tender
affection for their mother and dutiful love for me. I
know that they loved me well. There have been times.
and occasions in our life . .
In vain I school myself into forgetfulness; I can-
not quite forget, for all things remind me of my sons.
Alexis himself reminds me of them continually, and he
is constantly in my sight or in my thoughts. The place,
November-The Old Building.
7
too, recalls them to my memory, for they came here to
hunt the boar in the pride of their early manhood. And
why should we endeavor to forget? Do we not wrong
the dead when we dismiss their memory as too disturb-
ing and importunate? Let me rather welcome these
recollections, and be thankful for that clearness of the
faculties which enables me still to see their faces and
hear their voices as I heard and saw them when the
only war they knew was that against the wild boar and
the wolf. I will build a monument to their memory
near the Val Sainte Véronique. On the crest of the
hill before the house two columns of spotless marble
shall rise high above the summits of the trees, and as
the marble mellows to the sunsets of the years that are
to come, so may their sacrifice appear to me more in
harmony with the great purposes of the world!
III.
The Old Building— My Herbarium— My Books — A Year of Retire-
ment Reading - Botany - Etching-Animal Life.
THE
'HE day after our arrival in our new home it rained
incessantly, and not a ray of sunshine came to
brighten the dreary November landscape. We had
arrived at a time of the year that offered no pros-
pect of cheering natural appearances. The splendor of
autumn had utterly faded away; the clear brightness
of the frosty winter had not yet arrived to brace us
8
November - My Herbarium.
with its healthier influences; we had nothing around us
but the dulness of advanced decay. From sunrise to
sunset, or, more accurately in a valley shrouded by mist,
from the time when the cloud grew paler in the morning.
to the time when it grew dark again in the afternoon,
we remained in the house together. Our heavy baggage
arrived from the distant railway station in the middle of
the day, and we found an occupation in unpacking the
various cases and in settling our interior arrangements.
There was plenty of space in the old building, and, with
unlimited supplies of excellent firewood, we were under
no necessity for limiting our existence to the apartments.
we had especially selected as our own. We had déjeuner
in the dining-room, but it seemed so large and dreary,
with its broad stone floor and the black beams in the
rude old ceiling, that we determined not to eat in it any
more, and dined that evening in a circular cabinet, which
occupied the basement of one of the round towers
cabinet which had been used by a lady of our family
two generations before, and had still the charm of a
faded elegance that affected the mind like the faint per-
fume of withered flowers.
a
The German invaders of Lorraine had carried away
the greater part of my library and my little collection of
pictures. My herbarium, which it had taken me years
to collect and classify, had gone I knew not whither;
possibly some scientific invader may have been tempted
by the rarer plants, and appropriated them, leaving the
rest to comrades less enlightened, who may have used
them to kindle fires. Even the cabinets that contained
November- My Books.
9
them disappeared in the general ruin. All that remained
to me of my material implements of culture were a few
old books; but these, as it fortunately happened, were
my dearest friends and favorites. Better editions may
have been printed by the enterprise of contemporary
publishers, but to my feeling no copy of a beloved
author, however fair, however faultless, can ever be
worth the copy that has long been my companion.
Books increase in value for their possessor as they
diminish in salableness at an auction of his effects.
The remnant of what had been the best private library
in the neighborhood I lived in had for me a precious-
ness far beyond that of the finest editions that were
once its glory in the eyes of others. Especially had I
loved the true immortal poets. From them, and from
them only, can we win that wondrous lore which en-
chants for us the whole material world, and admits us
into a fairy-land which is not illusory.
A year of absolute retirement would seem like an
interminable desert to any one without an occupation,
but I knew from the experience of other years that
when once we are absorbed in pursuits that are at
the same time very interesting and very laborious, the
months melt away like a treasure in the hands of a
spendthrift. It was only, indeed, by the most method-
ical arrangement of our time that we could possibly
accomplish the tasks we had voluntarily undertaken.
Besides our reading, which, for Alexis, was the most im-
portant of my plans, I proposed to collect an herbarium,
to include the entire flora of my woodland property, and
IO
November - An Excursion.
to make an album of etchings which was to illustrate
everything of interest on the estate. In the selection
of subjects there was but one serious difficulty — their
inexhaustible and bewildering abundance. In the Val
Sainte Véronique itself there were groups of magnificent
chestnuts, centuries old, shadowing the woodland road
that leads into the heart of the forest; and though the
dense young woods were cut regularly for their revenue,
many an old giant had been spared from generation to
generation, and there were hollow trunks more ancient
than monarchy in France, and far more deeply rooted.
I desired also to illustrate the animal life of the great
woods, from the wild geese flying over their summits in
the chill evenings of the dying year, to the deer in the
sunny glade and the wolves in the winter snow.
IV.
The Forest-
Observation on the Adhesion of
An Excursion in the Forest - Dante's Suffering Trees
road - A Hill-top-We go astray
Dead Leaves-Analogy in Human Affairs - Wonderful Variety of
Color Emerson on Winter Scenery - The Forest-Fear of Dante
- How I first understood it.
ΟΝ
N the third day after our arrival in the valley the
weather, though still thickly overcast, was fair
enough to encourage ideas of exploration, and we set
out after déjeuner with the intention of making an ex-
cursion in shape something like the outline of a pear,
and so getting home again about dinner-time.
We
November-Dante's Suffering Trees.
I I
began by following one of the narrow roads which from
time immemorial have given access to the interior of the
forest. There is evidence that some of these roads
existed in the old Gaulish times, and the engineers of
those days, trusting to the strength and patience of
their oxen, seem to have considered mere steepness as
no objection whatever. The road we followed was often*
closely hemmed in on both sides by impenetrable hedges
of old beech, whose trunks were twisted into the most
fantastic shapes long ago, when they were young, and
have remained so ever since in grim deformity. Some
of them were really painful to contemplate, the efforts of
nature had been so thwarted. They were like powerful
arms of men bound at the wrists to some immovable
front of rock, with muscles swelling in vain efforts for
deliverance. I thought of that dreadful fancy of Dante's,
the suffering human trees, that bled dark drops of blood
when a little twig was broken, and asked so pitifully,.
'Why dost thou break me, why dost thou tear me, hast.
thou no pity?'
Però disse'l Maestro: Se tu tronchi
Qualche fraschetta d'una d'este piante
Li pensier ch'hai si faran tutti monchi.'
Allor pors'io la mano un poco avanti
E colsi un ramoscel da un gran pruno,
E'l tronco suo gridò: 'Perchè mi schiante?'
Da che fatto fu poi di sangue brunö.
Ricomincio a gridar: Perchè mi scerpi?
Non hai tu spirto di pietate alcuno?'
After being hedged in by these gaunt arms for the
distance of nearly a mile, the road became less distinctly
}
I 2
November- The Forest Road.
separated from the surrounding forest-land; it made
several sudden turns, and finally offered us a bifurcation.
Having nothing to guide us but a general project of wan-
dering, we took the side which seemed most in our in-
tended direction, and followed it where it might lead.
The wheel-ruts soon ceased altogether; the road became
a mere footpath, and after winding in an uncertain manner
for a long distance emerged at last on the very summit.
of a lofty knoll, where, in the midst of an open space of
greensward, stood four enormous chestnuts, surrounded
by tall bushes of holly with an abundance of red berries
in the midst of its varnished green. Although we were
certainly on the top of one of the many hills which carry
this great forest upon their ample sides, it was impossible
to see anything beyond the narrow circle of the open
space around us. We were enclosed by a sylvan wall,
penetrable indeed by a pedestrian traveller, but as im-
pervious to his vision as if it had been built of granite
blocks. We were certainly not on our own land; these
giant chestnuts were not mine, for all the great old
forest-trees that belonged to me were known to me as
the richest plum-trees in his orchard are known to the
market-gardener. It was impossible to ascertain the
points of the compass. The whole sky was covered
with one dense low cloud, not lighter in one place than
another, so that we could not guess the sun's position;
nor did any inclination of the trees, or any growth of
moss, give a reliable indication of the prevailing wind,
and if they had done so the indication would have been
useless to us in our ignorance of the local meteorology.
November-Dead Leaves.
13
To retrace the path we came by might have been pos-
sible, though difficult; but I felt an invincible repug-
nance to a mere retreat. So partly in reliance upon
chance, and partly trusting an instinct of locality that
I cannot account for or explain (an animal instinct, like
that of the salmon or the housemarten), I determined to
push on through the dense wood till the topography of
the country became somewhat more intelligible to us.
Before quitting the great chestnuts, I made an obser-
vation which confirmed what I had observed before with
reference to the adherence of dead leaves. These trees,
as a rule, were entirely denuded of their foliage; but
two or three branches, on the contrary, retained almost
every leaf that had adorned them in the glory of summer
changed indeed, in color, from rich dark green to a
lovely pale gold, far more delicate than the winter color-
ing of beech or oak, yet scarcely altered in form, and pre-
serving great purity of curve. Now the question which
interested me was, how it happened that these branches
retained their foliage whilst all the others had lost it?
The answer is, that a branch which retains its foliage has
always been virtually severed from the stem by fract-
ure before the fall of the leaf., Why the leaves fall from
a branch that shares the life of the tree, and adhere to
one that is separated from it, I am not scientific enough
to decide quite positively, but naturally conclude that it is
due to the continuance of circulation in the one case and
its stoppage in the other, the leaves adhering when the
sap has not been able to descend, but detaching them-
selves easily when the course of the descending sap has
14 November-Analogy in Human Affairs.
met with no interruption. This suggested the reflection
that a very close analogy may be found in human affairs.
A colony severed from the mother country will often
preserve words, and even habits in thought and action,
which have dropped off from the parent since the separa-
tion took place, and which would also have been lost by
the colony if the old closeness of connection had never
been interrupted. The French Canadians are an excel-
lent instance of this; they have preserved traditional
ways of thinking, and traditional manners, which have
dropped off long since from the inhabitants of France
itself.
Although the season of the year was that which is
generally reputed to be least interesting, and most com-
pletely denuded of the charms of color; although the
sky above us was like lead, and there was not one flower
on the earth beneath : still it would have been impossible
for a painter, or for any one capable of seeing color in
nature, not to be continually interested by the wonderful
variety around us. It was not merely those pale, golden
leaves of the broken chestnut branches, but the rich
green of the holly with its bright red berries, and the
abundant beech leaves, and the young oaks that kept
their foliage as in summer, changed only in hue and in
the form of the shrivelled leaves. Amidst intensities of
green, of moss and holly, blood-red berries, and foliage
like rusted iron or faded gilding, the grays and purples
of a thousand trunks and bewildering intricate branches
had a beauty that is lost in the too monotonous verdure
of July. The American philosopher, Emerson, says,
November-Forest-Fear of Dante. 15
'The inhabitants of cities suppose that the country
landscape is pleasant only half the year. I please my-
self with observing the graces of the winter scenery, and
believe that we are as much touched by it as by the
genial influences of summer. To the attentive eye, each
moment of the year has its own beauty.'
It was not without some feeling of anxiety that I
quitted that open space, to enter once more the obscurity
of innumerable trees. The words of Dante came to me
again, this time with a deeper gravity of meaning than I
had ever found in them before, -
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Chè la diritta via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a dir qual' era è cosa dura
Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte
Che nel pensier rinnuova la paura!
Gradually there came upon me a certain feeling that
I had never yet experienced, but which Dante had known
well. Hour after hour we walked through that intermin-
able forest, and the strange new feeling became more
and more oppressive, till at length I realized what the
old poet meant with
Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte.
We were so hemmed in by millions of stems, that,
although free to walk everywhere, we were held in an
illimitable prison. The trees began to wear a hostile.
and menacing aspect, as if we were wandering amongst
unnumbered enemies. They had no longer for us any
grace or beauty, but united together in one horrible
monotony. I remembered the enormous extent of this
?
16
November-A Shepherdess.
forest which covers a hundred square miles; its com-
plicated and difficult geography, not thoroughly known
to any human being; its endless variety of hill and dale,
that it would take weeks of travel to explore in their
intricate detail. And then I reflected on the single hour
of daylight that remained to us one hour-and that
we were not only unprovided with food, but had no
covering besides our light pedestrian dress. Alexis had
brought his gun. I had my tobacco, and a good pro-
vision of matches, and a little brandy in my flask; but
in the way of food, not even so much as a biscuit.
V.
A Shepherdess - Her Ignorance A Shepherd Lad-I resolve to fol
low a Rivulet — Emerson's Feeling about the Forest - That of Dante
How we were led by the Rivulet -Our Situation Resolves for
the Future - The Silence of the Woods A Wild Sow - We kill a
little Pig - Our Bonfire — Signals
Signals - Searchers
Searchers Help reaches us
Our Geographical Situation.
HE time was past when it might have been yet
THE
possible to retrace our steps, and the only prac-
ticable issue before us was to get out of the forest as
we might. I knew that there were occasional openings,
little patches of tilled ground with rude habitations
for the woodmen, and in one of these openings we
should probably find a guide. We came at last to a
clearing of about five acres on the slope of a hill-side,
and from this place were able to get a view of the
surrounding country. All that was visible consisted
November-A Shepherd Lad.
17
chiefly of a valley, with a stream at the bottom, in
character so precisely like the Val Ste. Véronique that
I concluded it to be the same rivulet, and therefore, of
course, the most reliable of guides. On one side of the
clearing passed a road of the kind common in these
forests, so narrow in parts that an ox-cart would graze
the trees on both sides, and then suddenly widening
with verdant margins of pasture to the right hand or to
the left. In one of these places, huddled in a coarse
striped cloak and spinning from her distaff, stood the
first human being we met with in these solitudes, a shep-
herdess with a flock of the tiny Morvan sheep, and a
wolfish dog to guard them. The dog rushed at us as if
we had been wild animals; the girl threw her sabots at
him, and hit him rather severely, uttering violent excla-
mations in a language entirely unintelligible by us. I
asked her whither the road led, pointing before me, and
she answered 'à la fôret' (pronounced fôôret); then I
inquired whither the road led in the other direction, and
she answered ' à la pâture' (pronounced pââture). These
two words comprised her entire conception of geography.
In vain I mentioned the names of the Val Ste. Véronique,
of the villages I knew, of the nearest market town, — all
these were utterly unknown to her. Forest and pasture!
could we not see them with our eyes?
We followed the road for about a mile, and met a
lad of sixteen with two curs after him. Here, at last,
was a reliable guide. We asked him whither the road
led, and got for answer 'à la fôôret ;' then we asked him
where it came from, and he answered de la pââture.'
!
2
18
November-I follow a Rivulet.
He, too, was entirely impervious to questions about dis-
tant localities, and he did not understand French, whether
from weak intellect or mere isolation I know not. He
spoke the uncouth patois of these regions, a language
more remote from French than is either Spanish or
Italian. Yet even his patois was spoken with the great-
est hesitation, as if utterance of any kind were a difficulty
for him.
It being impossible to gain any information from
these dwellers in the wilderness, I determined to take a
resolution and follow the rivulet in the valley. If it
were our own rivulet it would surely lead us home-
wards; if not, we should at least escape the danger of
wandering uselessly in a circle. Every stream in the
forest gets out of the forest ultimately, and he who
follows a rivulet, if he can only follow it long enough,
will emerge at last from its labyrinthine dells.
In
'In the woods,' says Emerson, 'is perpetual youth.
Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity
reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees.
not how he should tire of them in a thousand years.
the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel
that nothing can befall me in life— no disgrace, no
calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot
repair.' How different is this from Dante's feeling about
the forest! As the gloom of evening settled down upon
the land the views of Dante prevailed with me more
and more. I felt that our modern conception of wild
nature, simply as a field for the pursuit of health and
amusement, or pleasant study, is not a complete con-
November Our Situation.
19
ception. The old dread of the wilderness had retained
more of the early experience of man, when he found
himself, in his weakness and ignorance, in the presence.
of natural forces that appalled but did not charm his
imagination.
The rivulet led us into the densest wood once more.
Our easiest path, but a wet one, lay in the very bed of
the stream itself, and we floundered along, guided by
twilight glimmers on the fortunately shallow water. In
this way we proceeded for a long time with considerable
rapidity, and might have gone on until night fell in
blackness, had we not met with an insurmountable dif-
ficulty in a sudden alteration of geological character,
which made the rivulet no longer a practicable path. It
became closed in between precipitous rocks, and fell in a
loud cascade into the depths of a ravine below. Nothing
remained of daylight but a feeble grayness in the sky,
every near object was invisible, and after some ineffectual
attempts to get round the rocky sides of the watercourse
I determined to abandon, for that night, all further effort
to reach the Val Ste. Véronique. Most fortunately it did
not rain, and we were in a perfectly sheltered situation.
The constant exercise of our long march (we had been
walking for seven hours without intermission) had kept
us hitherto safe from cold, but we could not prudently
rest without a fire. I had matches and a newspaper in
my pocket; we collected a heap of the driest leaves and
twigs, and soon had the satisfaction of illuminating the
little dell with a cheerful blaze of light, that brought
the rocks and nearest trees into the most vigorous relief
20
November-Silence of the Woods.
against the forest gloom and the starless blackness of
the sky.
Near to us were some resinous firs, and under
them Alexis found quantities of large cones, rich in tur-
pentine, which kept our fire up very brilliantly.
I had carefully economized my brandy, and now ad-
ministered enough of it to give us a little temporary
comfort; but we suffered seriously from hunger. Alexis
had killed nothing with his gun, or else we might have
tried our skill at such rough cookery as the circumstan-
ces permitted, but the cartridges he had with him turned
out to be very useful to us ultimately. The lesson of
the day's misadventure was certainly not lost upon
either of us. Alexis declared that in future he would
never trust himself in the forest without a mariner's
compass in his pocket, and I mentally determined that on
all future expeditions we would carry soldiers' rugs and
a little supply of provisions. I had at least the consola-
tion of my pipe, which aids a man wonderfully to sup-
port privation, and deadens the sense of hunger.
The hours passed one by one, and Alexis was over-
powered with sleep. I cut a quantity of heather and
covered him with it entirely; after which I sat watching
by his bed, and supplying fuel to the fire of our bivouac.
There is a death-like silence in the woods on a winter's
night, but I consoled myself for the quiescence of the
nightingale by the torpor of a great population of vipers
which inhabit the crevices of the rocks, and are danger-
ous things in summer. No sound was audible but the
rushing of the rapid stream and the monotonous murmur
of its cascades.
November A Wild Sow.
2 I
About three o'clock in the morning I heard, or
fancied that I heard, a movement in the brushwood,
quite clearly distinguishable from the music of the
rivulet. To this succeeded a crash of breaking branches,
and a wild boar, or rather sow, dashed through the water
a few yards above our resting-place. She was followed
by a well-grown litter, which I took to be rather numerous
from the noise they made. On the impulse of the mo-
ment I discharged both barrels amongst them, and killed
a fine little pig, the rest of the family being immediately
lost in the depths of the forest. The discharge aroused
Alexis, who was delighted with this exploit, and finished
the poor little brute with a hunting-knife of formidable.
dimensions, which he always carries about him. Here, at
any rate, were the materials for a carnivorous breakfast.
But this was not the only consequence of the incident.
We were startled soon afterwards by the report of a gun
in the distance, after too long an interval to be an echo.
The inference was obvious; we were in communication
with some gun-carrying personage in the forest, either
poacher or forester, or possibly a party in search of us
from the Val Ste. Véronique.
Instead of attempting to set out in the direction from
which the sound proceeded, which would have been use-
less in the dark entanglement of the forest, I determined
to remain quietly where we were, and to increase our
bonfire as much as possible, so that the reverberation
from it on the clouds above might be strong enough to
guide any seeker to our whereabouts. This may be
done when the clouds are low, and it is the only advan-
22
November - Help reaches us.
tage I have ever been able to discover in losing yourself
on a cloudy night.
Alexis had a good supply of cartridges, so I told him
to fire both barrels every five minutes. These signals
were regularly answered, and we heard to our satis-
faction, by the increasing loudness of the distant guns,
that our friends were gradually approaching. It was
slow and toilsome work, however, for them in the depth
of the forest. We waited an hour and a half, firing
regularly, before we heard a long cry from the top of
the hill. This we answered, and twenty minutes later
the forest was suddenly illuminated by the glare of
torches, and a scene was accidentally composed which a
painter could not have witnessed without finding mate-
rial for his art.
The farmer who rented from me whatever little
pasture and arable land there was in the Val Ste.
Véronique, and my servant François, who, amongst
other peculiarities, has a deep-seated unbelief in his
master's capacity for taking care of himself (which the
present adventure was not exactly calculated to remove),
had become very anxious when we did not return at
dinner-time, as we had promised. They soon arrived
at the conclusion that we had lost ourselves in the forest,
and organized, by the help of neighbors (who lived five
miles away), a very well-arranged little expedition for
our relief. François had taken care at starting to bring
provisions in a heavily charged knapsack, and the first
thing he did was to arrange them tidily on the ground.
Alexis displayed the wonderful appetite of his age, and
November-Forest Scenery.
23
exhibited in triumph the ensanguined blade which had
finished the little marcassin.
Whilst we were breaking our fast our geographical
situation was made clear to us. In the first place, this
was not the stream leading to the Val Ste. Véronique,
but another rivulet leading in quite a different direction.
Had we been able to follow it we should have emerged
from the forest at a point about forty miles from home.
We had walked thirty miles, and were fifteen from the
Val Ste. Véronique in a straight line. The farmer knew
of a forester's hut within a reasonable distance, and pro-
posed that we should go there when it was daylight, as
we all needed a few hours' rest to prepare us for our
homeward journey.
*
VI.
Scenery of the interior of the Forest - The Forester's Hut — Interior
of the Hut The Forester and his Son - A little pet Wild Boar
A Boar that heard Mass-Jean Bouleau the Forester - His osten-
sible Trade He is a Poacher-Poachers and Magistrates — An
Indiscreet Poacher The Temptations of Good Eating-The Pro-
tectors of Poachers Professional Braconniers Their Wonderful
Skill The Weasel-Alexis fraternizes with the Weasel - The
Weasel described - His manners and habits His affected igno-
rance The Weasel's knowledge of the Forest.
E lay round our fire in the forest during the
WE lay round
hours that remained of the night, but at ear-
liest dawn we started for the forester's hut. The road
to it passed through a narrow gorge, so enclosed by
steep hills, densely wooded with young oak, that it was
24
November — The Forester's Hut.
impossible to see more than two or three hundred yards
in any direction. After walking in single file for the
distance of about a league, we came suddenly upon an
abrupt turn in the little dell, and there it ended, for a
barrier of hill rose directly in front of us, so steep as to
be almost inaccessible. There was a little open space
of natural meadow, and on one side of this stood the
forester's hut, scarcely distinguishable from the dense
vegetation that surrounded it, for the builder had used
material ready to his hand, and simply constructed a
sort of wigwam of young oak-trunks and branches, with
a thatch of gorse that covered both roof and wall. A
tiny rill had been artificially directed to a spout of hol-
low wood, and fell in a little cascade of the most perfect
purity on the stony ground in front of the cabin, trick-
ling afterwards amongst the pebbles, and finding its way
to the bit of meadow below. No human dwelling could
be more humble and primitive than this was. In the
remotest wilds of America there may be houses equally
primitive, but there can be no habitations nearer in
structure and conception to man's earliest ideal of a
home. The inhabitants were already awake, and we
had immediate access to the interior. There were a
couple of low bedsteads, made roughly from young
trees and covered with sheets of canvas. There were
two or three shelves, with nothing on them but a little
of the commonest earthenware, and the rest of the fur-
niture included nothing that Socrates would have re-
jected as unnecessary. It is just possible that Diogenes
might have discovered a superfluity.
November-A Pet Wild Boar.
25
The inhabitants consisted of the forester and his son,
a lad of fifteen, who seemed three years younger. They
welcomed us with a surprised politeness, natural under
the circumstances; but we told our story, and this led
to a more frank and intimate acquaintance. Our new
host lived too far from the Val Ste. Véronique to know
much about our extremity of the forest, and my name.
appeared to be unknown to him, but he treated us with
an equal hospitality in which there was a great deal
of simple dignity. The conversation turned upon our
adventure, and when we told him about the little wild
boar, and displayed the victim, he gave a peculiar whis-
tle, and immediately a beast of the same species, a little
older, came from a dark corner in the hut and sought
his caresses like a dog. He had killed the sow in the
forest, and taken this youngling home, at first with no
definite intention of adopting it, but the creature had
become so familiar that it now formed part of his house-
hold. The wild boar, if taken young, is very easily
domesticated, and capable of strong attachment to its
human friends. The men present immediately began
to mention other instances of boars that had been taken
and brought up in the same way, and one was men-
tioned which regularly followed its master to the village
church, and would not be excluded, but came at last, by
the toleration of the curé, to hear mass like a Christian;
till finally it grew to an alarming size, and was sold to
a travelling menagerie for the sum of seventy francs.
What a transition for a poor creature, that had loved its
friends and enjoyed great freedom in their society, to
}
26
November-Jean Bouleau.
be taken suddenly away from all affectionate intercourse
and shut up in a narrow cage, and carried from fair to
fair like poor Gulliver in Brobdignag, but without the
tender care of Glumdalclitch! As for the future fate
of this one, its owner admitted with sorrow that the
time must ultimately arrive when it would be necessary
to have him 'bled;' but when that day came he hoped
he might be at a distance, and not be a witness of the
sacrifice.
The society of people who live with Nature, though
it may be wanting in the variety of thought and expe-
rience that we find only in great cities, has always some
elements of interest; and this forester, Jean Bouleau,
was very observant in his own way, and half a naturalist.
I learned afterwards that he had the reputation of being
a wonderfully skilful poacher; and indeed a man in his
situation, buried in the depths of a vast forest, with no
neighbors but wild animals, would naturally be tempted
to lead the life of a trapper. His ostensible trade was
woodcutting, and he worked at it sufficiently to give a
fair color and pretext to his existence; but a hardy and
adventurous spirit desires other excitements than con-
stant physical drudgery, and this man found in poach-
ing exactly the excitement that he needed. The reader
may ask how a man so well known to be a poacher
could go on year after year without exciting hostility
enough to drive him out of the country; but the diffi-
culty in this part of France is, that however strong
the evidence against poachers, the magistrates will not
convict. One conviction certainly did take place some
November- An Indiscreet Poacher.
27
years ago, but it was owing to an extraordinary absence
of tact on the part of the poacher himself, who had not
yet learned the refinements of his trade. The President
affected to interrogate him with great severity, on which
the prisoner was simple enough to answer, 'What? don't
you know me? I'm the man that supplies your own
kitchen with game. It was I who sold that hare to
your cook only last week.' 'Silence, prisoner!' shouted
both the President and the Procureur Impérial, and the
man was condemned at once; not for poaching, but for
indiscretion. The simple truth is, that the poachers are
the regular purveyors of all who have a taste for game;
and as magistrates and other official persons know that
their kitchens are supplied by persons of this class, their
lenity may be counted upon if only the prisoner has the
tact to play his part in the little comedy so as not to
compromise his betters. Even the dignitaries of the
Church are not proof against the temptations of good
eating, and sometimes consume viands which have not
been come by either legally or honestly. There was a
certain Bishop, now dead, who took his share of re-
sponsibility in these matters with a pleasant humor.
Wishing to eat venison when not quite in season, he sent
half the body of the deer that tempted him as a present
to the Prefect, who lived in the same town, and accom-
panied the gift by the following little note, - ' Parta-
geons la responsabilité : chargez-vous du temporel; je
me charge du spirituel.'
Sometimes a few sportsmen unite to prosecute poach-
ers, but their efforts encounter the perpetual difficulty
28
November-Protectors of Poachers.
that the lawyers and magistrates have private feel-
ings of the tenderest regard for the clever and ad-
venturous men who supply the greatest delicacies of
their tables. Some sportsmen heard that a great game
dinner was being cooked at a certain restaurant, and
they required the Procureur Impérial to give a warrant
for seizure. Armed with this and accompanied by the
police, they entered the kitchen where the prepara-
tions were busily going forward. On the spits before
the fire were quails, partridges, pheasants - evidence
enough against the master of the establishment; but
he simply answered that, although the dinner might
not be legal, for the game was not killed in season,
still it would be useless to prosecute him, because the
feast had been ordered by the President of the Assizes
himself. The zeal of the trouble-fête sportsmen cooled
at once on receiving this piece of information, and they
desisted. The plain truth is, that conscientiousness in
game-preserving is almost entirely unknown in France,
and the only people who desire a different state of
things are the large land-owners, who are not power-
ful enough to alter the habits of the whole nation.
Every town of importance enough for the interchange
of hospitality is sure to maintain a good many isolated
braconniers, who supply its larders with game both in
and out of what may be legally the season. They are
less what an Englishman understands by the word
poacher, than hunters and trappers by profession, like
their brethren in the forests of America. There is still
great variety of game in France, and no country could
November-Professional Braconniers.
29
be more favorable to it if preservation of any serious
kind could be resorted to; but under present circum-
stances, when it is impossible to protect it efficiently, it
would be impossible also to purchase game without the
assistance of the braconnier. The land-owners do not.
sell, they have only enough for their own tables; the
sportsmen who live in towns, and consider themselves
rewarded if, after a day's march, they return home with
a single partridge, are not skilful enough to do more
than procure themselves a luxury from time to time: so
there is clearly a sort of need for the true professional
braconnier, who is to ordinary sportsmen what the artist
is to the amateur, and can get game in quantity enough
to supply the market regularly, though often at high
prices. The skill of these men is often wonderful, but
no one becomes a braconnier who has not a strong
natural aptitude for the chase, with all those animal
instincts and physical powers which are necessary to an
incessant warfare against the cunning and swiftness of
the brute. These instincts and powers gain greatly
both in delicacy and strength by incessant use, and after
ten or fifteen years of a life in the woods such a man
as Jean Bouleau becomes a hunting animal, the most
patient and cunning of all animals, and one of the most
enduring. If there is a fish in the river, or a quadruped
in the woods, he will have that fish, he will have that
quadruped, when the common sportsman might as hope-
fully propose to himself to arrest the wild swans in their
longest and loftiest travelling in the upper air. I found
afterwards that this man was never called by his own
30
November- The Weasel.
name, but was known in the forest and its outskirts as
'the Weasel,' and by this sobriquet we will speak of him
in the present narrative.
There is an instinct in the boyish nature by which
it is strongly attracted to whatever is primitive in man,
and I observed without surprise that Alexis fraternized.
almost immediately with the Weasel, even before he
became aware of the man's remarkable talents and ac-
complishments. It immediately occurred to me, that
if Jean Bouleau were guilty of no greater crime than
supplying the larders of rich citizens with game, which
they offered him the strongest temptations to procure
for them, merely because they had not skill and en-
durance enough to procure it for themselves, I need not
throw any hindrance in the way of an intimacy of this
kind, which would be an education for Alexis in habits
of self-reliance and observation, and the best possible
introduction to the study of natural history.
The Weasel was an excellent specimen of the race
of men that he belonged to, as pure a Celt as any in
all France. We, who belong to the taller races of man-
kind, are rather apt to undervalue the qualities of the
Celt. His superiorities may be summed up in rapidity
of intelligence and of action. The Weasel was in
stature even below the low standard of his race, but
he was beautifully built, with legs and arms fit for a
painter's model, and, notwithstanding his labor as а
woodcutter, the hands retained an almost feminine
delicacy. The hair on his head was richly abundant,
black, and curly; but the beard was scanty, like that
November- The Weasel Described.
31
of an adolescent. The eyes were like the eyes of a wild
animal, quite clear and brilliant, but unpleasantly rapid
in their movements. He spoke in the most good-
humored manner, and after the first quarter of an hour
became extremely polite to us. 'Would we not accept
something to eat? he would do what he could for our
entertainment.' Having kept a little inn some years.
before, he confessed to some skill in cookery, and pro-
duced as a specimen of it a large earthen pan filled with
civet de lièvre. He had wine, too, rather rough to the
palate, but sound-vin du pays, grown in a little ex-
perimental vineyard on the outskirts of the forest, with
sufficiently good soil and a southern aspect, but much
too high above the level of the sea for any delicacy of
flavor. There were goats' cheeses of his own making,
which were excellent; and to conclude, he gave us
coffee and a dram of genièvre, which consisted of brandy
made from pressed grapes, in which he had steeped
berries from the juniper bushes that abounded in the
forest. These luxuries, and the cigarettes he smoked
with us afterwards, were quite enough to prove that
the Weasel did not really and truly belong to the class
of woodcutters by his habits (for they live like ascetics),
nor did he appear in the least anxious to go to his daily
labor. His earlier life as an innkeeper, and his fre-
quent visits to the city, where he ate in the kitchens of
his patrons, had given him a taste for good living, which
may have been one of the incentives to his career as a
braconnier.
It became evident in the course of our conversation
32
November-Knowledge of the Forest.
that his ignorance of the Val Ste. Véronique had been
affected, probably to shield himself from the suspicion
of poaching on my estate. The truth was that the
whole of the forest was known to this man, and proba-
bly to him only. He could find his way through its
intricate hills and valleys by day or night, in fog or
sunshine; he needed no mariner's compass, but went
about guided by the marvellous instinct of locality.
His talk about the forest interested us exceedingly, and
he offered to guide us if ever we felt disposed to pur-
sue our explorations. It was an offer not to be rejected
for the future, but for the time being we felt more dis-
posed to return homewards with our relieving party.
After a rest of three hours at the Weasel's cabin, we
set off on our long march, and arrived at home before
nightfall. The principal result of our adventure was a
feeling of the awfulness of the forest, which was par-
tially diminished by subsequent familiarity, but never
quite effaced. We never set out on any excursion
afterwards without a mariner's compass and a small
supply of provisions.
December- Indoor Studies.
33
VII.
I resolve to live in the Present - Alexis - How we passed December —
Wild Boars and Wolves Strength of the Wolf Courage of a
Shepherdess The Wild Boar Eatable - Wintry Splendor of Janu-
ary-Beauty of Dried Leaves Oak-leafage in January. Common
Hornbeam — Leaves of Hornbeam in January - Winter foliage of
the Beech Its Form and Color- Rich color of the Quince-tree in
January - Common Bramble.
THE
in
HE weather, which had been gloomy since our
arrival in the Val Ste. Véronique, now became
more cheerful, and as we were more settled in our new
home the beauty of Nature grew more evident and more
satisfying. In times of mental disturbance from what-
ever cause, from the pressure of affairs, or anxieties, or
sorrow, we do not see Nature clearly, nor do we see it
either in the dulness of ennui. A certain middle state
is needed between anxiety and too stagnant calm, in
which the mind does not either suffer from the sense of
pressure on the one hand, nor yet, on the other, become
dulled from the want of use. Every day my sorrow pro-
duced less of disturbing pain, and knowing the past to
be wholly beyond my power, I resolved to live as much
as possible in the present. This was rendered the easier
by the companionship of Alexis, who, with the natural
buoyancy and activity of his age, soon entered with great
eagerness into the pleasures of our new existence, whilst
he willingly accepted the studious discipline which I had
felt to be necessary for both of us.
The month of December was passed in indoor stud-
ies, with occasional excursions in the forest, undertaken.
3
34
December — Boars and Wolves.
rather for sport than observation. Few incidents of
importance occurred to us during these wintry weeks.
The neighborhood of our own valley was frequently
visited by wild boars, which of late years had been
more numerous than ever, whilst the wolves were be-
coming rarer. The peasants affirm that this is an
inevitable law, that the wolf and the wild boar always
increase or diminish inversely. Why this is so I have
not yet been able to ascertain, for these animals do not
make war upon each other; but there may be a mutual
jealousy or dislike. However, although the wolves may
be rarer in this forest than they have been in former
years, there are still quite enough of them to occupy the
attention of the shepherds on its outskirts. About the
middle of December I happened to witness an incident
which is not very rare. A few sheep were grazing
quietly in a little sloping pasture along the wood's edge,
when an animal first crept out cautiously and then
rushed at the nearest sheep. That animal was a wolf,
and his immense strength was proved by his manner
of dealing with his victim. He got his head under the
sheep's belly and threw her weight upon his own neck,
her four feet beating the air. Holding her quite firmly
in this position with his teeth, the wolf had strength
enough to gallop very rapidly up the steep slope back
to the impenetrable density of the copsewood, where it
was of no use trying to follow him. Now the wolf in
this country is not a very large animal, and a feat like
this implies a degree of muscular and constitutional
power which is relatively enormous. I could not help
January-Wintry splendor.
35
admiring the courage of the little shepherdess whose
flock had been thus suddenly invaded. She was very
much irritated at the impudence of the wolf, but not
alarmed by his ferocity; and she threw her wooden shoe
after him as an expression of most earnest though in-
efficacious hostility, uttering at the same time sentiments
of her own in patois of extraordinary volubility, which
were certainly not benedictions. The girl's father told
me afterwards that on one occasion she had actually
beaten a wolf till he retreated, and there are so many
anecdotes of a similar character that I infer a certain
human influence over these animals, which as they are
of canine race may have something of canine deference
for humanity.
The wild boar has one indisputable advantage over
the wolf - he is eatable. There is always wild boar in
some form or other during the winter months in the lar-
der at the Val Ste. Véronique. It was a fancy of mine
that our guns ought to supply a great part of our food,
and they did so during what remained of the season.
The month of January opened splendidly, with sun-
shine in the gray and gold of the forest. I think that
the sadness so often attributed to winter scenery is due
much more to the prevalence of cloud and fog, and to
the chilly, uncomfortable temperature, than to the state
of vegetation. The color of winter scenery is not with-
out elements of variety and even brilliance. The leaves.
of the preceding year are important, both for the rich-
ness of the tints they give, and, when seen close at hand,
for the fixed beauty of their forms. A leaf that has
36
January-Oak-leafage.
passed the autumn on the tree, and dried there, is always
sure to be well worth drawing, for the force and variety
of its curvature. Even in January oak-leafage is rich
upon the trees, and though its color is often too red
and coppery to be altogether agreeable to the eye, still
it breaks the monotony of the gray stems. Saplings
retain their leaves longest, and there are varieties of
oak which have a pale yellowish-brown that a painter
might accept with pleasure. The common hornbeam
also preserves its leaves far into the following year, and
the underwood of this forest is full of it. Hardly a
single leaf of hornbeam is missing in the month of
January, but every one of them is curled up with a
graceful twist, showing the lines of ribs under it quite
distinctly, even at a distance of several yards. There is
no material better than dried oak and hornbeam for the
study of natural curvature, because you can carry a sprig
home with you, and it will retain all its forms, day after
day, as if the leaves were made of metallic gold. The
hornbeam underwood is splendid in the slanting sun-
shine of a January afternoon. The beech, too, is impor-
tant for its winter foliage, which remains, almost all of it,
in situations sheltered from the winds. The color is a
beautiful light red brown, and the form of the leaf very
perfect indeed, with a good surface. The roads in the
forest about the Val Ste. Véronique are often bordered
on both sides with trunks of beech, and the effect in
January is rich in the extreme, on account of the splendid
freshness of the green mosses, which are in perfection.
and give the best possible contrast to the beech-leaves.
!
Fanuary - The Quince-tree.
37
No tree in January is so variously rich in color as
the quince-tree. The branches (so wonderfully tortuous.
and interlaced) are tinted of a summer-like green-
painted, I may say, by Nature with the tiniest of her
green mosses; whereas the leaves, of which very many
are still remarkably perfect in form, are of a rich red
brown, and the under side is of a pale golden brown,
with a little down remaining. The most decayed leaves.
are a good deal darker. Now, although the oak, beech,
or hornbeam, still retain their leaves in the following
year, they offer but little variety of hue; and though a
sprig of oak might instruct and occupy a designer, the
quince-tree would occupy a colorist. So, indeed, would
the common bramble, with its crimson or purple stalk
and leaves, often still retaining a perfectly fresh green,
others being of a dark, ochrous red, but still very perfect
in their form.
VIII.
Deschanel's description of an English Landscape Painter - Botany and
Art - An Effect in January - The Harmony of Gray and Gold -
How Diaz would have given it — Sunset-light on Dead Foliage –
Use of Scientific Knowledge - The Microscope Use of a Nomencla-
ture - Drawing Plants - Jules Jacquemart's way of Drawing Plants
- Memoranda- Colors of the Wintry Landscape
Nature - Eglantine — The rich green of Broom
Edges of Woods Birches Lichen.
D'
M
―
Fanaticism about
Woods in Mass
ESCHANEL, in his -clever and amusing 'Essai
de Critique naturelle,' gives a description of an
English landscape-painter addicted to botanical study;
38
Fanuary - Botany and Art.
a description slightly caricatured, yet probably drawn
from some living instance, and accurate in the main:
'Il s'en va herboriser par champs, s'assure que tel vege-
table a les feuilles pointues ou découpées de telle façon,
que telle fleurette a une telle corolle et tant de pétales;
qu'il y a d'ailleurs, dans la nature des rouges violents,
des verts crus, des jaunes impitoyables, beaucoup de
violet,' &c. Well, this may be true with reference to
some painters of that young realist school which was
flourishing in England when M. Deschanel wrote his
book, and he may have met with some English artists
who were also botanists; but the harm is not in the
study of plants, it is in the forgetfulness of large relations.
to which this minute observation of Nature has occasion-
ally led those who were addicted to it. It is well to
know the plants with a loving familiarity that observes
the minutest detail, but the great harmonies of natural
effect and color concern the landscape-painter more
closely. Here, for example, is an effect which, if painted
in a masterly manner, with sufficient taste and feeling,
would reward the labor of an artist: One day in Jan-
uary I was riding in the forest, where the ground is
closely planted with young oaks, and the sun was setting
behind them. The material was almost monotonous in
its simplicity, one species of tree, and a sunset with
no elaboration of cloud-form, but merely a suffusion of
yellow light in a sky heavily charged with vapor. The
trunks of the trees were all gray, the sun-gold pale
yellow; and as the light was well concentrated, and
brilliantly scattered to right and left, but always from
t
Fanuary - - An Effect in January.
39
one central point, it was just one of those simple and
harmonious arrangements of light and color which are
adapted to the purposes of art. It happened, too, that
this color-harmony of gold and gray was precisely the
one which an artist may attack without incurring the
certainty of defeat from the unapproachableness of
natural illumination; for yellow is the one color which
may be made luminous in painting without much sacri-
fice of its chromatic quality. Had the sunset been a red
one, the difficulty (as every painter knows) would have
been immeasurably increased; and, indeed, would have
involved the necessity of painting the whole subject in
so low a key, that the beautiful grays of the forest
would have been lost in dark neutral tints far below
the pearly tones of Nature. This would have been seen
by an artist like Diaz as a flashing of gold on gray in-
tricacy, and he would have painted it exactly in the way
best fitted to convey that impression.
Another very
fine effect, often visible in winter at the hour of sun-
set, is the illumination of the trees to the east of you.
When the light of sunset catches the dead foliage of
a forest of oaks their tops burst into sudden flame,
so that the forest seems all on fire. The impression is
greatly heightened if you are unable, from your posi-
tion, to see the western sky, which is the origin of the
light. Now, for the powerful rendering of such effects
as these, the knowledge of plants need only be that
which every artist is sure to possess who has been in the
habit of sketching from Nature; but whenever a painter
desires to give something of the beauty of foreground
40
Fanuary-Use of Scientific Knowledge.
detail, and he may well desire this without abandoning
his pictorial purposes and intentions, then it is most
convenient for him to know the plants scientifically. I
cannot think that the Englishman in M. Deschanel's
book was wrong even in using a microscope, though
the idea conveyed is that he did so in order to be able
to delineate microscopically. There is an obvious non-
sequitur here. It does not follow that because an artist
happens to use a microscope to dissect some plant in
order that he may afterwards remember it, he will neces-
sarily draw the plant otherwise than as it simply appears
to the naked eye-to the educated eye-in its sub-
ordinate place in Nature. Possibly M. Deschanel might
argue that the landscape-painter need not trouble him-
self even about the names of plants, since he does not
write their names upon his canvas, and no doubt these
plants have existed for innumerable generations before
any nomenclature was contrived for them; still he may
surely avail himself of what is nothing more than a con-
venient memoria technica all ready to his hand. The
objection does not seem to be so much to the knowledge
of a little botany, as to the habit of drawing plants
minutely in isolation; and this habit is not injurious for
the knowledge which it conveys, but bécause it en-
courages us to neglect the more important truths of re-
lation, and makes us think we have done something
good and useful, when, in fact, we are busy in an occu-
pation which is not fine art, and which is incomparably
easier than fine art. Any young student whose eye for
form has attained a tolerable degree of accuracy may
Fanuary — Memoranda.
41
soon draw studies of detached leaves very beautifully,
and then he is likely to fall into a sort of mechanical
routine which is the indolence of the industrious in all
the handicraft trades. The only kind of study at all
resembling this, which may be permitted to a real artist,
is work done on the principles of Jules Jacquemart in
his etchings of flowers. There you have leaf-drawing
certainly, and careful copying of petals and calices, yet
always subordinated to the effect of a bouquet as a
mass.
Before quitting the subject of leaf-drawing let me
add, that careful memoranda of leaves and other objects.
may often be done with great advantage by those who
are not troubled with any artistic ambition. They aid
the memory wonderfully, and enable it to retain truths
of form and color with an accuracy that may be of the
greatest advantage in many studies and occupations.
Much mechanical drawing is bad, because the draughts-
man has looked only to those characteristics of plants
which may be technically described in scientific language:
these things he sees, but he fails to see the beauty of
natural curvature even in those very forms where it is
most conspicuous. Now it would be perfectly possible,
and a worthy object of ambition to any student who
really loved Nature in a catholic and comprehensive way,
to preserve the strictest botanical truth in the delineation
of plants, and yet add to it the true loveliness of their
forms, the exquisite changes of curve and surface which
the accidents of perspective are incessantly producing.
Such an enterprise might not be directly remunerative
1.
42
Fanuary-Eglantine.
in the pecuniary sense, for scientific students appear to
be satisfied with the sort of drawing which sets down
what they want to know, whilst lovers of art are satisfied.
with nothing short of full artistic synthesis both in con-
ception and execution, and yet the sort of work I now
suggest would reward the laborer by certain delicate,
intimate satisfactions of its own.
There are often very brilliant colors in the wintry
landscape, but the difficulty in making artistic use of
the material that it presents would be to harmonize the
color-material into synthesis. You may find very fresh-
looking greens, and very bright reds, but there is a want
of quieter color in their neighborhood sufficiently re-
sembling them in quality to lead up to them as a climax.
The coloring of Nature is not always good or available
for art, any more than all her plants for food, and it is
one of the first results of culture in an artist when he
is able to perceive this. It is mere fanaticism to speak
of the fortuitous arrangements of color which occur in
natural scenery as examples of divine art which it is
impiety to criticise. The simple truth is, that a plant
will bud or fructify at a time determined by the action
of heat or moisture upon its vessels, without the least
reference to its effect upon a color-composition in the
landscape. For instance, you may have a bush of eglan-
tine, which will be a perfect mass of vermilion on account
of its fruit. The stalks will be a very dark purple in
shade, but crimson in the evening light, and they inten-
sify the vermilion of the berries. Ten to one, this piece
of splendor will be entirely isolated, and it will kill all
Fanuary - Lichen.
43
the delicate coloring in its neighborhood, as a scarlet
coat kills a modest landscape in the Academy. Or
you may have the fine rich green of broom, most valu-
able in itself, especially in large masses, yet by its very
richness likely to make you feel more acutely the wintry
poverty of the decayed vegetation around it, and the
naked branches overhead. A judicious artist might
avail himself of these materials, but he would never
permit them to injure the unity of his work, a kind of
unity necessary in human art, but outside of the aims of
Nature. The seasons when Nature is most harmonious
are the late summer and the earliest weeks of autumn,
but in winter and spring she colors accidentally and in
patches. Woods in the mass, however, are often grandly
harmonious even in January, with their rich brown in
nearest scenery passing through purple in the middle.
distance to a deep neutral tint on distant hills. On the
edges of woods the white stems of the birches tell very
effectually against dark purple as silvery lines, even at
a considerable distance. In the immediate foreground
all lichens and mosses assume an unusual importance
during winter; in the case of the mosses because they
are really more brilliant, as they prosper and grow in
moisture, whilst the lichens gain a more than common
degree of prominence from the comparative poverty of
the decayed vegetation around them. There are hedges
so invaded by pale green tufted lichen that it becomes ·
in winter the principal element of their coloring; and
not a disagreeable element, being delicate in hue not-
withstanding its opacity.
44
January - Wintry Landscape.
IX.
Wintry Landscape-Mummy Plants Common Teazle - The Great
Mullein Ferns and Grasses - The Blackthorn
The Blackthorn - The Whitethorn
- Coloring of Rushes - Mistletoe -Minute Mosses - Viburnum
Splendor of Berries in Sunset Light-Mountain Ash - Hazel
Structure of Trunks and Branches - Walnut Oak Ash Poplar
-Alder-Horse-Chestnut.
THE
HE wintry landscape is a museum of dried vege-
tation, bearing much the same resemblance to
the verdant wealth of summer that a mummy does to
a living human being, yet with the difference that the
vegetable mummy often retains the most graceful ele-
gance; and this it is to be feared, can scarcely be said
of any Egyptian princess, however distinguished in her
time. Indeed I may go so far as to assert that some
plants are positively more elegant as mummies than
they were when the sap circulated in all their vessels.
There is the common teazle, for example, which in
winter acquires a quite remarkable perfection of curva-
ture in all its leaves. There is a clump of them not
far from the Val Ste. Véronique, of which the tallest is
nearly eight feet high, and so very perfect and delicate
that if some skilful goldsmith were to copy it as it stands.
in pure Australian gold (silver would be too chilly in
tint) all Paris would wonder at its loveliness. Not a leaf
of it but is fit to be the model for an archbishop's crozier,
and round the head rise the thin bracts like guards, still
perfect, every one of them, though the tall stem has
Fanuary - The Great Mullein.
45
swayed in the autumn storms. As to that head itself,
what a miracle of texture! Warm reddish brown in
the sun, and at a short distance seeming soft as fur, but
nearer a delicate net-work.
Another very fine plant in winter, happily very com-
mon in many places, is the great mullein, which, though
it does not equal the teazle in elegance, far surpasses
it in the expression of melancholy ruin. Still it retains
some rich, thick, pale, dusty, cottony leaves, between
the earth and the blackened raceme where the pale
yellow flowers once clustered so gaily in the sunshine,
but the large outer leaves have faded and lost form,
and become mere brown rags, like the tatters of mis-
erable poverty, drenched by the rains of winter, and
draggled on the mud of the cold inhospitable earth.
Of all the plants that grow, the mullein in its decay
comes nearest to that most terrible form of human
poverty when the victim has still, to his misfortune,
vitality enough for mere existence, yet not enough to
make existence either decent or endurable. Groups of
them will be found together, still strong enough to bear
up against the bitter wind that tears their rags into
more pitiable raggedness, and flings foulness on their
wet and withered leaves, to stick there, like contumely,
till they die. Some freshness lingers yet within their
folds, like hidden and tender recollections, some soft-
ness and a little warmth, but their misery is like that
awful destitution that stands clothed in the last shreds
and remnants of prosperity.
The ferns and grasses bear the season better, and
46
January-Grasses.
retain almost every charm but color. The forms of
fern are still complete, and the plant still bears itself
with a perfect grace, except where it has been exposed
to injury, and then it will often be broken, for it is more
fragile now than in the elasticity of summer. There
are grasses which survive with all their elegance, and
their delicate pale spears stand perfect in the air of
winter, bending at every breath, and bearing trembling
plumes, yet recovering themselves always. I value, too,
the great old dead stalks of the bramble, all quite hoary
and gray, with nothing but thorns upon them. They
are often twelve or fifteen feet long, and trail about the
hedges much more visibly at this season than when hid-
den under the summer leafage.
The blackthorn is valuable for the abundance of its
dark purple fruit, as big as common grapes, and covered
with a beautiful blue-gray bloom. The whole coloring
of this plant in winter is strikingly harmonious, for the
stem and twigs are of a pleasant purplish gray, which
the fruit continues in another variety. It is well worth
painting in studies of still-life for its peculiar quality of
texture. The whitethorn is less harmonious, but richer,
with the multitudes of its dark vermilion berries, in
masses quite sufficient to affect the coloring of a fore-
ground. Whilst the blackthorn is entirely bare of leaf-
age at this season, the whitethorn is not altogether bare,
but will often retain foliage rather abundantly in shel-
tered corners, and its remaining leaves are of a very
warm brown, which sustains the berries well, and is better
than the contrast of green. The way in which green will
Fanuary-Mistletoe.
47
be preserved or lost in winter is one of the most curious
things about the local coloring of landscape. For ex-
ample, in the case of rushes, the green remains vividly
where there is water, except at the tops of the blades,
which are tipped with yellow; but in drier places the
whole rush is pale yellow, often giving most brilliant.
and effective white lines, even when there is no sun-
shine to relieve them. Then you have the peculiar
green of the mistletoe, often existing in such quantities
as to give at a little distance quite a summer-like
appearance to the tree it has chosen to establish itself
upon. Seen nearer, the green is made perceptibly less
powerful by the wax-like berries, which, being of a very
pale greenish white, neither intensify the green by con-
trast, as scarlet would have done, nor yet sustain it by
a continuation of its own color. The mistletoe is, to
my taste, one of the most beautiful plants we have; and
I like its coloring exceedingly, both because the hue of
the leaves is not a vulgar green, and also because the
fruit has the most exquisite delicacy of hue, in such
perfect harmony with the leafage, that it seems tinted
by a faint reflection.
There is a great deal of pleasant green in winter, due
to the delicate minute mosses that often cover the bark
of certain trees; as for instance, the quince-tree and the
acacia. In some such cases the bark seems positively
painted, and is quite bright in the wintry sunshine. Such
moss-painted trunks and branches are a great resource
when there happens to be holly in the foreground, which
is dangerous from its isolation and the intensity of its
48
January-Viburnum.
green, derived from contrast with the scarlet berries.
One of the best things about the holly is the variety
given by the lighter color of the under-side of the leaf,
but it is not a very safe plant for the painter, as it offers
a peculiar temptation to obtrusiveness both of crude
color and of what may be called irritating detail, neither
has it any softness of mass or grace of contour. For
any one who enjoys the sight of red berries in the most
jewel-like splendor there is nothing in winter like the
viburnum, the species we call viorne obier (a relative
of the guelder-rose of gardens); and if you meet with a
fine specimen just when it is caught by the level rays.
of a crimson sunset, you will behold a shrub that seems
to have come from that garden of Aladdin where the
fruits of the trees were jewels. The birds love these
splendid berries, and it is said that in Norway they are
served at table for dessert. I have not forgotten the
mountain-ash, but in January, although it still has
berries, the most of them are withered and have lost
their beautiful color; however, they still keep a rich
crimson vermilion tint. Nothing in the beginning of
the year can be prettier than the hazel, with its thou-
sands of pendulous catkins, all of a very pale and tender
and lovely green in the sunlight; they remind one of
filigree, or the work in the fringe of epaulettes.
It is a great advantage of the winter season for the
study of sylvan nature that it enables us to see the
structure of trunks and branches so much better than
we ever can do when they are laden with summer foliage.
Of all trees at this season of the year my favorite is
January - Walnut.
49
decidedly the walnut. Its bark is magnificent in the
strength of the deeply-furrowed lines which mark it
(tempting beyond measure to an etcher), and its fine
pale grays exhibit to perfection that wealth of dark
mosses which the landscape-painter knows and values.
Besides this, there is so much grandeur in its far-spread-
ing, powerful arms, that it is well for us to see them
during part of the year without their voluminous green
sleeves. Happily for the beauty of many a village
the walnut is productive during life, so that it is allowed
to come to full maturity. The oak is inferior both in
form and color, and expresses only a sturdy strength.
The ash shows her grace of structure, her tall and ele-
gant limbs, whilst her bunches of 'keys' hang like orna-
ments on the lofty branches; and there will be a little
rich green moss, perhaps, about her foot, and on her
trunk one or two different kinds of lichen, either gray
or golden. As for the towering poplar, there will be
nothing whatever on all his height but here and there
a remnant of last year's leaves, withered and curled,
whilst the branches whiten towards the summit. The
alder would be almost as naked were it not for the
quantities of brown catkins, which give a deep and
rather rich color at a distance. All the branches of
the horse-chestnut are tipped with brown buds, whose
abundant adhesive varnish protects the tiny leaf rudi-
ments, all snugly wrapped in cotton. The ground
beneath is strewn with the sere leaves of the preced-
ing year, and the smooth-rinded old mahogany-colored
fruit.
4
50
Fanuary - Improvements.
X.
Improvements - Wood-cutting-Importance of fine Trees in Scenery
Giant Brethren-Spenser's Conception of the Forest.
MY
Y presence in the Val Ste. Véronique had the good
effect of saving some trees from the woodman's
axe, and by way of compensation I gave myself the
pleasure of making an opening here and there to obtain
glimpses of scenery, where the brushwood was as impen-
etrable as a jungle. Of all country occupations I think
this is the most interesting, whilst planting is perhaps.
the most satisfactory. It is flattering to the vanity of
a creature so ephemeral as man to feel that he is settling
the fate of oaks that might live for a thousand years.
No sentiment can be more foolishly thrown away than
that which would preserve all trees until they were rot-
ten: it is best to cut them in their fullest maturity before
decay begins. Still there are exceptions to this rule,
and the chief of these are the cases where a tree is valu-
able in life, either from its position as an ornament of
scenery or else from association with past generations of
How much of the beauty of the scenery we love
best may be dependent upon the magnificence of a few
trees which, once gone, a hundred years would not re-
place, we do not adequately realize until accident or
avarice has removed them. All scenery that is not
men.
Fanuary - Giant Brethren.
51
positively mountainous owes to sylvan beauty nearly all
its charm and attraction, and even where trees abound
the whole dignity and character of some house or village
may be dependent upon the immediate neighborhood
of two or three venerable oaks or walnuts. And in the
heart of the forest, remote from any human habitation,
there may be scenes of the most striking grandeur, which
would be utterly ravaged by the destruction of some
venerable company of giants who have lived there side
by side for full five hundred years. There is one such
solitude in a narrow dell about a league from the Val
Ste. Véronique. It is just at the end of a little valley,
where a streamlet glides down a grassy slope rounded
into the smoothest curves. On this slope stand twelve
gigantic brethren, chestnuts, which by a happy fatality
have escaped the axes of many successive generations.
They have no definite association with human history;
they have dwelt together in this solitude undisturbed by
the fall of dynasties or the noise of distant battle-fields.
No king has ever sought refuge in their foliage, no gen-
eral has encamped or held council beneath their shade.
Only the birds have made nests in their world of leaves,
and the wild deer found repose in the coolness of their
shadowy seclusion. No poet has ever sung them, no
lover ever carved linked initials on their bark. And
yet the man would be dead to all sylvan feeling, who
could go into that valley, axe in hand, and look at these
ancient brethren with a base calculation of their price.
Can we not spare a narrow spot of ground, where ground
is worth so little, in order that one group of trees may
52
Fanuary - Spenser.
reach the limit of their age, in order that we may see
both what they are and what they may become? Every
sapling in the forest gains dignity from their imposing
presence, and he who has once beheld them in their
place may read with better understanding the verse of
those great old poets who wrote when such princes of
the forest might be met with more frequently in the
land. Think what was Spenser's conception of the
forest, and what in our own time is too often the un-
interesting reality! He thought of it as a country
shaded by a great roof of green foliage, which was car-
ried on massive stems always so far apart that one or
several knights could ride everywhere without incon-
venience; but we find the reality to be for the most
part an impenetrable jungle of young trees, that will be
cut down in a year or two for firewood. Ah, let us still
preserve some dwelling of sylvan majesty, where the
poet may dream and the artist may study, and both may
forget the cares and interests of the present! Are there
not still left to us, here and there in the deep woods, such
vales of ancient peace that wandering Una may haply
meet us there; or some splendid knight of fairy-land,
like him whose glittering crest danced joyously as the
rustling foliage of an almond-tree,
'On top of greene Selinis all alone?'
February-Mild Winters.
53
Mild Winters
XI.
J
Arctic Sleep of Nature Beauty of Hoar-Frost
Fairy Work of the Hoar-Frost One Day Snow- Wild Boars
-The Weasel - He becomes my Gamekeeper A Snow-storm
Winter Reading - Cowper's Description of the Ice-Palace - Thom-
- His Ficelles - The Man Lost in the Snow.
son
Ο
UR winter in the Val Ste. Véronique had been
hitherto one of those mild southern winters
which deceive us with promises of a calm transition.
from the glow of autumn to the green of spring, as if
there were nothing between the two seasons but an
interval of grayer sky and briefer daylight, without
any severity of temperature, or any white enshrouding
of the departed year. Rarely, however, does the course
of Nature in these latitudes entirely avoid the season of
arctic sleep, and if it is delayed till the spring flowers.
are ready to blossom, it is almost sure to come down
suddenly upon the earth, like a fit of somnolence on a
weary human frame. So it happened that one day near
the end of February the thermometer went down very
rapidly, and every creature that was susceptible of cold
began to feel the bracing of a keener air. It was evi-
dent that we were to have real winter after all, though
probably a very brief one.
It came upon us in a single night; and as men have
gone to rest with hair all black or brown, and the next
morning looked in the glass and seen a head white like
54
February - Beauty of Hoar-Frost.
the foam of the sea, so did our forest darken in the twi-
light and whiten in next day's dawn.
It is certainly not my intention to trouble the reader
much with mere changes of the weather, but I mention
this because it produced one of those enchantments
which belong to sylvan scenery, and to sylvan scenery
alone. The beauty of hoar-frost is nothing by itself,
nothing on naked rock or mountain, nothing in the
streets of the city, and out at sea it is visible only on
the ship's cordage, if by accident it may whiten it for
awhile. But on sylvan landscape it settles like a fairy
decoration. No human work is delicate enough to be
compared with such delicacy as this, no human artificer
in silver or in ivory ever wrought such visible magic as
these millions of tiny spears that thrust out points of
unimaginable fineness from the lightest spray's utmost
extremity. The perfect beauty of this adornment is
visible only on tree-branches, and most visible on the
thinnest and lightest; on the dark thin twigs of the
birch, that bend under the weight of a robin, or on
the slender long sprays of the bird-cherry tree, that the
little birds love so well. And it is not every lover of
Nature, however keen his perception, however inveterate
his habit of observation, who has had the good fortune,
even once in his whole existence, to see the hoar-frost
in perfection. It needs a calm so perfect that a ship
with all her sails would sleep motionless upon the sea;
it needs also a low cloud upon the earth, whose watery
particles, or hollow spheres, or whatever in their infinite
littleness they may be, may fall and settle slowly in the
•
February - Snow.
55
stillness of the night, and freeze and fasten on the tiniest
point they touch. Not once in a dozen winters does
this fairy building prosper to its completion; but when
the time is come, and the fairies are permitted to do
their work without any disturbance from the great,
strong gods of the tempest, or the rays of far-darting
Apollo, then a strange enchantment descends upon the
forest, and a fragile beauty clothes it; so fragile that
the alighting of a bird will shatter it, or the wind from
his rapid wings.
The hoar-frost lasted for one day in this perfect
beauty, as abundant as a considerable snowfall, but
incomparably more exquisite, being indeed to the opac-
ity of common snow what the lace of a princess is to
the linen of ordinary life. During this one day of
strange tranquillity I walked mile after mile in the
narrow woodland roads, deeply enjoying the solemnity
of their silence, and watching without sorrow the beau-
tiful death of Nature. The next night came a storm of
wind and rain that washed out all fairy-land ruthlessly,
and after the rain came snow, and when the snow was
deep in the meadows down in the valley the sky cleared
and the stars shone as night deepened with that pecul-
iar scintillating splendor which belongs to a frosty night,
and a young bright moon cast a broad shadow from the
wood's edge down a slope of snow untrodden by man
or beast.
Alexis and I were watching this scene from a terrace
in the garden, when he seized my arm suddenly, and
pointed in silence to the broad shadow above mentioned,
56
February - The Weasel.
in which we discovered with some difficulty several
slowly-moving objects, that seemed to be emerging
from the blackness of the wood. They came out into
the moonlight, half-a-dozen of them, all fine wild boars,
and Alexis was just going to fetch his rifle when a shot
was fired from the wood on the opposite side of the valley,
and the largest boar rolled over on the snow. The others
were lost immediately in the recesses of the forest.
Soon a dark human figure became visible as it
crossed the narrow open space before us.
We quitted
our post of observation, and went towards the boar as
quickly as the depth of the snow would let us. It
was a noble beast, weighing more than three hundred
pounds; and the successful chasseur, perceiving that
his exploit had not been without witnesses, made no
attempt to avoid us, but came up with perfect assur-
ance. It was our new acquaintance, the Weasel, and he
saluted us with an ease of manner like that of some
considerable landowner, who finds himself by accident
a trespasser on his neighbor's domain. He begged par-
don for having yielded to an irresistible temptation, and
said that he would ask of my generosity a pound or two.
of boar's flesh for himself. I had resolved before to
keep on good terms with this active and enterprising
neighbor, whose depredations it was impossible to pre-
vent; so, instead of wasting words in ineffectual anger,
I simply observed that he would have done better to
ask my permission, which would have been freely given,
and added that he might remove the beast whenever he
chose to fetch it.
i
February- A Snow-Storm.
57
He stayed at the farm that night, and the boar was
carried on a rough litter to the house, where the Weasel
performed the office of butcher with a degree of skill
which gave clear evidence that the task was not new to
his experience. The next day I came to a decision,
and offered to take him into my employment as a
gamekeeper; which he agreed to more readily than I
had expected, for his independent existence must have
been in many respects more agreeable to his tastes and
habits, and probably more lucrative also, though it was
likely enough that he would never entirely abandon his
private business as a braconnier, even after his engage-
ment in my service. I did not regret this decision after-
wards, for the Weasel was of the greatest use to us in
subsequent sylvan labors and explorations. He occu-
pied a vacant cottage in the Val Ste. Véronique, and
attached himself more particularly to the service of my
son. I was glad that Alexis, who wandered a great
deal in the forest from the beginning, should have such
a competent servant and guide.
Although winter had come upon us late, the severity
of it was enough to make amends for its want of punc-
tuality. A tremendous snow-storm confined us to the
Val Ste. Véronique; .all the roads were impassable, and
the house was isolated from the world. But what do
we know of winter, what can any one know of it, in the
latitudes of the chestnut and the vine? Even where
the oak will not grow freely the winters are still sup-
portable, and wherever the yet hardier pine-tree can
bear the rigors of the long dark nights man lives.
58
February- - Winter Reading.
through the months of gloom, in crowded Lapland
huts. The perfect winter, more horrible than any
dream of poetry except Dante's frozen hell, is the
winter of Spitzbergen, where indeed some timber may
be found, but only driftwood, washed by the surf of
the Atlantic on that treeless northern shore, or frag-
ments of hapless vessels crushed long ago like nut-
shells in the ice.
I suppose that every European who has written any
thing about winter has certainly alluded to the one
indisputable benefit which that season brings to us, in
inclining us to be more studious of books. We never
read so profitably, I think, as we do by the fireside on
a winter's evening; and if in a future state of existence.
there should be any hours that we have passed in this
world to which we may look back with feelings of
tenderness and regret, it would be those fire-side hours
in which our minds have sought a light that is not the
sun's light, and which comes to us through literature.
Amongst other readings that seemed more partic-
ularly adapted to the season, I had selected passages
of English poets who had described winter with great
earnestness of manner, though not always with equal
felicity of style. It is not easy, in the blank verse of
Cowper, to find á passage that may be quoted without
the wish to pass over some line that is either halting
or prosaic, or else that slips away too suddenly from
under you; but there is one - the description of that
famous freak of the Empress Catherine, the ice-palace
on the shore of the Neva - which is firm and sound
February- Cowper.
59
throughout, and very grand. The subject is introduced
by a few weak and prosaic verses, which injure the effect
in the original, but when the nobler lines are detached
from these the ore is pure indeed :—
'No forest fell
When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores
To enrich thy walls: but thou didst hew the floods,
And make thy marble of the glassy wave.
In such a palace Aristæus found
Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale
Of his lost bees to her maternal ear:
In such a palace Poetry might place
The armory of Winter; where his troops,
The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet,
Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail,
And snow, that often blinds the traveller's course,
And wraps him in an unexpected tomb.
Silently as a dream the fabric rose ;
No sound of hammer or of saw was there.
Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts
Were soon conjoined: nor other cement asked
Than water interfused to make them one.
Lamps gracefully disposed, and of all hues,
Illumined every side; a watery light
Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed
Another moon new risen, or meteor fallen
From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene.'
Surely these lines have qualities which will survive
the vicissitudes of taste; but we are so impeded in our
judgment of the poets by the fashions of two epochs,
by their fashions and our fashions, that it is almost im-
possible for us to arrive at an unprejudiced appreciation
1
60
February - Thomson.
of their work. And I think that no poets are farther
removed from ourselves than those of the eighteenth
century. There is Thomson, for instance; how difficult
it is to read him without being arrested at every page
by a too clear perception of the minor tricks or ficelles
of his craft! At the time he wrote, these were the
accepted and customary ficelles, and probably attracted
so little attention in themselves that the mind of the
reader was left perfectly free to enjoy the thoughts
and imagery of the poet; but to us the work is old-
fashioned, and strikes us as we are struck by whatever
is just old-fashioned enough to be passé de mode.
yet, although his descriptions are not treated on the
same principles as ours, although he has not learned
the more temperate and perfect art which has resulted
from a completer culture than the culture of his time,
and has not been aided (as contemporary work is aided)
by the development of the modern school in painting,
there is still great force in his most finished passages.
The episode of the man lost in the snow is one of the
best of these:
'As thus the snows arise; and foul and fierce
All Winter drives along the darkened air;
In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain
Disastered stands: sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown, joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
And
March-Sudden Change.
61
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth
In many a vain attempt.
*
*
*
*
In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm ;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife nor children, more shall he behold;
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly Winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse!
Stretched out and bleaching in the northern blast.'
XII.
Sudden Change from Winter to Spring Floods - Spring is come-
The Sweet Time - Thomson - Nash — Daubigny · The Spring
Feeling-Constable - His Love of Spring-Harmony of good Art-
Work-Nature not harmonious in the Spring-Charms peculiar to
Spring The Regrets which the Spring suggests.
HEN the winter comes very late in our latitude,
WHEN
EN the winter
as it does from time to time, we pass to spring
quite suddenly. The temperature rises in the course of
a single night as if we had travelled far southwards, and
felt the breezes from the African shore of the Mediter-
ranean. The snow and ice thaw rapidly; the little
streams become impassable torrents; the rivulets be-
€2
March Floods.
come rivers; the rivers spread themselves over the
plain, and carry ruin to a thousand homesteads. There
was something ominous in the excessive mildness of the
temperature when we awoke one morning in March.
The snow lay deep upon the earth, but the air was
warm and enervating. Already the tiny stream in the
Val Ste. Véronique had increased in volume, and before
nightfall it roared angrily, its turbid waters confined
between steep banks, carrying logs of wood that had
been purposely laid along its sides, and other burdens
that had not been so intentionally confided to its care.
Most of the little wooden bridges are removed in a flood
of this kind, the earth is washed away from the roots of
the trees, and many an alder falls.
With the thaw came a deluge of rain, and the tor-
rents roared in all the glens. We who were at the head
of the waters began to expect evil tidings from the
plains. Every drop that now fell on the soaked earth
of the forest must find its way ultimately to the Loire.
Fortunately the hills were richly clothed with wood,
which retards the departure of the rainfall, and converts
what would be a sudden crisis of devastation into the
endurable floods of twelve or twenty days. And still.
the waters descended rapidly enough to give ample
reason for anxiety. We in our hills were safe, and the
buildings in our valley had been so arranged by the
foresight of the monks who first erected them as to be
clear from any possible inundation; but already the
torrent was washing the stone-faced embankment of the
garden-terrace, and if the monks had not built their
March- The Sweet Time.
گے
63
stone bridge lower down, which to strangers always
seemed so uselessly wide in summer, our road com-
munication would have been entirely interrupted. I
felt curious to see the effects of the flood, and,
notwithstanding the incessant rain, we quitted the
Val Ste. Véronique and drove in the direction of the
Loire.
The morning after our return to the valley we rose
early, and breathed an air at once so mild and pure
that we knew the spring had come.
Spring is much rather the season of poets than of
painters. What delights us in the spring is more a
sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any
visible reality. There is something in the softness of
the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very
sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses and
consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter. It is
natural that poets should love the spring, which comes
to them with a thousand flowers, with songs of birds,
with purer, brighter light, and such refreshment that it
is like a fountain of jouvence. So they hail the season
with their most melodious invocations, sometimes in
grave earnestness, as if its benefits were too great to be
treated lightly, and sometimes in frolic merriment like
the dancing of kids or lambs. Thomson is grave and
stately :-
'Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.'
64
March-Nash.
Nash greets the spring in another tone and measure :
'Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring.
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!'
These extracts are as dissimilar as can be, and yet
in both of them we may observe a characteristic they
have in common. It is much more the sounds and
sensations of the pleasant time than any thing that is to
be seen which awaken the enthusiasm of the poet. The
' ethereal mildness' of Thomson, with the shower of
shadowing roses and the awakening music, strike his
imagination before any landscape distinctly rises before
it. Nash says that 'cold doth not sting,' and he imitates
the songs of the birds, which serve him for a refrain.
On the other hand, I well remember a large picture of
Spring by Daubigny, which was very disappointing both
to myself and others; and the disappointment was most
probably due to the inevitable absence of those very
delights of sound and sense which refresh us so much in
Nature, and of which the poets are so careful to remind
us. What would spring be without the spring feeling
- that quite peculiar exhilaration that comes to us, we
know not how, like far-off reminiscences of youth?
The only landscape-painter who ever dedicated his
powers to this season of the year with a devotion all but
exclusive of every other was Constable. He liked the
freshness of the season as a pleasure for the eye, and his
own eye longed for it and loved it, because he was in a
state of intense antagonism to the brown doctrine in
March-Constable.
65
landscape-painting, and the spring greens were all on
his own side of the controversy. In estimating the value
of Constable's opinion on this matter we ought there-
fore to remember that it was not quite an unbiassed
opinion, that his mind was not at all in a neutral or
judicial state, but that he was like a Protestant theo-
logian seeking texts against tradition; and that his
texts were the young verdure, the shade and shower,
the cool and pearly light, and soft blue shadow beside
it, the sparkle and glitter of daisy pied pastures in the
moisture of an English April. Now whatever a good
artist paints is sure to be harmonious, for the simple
reason that he makes it so; and there is no doubt that
any first-rate landscape-painter who chooses to paint a
spring scene will get a harmony out of it (as he will
out of any thing in the world), which may be used after-
wards as a critical argument in favor of the 'year's
pleasant king.' But the plain truth is that Nature is
not harmonious at this season, she is only in the way of
becoming so. The colors that she gives are delicious
separately, as we happen to come upon them, and they
do our eyes good after the chills of winter; the green
especially is good for us, and we welcome it with an un-
critical gladness: but when we think of painting, it may
be doubted whether any season of the year is less pro-
pitious than this to the broad and noble harmonies.
which are the secret of all grand effects in art. A patch
of green in this place and that, quite crude as yet and
utterly isolated; a constant contradiction between the
sunshine and the wintry-looking woods; a few plants
5
i
66
March-Charms of Spring.
precociously early, and nobler ones lagging behind, the
season resembles nothing so much as that uncomfort-
able hour in the daily life of a household when some
of its members, the early-risers, are already walking
about as if they did not quite know what to do with.
themselves, and others have not yet come down to
breakfast. No, summer and not spring is the landscape-
painter's time of harmony, late summer, when the
peasants go to the harvest-fields, and come home with
songs in the warm-toned, mellow moonlight, and all the
trees have had time to assume the fulness of their
foliage.
Yet spring has its own charms, especially for young
people, who have it within their breasts. I think per-
haps, as we get older, and are saddened by the gloomier
experiences of life, that the recurrence of the earliest
leaves and flowers does not always increase our cheerful-
ness very much. We know too well the limits of a year,
how short a space it is, how little that will be satis-
factory afterwards can be done in it whilst it lasts. We
think of the other springs that now lie far behind us,
and how we lost them in vain pleasures, or profitless
labor that seems to us still more vain. Will this year
be better used? Already it is slipping away from
under us, and pray what have we done? Made plans,
perhaps, to be afterwards modified, and, it may be,
finally abandoned, to join all those other ghostly
schemes and projects so various in conception, so mo-
notonous in the negative result. It is only, I imagine,
the simply and intensely practical who are never
>
March-Awakening of Townspeople to Spring. 67
assailed by any such regrets as these; to them the
business of living seems a very plain, straightforward
business, and they follow their own lines, as loco-
motives do, with the least possible friction or loss.
XIII.
Sudden Awakening of Townspeople to the Spring - My Experience of
p
this Wonderful Effect of a sudden Transition - Horses The
Thirst for Summer Case of a sick Boy Slow brightening of the
new Season-Water Ranunculus - Effect of it on a Horse - The
Low Country-Purple Willow - Sallow Willow - Osier Round-
eared Willow - Male Tree - Female Tree - Variety of Spring Land-
scape Evanescence in Landscape.
IN
N the life of men who work in great centres of popu-
lation, and see nothing of the sylvan world except
what may happen to have been planted in a plot of
ground which they dignify with the name of a garden —
a few gardeners' plants so altered from the Divine ideal
as to be unrecognizable, and so arranged as to be
entirely without that charm of unexpected surprises
which is the great source of interest in Nature — there
will often occur a sudden awakening, about the begin-
ning of June, to the fact that the world has somehow
painted itself green again, with touches of white, and
crimson, and blue. In such lives as these the spring
is often simply omitted, unless from time to time some
breath of vernal mildness may reach them across the
barrenness of the brick wilderness they live in. It hap-
pened to me once to be confined by urgent business
68 March-Effect of a Sudden Transition.
during the spring season in the heart of a great English
city, in which there were no green boulevards or avenues,
and whose only refreshment in that kind was a park that
had been recently purchased by the common council, far
outside in the suburbs. After many delays my business
came to an end, and I fled at once to a little corner in
the country that was frequented only by artists and
anglers — a clean little inn by a river well shaded by
ancient trees. We had got to the middle of June and I
had not seen a leaf or a flower; or if my eyes had seen
one, the mind had not perceived it in the midst of
wearing anxieties. When, therefore, this sudden leisure
came upon me, in the glorious birth of summer, I felt
the transition like the change from Purgatory to Para-
dise. No summer ever seemed to me so wonderful as
that did. Every leaf was a marvel, every flower was
a delight; I lay down in depths of dewy grass, and
watched the pure sunshine streaming through the per-
fect young leaves till they softened it to a quiet green
light all around me, that seemed at once to strengthen
my jaded eyes and soothe them. Three days after-
wards the marvel had passed away, but the recollection
of it has ever since remained with me, and explains for
me the delight of the citizen in green leaves, and the
intensity of sensation about Nature which we find in
poets who were bred in towns; whilst those who have
lived much in the country, though they know and
observe more, seem to feel more equably, and to go to
Nature with less of sensuous thirst and excitement.
Exactly the same difference may be observed between.
March-
- Horses.
69
horses which have daily access to the pasture, and those
which, after being kept in stables during a prolonged
town season, are sent to grass in summer. The former
will conduct themselves reasonably when the released
prisoners of the town-stable will indulge in the most ex-
travagant demonstrations. There is in men and animals
a natural thirst for summer that begins to agitate them
about the month of March, and if they live in rural
freedom the advance of spring very gradually satisfies
this craving, like slow-dropping rain on a parched land;
but if they pass into summer suddenly, and omit the
spring from their experience, then the change is like the
arrival of thirsty camels on the bank of the abounding
Nile. Yet, although there is a deep delight in thus
bathing ourselves in the full rich green of summer, when
we have longed for it many a day, I like better the slow
increase of satisfaction that the spring-time hourly brings
to us, however parsimoniously, and I would not in ex-
change for months of what is commonly reputed to be
pleasure, miss the sight of the first leaves on the willow
and the scent of the violets where they grow.
•
I remember a boy who for many months, even for
years, suffered agonies from a disease which was per-
haps even the more terrible that there was no hope of
release by death; and one day, after he had been in bed
so long and had suffered so much that he had lost his
reckoning of time, his mother brought him a great full-
blown rose that filled all the chamber with its fragrance.
The lad took the flower very eagerly, and, after almost
burying his face in the soft and perfumed petals, turned
70
March-Water-Ranunculus.
wonderingly to the giver and said, 'Is it summer now,
dear mother?' He, poor fellow, had missed his spring
altogether, and missed it doubly; for the spring of his
life was passed on a couch of suffering, amidst odors
of medicines, visits of grave-faced doctors, and a weari-
ness almost without hope.
Happier in this, at least, at the Val Ste. Véronique
we were out every day from the very beginning of the
new season, and watched the slow brightening of it like
a dawn. Where, in early March, will you find a plant
already in the fullest pride of all its greenery, not yet in
flower it is true, but in leaf abundantly? The water
precedes the land in the contest for spring primers, and
our finest streams are full of the water-ranunculus,
waving in the shallows like long green hair,— the richest
of all greens, certainly, though it might be treason to
some paler and fairer land plants to affirm that it is also
the loveliest. The water at this time is quite clear and
abundant, and very swift in those depths of two or three
feet where the ranunculus is happiest; so that all the
fine linear segments of its subaqueous leaves, the only
ones yet developed, are washed by millions of gallons of
pure water every day of their lives, and kept so exqui-
sitely clean that no fragment of earth can ever adhere
to them for an instant. It is very different later in the
year, as we shall see when the time comes, but the plant
is never so lovely as it is now, even when its flowers are
all out in the sunshine and it has two sorts of leaves to
boast of. I thought sometimes as I watched it waving
so unweariedly with the motion that the current gave it,
March The Low Country.
71
and flashing dark emerald from one end to the other
like the scales of some swiftly-gliding serpent, that it
seemed to have more than simply vegetable life, and to
be a water-spirit tied fast in the stream's path and seek-
ing relief in ineffectual struggles. Strangely enough, one
of my horses came exactly to the same conclusion;
for
as I was riding him across the river at a ford down in the
plain, where the stream had a certain width and a depth
of two feet or thereabouts, he saw the green ranunculus
waving in the clear current, and, being at once per-
suaded that it was some living creature likely to do him
bodily harm, became frantic with fright, and bolted with
me down the stream's bed till he got into a deep pool,
where the necessity for swimming brought him to his
senses again. I do not know whether artists have ever
cared much for this plant, but it adds infinitely to the
beauty of some rivers at this early time of the year, the
effect of the waving various green through the lightly-
rippling transparent water being a beautiful variety in
the otherwise rather monotonous topaz of river-sands.
Alexis and I quitted our retreat amongst the hills
for an excursion in the low country to see the opening
of the spring season, which occurs about a fortnight
earlier there. The plain was rich in trees and fore-
ground plants that were not so common in our forests,
and the most conspicuous of these, at this time of the
year, were the willows. During a walk of a few miles
we found half-a-dozen varieties, the most frequent and
most effective near the rivers being the purple willow,
whose thin red stems, all speckled with young shoots of
72
March The Willow.
pale green, were brilliant in the first spring sunshine.
Then there was the sallow-willow, with its soft white
downy blossoms, and the brilliant silver of the osier
changing so beautifully, according to the direction in
which you look at it; for if you look in the direction
of the down it is silvery, but if against it, then you see
a delicate gray purple. This purple reddens later as
the anthers become visible, and finally turns to a
golden yellow with pollen, but the yellow is beautifully
moderated by being always on a gray ground. Hardly
any thing in Nature is more lovely than the round-eared
willow in full blossom, especially the glory of the male
tree, with the mingled, greenish gold on its flowers,
where the anthers make a sort of light golden filigree
on a ground of tender green. The female tree is much
less splendid, but her pale flowers are pleasant as young
foliage is, with their soft grayish verdure on which lies
no dust of gold. A little later in the season the com-
mon white willow is sufficiently leaved to show a delicate
green bloom in the distance when caught by the sun, but
when the sun is clouded the bloom seems to disappear,
and in certain positions relatively to the light the green
will be scarcely, if at all, visible. This adds much to
the liveliness and variety of the spring landscape, as the
color comes and goes under the sunshine and cloud,
adding greatly to our sense of motion and change in
Nature, a sense that some artists have had in great
strength, and even expressed verbally, which is rare
with them. There is nothing prettier in the natural
landscape than the appearance, and vanishing, and
March - Barbara's Song.
73
sudden reappearance of the fresh young green on wil-
lows, at a distance, as the light touches or abandons
them. We have something of the same kind, but more
sublime, in the evanescence and reappearance of crags
or knolls on the sides of all noble mountains, whose.
structure can never be quite accurately ascertained.
unless you can make models of them by tedious sur-
veys, and which cheat us and amuse us by endless alter-
ations and disguises.
XIV.
The Willow — Associated with Unhappiness — Desdemona — Barbara's
Song-Ophelia - The Willow cheerful in Itself -Cheerful use of
In Tennyson-In Virgil — Melody of the English Name
-The Latin Name The Italian Name - The French Name - In
Lamartine.
I
Willow
Ü
-
WONDER how it is that so cheerful-looking a tree.
as the willow should ever have become associated
with ideas of sadness. Yet the association was estab-
lished by the great poets long ago, and must have been
found by them already in the popular mind. It is es-
pecially connected with unhappiness in love, and unhap-
piness on the side of the woman when neglected and
forsaken. So Desdemona says,
'My mother had a maid called Barbara :
She was in love; and he she loved proved mad,
And did forsake her: she had a song of "willow;
An old thing 'twas, but it expressed her fortune,
And she died singing it.'
74
March — Ophelia.
Then Desdemona sings Barbara's song, with the refrain,-
'Sing willow, willow, willow;
Sing all a green willow must be my garland.
And in Hamlet,' when Shakspeare wishes to give
a poetical melancholy to the brook where Ophelia was
drowned, he introduces a willow in the very beginning
of the Queen's description, so that the word occurs in the
first verse, and is the first substantive in the verse:
'There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them :
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies, and herself,
Fell in the weeping brook.'
This association seems the more curious that the wil-
low is one of the lightest, liveliest, and most cheerful-
looking of all the trees that grow. There is nothing
funereal about its leaves either in form or color, and they
play in the wind like butterflies. See how well the tree
comes in when Tennyson uses it in the pleasant allegro
overture to the 'Lady of Shalott':
'Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver,
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.'
And how sweetly and cheerfully the willow occurs to
March — Cheerful Use of the Willow. 75
Virgil's mind in connection with a passage of pure con-
gratulation, as a tree whose flowers would be haunted by
the bees of Hybla: -
'Fortunate senex! hîc, inter flumina nota
Et fontes sacros, frigus captabis opacum!
Hinc, tibi, quæ semper vicino ab limite sepes
Hyblæis apibus florem depasta salicti
Sæpe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro.'
But what an advantage the English poets have over
all others in the melody of that sweet word 'willow'!
How beautifully it takes its place in verse,
so beauti-
fully that the mere repetition of it is music in itself.
6
'Sing willow, willow, willow.'
Virgil was not nearly so fortunate as Shakspeare
in this respect, for salictum is a word which can never
have any beauty of sound, though it may be made, of
course, to fit neatly into a Latin hexameter; neither is
salix any better for euphony. And even the great soft-
ening process which Latin underwent before it was
moulded into other languages has not very much im-
proved the word for poetry. Salce and salcio are both
harsh; and saule, though softer, is far inferior to willow
for syllabic melody. Here it is, for example: the word
occurs in some fine lines of Lamartine, but the adjective
which follows it is immeasurably more important in the
structure of the verse:-
'Là, contre la fureur de l'aquilon rapide
Le saule caverneux nous prêtait sọn tronc vide,
Et j'écoutais siffler dans son feuillage mort
Des brises dont mon âme a retenu l'accord.'
76
March-Changes in Foregrounds.
XV.
Perceptible Changes in Foregrounds - Honeysuckle - Yellow Iris
Fürze - Soapwort - Arum - The Names of the Periwinkle in dif-
ferent Languages The unfortunate English name, Periwinkle
Brilliant Contrasts in early Spring Viburnum Spindle-tree-
Precedence of Leaf or Flower Hawthorn and Blackthorn
A
M
- Oak.
LTHOUGH there is nothing at this early season.
which shows from a distance like the willow,
whose silvery catkins and tiny nascent leafage have
really an importance even in the general landscape,
still the foreground is beginning to decorate itself with
leaves that count for something, even before they are
fully grown or accompanied by their sweet sisters,
the flowers. The very tardiness of some plants gives
greater consequence to those which precede them by a
few weeks; for instance, the honeysuckle is a more im-
portant hedgeplant in March than it is two months later;
for when the hedges are bare of every thing but a few
incipient buds of thorn, or wide-apart scattered little
leaves of eglantine, it is a great thing to find the soft,
rather dark-green leaves of honeysuckle quite rich and
abundant, so much more abundant as it seems to us
than even in the height of summer, when they are lost
in the general profusion, and only the flowers attract
us by their color or their perfume. So by the edges
of streams, although the yellow iris is a fine attractive
plant at all times when it is visible, and most especi-
March - Yellow Iris.
77
ally so when it displays its regal flowers, still one
welcomes it in March with a new sense of its value
when the young pale-green blades stand straight out
of the water, their points about six inches above the
surface. There is, in truth, plenty to be seen in the
young vegetation of the foreground, and there are more
leaves everywhere than we think; but most of them
are so small yet that they escape attention individually,
and only please the eye in the mass by a general sense
of reviving greenness. So it is with the tiny green leaves
of furze, an innumerable multitude, which as yet, how-
ever, seem less numerous than its thorns. And there
are plants which will be of great size and splendor in
their maturity, and which have already quite a mature
look on a much smaller scale, so that any one who did
not know them would think they were satisfactory
enough already. The young soapwort is an example
of this; few young plants are better worth drawing,
for the leaves take curves almost as good as those of
fine naturally-dried leafage, and there is an interesting
transition of color from the fresh green of the well-
formed leaves down to purple near the root. Other
plants, which will never reach any great height or size,
are of consequence, because their leaves, though few in
number, and close to the ground, happen to be rela-
tively of rather large dimensions; such a plant is the
arum, which is often visible now in damp nooks with
more than a mere promise of verdure yet to come.
I have said something about the beauty of the
English word Willow. Other plants are less happy in
78
March-The Periwinkle.
their English names, and more fortunate in the names
that have been given them by other nations. For ex-
ample, there is that charming little spring flower which
is called in Latin the Vinca, or Pervinca, because it is
supposed to conquer (vincere, pervincere) either the
frosts of winter or some malady, whichever it may be,
for etymologists suggest both explanations. And now
for the changes that we have made in the Latin name.
The Italians, to begin with, have been in this instance
singularly conservative, and they call the flower pervinca
still; but the French have softened the word, and made
it more beautiful by changing it into pervenche. How
sweetly it occurs in the following verses, addressed by
a poet to a young lady who had captivated his admira-
tion!
'Je voudrais être la pervenche,
Qui joue avec tes noirs cheveux,
Ou ton beau miroir qui se penche,
Quand sur lui tu mires tes yeux.'
The English, on their part, have also deviated from
the Latin, but not, I think, with so happy a result. They
have changed pervinca into periwinkle, and I submit that
it is simply impossible to write about this flower in sen-
tences worthy of its charm and beauty when you have
to introduce such a barbarous word as that.* A poetical
lover might wish to be a violet or a rose, but he would
never, in written verse, have the temerity to wish he was
a periwinkle.
* I suppose the change must have come gradually, and through the
form pervinke, which Chaucer uses.
March-Spindle-Tree.
79
Early spring is not the season of the most brilliant
contrasts; but they occur occasionally, and may be
briefly alluded to in passing. You have the viburnum,
for instance, which in the late winter is so splendid in
its innumerable berries, with their jewel-like transparent
red. In early spring a good many of these berries remain,
and though their splendor is rather dimmed and faded
by this time in reality, it seems to be revived by the
effect of contrast, for the fresh green leaves have sprouted
amongst them. Another little tree, whose foliage sprouts
about the same time, is the spindle-tree, or fusain, which
one can never see without thinking of its two very oppo-
site uses. The charcoal from it is, it appears, especially
approved for the manufacture of the powder used in can-
nons, whilst at the same time artists prefer it for char-
coal-drawing. Both these two things cannon powder
and charcoal-drawing-have been immensely improved
of late years; so war and art, barbarism and civilization,
go on together yet as they did in old Greece, in old
Rome, in the Europe of the Middle Ages, and in the
time of the great Renaissance.
The mere precedence of flower before leaf, or leaf
before flower, is in itself quite sufficient to insure variety
in the early aspects of vegetation. It is illustrated by
many plants which might be paired together in this con-
nection as examples; but it is enough to mention two of
the commonest and best known, the hawthorn and the
blackthorn. The leaves of the hawthorn will be all
sprouting over it abundantly and rapidly covering the
hedge with their fresh light-green, probably rather in-
80
March-A Larch-Wood.
tensified by the contrast of a few old haws that may
linger yet from winter; whilst, at the same time, the
blackthorn will just begin to be abundantly dotted with
little white buds which, here and there, are bursting into
flower, the leaf-buds meanwhile, though contemporane-
ous, being of no visible importance, mere points compared
with the flower-buds. If the blackthorn were often an
isolated plant it would scarcely, in early spring, be a
cheerful-looking one, notwithstanding its abundant efflo-
rescence, for the eye desires a little green amidst so much
white and black; but, as it very frequently happens that
the hawthorn is not far off, this defect is fully compen-
sated by the green and leafy neighbor. Besides this,
in our scenery at least, you are never very far from an
oak, and last year's leaves still remain very abundantly,
offering another contrast which is not, I think, always
quite harmonious or agreeable, but which, at any rate,
is a variety.
XVI.
A Larch-Wood-Rosy Plumelets
Horse-Chestnut-Quince Tree
Ash-Walnut - Oak-Keys of Ash - Acacia - Elder - Privet ·
Bird-cherry
the Daffodil
-
Wild Gooseberry - Daffodil - Wordsworth's Poem on
Herrick's Poems on Daffodils - The Poet's Narcissus
The Legend of Narcissus καλὰ νάρκισσος
· Kаλù vúρkισσоs Keats - His Poem on
Narcissus.
B
Y far the most charming sight in the early spring
is however, to my taste, a larch-wood. There is
such a delightful mystery in it, just when the leaves begin
to sprout a pervading green-gray bloom, from the gray
March-Horse-Chestnut.
81
of the branches and trunks, and the delicate green of the
young leaves. Still more beautiful is it rather later,
when the rosy catkins come into being, as Tennyson
says, -
'When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,
And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ;
Or underneath the barren bush
Flits by the sea-blue bird of March.'
About this time, too, the leaves of the horse-chestnut
have pushed vigorously through their varnished scales,
and are now visible all wrapped together in a great
ogive bud, in softest cotton down. The quince-trees,
always interesting in one way or another, are especially
pretty at this time, for downy little pale leaves are com-
ing all over the tree in little clusters, each cluster almost
like a flower, the effect at a short distance being that
of a scattering of light-green points, as if a swarm of
small green butterflies had alighted on the tree. The
ash and walnut, like the oak, show no change as yet
at a distance, although the work of a new creation is
elaborating itself within their closed buds; but the
'keys' of the ash catch the sunshine strongly, and are
important and elegant from their vertical hanging -
a quality which never fails to add a certain grace to
trees whenever it occurs; as, for example, in the flowers
of the acacia and many others not so beautiful or con-
spicuous. The elder, privet, and bird-cherry tree all
advance simultaneously, and amongst the shrubs the
wild gooseberry is in great haste to clothe itself with
fresh green. This unpretending little shrub has been
6
82
March-Daffodils.
strangely unfortunate in being scientifically misnamed
ribes a name which the Arabs gave to an acid rhu-
barb, and a Frenchman by mistake applied to the wild.
gooseberry.*
But of all the plants that flourish at this season of
the year not one is equal to the daffodil in its splen-
dor of golden yellow on pale dusty basis of long green
leaves. The causes of the singular and almost blinding
intensity of the color are a gradation from semi-trans-
parent outward petals, which are positively greenish in
themselves, and still more so by transparence owing to
green leaves around, to the depth of yellow in the womb
of the flowers, where green influences are excluded, but
yellow ones multiplied by the number of the petals. So
in the heart the color is an intense orange ·cadmium,
not dark, but most intense a color that we remember
all the year round. Wordsworth found that this floral
splendor haunted him,-
'I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.'
It is well for our northern yellow daffodils that they
should be thus associated with one of the most beauti-
ful passages in which any poet has ever revealed to
us something of the working of his own memory and
*I allude to the Ribes Grossularia, sometimes called Ribes Uva-crispa,
the Gooseberry Ribes; not to the Ribes Rubrum, Ribes petræum, or Ribes
nigrum, various species of currant Ribes.
March — Herrick.
83
imagination. And then we have a very exquisite little.
poem by Herrick, in which he laments their too early
disappearance; a regret which has been felt by many
others who have loved the flower, yet never, it is prob-
able, expressed with such exquisite conciseness,-
'Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon.
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained its noon :
Stay, stay
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song,
And having prayed together we
Will go with you along.'
But of all the associations which are attached to our
golden narcissus, the most ennobling is its near relation-
ship to the 'poet's narcissus' of the Mediterranean, which -
bears a solitary flower of pure white, with a yellow crown
often edged with orange or crimson; and this is believed
to be the flower to which the beautiful Greek legend has
given the charm and interest which belong to imagina-
tive tradition, and to that alone. The different stories
of Narcissus agree in these particulars, that he contem-
plated the reflection of himself in the river Cephisus or
in a fountain, and afterwards became a flower, either
because his blood was changed into one after suicide,'
or because a flower grew beside his grave after he died
of sorrow for his twin sister, unheeding the charms of
Echo. The stories differ as to his reason for gazing
upon his own image; some say that he became enam-
84
March― Legend of Narcissus.
oured of it fancying it to be a water-nymph, and
others that he could not help looking at it because it
reminded him of the sister that he had loved too much
and lost. The popular impression seems to be that
Narcissus was a beautiful youth who simply admired
his own beauty, and gazed upon his form as it was
reflected in the smooth water, afterwards becoming a
flower on the river's brim, and continuing, as a flower,
the habit of self-admiration which he had contracted
in his human adolescence. This last interpretation, or
simplification, of the old legends, whose details it drops
altogether, is still very happily in accordance with the
genuine old Greek spirit, the spirit of a time when no
possessor of eminent physical beauty could remain un-
aware of a gift so much appreciated, but would see it
reflected, not only in the waters of the Cephisus or other
rivers, but in the admiring eyes of all Greek men and
women whenever he appeared in public. In any shape.
it is peculiarly an artist's legend, having so direct a ref-
erence to beauty, so that it has often been illustrated
by modern painters and sculptors. We do not feel very
grateful to those later classical writers who have been at
the pains to inform us that our kаλà váρкισσos (as The-
ocritus called it) has no especial association, with beauty,
and is not called so after the beautiful youth who was
beloved by Echo, but takes its name simply from váρêŋ,
or, vaρkáw, with reference to its narcotic properties. Was
the flower called váρrioσos before the legend existed,
and is the legend itself, as Keats imagined, simply the
beautiful fancy of some early poet who, in some deli-
March-Young Hemlock.
85
cious ramble,' found the flower looking at itself in the
water, and imagined for it the story that we know?
'And on the bank a lonely flower he spied,
A meek and forlorn flower, with nought of pride,
Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness,
To woo its own sad image into nearness :
Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move ;
But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love.
So while the poet stood in this sweet spot,
Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot,
Nor was it long ere he had told the tale
Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo's bale.'
Young Hemlock
XVII.
Socrates Authorized Suicides
The Death of
Socrates - Peach-bloom- Apricot Blossoms Value of Old Walls.
TH
HERE is a corner of a neglected old garden at the
Val Ste. Véronique in which grows a certain plant
very abundantly, that inevitably reminds us of an ancient
philosopher. Towards the end of March it is all carpeted
with young hemlock, which at this stage of its existence
lies almost perfectly flat upon the ground, and covers it
with one of the most minutely beautiful designs that can
possibly be imagined; the delicate division and sub-
division of the fresh green leaves making a pattern that
would be fit for some small room, if a skilful manu-
facturer copied it. Our own hemlock is believed to be
identical with that which caused the death of Socrates,
86
March-Socrates.
but its action in northern countries is much feebler than
in the warmer climate of the Mediterranean. The Athe-
nians added poppy-juice to the infusion of hemlock, that
the approach of death might be painless; and it is said
by Valerius Maximus that the civil authorities of Mar÷
seilles kept a supply of this drink always ready for
weary ones who had obtained the permission of the
Senate to lay down the burden of existence. Those in-
deed were waters of oblivion; and it is astonishing how
easily, in certain conditions of society, men have come
to look on death as a deliverer, to be invoked whenever
life is felt to be unpleasantly painful, or even simply
ennuyeuse. But the death of Socrates, half voluntary,
was grander than their death which was wholly volun-
tary. His dignity seemed to him incompatible with
flight, and he awaited the fatal cup with that perfect
mental clearness which is so well known to us. He died
for having preached the philosophy of the conscience,
which the Athenians instinctively felt to be opposed to
the antique religion of the State, however careful he
might be in external conformity to its rites.*
In the same old abandoned garden where the hem-
lock grows on the walls there remain a few fruit-trees,
* 'En vain prenait-il soin d'assister à toutes les fêtes et de prendre
part aux sacrifices; ses croyances et ses paroles démentaient sa con-
duite. Il fondait une religion nouvelle, qui était le contraire de la relig-
ion de la cité. On l'accusa avec vérité "de ne pas adorer les dieux
que l'état adorait." On le fit périr pour avoir attaqué les coutumes et
les croyances des ancêtres, ou, comme on disait, pour avoir corrompu
la génération présente.' La Cité antique, by M. FUSTEL DE COU-
LANGES.
March-Apricot Blossoms.
87
and amongst these some peaches and apricots. They
are in full bloom towards the end of March, and of all
the beautiful sights to be seen at this time of the year
I know of none to be compared to these old peach-trees
with their wealth of rosy bloom, which would be beauti-
ful in any situation, but is so especially in this because
there happen to be some mellow-tinted walls behind
them, the very background that a painter would delight
in. There is some pretty coloring in the apricot blos-
soms, on account of the pink calyx and the pinkish brown
of the young twigs, which has an influence on the effect,
but the peach is incomparably richer; and after the
grays of wintry trees and wintry skies the sight is glad-
dened beyond measure by the flush of peach-blossom
and the blue of the clear spring heaven. But to enjoy
these two fresh and pure colors to the utmost we need
some quiet coloring in the picture, and nothing supplies
this better than such old walls as those of the monastic
buildings at the Val Ste. Véronique; walls that Nature
has been painting in her own way for full four hundred
years, with the most delicate changes of gray and brown
and dark gleamings of bronze and gold. There is some-
thing, too, which gratifies other feelings than those of
simple vision in the renewal of the youth of Nature,
contrasting with the steady decay of any ancient human
work; and in the contrast, between her exquisiteness,
her delicacy, her freshness, as exhibited in a thing so
perfect as a fresh peach-blossom, with its rosy color, its
almond-perfume, its promise of luscious fruit,— and the
roughness of all that man can do, even at his best.
88
March-Little Fields.
XVIII.
Scenery round the Val Ste. Véronique - Little Fields - Oxen and
Horses Ploughing with Oxen - Example for the Intellectual-
How a Peasant Ploughed - Beautiful Grouping - Splendor of the
Ploughshare Polish of Labor Independence and Dignity of
p
M
Ploughmen Resolute Will and Strength needed in Ploughing.
IT
T is one of the most striking peculiarities of the
scenery around the Val Ste. Véronique, that al-
though the country is almost entirely covered with dense
forest, and although the land is a sea of hills with nar-
row valleys between them, there are here and there lit-
tle patches of it in full tillage, and these are often placed
in the most unlikely situations. You will occasionally
come upon a little field, islanded in the forest, and
occupying very likely just the most awkward bit of
steeply-sloping hillside that is to be found there, and
yet this little field will be ploughed and sown with the
utmost diligence and affection. I know two or three
such places, which not only are on a most inconvenient
slope to begin with, but have also on their own sur-
face a variety of minor inconveniences, in the shape of
miniature hills and valleys, or lumps and holes, which
seem as if they would baffle the most ingenious plough-
man who ever` stood behind a team of oxen. With
horses, it is unnecessary to observe, such work as this
would be simply an impossibility. The heaviest and
most sluggish breed of horses in the world would still
March-Ploughing with Oxen.
89
:
be far too impatient for a kind of labor which is as try-
ing to the patience of animals as if it were expressly
contrived to irritate and torment them. The oxen go.
through it in their own inimitably firm and patient way,
often dragging the plough against a slope so steep that
merely to climb it, without dragging any thing at all,
would be in itself an exhausting kind of labor, yet keep-
ing up to their work always steadily and well, as if they,
were inwardly sustained by the firmest sense of duty.
Such is the difficulty of the ground that a light plough
requires six oxen to work it, and often eight. There
is a certain field on a hillside visible from the Val Ste.
Véronique which especially interests me when the farmer
is ploughing it, which he does so conscientiously that his
example would be excellent if transferred to the intel-
lectual sphere; and many a student, who finds the
ground before him irregular and arduous, would do well
to imitate that thoroughness which will leave no corner
of it untilled. There is one place which interested me
most especially, a sort of cup or hollow just on the edge
of the field, so that the forest advanced into the very
middle of it, and you could not go down one slope and
up the other, which would have been comparatively con-
venient, but must necessarily, if you would plough the
place at all, take your team of oxen straight into the hol-
low, then turn them, and bring them out again up a slope
as steep as a house-roof. Would the peasant attempt
this? I watched him the first day to see what he would
do, but the question was very soon decided. He took
his eight oxen straight over the edge of the hole, down
90
March — Beautiful Grouping.
into the bottom of it, where they were huddled in tem-
porary confusion, then calling them by their names got
them into order and bravely ploughed his way out again.
This he repeated till the sides of the hole were as well
ploughed as any other part of his little field, and the
groupings of his eight oxen when they got into it, with
their grandly strenuous labor as they were getting out
of it, were well worth the study of an animal-painter.
The clear early sunshine cast them into strong light and
shadow, and the creamy white of the oxen was splendid
against the dark reds and yellows of the earth.
That word 'splendid' which I have used just now,
without especially thinking about it, reminds me of the
right and accurate employment of the same word by
Virgil with reference to a ploughshare. His 'sulco at-
tritus (incipiat) splendescere vomer' is just one of those
touches which show an artist's sense of what has been
called the poetry of common things. Anybody can see
that the Shah's diamonds are splendid, and perhaps the
most essentially vulgar minds are the most likely to be
strongly impressed by a splendor so much associated
with great pecuniary value; but only an artist or poet
would notice the shining of a common agricultural im-
plement. And yet few things in the world are more
resplendent than a well-used ploughshare as it catches
the glory of the sunshine; and it may be doubted whether
even the glitter of martial steel can awaken more poetical
associations. It is a fine sight to see a flash of sunshine
run along a restless line of bayonets, or on the burnished
helmets of some emperor's regiment of guards; but a
March-Polish of Labor.
91
true poet would be set dreaming just as surely by the
polish of the ploughshare a polish not due to any in-
tentional scheming about effect, but simply a proof of
labor, like that noble polish which comes of itself upor
the laborious human mind when it has toiled in the in-
tellectual fields. The mere fact that Virgil noticed the
shining of a ploughshare nineteen hundred years ago is
of itself a poetical association, as Thomson felt when he
wrote:
'Such themes as these the rural Maro sang
To wide imperial Rome, in the full height
Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined.
In ancient times, the sacred plough employ'd
The kings and awful fathers of mankind.
And some, with whom compared, your insect tribes
Are but the beings of a summer's day,
Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm
Of mighty war; then, with victorious hand
Disdaining little delicacies, seized
The plough, and greatly independent lived.'
'I was bred to the plough,' wrote Burns, and am in-
dependent;' the two ideas of ploughing and indepen-
dence connecting themselves together very easily, in
part perhaps because the ploughman whilst he works
is not commanded by another, but is lord of his own
team, and guides his own implement as it makes the
long furrow in the earth. There is certainly a great
dignity in the grand old agricultural operations; so
much dignity, indeed, that they are compatible with the
grandest traditions of religious or political history. One
is tempted to avoid the allusion to Cincinnatus because
92
March-Strength needed in Ploughing.
it is so familiar to every one, but I may observe that
the very familiarity of it, the universality of its recep-
tion and preservation in the memory of the cultivated
world, is the proof that we have an ideal sense of a cer-
tain harmony and compatibility between the dignity of
ploughing and the dignity of government which finds its
satisfaction in the story of that worthy Roman. And
I think the true dignity and grandeur of this labor is
never so conspicuous as it is under circumstances such
as those which I have just now attempted to describe,
when the earth to be subdued is so difficult and rebel-
lious, and it is necessary to have a strong team of six
or eight well-trained oxen thoroughly under command.
Think of the long hours from early dawn to sunset, with
the incessant exercise of resolute will and strong, con-
trolling arm on the plough-handle; a guidance needing
far more strength than that of the seaman's tiller, whilst
the team of animals is not so mechanically obedient as
the unresisting ship! Steadily they all go forward to-
gether, team and plough and ploughman, through wind
and calm, through shine or shower, and still the iron
coulter turns up the heavy soil, resisting always, and
always resisting vainly!
March-Sowing.
93
Sowing-Its sublime Trust
XIX.
Spiritual Sowing - Parable of the Sower
- Intellectual Sowing-Our Age more favorable to it than other Ages
An Old Peasant- The First Sower-The First Cultivator of the
Cereals - Roman Bread-Our Ignorance of our earliest Benefactors.
OF
F at least equal dignity is the great religious act of
sowing, with its sublime well-grounded confidence.
in the natural repayment of what we wisely trust to
Nature. We are so familiar with this act of confidence
that the meaning of it is almost lost to our apprehension,
yet man's trust in the order of the universe is never more
grandly proved than when he goes forth from some poor
house where the children have scanty bread, and carries
the precious grain and scatters it on the ground. There
is another kind of sowing on which it is not always
possible to have such secure reliance, because it is so
difficult to know accurately the condition of the soil.
He who sows corn sows it in earth that can be analyzed,
and agricultural chemistry can tell him with great
certainty what may be his chances of success; but who
knows the minds of nations and their chemistry? who
can tell whether the most precious seed-thoughts of
philosophy will lie utterly unproductive or yield illimit-
able harvests? The condition of that soil varies from
year to year; one year you might as well sow corn on
94
March-Intellectual Sowing.
icebergs as trust any living thought to the deadly cold-
ness of the world, and yet a few years later this same
world will be no longer an iceberg but good earth wait-
ing for the seed. We all of us know the parable of
the sower, how 'the sower soweth the word' by the
wayside, and on stony ground, and amongst thorns,
and finally on good ground also. That is the way the
preacher sows his doctrine, and in every age from the day
when that parable was first spoken the preacher has had
exactly those chances of success. But it is not quite the
same in the intellectual sphere, for here the soil itself all
changes together, and in one age it will be all stones or
thorns, whilst in another it will be good ground ready
for the reception of great thoughts or astonishing
discoveries. And whatever may be the faults of the
age in which we live, whatever may be the crudeness,
rawness, uncouthness, of our half-developed industrial
system with the unpleasant forms of human life which
it has made discouragingly conspicuous, one thing at
least may be boldly advanced in defence of it; namely,
that it is incomparably more favorable than any age
that has preceded it to the sowing of the seeds of
knowledge.
There is an old peasant near the Val Ste. Véronique
whom I like to see especially at this time of the year.
He is very tall and thin, with large bones, and a white
head carried high with natural dignity. When he walks
steadily along the furrow, casting the seed with that
regular motion of the hand and arm which comes from
years of practice, I look at him and think that, of all the
March - The First Sower.
95
great works that ancient tradition has handed down to
us, there is none more full of majesty than this. The
old man has sown crops that were harvested long ago,
and his fathers before him have done this also for un-
numbered generations. When the legions of Cæsar
swept through the country in pursuit of the Helvetii,
there were great granaries in the hill-fortresses that the
Gauls had filled from their well-cultivated cornfields.
In what far Eastern land, I wonder, did the sower first
go forth to sow? And what keen-minded, far-seeing,
early discoverer, aided by no hint from Science, first con-
ceived the notion of cultivating those utterly unpromising
gramina which were shortly to become corn, and wheat,
and barley? Nobody knows how long the human race
used the cereal grasses before the clever bakers found
out at last the art of making what we call a loaf of bread.
It was nearly six hundred years after the foundation of
Rome when the Roman bakers developed their art to a
degree before undreamed of, and produced what at that
time was a novelty and a luxury, but is to us a matter of
primary necessity. Before that they made bread indeed,
but of the sort that was eaten by the besieged Parisians,
with bits of straw and awns in it; and soldiers on the
march carried a sack of ill-ground flour, that they mixed
with water when they came to a spring or stream. We
know nothing of the first discoverers, humanity's earliest
benefactors, but not the least among them were the
discoverers of the cereals. The author of Lothair' did
well to remind us of what we forget so easily — the merits
of discoverers whose discoveries have been long familiar.
(
96
March - The Common Reed.
We think that nothing can be more natural than the
growth of the cereals, but it is not so: the wild grasses
with tiny uneatable seeds, these are natural, and not the
nourishing cereals.
XX.
The Common Reed-Music of Reeds - Pan and a Reedy Stream
Sadness of the Willow and of Reeds-Tennyson's use of them
Song of the Dying Swan - 'The Morte d'Arthur'— Association of
Reeds with a dreary Scene - Mrs. Browning's Association of Reeds
with the Sacrifice of the Poet to his Art-Associations of noble
Utility Various practical uses of Reeds The Reed's Motto - The
·
lesson of the Reed not very noble - Pascal's comparison of man to
a Reed.
A
MONGST the good gifts of Nature which have
needed absolutely no amelioration by human
care or culture, one of the best and handsomest is the
common reed, and March is its harvest-time. There
is hardly any thing in Nature more delicately beautiful
than some damp corner where the reeds have grown un-
disturbed, and turned finally to that pale reed-yellow, a
tint far exceeding in refinement the golden hues of straw.
The long lanceolate leaves seem like fairy papyrus, on
which some elfin bard might indite his exquisite inven-
tions, and the tall stalks rustle together as the cool March
wind blows through them, and the sound is very sad and
melancholy; because although the glorious spring is
coming, when the earth will be covered with flowers,
March — Music of Reeds.
97
these last year's reeds will never be green again, and
they watch the spring as old people watch sadly some
festival of youth. Their music is not unknown to thee,
great Pan !
'Who lovest to see the hamadryads dress
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken,
And through whole solemn hours dost sit and hearken
The dreary melody of bedded reeds
In desolate places, where dark moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth,
Bethinking thee how melancholy loth
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx.'
And in another poem by Keats, where Pan and a
reedy stream both recur to his fancy, we have in the
space of four lines a strong expression of pity, with
weeping, sighing, and desolation: -
'Poor Nymph
poor Pan
- how did we weep to find
Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind
Along the reedy stream! a half-heard strain,
Full of sweet desolation, balmy pain.'
As the willow is associated with the sadness of dis-
appointed lovers-
'The willow, worne of fornlorne paramours
so whenever the poets speak of reeds, it is in connection
with dreariness or weariness of some kind, and always
to give sadness to the landscape. This may be because
no plant answers so exactly to our idea of ghosts as
reeds do when they stand still in their places, so changed
and pale, when the sap no longer flows, and a phantom
7
98
March — Tennyson's
Tennyson's use of Reeds.
of their former self remains, all ghastly in the twilight.
So Tennyson says:-
'Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.'
And farther on in the same poem the song of the
dying swan is associated with
'The wavy swell of the soughing reeds.'
And in the Morte d'Arthur,' where the poet has
sought every circumstance which could heighten the ef-
fect of melancholy sublimity, the dark strait of barren
land,' the sea-wind singing 'shrill, chill, with flakes of
foam,'' the winter moon,' he has not failed to remem-
ber the poetical use of reeds :
'Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd
There in the many-knotted waterflags
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.
And a few lines farther on,
""I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag.”
To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale,
"Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name.
This reference to the reeds occurs a second time with
the effect of a mournful refrain:
'Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily,
"What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard?"
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere,
"I heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds."
Even in Mrs. Browning's fine little poem, 'A Musical
1
March-Associations of Utility. 99
Instrument,' there is an undertone of regretful melan-
choly. The 'great god Pan' goes down in the reeds
by the river,' and hacks and hews at them till he has
got the material for his instrument; but then comes the
deeper meaning of the poem-the regret that poetical
culture and discipline should so isolate us from the
common world; and pray just observe how sadly sweet
are the final cadences of the verse, and how much the
sadness is aided by our old association of melancholy
with reeds-
'Yet half a beast is the great god Pan
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man.
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,
For the reed that grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river."
Reeds have many associations of utility as well as
poetry. The reed-pen, still used by a few artists and
greatly valued by them on account of its qualities as an
instrument for powerful and picturesque design, was in
the early centuries of our era universally employed by
authors and transcribers, so that the plant has been a
servant both to literature and art, and has the dignity
which belongs to every instrument of culture.* Besides
these delicate uses, the reed has aided the early steps
of civilization by providing its first requisite, — a roof;
and a requisite only secondary to that, opáyµa, a fence,
*To this might be added some reference to the papyrus of antiq-
uity, which was the leaf of the Nile reed, so that this plant has supplied
both pens and paper.
100
March- The Reed's Motto.
so that botanists have called it Arundo Phragmites.
The moralists, on their part, have found the reed
extremely useful as an illustration of weakness and in-
stability, which may however save itself by a timely
yielding to forces that cannot be resisted. The reed's
motto is given with the neatest brevity by Lafontaine:
'Je plie, et ne romps pas.'.
But although the reed in the fable had practically the
advantage over the oak that the wind uprooted, and al-
though worldly prudence always counsels us to do as
the reed did, and bend, still it may be observed that
the reed's lesson is not a very noble one, and that hu-
manity scarcely requires it, being only too ready to bow
before every breath that assumes the tone of authority.
And it may be observed, farther, that whatever political
liberty, and whatever intellectual light, may be at pres-
ent enjoyed by the most advanced nations of the world,
are due to exceptional men, who had much more of
the oak in them than the reed; men who often paid
their resistance with their life, but who were not fail-
ures, since their example has bequeathed fortitude to
their successors. Pascal said, 'L'homme n'est qu'un
roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est un rcseau
pensant. Surely, however, the thinkers are of robuster
quality than that.
April-Play of Light and Shadow. ΙΟΙ
XXI.
April- Play of Light and Shadow - Genuine April Weather — Hills
in April Weather - The Willow in April-Streams in April - Con-
stable-His observation about Clouds - His Affection for the
Spring-time Chaucer - His wonderful Passion for Landscape
His description of Spring - The Draba Verna - Figwort Ranun-
culus Wordsworth's Poem on the Little Celandine - Buttercups
-The Lesser Celandine in Decay - Unresisting nature of Decay
in Plants Resistance to Decay in Men - Beautiful Association of
the name Celandine.
IT
T happened that the month of April opened with
April's own characteristic weather. March had
ended with a gray sky through which sunshine filtered,
as it were, in a way much more trying to the strongest
eyesight than the intensest glare of summer. All Nature
was a picture of the most various and delicate grays, with
fresh green sparingly scattered; a sort of coloring quite
peculiar to the season and full of a quiet charm, when
we are in a mood quiet enough to enjoy it. But the
first of April brought with it a perfect revolution.
Instead of the almost uniform gray sky, broken only by
gleams of semi-transparence in the universal cloud-
canopy, we had now separate clouds, having a magnifi-
cent individuality, and sunshine in perfect though tem-
porary splendor. No weather is, to my feeling, so
delightful as this genuine April weather. The play of
light and shadow, so rapid in its transitions, so powerful
102
April — Hills in April Weather.
in the suddenness of its unexpected yet most effective
contrasts, would of itself be a subject of inexhaustible
interest in any country where the landscape is not too
irremediably dull for any thing to make it lively; but
this is not all. In genuine April weather you have not
only the play of light and shadow, but that of mystery
and definition, caused by the frequent showers, which
pass before the hills at one time with the half-trans-
parence of a veil, at another with the opacity of a curtain ;
so that it is hardly possible to find any considerable
extent of hill-scenery of which one part will not be in
the clearest definition that brilliant sunshine and a pure
atmosphere can give to it, whilst another will be in
purple shadow, and a third paled by a light-gray shower.
It is a season, too, which will give to ordinary hill-sce-
nery much of the life and glory of the true mountains.
A forest-covered colline, which in summer is simply a
rising land of rather sombre green, with a monotonous
outline on a blue sky, becomes, under the lively effects.
of April, as rich in purple and blue, and silvery grays of
distance, as a mountain-range in the north of Scotland.
Nothing can exceed the vivacity and brilliance of these
effects in April, and their brilliance is heightened to the
utmost by the freshness of the unsullied greens in the
foreground, which are made splendid by the glittering
varnish of the rain. This is the time of the willow's
pride and glory. He is as yet almost alone amongst
the trees, and begins the concert of the year with a
delicate and tender solo, to which we are all sure to
listen; and he is sustained by an accompaniment of
+
April-Constable.
103
purple background, with such variations of sunshine that
his singing, not naturally of the strongest, is made to
seem quite powerful for the time. All the streams, too,
are in a season of prosperity; for although they are
rather swollen by frequent showers, they run plentifully
but not foully as they did in winter, and all their little
islets are like emeralds with the new grass that the clear
water refreshes as it flows past them.
It is impossible to watch the effects of April without
thinking of a painter who loved and understood them
better than any other, and who painted them in all
their freshness at a time when the connoisseurship of
all Europe was in the brown stage of art-criticism, and
liked nothing so much as thickly-varnished old canvases,
so obscure that it was not always easy to distinguish
what the artist had intended to represent. Constable
said that he preferred spring to autumn, in which I find
it difficult to agree with him; but as he loved the spring
pre-eminently he studied it earnestly, which landscape-
painters who pass the season in great cities have few
opportunities for doing. There is a description of an
engraving from one of Constable's pictures of Spring,
written by the artist himself, which is well worth quoting
for its truth of observation about clouds. 'It may per-
haps,' he says, 'give some idea of one of those bright
and silvery days in the spring, when at noon large
garish clouds, surcharged with hail or sleet, sweep with
their broad shadows the fields, woods, and hills; and
by their depths enhance the value of the vivid greens
and yellows so peculiar to the season. The natural
104
April-Chaucer.
history, if the expression may be used, of the skies,
which are so particularly marked in the hail-squalls at
this time of the year, is this: the clouds accumulate in
very large masses, and from their loftiness seem to move
but slowly; immediately upon these large clouds appear
numerous opaque patches, which are only small clouds
passing rapidly before them, and consisting of isolated
portions detached probably from the larger cloud. These,
floating much nearer the earth, may perhaps fall in with
a stronger current of wind, which, as well as their com-
parative lightness, causes them to move with greater
rapidity; hence they are called by wind-millers and
sailors messengers, and always portend bad weather.
They float midway in what may be termed the lanes
of the clouds; and from being so situated are almost
uniformly in shadow, receiving a reflected light only
from the clear blue sky immediately above them. In
passing over the bright parts of the large clouds they
appear as dark; but in passing the shadowed parts
they assume a gray, a pale, or a lurid hue.'
Notwithstanding Constable's passionate affection for
the spring-time, and the advantage of possessing an eye
that had been educated by the constant practice of art,
it may be doubted whether he felt its influences more
keenly than did a great early English poet, who had
been influenced by no such general appreciation of the
beautiful in Nature as that which exists (or seems to
exist) in modern society, and is so continually stimulated
by modern writers and artists. It is truly amazing that
a poet situated as Chaucer was situated, who had seen
April- His Description of Spring.
105
no landscape art but such as existed in the backgrounds.
of illuminated manuscripts or the sylvan scenery of
hunting-pieces in mediæval tapestry, who had read no
literature in which the landscape sentiment was more
developed than it is in the Eclogues of Virgil, should.
have felt as Chaucer felt, and seen what he perceived..
I do not mean that he wrote from the landscape-painter's
point of view, for that has only been done by quite
recent poets, and the attempt has in most instances been
injurious to their compositions as literature, which is not
painting, and ought not to imitate painting; but I mean,
that to any one who thoroughly realizes what Chaucer's
situation was, it must be matter of astonishment that he
loved Nature with such intensity. There is a sort of
quiet enjoyment of Nature in the classical pastorals..
Theocritus and Virgil evidently liked a country life, and
they mention different kinds of trees and shrubs, and a
few flowers, with a tranquil contentment that occasion-
ally becomes almost affectionate; but they have nothing.
like Chaucer's passion. The note of the following ex-
tract from 'The Flower and the Leaf' may, it is true,
seem delicate and tender rather than passionate, yet its
tenderness is passion in repose:
'When shoures sweet of raine descended soft,
Causing the grounde fele times and oft
Up for to give many an wholesome aire,
And every plaine was clothed faire
'With new grene, and maketh small floures
To springen here and there in field and mede,
So very good and wholesome be the shoures
106
April- The Draba Verna.
That it renueth what was old and dede
In winter time; and out of every sede
Springeth the hearbe, so that every wight
Of this season waxeth glad and light.'
If from the 'small floures' of Chaucer we descend
to particulars, and ask of what 'small floures' the verse
at once reminds us, I think we can hardly fail to re-
member the common Draba, or Draba verna, which is
both small and early, and as pretty in its elegant humility
as many little plants that happen to be more popularly
known. Tiny as it is, with stalks just strong enough to
carry its little pods and flowers, and not burdened by
any leaves, for they lie on the ground about its root, it
still has an appreciable effect on the color of an April
foreground, which it powders with white like a hail-
shower, and even at a distance it will make the green of
a pasture grayer. The power of small plants in the
coloring of landscape is often forced upon the attention
of artists, and there are many remarkable examples of it
in different parts of the world. The Draba does not
strike the eye as it would if the flower were scarlet or
bright blue, but it has its influence nevertheless as a
moderator of crude greens.
A much more important spring flower in size and
splendor is the Figwort Ranunculus, which, happily
for its reputation, possessed a much prettier and more
musical name; probably the great motive that induced
Wordsworth to write about it. The rose might smell as
sweetly by another name, and yet not occur so favor-
ably to the euphony of verse. Wordsworth, in a foot-
April- The Celandine.
107
note, called the Figwort Ranunculus 'common pilewort,'
but he was extremely careful not to call it so in the
stanzas of the poem itself.
Hear how prettily the
poetical name ends the first stanza:
'Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises ;
Long as there's a sun that sets
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.'
And again, the last stanza but one:
'Ill befall the yellow flowers,
Children of the flaring hours!
Buttercups that will be seen
Whether we will see or no;
Others, too, of lofty mien;
They have done as worldlings do,
Taken praise that should be thine,
Little, humble Celandine!'
It is curious what a hold this flower seems to have
taken on Wordsworth's affections. He wrote three poems
about it, two in the rather jingling measure of the stanzas
just quoted, and a third, of far more serious tone and
deeper meaning, in a measure adapted to the expression
of earnest thought; and so closely does the noble sadness.
of these stanzas associate itself with the flower by which
they were suggested, that it is impossible for any one
who has read Wordsworth as poetry ought to be read,
108
April- The Celandine in Decay.
not to remember them when he sees the Lesser Celandine
in her decay.
'But lately, one rough day this Flower I passed,
And recognized it, though an altered form,
Now standing forth an offering to the blast
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.
I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,
"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold,
This neither is its courage nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.
The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay."
Surely in all the range of poetry there is no finer and
truer description of the real nature of decay — that there
is no courage in it, nor choice, but only necessity and
helplessness yet in the association with old age in man,
which occupies the concluding stanza of this poem, one
cheering consideration is omitted, that the note of melan-
choly might be wholly unrelieved. It is certain that by
courage and strength of will men really can resist, for
long years, some of the worst evils of old age, and at
least one happy consequence of the modern feeling de
senectute (so different from Cicero's) is that men not only
try to keep themselves young, but actually succeed for a
very long time in doing so. In the vegetable world there
is neither courage, nor choice, nor effort, but only sub-
mission. The plant is rooted in its place, and can seek
no shelter against the weather, nor any protection against
its enemies, neither can it strengthen by voluntarily di-
rected nervous force the resisting power of stalk or
branch. We are so much accustomed to that old artifice ·
April- The Name Celandine.
109
of the poets, so suitable to the childish condition of the in-
tellect, by which they attribute human feelings to the oak
and reed, to rose and lily, that we have a difficulty in realiz-
ing the true nature of a plant's existence. And yet there
is poetry in the truth also, as my last quotation proves.
The Lesser Celandine attracts us by scattering a little
bright gold on the earth so early in the season, but its
yellow is neither more modest nor more beautiful than
that of the later flowers that Wordsworth playfully sacri-
ficed at the shrine of his early favorite. It is evident,
however, that in addition to its sweetly-sounding name,
the poet found another attraction in the Lesser Celandine
the idea of connecting his own fame with that of the
flower permanently, and of conferring fame upon what
had been hitherto unnoticed; an idea that has always
been pleasing to poets, from Horace downwards. Words-
worth does not appear to have remembered that the name
which pleased him by its music is associated with, and
even derived from, the name of one of the most beautiful
and poetical of the birds. Celandine is a corruption of
the French chélidoine, which in Italian is chelidonia or
celidonia, in Latin chelidonium, in Greek xeλdóviov, from
Xeλidov a swallow.* Opinions differ as to the reason
*The classical reader may remember the beautiful passage in
the thirteenth idyl of Theocritus, where Hylas goes down to the
fountain to fetch water for the heroes who are eating. Several plants
are mentioned by name : -
Περὶ δὲ θρύα πολλὰ πεφύκει
Κυάνεόν τε χελιδόνιον, χλοερόν τ' ἀδιάντον,
Καὶ θάλλοντα σέλινα, καὶ εἱλιτενὴς άγρωστις.
Liddell and Scott suggest that Kvávɛóv (which presents a little
110
April- The Common Primrose.
why the Greeks associated the celandine with the swal-
low; some say that it is because the celandine* (not
the lesser) comes when the swallows come, and stays
as long as they remain with us; but others affirm that it
is because the swallow used the plant (in which a caustic
juice circulates like blood) to give sight to her little
Be this as it may, the plant takes her name from
ones.
the bird.
XXII.
The Common Primrose - Nooks where the Primrose grows - Etymology
- Beauty of Primrose Yellow-Cowslip and Oxslip Influence of
Agriculture upon Landscape -French Dislike to Solitude-Nature
and the Farmers - Wheat-fields in April - A flowering Rape-field
Gentians and Heather -The Blackthorn - Its Chilling Effect -
Leafless Oaks.
A
MUCH more delicately beautiful flower is the
common primrose, but her praises have been sung
so often that it is difficult in this century to say any thing
of her that can be either new or interesting. Still, if we
can say nothing that is new, there is always a delightful
novelty, not unpleasantly mingled with half-melancholy
difficulty, as there is no positive blue about the plant) may have
stood for yλavкóv; and this is the more probable that the under-
side of the leaves might be accurately described by the latter
adjective.
* The Figwort Ranunculus, which Wordsworth wrote about, has
scarcely any thing in common with the true Celandine but the color
and the name. The two plants do not even belong to the same
family botanically. The figwort belongs to the Ranunculacea, and
the true celandine to the Papaveracea.
April-Beauty of Primrose Yellow. III
reminiscences of by-gone years, in the sensation of
meeting with primroses for the first time in the spring,
especially if they happen to be in great rich clusters, in
some corner where we come upon them unexpectedly.
There are several nooks in the Val Ste. Véronique which
the primroses have elected for their homes, particularly
one place between the rivulet and a great wild cherry-
tree, where there must be two or three thousand of these
flowers. Prima veris, first of the spring, primevère, and
first not only in the sense that it is earliest, but first also
in the perfection of its loveliness, if you think only of
the delicate corolla, and not of the great coarse leaves,
which seem as if they had been put there for nothing but
to make us feel the exquisiteness of the pale corolla
more completely. That corolla is the perfection of
Nature's yellow, for it shows all the delicacy the color
is capable of; and if you seek that coloring elsewhere,
you need not look for it on the earth, but may haply find
it once in a twelvemonth in the purity of the clear heaven
after sunset. The bees are glad when the primroses.
bloom in the grassy hollows, and they come to them from
far, well knowing that there is honey down in the tube
of the one soft beautiful petal. And whilst the primroses
live in great companies in the shady places that suit them
best, the cowslip and oxslip, their very near relations, live
out in the meadows and pastures, over which also the
bees range at this time very busily.
The influence of agriculture upon landscape is one
of those questions which force themselves irresistibly
upon our attention when we think about art and Nature.
II 2
April-French Dislike to Solitude.
The
There are two quite opposite schools amongst artists and
poets in reference to this rather difficult and complicated
subject. Constable was entirely on the side of agricul-
ture, and plainly said that he liked the fields the farmers.
worked in, and the work they did in them; in short, the
Nature that Constable loved best was Nature modified
by man, and so he painted a well-cultivated country
with villages and mills, and village-steeples seen over the
hedges and between the permitted trees. This feeling
about Nature is a very common one in France, where
people will often tell you that such a place 'is delightful
for its scenery—you can count the steeples of eight vil-
lages, and you cannot drive two miles in any direction
without passing either a village or a country-house.'
essence of this feeling is the dislike to solitude, and a
sense of oppression when not relieved either by the com-
panionship of man or by visible evidence of his presence.
On the other hand there have been several modern land-
scape-painters, and a few writers, who believe in wild
Nature as an article of faith, being persuaded that nothing
that occurs in unspoiled Nature' can by any possibility
be defective from the artistic point of view-a dogma
of natural religion which is seductive by reason of its
simplicity, and because it offers what man so much de-
sires, an infallible authority and guide. But supposing
that a thinker were to approach this subject armed with
a good deal of artistic taste and experience, yet not in
the least inclined to pin his faith to any absolute dogma
on one side or the other, what would he be likely to
decide? He would say most probably that both Nature
April- Wheat-fields in April.
113
and the farmers often made arrangements which might
be good and reasonable on the solid earth that we in-
habit, but which, for the clearest artistic reasons, would
be perfectly intolerable in a picture; and such an opinion
would be compatible with the profoundest reverence for
the Divine arrangements, and a sincere respect for the
useful work of agriculture. The material world was not
made exclusively for the purpose of being painted; it
has other uses, and there may be some incompatibility
between those other uses and the exigencies of artistic
color or composition. Who would venture to paint a
wheat-field at the beginning of April? Its intense crude.
green may be in itself agreeable as a refreshing change
after the grays and browns of winter, but it harmonizes
with nothing else in the landscape, and the quantity of
it is unmanageably great for a color of such intensity.
And if a wheat-field is too dangerous to be thought of,
what shall we say to such a blinding phenomenon as a
flowering field of rape? The difference between color
and colors could not be more vividly illustrated. In the
artistic sense the rape is devoid of color, though it is of
the most glaring yellow, and a patch of it on a hillside
flares over leagues of landscape. Not only ought artists
to avoid painting crudities of this kind, but they ought
even to avoid looking at them. It is enough to paralyze
any delicate color-faculty to live near a flowering rape-
field, at least so long as the abomination lasts. The
balance of color in the entire landscape is destroyed by
it, and the eye is rendered insensible to modulation.
There are times when even wild plants may be a danger
8
I 14
April- The Blackthorn.
to the general harmony, but a belt of azure from the
gentians on an Alp, or a large patch of rather crudely
purple heather on the flank of a Scottish mountain, has
always the great advantage of irregularity about its edges,
which also lose themselves with more or less of grada-
tion in the vegetation round about. The rape-field, on
the other hand, is as obtrusive from the mathematical
definition of its outline as from its insupportable intensity
of hue.
The spring of the year, like the adolescence of the
mind, is especially the time of crudities. May I venture
to observe that even the blackthorn, which the poets
have sung with affection, is at this time rather a crudity
also, and not very much better, from the colorist's point
of view, than snow on the hedges in winter? Of course,
if you go close up to the flowers, and look at them as a
lady does at her bouquet, you will perceive the yellow of
anthers and green of calyx, but these have little effect at
a distance, and we feel the need of leaves. It is curious
how far a flowering shrub can make us feel its impor-
tance, for good or evil, in the landscape. A single black-
thorn can chill the edge of a forest, and this is the easier
that the forest, being as yet leafless, has a wintry look in
contradiction to the genial weather. A forest of oak is
even more leafless now than in the month of January.
The smaller oaks will retain the mass of their dead
leaves, but the larger ones, being more exposed to the
wind, will have lost the greater part of theirs, leaving a
few only in the light sprays, which catch the sunshine
as specks of ruddy gold.
April- The Cherry-tree.
115
XXIII.
Cherry-tree- Aspen Poplar Stem of the Birch - Birch trunks in Sun-
shine-Young Beech - Birch against the heavenly Azure - Young
leaves of Horse-chestnut Their apparent newness Dried old
Leaves-Old Scales - Their ornamental Utility - Dry Oak Foliage
- Last Year's Leaves of Bramble - Their rich Coloring Principle
—
of Coloring in good Glass and Oil Painting - Deathly Opacity — Vig-
orous advance of many Plants - Nettles - Great Mullein - Arum
Meadow Bittercress Its Constellations — Marsh Marigold — Creep-
ing Bugle - Small-flowered Calamint - Broom in Flower - Broom
Yellow Prudence in Art — Criticism of Nature - Fanatical Oppo-
sition to it - Artistic and Natural Color - The Materials of Art in
Nature.
A
MONGST the wild forest-trees in the Val Ste.
Véronique one of the finest is the cherry-tree,
which is believed to be indigenous here, and as the soil
and climate are most favorable to it, grows to such a
size that it may almost, in that respect, claim equality
with the oak and the beech. At the end of the first
week in April the wild cherry-trees are all in full bloom.
At a distance of fifty yards the flowers so entirely
eclipse the leaves that the latter are invisible, but the
young leaves take their place beautifully when you are
close at hand, not only for their form (the cherry-leaf
is one of the most beautiful of all leaves for a good
designer), but for their color also, which is not crude,
as young leafage generally is, but enriched with a red-
dish brown. There is one huge old cherry-tree just out-
side the wood, with plenty of space for growth, and a
ļ
116
April-Aspen Poplar.
quite congenial situation. It is a great world of flowers,
and the bees are constantly going and coming between
it and their hives. Not only what are popularly called
flowers may produce an effect, but even the less generally
admired catkins may under certain circumstances acquire
pictorial importance. One of the finest sights at the
beginning of April is a tall aspen poplar in full morning
sunshine, with its thousands of pendent catkins, which
at a little distance take a rich dark crimson tint, and
strikingly contrast with the light gray stem and branches.
But the stem of the aspen is not to be compared with
that of the silvery birch, which is one of the master-
pieces of Nature. Every thing has been done to heighten
its unrivalled brilliance. The horizontal peeling of the
bark, making dark rings at irregular distances, the brown
spots, the dark color of the small twigs, the rough text-
ure near the ground, and the exquisite silky smoothness
of the tight white bands above, offer exactly that variety
of contrast which makes us feel a rare quality like that
smooth whiteness as strongly as we are capable of feeling
it. And amongst the common effects to be seen in all
northern countries, one of the most brilliant is the oppo-
sition of birch trunks in sunshine against the deep blue
or purple of a mountain distance in shadow. At all
seasons of the year the beauty of the birch is attractive,
and peculiarly its own. The young beech may remind
you of it occasionally under strong effects of light, and
is also very graceful, but we have no tree that rivals the
birch in its own qualities of color and form, still less
in that air and bearing which are so much more difficult
:
April-Young Leaves of Horse-chestnut. 117
to describe. In winter you see the full delicacy of the
sprays that the lightest foliage hides, and in early spring
this tree clothes itself, next after the willow, with tiny
triangular leaves, inexpressibly light in the mass, so that
from a distance they have the effect of a green mist
rather than any thing more material. When the tree is
isolated sufficiently to come against the sky, you may
see one of the prettiest sights in Nature, the pure deep
azure of heaven with the silvery white and fresh green of
the birch in opposition. And yet it is not a crude green,
for there is a great deal of warm red in it, which gives
one of those precious tertiaries that all true colorists
value.
No young leaves are more interesting than those of
the horse-chestnut, which every lover of Nature who
passes the spring in the country must have watched
daily in April, if the tree happened to grow within a
little distance of his residence. When they get fairly
out of the cotton, in which they have been so snugly
protected against the severities of the early season, they
first hang straight down in the most languid manner,
and it is only after many days that they begin to spread
themselves in the air like the fingers of an extended
hand. No leaf but that of the beech looks newer than
the young horse-chestnut. There is a great difference
amongst trees in this respect, for some young leaves
have a very old look indeed, and might be taken by a
half-observant person for remnants of the later year;
but when the horse-chestnut leaf is young, it has that
air of newness which is seen in human work that has
118
April-Dried Old Leaves.
just left the hands of the workman. The impression is
much increased by the quantities of leaves from the pre-
ceding year, which will generally be found on the earth.
beneath, for the horse-chestnut leaf is very durable, and
retains its shape and substance long after it is dead and
sapless. Painters are not generally very partial to this
tree, because the size of the leaf and the definition of
its forms require more accurate drawing than can be
easily made compatible with the mystery that landscape-
painters desire; but from the opening of the leaf-bud
to the ripening of the fruit the end of a horse-chestnut
twig presents a constant succession of interesting models.
for a designer of ornaments. Even such a detail as the
position of the old scales, which remain after the accom-
plishment of their especial protective function, is of im-
portance from the ornamental point of view, as one
soon discovers after carefully drawing the extremity of
a twig in full detail, when the leaflets are still hanging
together vertically, or just gaining strength enough to
begin to spread themselves, and the scales decorate the
point from which all this new vegetation has issued,
making the separation between the old woody twig and
the fresh green leaf-stalks of the present year.
How long the coloring of foregrounds is affected by
the remains of the previous season! and what aston-
ishing contrasts are produced by this juxtaposition of
death and birth! All along the sides of the April
woods you may see the red of the dry oak foliage
close to the fresh green of the willow and the white of
the blackthorn, three colors as distinct as possible;
April-Leaves of Bramble.
119
whilst in the nearest foregrounds the last year's leaves
of the bramble are still visibly an element in the land-
scape, with their stains of red and passages of russet and
dark green. Sometimes you may get a few such leaves
between you and the morning sunshine, and then, if the
coloring of them happen to be favorable, you will see
that which in all wild Nature comes nearest to the effect
of a painted window. The middle of the leaflet will
probably still retain some of the original green coloring
matter (being nearest to the midrib from which the sap
was supplied), and its edges will be quite brown and
dead; but between these there will be gradations from
light crimson to deep purple, precisely of that quality
which Jean Cousin and his school successfully tried for
in their glass-painting- that is, color intensified to the
utmost by light unequally transmitted. The same prin-
ciple is well known also to oil-painters, and can be (by
means of glazing) to a great extent acted upon in their
art, though not so strikingly as in glass-painting. When
this principle is absolutely neglected or ignored, as it is
in vulgar stained glass, in which a flat pane of blue is
put by the side of other flat little panes of yellow or red,
the color is never really luminous, nor can it be.*
Besides the jewels of transparence, last year has
bequeathed to us much deathly opacity, which lingers
* It does not follow, however, that to obtain luminous quality
in color each piece of glass should necessarily have a gradation
painted upon it. Luminous quality may also be obtained by the
graduated arrangement of small fragments, which, taken separately,
had no gradation; in a word, by glass arranged on the principle of
mosaic.
I 20
April - Nettles.
only too long in the spring landscape. There are great
quantities of dead light-brown rushes, which for my part
I am weary of, and should like to see hidden away
under fresher and greener growths. It is consoling that
so many plants come vigorously forward at this season.
The enormous roots of the bryony, hidden away in so
many places where no one suspects their existence,
begin to prove their vigor by sending forth a few green
leaves, which give promise of graceful festoons. Nettles
are growing in great abundance under the hedges, which
they border with a fresh and beautiful green; and many
wild places are adorned with the richer and better
coloring of the ground ivy, which the peasants in
France, I know not wherefore, have chosen to dedicate
to St. John. The great mullein sprouts handsomely in
April, with his fine large cottony leaves, and it is a
pleasure to meet with him again when we remember
his summer grandeur. Contemporary with the great
mullein, the barbed leaves of the arum, smooth and
glistening, with their irregular spots of dark, grow
quickly in their shady retreats. By the streams no
April-flowering plant is prettier than the meadow bitter-
cress, and I know some places where it clusters in
splendid constellations that bend over the water, and
are reflected on it
'Like stars on the sea
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.'
The flowers being of the purest possible white, or else
just delicately tinted with pinkish purple, show strongly
in the evening when the first approaches of twilight have
April-Broom in Flower.
I 2 I
darkened the damp recesses behind them. You will
find, too, in similar situations, the marsh marigold, often
in the most splendid abundance, making a rich yellow
foreground color, and those more modest little plants,
the creeping bugle and the small-flowered calamint, both
which are good and agreeable in hue, and some places.
are known to me where the small purple flowers of the
calamint are sufficiently powerful from their quantity
to deserve the attention of a painter.
I suppose that no prudent artist would undertake to
paint a field of broom in full flower, as we see them
towards the end of April. The broom is certainly less
objectionable than a field of flowering rape, for the
yellow is more supportable and not so unmixed with
green; besides, the green is much richer and darker
than that of the rape plant, even if the latter were
visible; but the broom yellow is too powerful to be.
acceptable in landscape-painting unless in very moderate
quantity. It is conceivable that an artist might admit a
broom amongst other plants in his foreground, but only
with the greatest care and moderation as to the painting
of its flowers; and in saying this I do not wish to main-
tain the authority of the brown masters, but that of
sober and right judgment, which in art, as in other
matters, must always predominate in the end. When-
ever an artist admits any glaring and positive color
in quantity relatively great, he incurs the risk of not
being able to harmonize it with the quieter hues of
which the rest of his picture is composed; and I may
add that Nature herself, from the artistic point of view,
122
April-Criticism of Nature.
does not always succeed in doing so. I have met with
people who consider any criticism of Nature as a sort
of heresy, who, having adopted the theory that Nature
is infallible, will not listen to any reasoning on the sub-
ject, and tell you that a field of cabbages is a finer sight
than a gallery of masterpieces in painting; but if such
persons could understand what art is they would aban-
don this fanaticism. All who have practised art are
well aware that natural composition, though a suggestion
of artistic composition, is never quite good of itself, and
has always to be altered by the artist; and why should
Nature be more artistic in her color? I believe the
truth to be, that artistic color is as far removed from
natural color as artistic composition is from natural
composition, and that it will be found on investigation
impossible to produce what artists call fine color by
the simple copyism of Nature. It has been a vulgar
error of the uneducated, whether practically painters or
not, to imagine that things in Nature were suitable for
painting which in fact were altogether outside its prov-
ince, to believe that they had only to paint whatever
struck their fancy out-of-doors, and that toute verité was
bonne à dire. There could not be a greater mistake. It is
true that Art finds her materials in nature, but she chooses
them as we choose mushrooms for the table, and if she
were not careful in her selection it would be at her own
great peril. And even when the material has been judi-
ciously chosen it is only raw material still, but the finished.
work of art is material that has been both modified and re-
organized by human taste, intelligence, and invention.
¦
May-Early Rising.
123
XXIV.
Early Rising - Not a virtue, but a Compensation - Chaucer's Early Ris-
ing - His passionate Love of Daisies -Chaucer's way of observing
Nature - How Etymology may be Poetical.
IF
in leech, in this
F early rising were so much of a virtue as its practi-
tioners generally assume, then indeed, in this respect
at least, should we be eminently virtuous in the Val Ste.
Véronique. We are all of us up and stirring before the
dawn, not for any particularly laudable passion for an
ideally perfect life, but in the case of the poor peasants
and servants who surround us from immemorial tradi-
tion simply, and the daily necessities of existence; and
in my own case from taste and choice, and the love of a
kind of pleasure which is blameless, and no more. In-
deed, I think that early rising is not so much a virtue
in people who live in the country as one of the many
pleasant compensations of their existence. They can-
not go to the opera in the evening, and they miss a
hundred delights and advantages of great cities; but
they have certain pleasures of their own which it is wise
to enjoy to the utmost, and early rising is one of them.
We had kept late hours at Paris, as every one must
who lives with and in the life of a great capital; but
here in the Val Ste. Véronique we followed the life of
Nature.
124
May - Chaucer.
Of all early risers that ever witnessed the beautiful
Aurora, surely old Chaucer was the happiest, and the
most keenly conscious of his happiness. What seemed
to him sweetest and purest of pleasant hours was that
cool, calm hour of the early morning, at the beginning
of the dawn, when having put on his 'gear and his
array' he walked forth into the fields and woods with
the serenest cheerfulness in all his well-tuned feelings.
If it is true that Nature with all her beauty is mere
desolation until reflected in the eyes and soul of man,
then there must be gradations in the beauty of the
image according to the brightness or imperfection of
the living mirror; and if so, how fortunate were those
dawns, and those dewy fields and flowers, that were in
the deep, clear, happy, poet-soul of Chaucer! If it were
possible to go back into the past, and enjoy the com-
panionship of the illustrious dead, I should like two
things most of all - a drinking-bout with Socrates (not
for the wine's sake) and a very early walk in the morn-
ing with Dan Chaucer, yet not perhaps on the morning
immediately following the before-mentioned Athenian
symposium:-
'Wherefore I mervaile greatly of my selfe
That I so long withouten sleepe lay,
And up I rose three houres after twelfe,
About the springen of the day;
And on I put my gear and mine array,
And to a pleasant grove I gan passe
Long er the bright Sonne up risen was.'
Such was Chaucer's way in the pleasant spring-time,
May-His Love of Daisies.
125
especially when he could count upon seeing plenty of
daisies, the flower he loved before all others.
"Of all the floures in the mede
Than love I most these floures white and rede,
Soch that men callen daisies in our town;
To hem I have so great affection,
As I said erst, whan comen is the May,
That in my bed there daweth me no day
That I nam up and walking in the mede,
To see this floure ayenst the Sunne sprede,
Whan it upriseth early by the morow
That blissful sight softeneth all my sorow.'
In some verses that follow soon after these we have
an account of the poet's own way of observing Nature;
and notwithstanding the intensity of the modern passion.
for natural beauty, it may be doubted whether there
exists in any writer of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries any passage so full of the true feeling as
this is:
C
My busie gost, that thirsteth alway newe
To seen this flower so yong, so fresh of hewe,
Constrained me, with so greedy desire,
That in my herte I fele yet the fire
That made me rise ere it were day,
And this was now the first morow of May,
With dreadfull herte, and glad devotion
For to been at the resurrection
Of this floure, whan that it should unclose
Again the Sunne that rose as redd as rose,
And downe on knees anon right I me sette;
And as I could this fresh floure I grette,
Kneeling alway, till it unclosed was
126 May - How Etymology may be Poetical.
Upon the small, soft, swete gras,
That was with floures swete embroidered all.
*
*
*
*
In which methought I might day by day
Dwellen alway, the joly month of May,
Withouten sleepe, withouten meat or drinke.
Adown full softly I gan to sinke,
And leaning on my elbow and my side,
The long day I shope me for to abide
For nothing els, and I shall not lie
But for to look upon the daisie,
That well by reason men it call may
The daisie, or els the eye of the day.'
Who shall say, after this, that etymology may not be
poetical, since Chaucer teaches it us in his own sweet,
unpedantic way? If he loved the daisy for itself, he
loved it also for its association with the day, and liked
to see in it the opening of the dawn. So, too, the French
marguerite has its own beautiful origin. In the Latin
Bible margarita is the word for pearl, from the Greek
μαργαρίτης; and Littre thinks that the Greek word in
its turn comes from the Persian word mervarid, which
means pearl also. So here we are again en pleine poésie,
and just as Chaucer's English derivation may be ex-
plained in verse without lowering its tone, the origin of
the French word might be prettily dwelt upon by any
French poet who chose to write about the flower.
Shelley, indeed, though an Englishman, having in his
mind very probably the beautiful Greek association, uses
it as an epithet,
'Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth.'
May - Starwort.
127
XXV.
The
-
Starwort Stalk of Starwort-Composed and Simple Flowers
Water Ranunculus - The Gardener's hatred of it-Its Beauty
Minute Study of Vegetation for Landscape-painters The Sheep-
sorrel Dock - Its hot Color in May-Important in Landscape
Warm rich Color of Oak Leaves in May May Landscape more
harmonious than that of April Brooms and Bugles - The chief
Colors of May - Chaucer's White and Green The Lily of the Val-
ley - Perfection of the Lily of the Valley The Golden Water
Fabled Remedies. The Potentilla - Lung-wort - Unscientific Rea-
soning.
SHE
a
HELLEY'S allusion to constellations reminds one
of a flower, or family of flowers, to be seen in the
very greatest profusion in the beginning of May, and
which have certainly much more the effect of stars upon
the earth than daisies ever have. Everybody seems to
have been struck by this, as the name implies, stellaria,
starwort, stellaire. It seems almost a crime to compare
any thing with the daisy to its disadvantage, and yet so
far as mere appearance goes the starworts are greatly
superior. In quantity they may often be found, like the
stars in a clear sky, by myriads, their brilliant white-
ness illuminating the shadiest places; and if you come
near enough to see the individual plants, if you lean on
your elbow and your side, as Chaucer did when he
studied daisies, then are you rewarded by the beauty
of one of the most graceful amongst the lighter vege-
table forms. The light green stems are elegant beyond
the common grace of Nature, and there is much delicate
curving in the slender pedicels. The whole stalk is but
128 May-Compos.d and Simple Flowers.
just barely strong enough to support the narrow lanceo-
late leaves, and the thin, all but imponderable petals.
I confess, too, that I feel a certain reasonable preference
for plants that carry well-cut leaves in the air to those
other plants which, like the daisy, have what botanists
call radical leaves, that never get much above the root,
and lie for the most part helplessly, making only a
sort of leaf-pattern on the green carpet of the earth.
Finally, notwithstanding my love and reverence for
Chaucer, and all the dear associations that we have
with the unpretending daisy, it seems to me that, when
we know enough of botany for ideas of structure to be
inextricably bound up with our conceptions, a composed
flower, or congeries of flowers like the daisy, must always
seem to have much less individuality than a simple
flower like the starwort; and it seems easier to me to
fall in love with an object that is clearly individual than
with a collection of objects such as the florets of the
composite. This may be fanciful, but there is always a
great element of the fanciful in these things; and it is
highly probable that Chaucer loved his favorite all the
better for not being aware that what he thought of as
a flower was, in reality, a sort of floral village, perched
on the top of a stalk.
If the starwort looks like constellations on the land,
the water ranunculus covers at the same season the
shallow streams and ponds where it has fixed itself with
other constellations of its own. Early in the year its
wavy hair of green is wonderfully lustrous in the rapid,
limpid water: but that green, the most beautiful of all
May- The Water Ranunculus.
129
greens in the world, has now become very dull; yet out
of its dulness springs a novel life and beauty, as the
plant no longer limits itself to its old subaqueous fila-
ments, but sends forth leaves to float on the surface in
the sunshine, and covers the water with white blossom.
I find that people who see Nature from the gardener's
point of view have a hatred and horror of this plant,
because it is very prolific and persistent, and invades
little streams and ponds very rapidly when once it has
got a footing, there; but for my part I feel very grateful
to it for two quite distinct kinds of beauty: first and
above all, for the lovely, intense green of the moving
filaments in February and March, and afterwards for
the gayety of its prodigally abundant afflorescence.
There is a common belief amongst landscape-painters
that the minute study of vegetation is a waste of time,
and even a snare for them, impeding their broader and
more comprehensive observation of natural appearances.
It is certainly true that any artist who studied too much
from the botanical point of view would be likely to lose
himself in unnecessary detail, but it may be shown very
easily that a very minute detail may become of immense
importance when multiplied, as Nature often multiplies
it, by millions. One of the best instances of this amongst
very familiar plants is that humble little member of the
Polygonum family, the sheep-sorrel dock. Its flowers
are so small, that one of them, taken separately, is a
mere unintelligible speck, until you apply the microscope
to it; and yet with these little specks will Nature stipple
and color vast spaces of landscape. The flower is red-
9
I 30
May-Oak Leaves in May.
dish or greenish, and it often turns so red that whole
fields and hill-sides are painted with it early in May,
painted a deep, rich, hot color, of the sort which peo-
ple who do not observe accurately are accustomed to
associate exclusively with autumn. Now I cannot but
think that it is an advantage to an artist to have such a
resource as this rich color affords him, and to know
the cause of it; and I think also that it would perhaps
be well if critics knew enough of Nature not to be taken
by surprise when a landscape-painter happened to avail
himself of this coloring. There are tints in spring, of
which this is an example, that everybody would call
autumnal in a picture, and yet in Nature they often com-
pensate for the crudeness of the early greens by ming-
ling with them in large masses. Amongst the numerous
varieties of oak that are indigenous in western Europe
there are species whose young leaves, freshly sprouting
in the month of May, give the richest golden color,
deepening into red, especially glorious when the sun-
shine filters through them; and so, in a minor degree,
do the leaves of the aspen poplar in their season.
Although the May landscape is richer in floral
splendor than that of any other time, and splendor
of that kind is difficult to harmonize, it is still much
nearer to artistic harmony than the hues of April. The
hawthorn, having abundant leafage intermingled with
its flowers, escapes the extreme chilliness of the snow-
like blossoming of the blackthorn, and the plentifully
sprinkled starworts carry the white down into the
hedge-bottoms. Hardly any color at this season is un-
J
May-Chaucer's White and Green. 131
pleasantly isolated. The note that is pitched amongst
the branches of some tree or shrub is pretty sure to be
repeated on the ground by some humble wild-flower.
Notwithstanding the variety of flaming gold and blue
that may be found wherever the brooms and bugles are
abundant, the chief colors of May are the white and
green of Chaucer, as he describes them on one of his
customary early walks:-
'Anone as I the day espide
No longer would I in my bed abide,
But unto a wood that was fast by
I went forth alone boldly,
And held the way down by a brooke side
Till I came to a laund of white and grene.
So faire one had I never in been ;
The ground was grene, y-poudred with daisie,
The floures and the greves on hie,
All grene and white, was nothing els seene.'
And now, if I were asked to name one plant as
typical of the color and fragrance of this sweet season,
what other could it be than that modest and singularly
beloved one, the lily of the valley? I know not whether
it is from some dear early association, from having seen
one who is gone to her rest long ago arranging these
flowers that were her favorites, and setting them in
clear water on her work-table to be companions for her in
bygone months of May, but it is certain that of all the
flowers that grow this little one most surely touches
the tenderest place in my heart. And every year when
the time comes for its blossoming, and when first I find
it in the cool and shady spots that suit it best, there
{
132
May- The Lily of the Valley.
comes a film of moisture across my eyes, not quite con-
sistent perhaps with the hardness of perfect manhood.
But let each of us live after his own nature; for of the
two figures that we remember as most characteristic of
the middle ages, the poet lying on the earth all through
the sunny day dreaming and doting on the flowers, and
the knight sheathed in complete steel crushing them
under the hoofs of his war-horse and sullying them
with the blood of his enemy, it is the first who has
my sympathy. Where in the world can there be any
thing more perfect than these lilies of the valley? Look
at their twin-leaves, outlined so delicately, just two of
them, perfect as the wings of a bird, and the few white
bells that tremble on the slender stalk, shedding the
sweetest perfume! Be sure that here we have one of
Nature's most complete conceptions. You may look
upon a mountain and wish that it were loftier or more
precipitous, upon a river and wish that it were clearer,
upon a tree and desire for it some farther spreading
of its boughs, some richer filling of its foliage, — but
you cannot look upon a lily of the valley and wish it
to be other than it is. Only one addition is possible,
and that is given in the cool of the early morning, when
there hangs upon each of those fairy bells one pure,
bright drop of dew.
It is curious that a plant so humble and sweet as this
should have had a great reputation for giving strength
to the weary and the weak; but with that strangely
groundless faith that characterized the pre-scientific
ages, our forefathers were quite strongly convinced
May- The Golden Water.
133
upon this point, and distilled from it a miraculous.
water, the 'Golden Water,' as they called it; and
whoso drank thereof was believed to be sure of regain-
ing the strength that had left his limbs. Is it not
sad that we may no longer put trust in all those wonder-
ful remedies there are a hundred of them which in
old times gave hope at least, if they could not restore
to health? There is another humble little plant that
flowers in May (and also in October) in pastures and
waste places, and was called Potentilla, because it was
believed to be so potent as a remedy. In these days
we see its pretty yellow flowers without reverence for
its potency. Just in the same temper of ready credulity
on the most fanciful grounds our forefathers used to
believe that the plant they called Lung-wort (Pulmona-
ria) must be good for the cure of lung disease, because
its leaves were blotched like the lungs of a consumptive
person! What a wonderful piece of reasoning that
was! How remote from the scientific spirit!
We may
laugh, and yet that is exactly the sort of reasoning
which finds ready acceptance with the untrained minds
of the vulgar, and a hundred things are still believed by
uneducated persons of all ranks on grounds at least
equally absurd.
I 34
May- -The Songs of Birds.
XXVI.
www.
Canaries
The Songs of Birds
White of Selborne
Birds in Liberty
Our Love for the Songs of Birds Poetical and not Musical — The
Warbling of Birds really Discordant Disillusion Reason and Sen-
timent Condescension of the Divine Mind - Poets and Birds
Mingled Warbling The Dominant Songster Chaucer's Fancy of
the Religious Singing-birds The Throstle -The Peacock-The
Owl The 'Romaunt of the Rose.'
T is just a hundred years since Gilbert White of
IT
Selborne lamented the 'frequent return of deaf-
ness' that incommoded him, and deprived him of
much enjoyment and many opportunities of observa-
tion. Especially did he lament that when this deaf-
ness was upon him he 'lost all the pleasing notice and
little intimations arising from rural sounds,' so that May
was 'as silent and mute with respect to the notes of
birds as August.' Here, indeed, was a sad loss to one
who so deeply appreciated the pleasures of a country
life, and who used his senses so well for the work of a
naturalist while he possessed them. All true rural poets
and observers have loved the songs of birds. There are
occasionally to be found beings unfortunate enough not
to enjoy these melodies, and I know one wretch who
says he does not much care for his country-house at a
certain season of the year 'on account of that bother-
some noise of nightingales.' Certainly this bird-music
May-Canaries.
135
may sometimes become importunate. There is a land-
scape-painter in Paris who is a great canary-fancier, and
has a very large cage full of these birds in the studio
where he paints. So long as he is alone it may be very
delightful, for perhaps his little yellow friends sing to
him with moderation; but no sooner does a visitor enter
the room and try to begin a conversation than all the
canaries set up such a clatter that no human voice is
audible.
The birds in the free woods fill the air incessantly
in spring with their merry noises, but their garrulity
never tries our patience like that of the poor prisoners
in cages.
Is it really music that they make, and do
they charm the ear as music does, or move some fibre
of poetic sentiment in our hearts? I believe that the
feeling they reach within us is a poetical and not a
musical feeling. The notes of birds may be imitated
with deceptive accuracy, and yet a concert of such
imitations would not attract an audience. The wild
bird utters its notes and we are delighted; the human
imitator accurately reproduces the same notes with in-
geniously contrived whistles, and we remain indifferent.
Here, too, is another consideration which may be worth
notice. So long as one bird performs a solo it may be
a melody, but when half-a-dozen are singing at the
same time is it concerted music that they sing? Does
each of them take his part in a general harmony, like a
chorus-singer at the opera? No, their science is not
equal to any thing requiring subordination of parts.
And the plain truth is, that the warbling of a multitude
136
May-Reason and Sentiment.
of birds must necessarily be full of discords; yet people
of musical taste endure it, and even delight in it. For
the birds are pets of ours, they have especially been pets.
of the poets, and we regard their performances with
the most tender and affectionate indulgence. It has
occurred to me more than once to hear what I took for
birds' notes, and to think 'what delicious purity of tone,
what softness, what ravishing quality!' and immediately
afterwards to discover that these wondrous notes had
been simply whistled by some boy behind a hedge, after
which discovery all their fine qualities vanished.
So much for the criticism of reason; but when we
let sentiment have her way, as in this matter we may
and ought to do, then we fall at once under the old
charm and can listen enraptured, as Chaucer did. For
the songs of birds convey to us far more than the mere
sound; they are voices of Nature speaking to us joy-
ously, tenderly, caressing the childish part of our being
with simple lullabies, and thus gently effacing the too sad
or awful impression which many other sounds of wild
things make upon us; such as the screeching of church-
yard owls, the croak of the raven, the wild cry of plovers
toppling over in the wind on the ridges of desolate
moors. We love the little singing-birds because they so
prettily tell us that, notwithstanding the hard regularity
of the laws that govern the world, the Divine Mind
condescended to take pleasure in cheerful little beings
that sing of gladness only, and know no other theme.
Who can tell what man himself may have gained from
the singing of the birds, how much his heart may have
•
May - Poets and Birds.
137
been cheered by it, and his labor lightened? All the
poets, without exception, who have written of what is.
charming and beautiful in Nature, have spoken lovingly
of singing-birds; and therefore it may be presumed that
the great multitude of poets who have never penned
their inspiration,' and the still greater multitude who,
without being mute poets, have nevertheless some share
of poetic faculty or feeling, do all take pleasure in this
simple sylvan music. In aviaries it easily becomes over-
powering, but in the open woods it is mellowed by many
various distances; and as there is a perspective in what
we see there, as the trees at a distance mingle a thousands
various tints into a quiet harmony of color, so do the
songs of a thousand birds mix together into a delicious
indistinguishable warbling, of which the most perfect
ear could never analyze the elements. And just as
some one branch or leaf will detach itself brilliantly in
the sunshine from the rich mystery that lies behind it,
so will the voice of one songster pipe clearly over all
the rest till it is lost again in the pervading atmosphere
of sound.
Every one who cares for old poetry will remember
the stanzas in Chaucer's 'Court of Love,' where he
makes all the birds sing religiously in May, — one of
the quaintest and prettiest of his fancies, but worked
out too fully in detail to admit of any complete quota-
tion. Here are just a couple of stanzas as specimens of
the whole :-
""Te deum amoris," sang the throstel cocke;
Tuball himself, the first musician,
138
May-Chaucer's Fancy.
With key of armony could not unlocke
So swete tune as that the throstel can:
"The lorde of love we praisen" (quod he then,
And so done all the foules great and lite),
Honour we May, in false lover's despite.
"Dominus regnavit," said the pecocke there,
"The lord of love, that mighty prince ywis,
He is received here and everywhere.
Now Jubilate sing."-"What meaneth this?"
Said then the linnet: "Welcome, lord of blisse."
Out sterte the owl with "Benedicite,
What meaneth all this merry fare?" (quod he.)'
There is no end to the allusions to singing-birds in
Chaucer, but one of the most delicately charming of
these consists of three couplets in the Romaunt of the
Rose,' which always come back to my memory when I
hear the birds in May. Harde is his heart,' says the
poet :
'Harde is his heart that loveth nought
In May, when all this mirth is wrought,
When he may on these branches here
The smalle birdes singen clere
Hir blissful sweet song piteous,
And in this season delitious.'
May - Hymn of the Birds.
139
XXVII.
Gentle Heartlessness.
Hymn of the Birds to the Sun, by Gawin Douglas The Birds hail the
Sun with Welcomes - How the Poets love the Birds How the Bird-
catchers love them -The Mistletoe St. Lambert's Poem of the Four
Seasons
The Bird-catcher in Buffon - The
Work of Nest-building- Are Birds Architects or Masons? - Magpies
- The Labor given to a Magpie's Nest - Thrush, Tom-tit, Linnet -
Greenfinch and Goldfinch -Wren-Excellent Arrangement of Wren's
Nest Building a House - Building for Oneself - Varieties of Nest-
building Raising and Fixing of Material - Adhesion of Martin's
Nests Birds that like to be rocked in their Nests The Cuckoo
Poet-cuckoos Birds and Plants - The Cuckoo-pint-Value of the
Common Arum for Artists.
OF
F all the fine passages in old poetry concerning the
life of birds in Nature, the most magnificent is
the hymn of the birds to the Sun in Gawin Douglas's
prologue to the twelfth book of the 'Eneid.' I should
have been glad to abridge the quotation had it been
possible without spoiling it, but I find, as the reader will
also, that the series of verses beginning with the word
Welcome' could not have their due effect if given by
themselves; the mind needs to be led up to them and
tuned to the proper poetical pitch before it can fully
enter into the fine spirit of the hymn itself. As for the
little difficulty with the old Scottish words it vanishes
6
140 May - The Birds' Welcome to the Sun.
on the second or third reading, and such poetry as this
is worth reading a hundred times:
'The cushat crouds and pykkis on the rise,*
The sterling changes divers steunnys nise,†
The sparrow chirpis in the walles cleft,
Gold spink and linnet fordynnand the lyft.
The cuckoo galis,§ and so twitteris the quail
While rivers reirdit; || schaws and every dale,
And tender twistis tremble on the trees,
For birdes song and bemyng of the bees,
And all small fowlis singin on the spray,
"Welcome thou lord of light and lampe of day,
Welcome thou fosterer of herbis grene,
Welcome quickener of freshest flouris shene,
Welcome support of every root and vein,
Welcome comfort of al kind frute and grein,
Welcome depainter of the blooming meads,
Welcome the life of every thing that spreads,
Welcome restorer of all kind bestial,
Welcome be thy bright bemes gladding all."
What is pleasant in these passages of the quaint old
poets is their hearty love for the birds themselves and
full participation in their gladness. The sylvan feeling
of the bird-catcher is of a very different character; he,
too, rejoices in the woods; he, too, likes to hear the birds.
sing, for if they sing they exist, and if they exist they
may be ensnared, and afterwards sold or roasted as
poverty or gluttony may suggest. The mistletoe is in
full berry in the month of May, and its berries, which
* The dove crows and picks on the bush.
† Heaven.
§ Cries.
† Tuneful voices.
|| Sounded.
+
May-Saint-Lambert.
141
seem like waxen pearls at a little distance, suggest some
rather painful reflections. The birds plant the mistletoe
on the branches of trees by depositing its seeds there,
undigested; man comes and makes bird-lime from this
very mistletoe, which by a strange fatality causes the
destruction of the very creatures to whom its own propa-
gation is due. Could any poet rejoice over their miser-
able fate, and think those moments sweet when his
victims are hopelessly struggling? Yes, M. Saint-Lam-
bert, whose poem of 'The Seasons' is, to say the least,
a piece of beautiful versification, sometimes rising into
more elevated regions, expresses the keenest delight in
that exquisitely cruel business of bird-catching, and avows
his crimes in verses of the most finished harmony:
'Cent fois, dans ma jeunesse, aux rives des ruisseaux
J'ai semé les buissons d'innombrables réseaux:
Avec quel mouvement d'espérance et de joie
Vers la fin d'un beau jour, j'allais chercher ma proie !
A présent même encor, sous les rameaux naissans ;
De l'oiseau de la nuit imitant les accents,
Des habitans des bois j'entends la troupe ailée
S'avancer, voltiger autour de ma feuillée.
J'écoute, en palpitant, leur vol précipité ;
D'un transport vif et doux mon cœur est agité
Quand je les vois tomber sur ces verges perfides
Qu'infectade ses sucs l'arbrisseau des druides,
O doux emploi des jours! agréables momens!'
It would be difficult to find any thing more gently
heartless and amiably selfish than these last well-polished
verses. It is like the gentleness of the mild-minded
angler enjoying the pleasant sunshine and the purling
142
May-The Bird-catcher.
stream, whilst the living bait writhes in torture on his
hook. Agréables momens! Not for the birds, surely!
not for the birds! And before quitting this subject let
me just observe how painfully the bird-catcher is con-
tinually reappearing in so great a writer as Buffon. He
never fails to give his readers instructions, in this line of
business, and generally tells them whether every little
bird is good to eat or not. Fancy eating a brace of
wrens, or of tom-tits! It is true that we eat smaller
creatures still, shrimps, for example; and the Bur-.
gundy vine-snail is both good and nourishing: but our
sentiments are not enlisted in their behalf. To my
feeling the most agreeable bit of information about bird-
catching that I ever gleaned from the great naturalist
of Montbard is, that the wren, from its extreme small-
ness, gets through the meshes of the finest nets and so
happily escapes. I wish all the other birds could do
likewise.
The wonderful work of nest-building goes on with
immense activity in the spring. What a difference
there is in relation to this business between a human
couple and the wedded birds! The human couple
either inherit a nest already made, generally without
the most remote conception of the labor it cost to
make it, or else they hire another nest without much
serious interest or affection; but the bird and his wife
are their own masons, and also their own architects,
being usually more successful in this latter capacity
than the unprofessional human designer of habitations.
Or is it not more accurate to say of them that, strictly
May-Magpies.
143
speaking, they are masons only, working after the plans
of a greater Architect than those who devise big palaces
in stone and mortar? If masons only, at least they are
most industrious masons. The Marquis de Cherville,
who is an accurate observer of what passes too often
unobserved in the quiet routine of Nature, says that he
watched a pair of magpies from the beginning of their
nest-building to the end. They had fixed themselves
in a large poplar, just before M. de Cherville's window,
and he watched them both from his desk and from his
bed, missing hardly any thing that they did. The work
lasted for forty-seven days, during which, especially in
the morning and evening, the two birds carried materials.
with a feverish activity. In a single day he counted
two hundred and eight journeys in quest of material,
and this was not the whole. But the nest of a magpie
is a very rude affair, indeed, when compared with the
highly finished and delicate workmanship of many other
birds. The thrush, the tom-tit, and some kinds of lin-
net, are master-builders in different ways. The thrush
makes the outside of his nest with almost any thing
that comes to hand, — with moss, with straw, or dried
leaves; but his great skill is displayed in the fabrica-
tion of the stout mill-board that constitutes its inner
wall or shell, made of wet mud well beaten, strength-
ened with bits of straw and roots. The thrush likes
this hard and smooth interior, not caring for the lux-
ury of soft feather-beds, but some other birds are more
luxurious. The greenfinch and goldfinch are amongst
the cleverest of bird upholsterers. They know how to
144
May The Wren.
feather their nests well, and have an English taste for
carpets and interior comfort, well knowing the value of
bits of wool, and hair, and feathers. The wren has
another English taste also, for he likes his house to
be not only comfortable, but big; and, small as he is,
he has large ideas in the way of architecture. I like his
plan of a little doorway in the side, just big enough
for his small person to pass through; it is infinitely
more snug than the commoner system of sitting in a
sort of enlarged egg-cup: and, besides these advan-
tages, the wren's house is not easily discovered, being
apparently a shapeless lump of moss, though so artfully
shaped within. How interesting it would be if some
observer, like the Marquis de Cherville, could watch a
couple of wrens at work from the very beginning to the
moment of their happy house-warming, when the soft
clear down was all arranged snugly as a lining to the
wee dwelling, and just ready to receive the wonderfully
tiny white eggs! Is not this much more interesting, as
well as more admirably laborious, than the furnishing
of some house in a row run up by some speculator, with
balconies that you dare not step out upon for fear that
they should fall with you down upon the dangerous-
looking railings? I think there must be an infinite
pleasure in building one's own house, not as rich peo-
ple use the words, when they say I am going to build,'
but in doing it with one's own hands-a pleasure
founded upon the primitive depths of our original wild
nature. It has sometimes occurred to me to talk with
very poor men who really had done this with their own
May-Varieties of Nest-building.
145
hands, and the satisfaction their rough work gave them
was evidently of a kind that no wealth could ever pur-
chase. Observe the zest with which travellers in wild
countries, who have been compelled to erect dwellings
for themselves, describe the interesting process, and
gravely give directions to others, a spirit of the keenest
enjoyment being visible throughout the prudence of
their precepts!
I have noticed the wide difference of refinement and
skill in nest-building between such different birds as the
magpie and the thrush, linnets, &c., but Gilbert White
remarked that there was a great disparity in this respect
between 'birds of the same genus, and nearly corre-
spondent in their general mode of life; for while the
swallow and the house-martin discover the greatest
address in raising and securely fixing crusts, or shells,
of loam, as cunabula for their young, the bank-martin
terebrates a round and regular hole in the sand or earth,
which is serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet deep.
At the inner end of this burrow does this bird deposit,
in a good degree of safety, her rude nest, consisting of
fine grasses and feathers, usually goose-feathers, very
inartificially laid together.' Here, in a very few words,
he perfectly describes what is most wonderful in the
skilful toil of the swallows and house-martins, their
address in raising and securely fixing the crusts they
build so cleverly. The raising, however, is compara-
tively mechanical; it is the fixing that always surprises
one. Some windows in the old house at the Val Ste.
Véronique had been left unopened for years, and the
ΙΟ
146
May-Martins' Nests.
hirondelles des fenêtres had fixed their nests in the
corners, partly on the woodwork and the stone sides,
but partly also upon the very glass itself. It seemed
necessary to air these chambers and to open the win-
dows, which I did with the greatest regret, but it
afforded a singularly good opportunity for ascertain-
ing the actual strength of adhesion in the nests, which
was truly surprising. Not only are the birds themselves
perfectly safe in them, for they weigh scarcely any thing
to speak of, but it would require a considerable weight
to detach the little structure from its place; and even
after the nests had been torn away from the windows,
large fragments of them still adhered obstinately to
the stonework. I imagine that these birds, which are
almost always in movement, have a particular satisfac-
tion in feeling that their nest is firm and substantial; so
they fix it to the strong work of human masons that is
not shaken by the wind. In this preference for what
is fixed and substantial they differ notably from some
other birds that like their nests to be rocked like a
sailor's hammock, which one would imagine must be
fatiguing in windy weather; however, it is their taste,
and there is no disputing about tastes.
Buffon re-
marks that goldfinches like to build upon thin and
weak branches, especially of plum-trees and walnuts,
that are rocked by the wind. It is to be supposed that
these little creatures are independent of the sensation
of sea-sickness.
One has a particular respect for the industrious nest-
builders that have houses of their own and establish
May - The Cuckoo.
147
themselves respectably in life; but it is difficult to feel
any such sentiment towards the cuckoo when we hear
the two notes of his monotonous ditty, and see him
pass from grove to grove with his silently gliding flight.
But if the cuckoo is not a respectable personage, since
he will neither build his own house nor bring up his
own offspring, he has an advantage in common with cer-
tain celebrities in literature and art; which is, that every-
body knows his voice. It requires considerable sylvan
experience to distinguish some birds by their voices,
and it is only the most observant naturalists who can
recognize each of them with certainty; but the citizen,
who rarely visits the country, knows the cuckoo when
he hears him. The reader at once perceives the moral
which is impending. The cuckoo is like a poet who
says but little, and always repeats that little without
variety, yet who enjoys a great reputation because his
one song is at the same time agreeable, perfectly
original, and perfectly inimitable. There have been
such poet-cuckoos.
Nothing is more curious in popular botany and
ornithology than the way in which popular beliefs
associate together certain birds and plants. Why, for
example, is the cuckoo particularly associated with the
common arum, which is called the cuckoo-pint? Is
the bird supposed to drink the dew or the rain-water
from the spatha? The explanation of the popular
fancy about cuckoo-spit, which is the frothy exudation
of a certain larva, was suggested with great probability
by Buffon. He thought it possible that a cuckoo might
:
148
May - The Common Arum:
have been observed in the act of seeking the larva in
the froth, and that the rustic observer had concluded
the froth to be the cuckoo's own saliva; after which
it might have been noticed that an insect came out of
such froth, whence the conclusion that vermin was
engendered from the saliva of the bird. And what a
strange old notion it was that the cuckoo travelled
on the back of a kite, which was thought to be amia-
ble enough to submit to the inconvenience of such a
burden! It is almost impossible to imagine any ob-
served fact which may have given rise to such an
improbable myth as this.
Whether or not the cuckoo takes any particular
interest in the common arum, it is a valuable fore-
ground plant for artists, being one of the earliest in
the season of those whose leaves are large enough to
be of some consequence in a picture. The only misfor-
tune about it is a love of shelter, which makes it grow
almost always in situations where it is half concealed,
such as nooks and thickets, and shady places under
hedges. One of the earliest of our botanical expe-
riences is a feeling of astonishment about its peculiar
way of flowering, and the incipient botanist is sure to
feel at the same time interested and puzzled by the long
spike and the leafy spatha, which he always remembers
afterwards.
"
:
May-
The Water Iris.
149
i
XXVIII.
Water Iris-The Royal Flower - Lychnis - Origin of the Name - The
Spurge Family-Bitter Reverie A Poet's Botany - Use of Poets'
Fancies.
O
F other plants that show themselves in May it
would be easy to make a considerable catalogue.
There is the water iris, for example, which in this part
of the world has tall blades early in the month and
flowers towards the end of it, giving considerable mag-
nificence of color to the banks of streams. It is re-
markable amongst flowers as having been chosen by
the kings of France to decorate their shields and
banners, for in the middle ages it was called the lis.
This, at least, is the more probable view, considering
the form and color of the flower, though the popular
belief is that the large white lily is the royal flower of
the Bourbons. But the white lily bears no resemblance
to the fleur-de-lis, whereas the water iris curves out its
petals in such a way as to produce a very striking like-
ness to the heraldic flower. Besides this, the fleur-de-lis
is or in heraldry, and, without attaching too much im-
portance to the choice of the metal, one cannot but
think it likely that a sovereign who had felt pleased
with the white lily would have preserved the record of
its whiteness by blazoning it argent. For my part I
feel no doubt about the matter, and the golden flowers
150
May-Lychnis.
of the water iris have, for me, associations with history
as well as landscape.
From the beginning of May there are also immense
quantities of flowering lychnis, whose bright red is like
gems scattered prodigally by field and river. The plant
was used in Greece for garlands, and it seems possible
that in this way it may have been associated with the
idea of a light-giving gem that was called Xvxuls also. I
am aware that another interpretation has been suggested.
It is said that the Greeks used a plant of this kind for
lamp-wicks, and as they called a portable lamp λúxvos
the flower got its name from this more utilitarian origin.
I cling by preference to the association with the gem
rather than the lamp, and I should like very much to
know what was the color of the gem Avxvís. If it
were red, that would almost settle the question. But
whatever may have been the origin of its name, the
lychnis is one of the brightest and most abundant of
wild flowers, giving a wonderful gayety to foregrounds
wherever it occurs.
A perfect contrast in this respect are the members
of the humble spurge family, with their flowers, green-
like leaves, and their cold, white, milky blood, caustic
and pungent. With a poet's felicity of choice Rossetti
selected this unattractive plant as the object of contem-
plation in an hour of bitter reverie:
Between my knees my forehead was,
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.
May - A Poet's Botany.
My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon ;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me,
The woodspurge has a cup of three.'*
151
This, of course, is a poet's botany, and one does not
expect it to be very accurately scientific. Rossetti
means, by his 'cup of three,' the pair of flowers at the
end of each ray of the umbel, and the floral leaves
beneath the pair which are connected into one large
orbicular leaf. The two flowers and the orbicular leaf
below make up the number three, and this is the only
explanation I can venture to suggest. Is it worth while
to dwell in this way upon poets' fancies in connection
with the subjects of our study? Yes, I think it is; for
experience proves that nothing impresses natural objects
upon the memory so much as association with human
thought and fancy, even when, as in the case of many
popular superstitions, it has no foundation in fact.
* D. G. Rossetti's Poems, Roberts Brothers' Ed. p. 249.
152
May-The Horse-chestnut.
XXIX.
Artistic and other Ideas of Beauty The Horse-chestnut - A Painter's
Embarrassment - Countable yet Numerous Things Leaves Foli-
age Objection to the Horse-chestnut-Glory of the Tree in May
-Transparencies - Bold and decided Contrasts - Flowers of the
Horse-chestnut.
Ο
NE of the most striking examples of the difference
between artistic ideas of beauty and those ideas
of beauty which we derive directly from Nature without
the intervention of painting is supplied by the horse-
chestnut. In Nature it is one of the most noble of all
trees, yet it has rarely been celebrated by landscape-
painters, who, when you talk to them about it, almost
invariably express a dislike for the peculiar quality of
its foliage; nor have they been more attracted by its
magnificent efflorescence, although in our northern
countries no other tree of equal dimensions bears such
splendid flowers, or any thing comparable to them. The
reason is easily discovered. In the art of painting there
is always a peculiar embarrassment in dealing with
things that are countable and yet exceedingly numerous.
Such things require great labor for their individualiza-
tion, because the eye so easily detects a failure or in-
sufficiency in design; whilst, on the other hand, there is
a difficulty in passing from this complete individuality
of the things seen near at hand to the mystery of the
things that are utterly past counting. When things are
May - Foliage.
153
large enough, and shapely enough, to require careful
drawing, an artist does not wish them to be too nu-
merous; thus, there is no work that can be offered to
a figure-painter more distasteful to his artistic feeling
than a crowd of a hundred faces, of which every one.
must be a portrait, since the mere attention to indi-
viduality imperils the unity of the whole work. On the
other hand, if the numbers are very great the painter
likes them to be far past any possibility of counting, so
that his only duty may be to represent the mystery
and infinity of the innumerable. Thus, in leaf-drawing,
the greatest figure-painters have always designed a few
leaves of the kinds whose forms are beautiful, both
pleasurably and successfully, and such a thing as a
wreath of laurel is perfectly agreeable to their taste;
whilst, on the other hand, the great landscape-painters
have delighted in the immensity of foliage, where the
leaf is nothing individually and only the mass is seen.
The objection to the horse-chestnut is, that to render it
perfectly we should need the skill of the figure-painter
drawing a wreath of laurel, and the skill of the land-
scape-painter sketching the masses of a forest.
leaves are so large, and so peculiar in their form, that
they cannot be treated negligently, for the negligent
hand would commit errors in shape and scale that the
first comer would at once detect; yet, at the same time,
they are so numerous, that any attempt to draw them
individually, as you would the twin-leaves of the lily of
the valley, must inevitably spoil the unity of the tree,
not to speak of the still vaster unity of a picture. The
The
154
May-Glory of the Horse-chestnut.
consequence of this is, that the horse-chestnut is hardly
ever painted, and never painted quite sufficiently and suc-
cessfully. But now, having stated the artistic difficulty,
let us turn our backs for the moment upon all picture
exhibitions, and, forgetting art altogether, go straight to
the world of Nature. The horse-chestnut, in the earlier
weeks of May, is a sight for gods and men. If you are
well outside its branches, you see the richly-painted
flowers rising tier above tier on all its glorious slope up
to the odorous heights that belong to the birds and the
bees; if you are under its shadow, you walk in a soft
green light that comes through the broad-spreading
leaflets. No transparencies are finer than this sun-
illumined canopy of green, and whilst the leaves are
quite young and perfect, they are cut out so clearly
as to have a grandly decorative effect. Next, as to
direction of line and surface, this tree is very remark-
able for its bold and decided contrasts. You have the
curve of the twig, first downwards and then upwards,
where it carries the flowers at its extremity. The ten-
dency of the flowery spike itself is to be vertical, and
the large leaves spread themselves out horizontally and
as flatly as possible to right and left. The flowers
themselves are amongst the very richest of spring
blossoms. The coloring of the petals is made lively
by the presence of white, but admirably preserved from
crudity by dashes of red and yellow. When the spikes
or cones of flowers are in their full splendor, the horse-
chestnut reminds one of a magnificent Christmas-tree,
carrying a thousand lighted tapers upon its branches,
V
May-Willow.
155
but with the difference that the flowers promise life,
and the renewal of life; whereas when the pretty
Christmas tapers are lighted upon a tree they are a
sign that its end is near, according to Andersen's mel-
ancholy story. The horse-chestnut has only been an
European tree for the last three centuries, and is one of
the happiest importations from Asia. There is an octa-
gon of them at the Val Ste. Véronique, and the eight
brothers are all equally well grown, - tradition says, that
eight boar-hounds are buried under them, a hound under
each tree. In the heat of summer they offer a delight-
ful shade, for their broad leafage makes an impenetrable
dome of verdure.
Willow
XXX.
Spanish Chestnut - Walnut - Ash and Walnut - Beech-
Young Beech-leaves- Light through them - Birch
Character of
- Sap of
Birch - It bears extremes of Heat and Cold - Birch-bark
Birch Prejudices against Trees - Abuse of Painters who study
certain Trees - Trees and Politics - The Birch always Beautiful
Willow Spanish Chestnut — Its Strength and Longevity — Beauty
of Foliage of Chestnut Oak and Chestnut - Bird-cherry Prunus.
TH
HE horse-chestnuts are amongst the earliest of
the trees in leaf and flower. The willow, as
we know, is earlier still, and its leaves are now fully
developed, glittering a great deal in the sunshine, when
the pleasant May breezes move them. The young green
leaves of the Spanish chestnut are rapidly making foli-
156
May - Walnut.
age now, and hide already the heavy, magnificent stems,
at least in places. The young leaves of the walnut
are pleasant upon the cool gray of the stems, being
of an exceedingly warm green, that differs greatly
from the crude color of most of the other vegetation.
The reader may have observed how peculiarly rich are
the dark mosses upon walnuts, but the glory of mosses
is not in the time of leaves. The French word noyer
comes in a very roundabout way from the Latin nux,
a nut, so that noyer means the nut-tree par excellence;
and the Latin name Juglans comes from Fovis glans,
Jupiter's nut, as the fruit of this tree was thought good
enough for the father of the gods. The ash and the
walnut come on very nearly together in the spring,
and are not much advanced in the middle of May;
the beech at this season is more attractive, from the
particularly lovely and fresh green of the leaves, which
have all the exquisiteness of Nature's softest and pret-
tiest new things. Their green is delicately pale with-
out being crude, and they have downy edges, and
are so soft that it is a luxury to touch them; then,
on the upper side, they are protected by a gloss of
varnish. I spoke of the transparence of the horse-
chestnut leaves; that of beech-leaves, when they are
young and fresh, is still more delicate and beautiful, and
the light under them is like what one fancies the pale
sea-green light where the mermaids live in submarine
grottos and gardens.
As for the birches, they are in full leaf in May, as if
it were the height of summer, and their shining silvery
May-
-Character of Birch.
157
stems, so brilliant in wintry sunshine, are now greatly
overshadowed by their foliage. Nothing can be more
decided than the character of the birch, and the leaves.
add to its expression. In winter it is simply the most
graceful of trees, but in summer it seems nervously
sensitive and easily disquieted. The slightest breath
of air sets it all in a flutter, and it has the appearance
of the extremest delicacy of temperament. However,
in this case, as in some human constitutions, the ap-
pearance of delicacy is in the highest degree deceptive,
for the birch is gifted with singular powers of resist-
ance. I do not believe that a tree can be mentioned
which bears so well the extremes of heat and cold. It
lives high on the sides of the Alps and thrives in the
terrible Lapland winter. The last trees near the polar
ice are birches, and yet at the same time the birch lives
uninjured through the burning summers of Burgundy,
and does not apparently suffer from a temperature that
ripens the grape, the peach, and the apricot. The bark,
too, that looks so fragile on account of its thin white
epiderm, so easily torn and never without a rent, is
really of considerable thickness, and quite remarkable
amongst vegetable substances for its all but unlimited
durability. The tree is respectable for its uses, espe-
cially for the uses of the bark, out of which the ingen-
ious northern races have contrived to make many
different things, including canoes, ropes, roofs, drinking-
vessels, shoes, and even food, whilst that product of
high civilization called Russia leather is tanned with it.
The abundant sap is good to drink, and an alcoholic.
158
beverage is prepared from it. Haller says that the cat-
kins yield wax. Therefore, although the birch does not
give fine timber like the oak, nor abundant edible fruit
like the walnut and what are commonly called the fruit-
trees, it is still one of man's best friends, and a friend
to him in climates of such rigorous severity that the
rich southern fruit-bearers cannot live there. The
Southerner may know the birch by sight, for its slender
stem gleams here and there in his forests; but he does
not know the tree as the Laplander knows it, in the
hardship and adversity of a life so little cheered by the
genial gifts of Nature. What the reindeer is to him
amongst animals, the birch is amongst trees.
May - Prejudices against Trees.
I spoke about the suitableness of the horse-chestnut
for the purposes of the landscape-painter, and I showed
a reason why artists have so generally abstained from
any attempt to represent the horse-chestnut in their
works. But if there are reasonable objections to trees
that may be beautiful in Nature, there are also unreason-
able ones, that are due to the most absurd prejudices, -
prejudices so absurd that the existence of them would
be absolutely incredible if we did not meet them from
time to time in reading and in conversation. One of
the clearest and most outspoken expressions of such
prejudices that it was ever my lot to meet with occurred
in an ultra-conservative French newspaper, which 'is
taken in by my neighbor the curé, and I made an ex-
tract from it as a curiosity. It is certain that many
trees and the graceful birch is one of them
systematically neglected by the landscape-painter of
were
May-Trees and Politics.
159
former centuries, and have only of late years had their
beauties reflected in the mimic world of painting. It
is not probable that, in illustrating these neglected yet
not less noble species, the artists of this generation have
had any feeling of hostility to the trees which their pre-
decessors studied, not too affectionately, but too exclu-
sively; they have simply acted with that independence
of tradition and that large desire to study the whole of
Nature which are distinguishing characteristics of our
age in art, as in science and in literature. But now see
how they get abused and ill-spoken of for their large-
ness:
'It looks like a conspiracy. The painters of the old régime,
the artists who were faithful to tradition, sought for and hon-
ored certain beautiful and aristocratic trees, and considered
them alone worthy of the selection and the efforts of art; the
majestic oak, the elegant poplar, the pompous pine, and the
funereal cypress.
""Let us upset tradition!" say the realists. "Down with
the trees that are symbols of superannuated and odious dis-
tinctions! Let us lift up the humble and insignificant; let us
open a broad way to the new 'couches sociales' of the forests;
there is the truth, the strength, and the honor of the societies
of the future!" And with these fine reasonings we see the
rustic apple-tree, the shivering birch, the amphibious willow,
the crude and hard Spanish chestnut, come out of their enclo-
sures, or their rocks, to display themselves outrageously in gilt
frames on the walls of palaces and galleries that were never
built for them! It is a new form of the democracy which is
about to overwhelm us. The populace of the woods puts.
itself on the level of the populace of the faubourgs. It was
not enough to have beheld the noisy and unsavory crowds cast
160 May-The Birch always Beautiful.
themselves upon the Louvre and come to Versailles and the
Trianon: we must, in addition, endure the contact of the
inferior species in our woods, justly rejected to the second
rank, and condemned to inferior functions.'*
Now, on behalf of the birch especially, I protest
energetically against this comparison with the lowest
Parisian democracy. So far from being coarse and offen-
sive, it is the most delicately elegant of all the trees
that prosper in our climate. It is always beautiful: in
winter for the exquisite refinement of its ramification,
only to be followed by the most finished and accom-
plished drawing; in spring and summer for the beauty
of its cloud of light foliage; in autumn for its color.
The writer just quoted mentions also, and with equal
disdain, the willow and Spanish chestnut. The beauty
of the natural willow is very little known, because the
farmers almost invariably make a pollard of it, which
is the artificial production of a painful and horrible
deformity. Very possibly the critic may have supposed,
as many people do, that willows are born so; but the
truth is, that if you only have the kindness to let the
willow alone he becomes a very good landscape tree,
and there are species which cast their arms out with a
nóble freedom and grace, having also a fair stature. Of
the Spanish chestnut one can scarcely exaggerate the
merits. His expression is that of sturdy strength his
trunk and limbs are built, not like those of Apollo, but
*This passage is quoted from 'L'Union,' Sept. 2, 1873. It is a
very curious example of a political spirit invading the domain of
art.
May-Oak and Chestnut.
161
like the trunk and limbs of Hercules; and though for
his inflexibility he loses an arm now and then in the
hurricane, he lives to be a Methuselah amongst trees,
and dynasties rise and fall, empires are built and de-
molished, literatures flourish and decay, whilst he is still
green in his old place, unheeding the lapse of time.
His foliage is magnificent in mass and beautiful in the
individual leaf; it is always worth drawing and painting,
both for its lines and shadows: it cannot be mean or in-
significant. Whether he is an aristocratic tree, or a tree
tainted with democracy, I am not subtle enough in social
distinctions to determine, but tradition informs us that
the chestnut of Mount Etna once sheltered a queen and
her hundred nobles, and is called for this reason the
Chestnut of the Hundred Horses.' In the comparison
of the chestnut with the oak, it is fair, too, that we
should remember what animals are fed by each. The
oak feeds herds of swine, but the chestnut supplies to
great multitudes of human beings a food as agreeable
as it is nutritious. There are countries where it is the
staff of life, and its alimentary importance is greater
than that of any other tree that grows, with the single
exception of the date.
6
Amongst the shrubs which are almost trees, and
sometimes fully deserve to be called so, let me not
forget, in connection with the month of May, to mention
the bird-cherry prunus, of which we have some excep-
tional specimens in the Val Ste. Véronique, where they
grow to a height of sixteen or twenty feet, and have the
most perfectly graceful proportions. I have often much
II
162
May-Broom.
regretted that this tree was not more common in this
fully developed form; ordinarily it is a mere shrub six
or eight feet high, to be found in luxuriant hedges. As
a tree it shows splendidly in blossom, and the droop-
ing racemes of flowers are not only very graceful, but
fill the air with a delicious odor.
XXXI.
Broom - Flaming Flowers of Broom - Fortissimo in Color - Pansies
Their Variety - Heartsease - Poetry in the Language of Science
Daisy Buttercup - Disagreeable Scientific Name Ranunculus
Aquatilis Lousewort The Rose fortunate in her Name. Name
of the Horse-chestnut-Cuckoo-flower - Marsh Caltha - Names
of the Marsh Caltha.
C
T is rarely that I feel myself capable of any thing
I myself capable of any thing
like hostility towards any plant that grows wild in
our country, but there is one of them—the broom-
which tires my patience a little in its flowering season.
by the very loudness of its self-assertion. At all other
times of the year it is welcome enough, and its pleasant
green is often most agreeable to the eye when very
little green of a cheerful kind is to be found upon any
thing else; but really, when the yellow flowers are all
ablaze, I feel that we have too much of a good thing,
and are positively incapacitated for the enjoyment of
delicate color by this all but intolerable glare. A
strong pure color of this kind ought not to be sur-
May - Flming Flowers of Broom.
163
?
rounded by delicate tertiary colors, because it kills
them at once. What it requires is the neighborhood
of other colors pure enough to hold their own against
it. This theory is fully borne out by the coloring of
two places which I will now describe. The first is a
beautiful bit of river-shore, very delicately tinted and
covered with pansies and violets, with a mountainous.
distance usually in tender gray. All this is lovely indeed
till the broom explodes into flames of chrome-yellow,
but after that what becomes of such a thing as a pansy.
You may take it up, of course, and satisfy yourself by
minute inspection that it is a beautiful flower of pale
parchment-yellow, with a bold touch of cadmium on the
lower lip of the corolla, and seven effective little black
streaks; but the moment you look at it on the ground
you can see nothing but gray. The other place is the
edge of an abandoned quarry, where the red earth is as
hot in the sunshine as it can be; and as you look up
at it from below, the edge is brought against the intens
est azure of the sky. Just along this edge grow twenty
or thirty magnificent plants of broom, and between the
azure of the sky and the fiery red of the sun-lighted
earth below they hold their own effectively enough with
their blaze of yellow, but are unable to extinguish either
the azure or the red. It is just one of those tournaments
of natural colors that the English painters seem born
to enjoy, and the French to run away from, a spectacle
to delight the strong natural sense in its naïveté, but not
either the tender or the educated sense. It answers in
music, to a brass band playing fortissimo with blare of
164
May - Pansies.
trumpet and clash of cymbals; it answers, also, in gas-
tronomy, to the hottest of London pickles, of which one
knows not which element is most fierce.
I mentioned pansies just now, but did not stop to
dwell upon them. They have several notable merits
and pleasant associations. One of their merits is that
of variety. Hardly any plant in a wild state is so
various as the pansy; other plants become various in
the hands of the horticulturist, who obtains curious
novelties by selection and culture, but Nature herself
does this with the pansy, and you have it purple, or
yellow, or whitish, or mixed in ways that it would be
an endless business to describe. Another merit is that
it flowers for many months; unlike the broom, which
blazes only for a week or two, and is then completely
extinguished, like a fire that has burned itself out.
Then one likes the pansy for its pretty association with
kindly and affectionate thought, with the memory of
those we love who are separated from us by distance.
Pansy is the French word pensée, scarcely even cor-
rupted, but rather written phonetically in a rude, ap-
proximative way; and in France the flower pensée is
connected only with thoughts of a tender and kindly
nature. Many such a flower, that bloomed in a bygone
summer, is still religiously preserved in an old letter or
book, and never looked upon without a moistening of
the eyes. So Ophelia said, 'There's rosemary, that's
for remembrance: pray you, love, remember; and there
is pansies, that's for thoughts.' In English the pansy
violet is called heartsease also, showing in another form
May-Daisy.
165
the close connection between tender human feeling and
this flower, which has somehow mysteriously established
itself. Science, of course, ignores all such associa-
tions, but it would be a pity, surely, to lose and forget
them altogether. The writer of a lively and fanciful
little volume, called 'La Vie des Fleurs,' is indignant
against men of science for their barbarity; yet even the
men of science, hard as their hearts may be, do some-
times wrap up a little kernel of poetry in the rough and
repulsive covering of their Greek erudition. They will
not call a pansy a pansy, but they call it viola tricolor;
and some of them have fancied that viola came from
lov, and lov from the heifer Io, which fed on flowers of
this kind. So difficult is it to shut out poetry alto-
gether from language, even from the. language of stern
Science herself!
There are some exceptions, but the rule is that the
popular names for plants are either charming for some.
sweet rustic association, or else from a direct reference
to the deep feelings of the human heart. I showed how
prettily Chaucer introduced etymology into his verse
with reference to 'the daisie, or els the eye of the day;
and the rustic name 'buttercup,' which explains itself
without analysis, is redolent of the dairy and the farm.
The common French name, bouton d'or, has reference
to the flower in the bud; the English one, to the flower
full-blown. And now think of the learned name, Ra-
nunculus acris; how disagreeably it grates upon the ear!
The popular name hits at once upon what is agreeable
in the plant, its pretty yellow color; the scientific one
166
May-Ranunculus Aquatilis.
refers to what would be disagreeable if we went out of
our way to try it, namely, its acrid taste; but what have
we to do with its taste, I wonder? Just in the same way
I have no doubt that the sweetest of pictures would
be extremely disagreeable if we were to eat it. And
ranunculus comes from rana, a frog or toad, a strange
connection of ideas in this instance, for what has a but-
tercup particularly to do with frogs? It may be more
appropriate in the case of the Ranunculus aquatilis,
because that plant is born in the water like a frog,
and passes its infancy there; after which it comes up
to breathe and flower in the upper air, as frogs come
to air themselves in their maturity. A plant may, how-
ever, be still more unfortunate than to have its name
associated with frogs, or even toads, for there is one
very pretty little pinkish flower, common, from April
to June, in damp meadows and woods, which takes its
name from a minute animal celebrated by the poet
Burns, who discovered it on a lady's bonnet at church,
when he ought to have been thinking of something else.
Few plants are prettier than the common pedicularis,
with its delicate wax-like flowers and deeply-cut leaves;
and it is a robust plant, too, with a strong perennial
root. But what a misfortune to be called lousewort, and
that precisely for the plant's utility and efficacy against
lice! As men afflicted with very disagreeable names.
often take care to change them (and they do right), so
would the plants, if they were conscious of such ill-
luck. Begging the reader's pardon for introducing the
hackneyed quotation from Shakspeare about the rose
May-The Rose fortunate in its Name. 167
smelling as sweetly by another name, I would just ob-
serve that the rose has been remarkably fortunate in
her name, wherever it is derived from the Latin. It
is perfectly euphonious; it calls up no association what-
ever but that of the flower itself, except in the mind of
some learned pundit, who thinks it may have some-
thing to do with the Sanscrit word vrad, which means.
'flexible;' and wherever either rose or rosa is used in
poetry it always comes in charmingly. Now, without
referring again to the supremely unfortunate pedicu-
laris, let me take the case of a particularly magnificent
tree which has occupied us a little quite recently, the
horse-chestnut. I have often wished that awkward com-
pound word could be exchanged for one at the same
time more convenient and better sounding. Imagine
the embarrassment of the poets if the rose had been
called the horse-chestnut! They would simply have
passed it in silence. It is fatal to the celebrity of a
flower for it to be known by an awkward name, even
though it may smell as sweetly as if some poet had
named it with musical syllables. And why the connec-
tion with the horse? Are horses fond of the fruit?
Most probably it is only a way of implying that it is
unfit for human food. I might have mentioned, when
speaking of the cuckoo and the use of his name with
the arum, which the people call cuckoo-pint, that another
plant is also dedicated to the same bird, the cuckoo-
flower, or meadow-bittercress. This plant is often found
in great abundance in dampish meadows, and I know of
one place near a little stream where the water is entirely
168
May-Marsh Caltha.
bordered with its beautiful flowers, which in that place
are of the purest white, though they are often purplish.
Whatever the cuckoo may have to do with this elegant
and abundantly flowering plant, it is one of the glories
of advancing spring, and where you find it you are very
likely to find the marsh caltha not far off, for both of
them like damp places. The botanical name Caltha is
an allusion to the basket shape of the flower, which
reminded some one of a little gilt basket, not that it
is much more like a basket than a buttercup is; how-
ever, a name was got for it in this way from κáλaðos.
The French name for it, populage, is an allusion to its
habits. The flower likes damp places as a poplar does,
so it was called after populus, a poplar; which is a very
singular way of naming a plant, for similarities of struct-
ure are much more generally noticed than similarities
of taste. As the flower is much larger than that of the
buttercup, and equally golden in color, it often becomes.
of considerable importance in spring foregrounds.
May- -Cones of Pine.
169
XXXII.
Cones of Pine-The
The Author audaciously Plagiarizes — Quotation from
Sir A. Helps-A Pine-wood-Sycamore-maple-Les Bœufs,' by
Pierre Dupont - Holly - Flowers of Bird-cherry and Holly.
UST before the middle of May the pines are begin-
JUST
ning to form their cones, which, at a little distance,
have a powerful effect upon the color. At this time
they are just disengaging themselves from the brown
covering, and are of a light and cheerful green; how-
ever, the brown still dominates, especially at a distance.
There is scarcely any thing in Nature to be compared
with a pine-wood, I think. Now, this sentence which
I have just written is not my own, but a piece of down-
right audacious plagiarism from a very eminent author,
who wrote 'Companions of my Solitude,' and whose
charming thoughts have become companions to enliven
the solitude of many other persons beside himself; and
in that book any ingenious critic, keen to detect a
larceny, may find the above sentence printed word for
word. I ought, no doubt, to have honestly written
it as a quotation with inverted commas, but as the
opinion it expresses is just as much my own as his I
prefer to appropriate it absolutely. But as one cannot
exactly steal a whole paragraph or page, I will now
proceed to quote a passage which has always seemed
to me one of the most complete expressions of the syl-
van influence on the mind of a thinking creature:
170 May - Quotation from Sir A. Helps.
'I remember once when, after a long journey, I was ap-
proaching a city ennobled by great works of art, and of great
renown, that I had to pass through what I was told by the
guide-books was most insipid country, only to be hurried over
as fast as might be, and nothing to be thought or said about it.
But the guide-books, though very clever and useful things in
their way, do not know each of us personally, nor what we
secretly like and care for. Well, I was speeding through this
"uninteresting" country, and now there remained but one
long dull stage, as I read, to be gone through before I should
reach the much-wished-for city. It was necessary to stay some
time (for we travelled vetturino fashion) at the little post-
house, and I walked on, promising to be in the way whenever
the vehicle should overtake me. The road led through a wood,
chiefly of pines, varied, however, occasionally by other trees.
'Into this wood I strayed. There was that indescribably
soothing noise (the Romans would have used the word
susurrus), the aggregate of many gentle movements of gentle
creatures. The birds hopped but a few paces off, as
as I ap-
proached them; the brilliant butterflies wavered hither and
thither before me; there was a soft breeze that day, and the
tops of the tall trees swayed to and fro politely to each other.
I found many delightful resting-places. It was not all dense
wood; but here and there were glades (such open spots, I
mean, as would be cut through by the sword for an army to
pass); and here and there stood a clump of trees of different
heights and foliage, as beautifully arranged as if some triumph
of the art of landscape had been intended, though it was only
Nature's way of healing up the gaps in the forest. For her
healing is a new beauty.
'It was very warm, without which nothing is beautiful to
me; and I fell into the pleasantest train of thought. The
easiness of that present moment seemed to show the pos-
sibility of all care being driven away from the world some
day. For thus peace brings a sensation of power with it. I
June-A Pine-wood.
171
shall not say what I thought of, for it is not good always to be
communicative; but altogether that hour in the pine-wood was
the happiest hour of the whole journey, though I saw many
grand pictures and noble statues, a mighty river, and buildings
which were built when people had their own clear thoughts
of what they meant to do and how they would do it.'*
This is as different as possible from Dante's feeling
about woods, but then the English writer knew that he
could easily get out of his pine-wood to catch the
vetturino again; and in England, where he had learned
to love woods as places to meditate in, they are never
large enough to inspire the forest-fear of which I have
spoken elsewhere. And yet the pine is not in the
spring-time the most cheerful-looking of forest-trees,
though it has a wholesome influence on the mind, and
fills the air with a healthy and stimulating odor. The
sycamore-maple is far more gay, with its long pendent
racemes of greenish-yellow flowers. The botanists call
this family the Aceraceae, because the wood is sturdy;
and the reader may remember how in that magnificent
rustic song 'Les Boeufs,' by Pierre Dupont, the poet
begins by particularizing the woods from which the
plough and the goad are made, and the wood used
in the plough is sycamore:
'J'ai deux grands bœufs dans mon étable,
Deux grands bœufs blancs marqués de roux ;
La charrue est en bois d'érable
L'aiguillon en branche de houx.'
*Companions of my Solitude.' By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. Roberts
Brothers' Ed. p. 77.
172
June The Classic Pastorals.
The holly, that served for the goad, flowers nearly at
the same time with the sycamore, but not at all con-
spicuously, though its flowers are visible. I may just
observe what a great difference there often is in pictorial
importance between the flowers and fruit of the same.
plant. In some plants, as, for example, the bird-cherry
tree, the flowers are glorious, and the berry of scarcely
any visible importance; in others, as the holly, the
flowers would almost escape the notice of anybody but
a botanist, whilst it is impossible to avoid paying atten-
tion to the fruit.
XXXIII.
The Classic Pastorals — Inferiority of the Classical Writers in Passion
for Natural Beauty Superiority of Chaucer to Virgil - Virgil's
laconic Way Chaucer's abounding Eloquence Virgil never
intense when speaking of Nature - Virgil's blending of Human
Interest with Nature - How Virgil particularizes - He cared for
Nature independently of Personal Ease and Enjoyment - Catho-
licity of Taste in Virgil His preference of Olive to Willow Affec-
tionate Comparison of Species True Classic Love for Nature
contrasted with Wilful Ignorance of False Modern Classicism
Facility of brief poetical Word-painting-A little Virgilian Picture
- Virgil's Coloring Much effect with little Labor - Excessive
Brevity of Classical Writers Their Laborious Corrections - Per-
manent Interests of Sylvan Life - Virgil's prospective Sense of
Duration in Sylvan Things - The Anchorite and the Cicada.
I'
HAD reserved the reading of the classic pastorals
for the full bloom of leafy summer, hoping that
in our retirement we might have better access to the
thoughts of the poets when the green light fell upon
June-Superiority of Chaucer to Virgil. 173
their pages through the forest-leaves, and every thing
around us might illustrate their sylvan imagery.
So
when June came I seldom went out without some old
Idyllist in my pocket, and sometimes Alexis read with
me, and often I read alone.
One general result of these readings remains with
me, and that is a strong sense of the inferiority of the
classical writers in the passion for natural beauty, I
will not say to the moderns, who have made a trade
of this passion, just as landscape-painters do, but to
the poets of the early renaissance, who wrote simply
from the heart, and had no idea of making poetical
capital from a business-like observation of Nature.
There is not the slightest comparison, for example,
between Virgil and Chaucer with respect to wealth of
landscape description, either in quantity or passion,
Chaucer is so much the more opulent and powerful
poet of the two in every thing that relates to external
Nature. And yet when I mention Virgil, I mention
a poet highly distinguished amongst the ancients for
this very delight in Nature; a poet who certainly did
love sylvan things with a rare degree of affection, and
that not simply for his own physical enjoyment of
pleasant shade or thirst-assuaging fountain, or fruit
delicious in the mouth, but for their own beauty out-
side of human needs. But how laconically he expresses
this feeling! how little he dwells upon it! A few
neatly-ordered words suffice; the poet thinks he has
said all that is to be said, or need be, and there is an
end. Chaucer, on the other hand,; whenever he begins
174 June — Chaucer's abounding Eloquence.
to talk about his enjoyment of Nature, hardly knows
how or when to stop; he has the abounding eloquence
of a warm and earnest enthusiasm, the freshness and
variety of his ideas and sensations suggest an equal
variety and abundance of poetical expression; he tries
hard to utter all that is in him, very frequently finds
that he has not yet succeeded to his mind, and tries
again and again, but without effacing the previous.
attempts, so that there is a string of them one after
another. Hence Virgil may be quoted easily; there
are passages of his, not more than three words long,
which afford excellent quotations and good subjects
for literary disquisition : whereas to quote Chaucer is
difficult in the extreme, for he leads you down to the
bottom of the page, and over the leaf, before you have
time to pause.
Of course I am clearly aware that a
comparison of this kind cannot be made with justice
unless we duly consider the reserve which was a part
of the classical temper, and the remarkable tendency
to think it is enough,' which formed habits of work
in classic artists so directly opposed to the careless
fecundity of the medieval ones, and to the money-
getting productiveness of the moderns. It is quite
evident that if Virgil, whilst retaining this classical
reserve, had been imbued with Chaucer's passion for
flowers and birds, and spring mornings in the woods.
and by streams, he would have concentrated the utter-
ance of it into a tenth of the space that Chaucer covered
with his facile verse; but then the utterance would have
been all the more intense and powerful for that very
June- Virgil never intense.
175
concentration, whereas what we have of Virgil's is
delicate, but never intense, I mean, when he speaks
of Nature. He is always pleased to be in the woods,
and, whilst he is telling the story of this or that poetical
shepherd, the landscape is constantly seen by little.
glimpses behind and between the figures; but it is.
painted with a quiet affection, no more, and an affection.
that is immediately satisfied. One thing, however, is in
the highest degree delightful in Virgil, and that is the
lovely blending of human interests with his observations.
upon inanimate nature; exactly like the wreathing of
leaves and branches about fair or mighty human limbs,
that occurs so frequently in the work of the great figure-
painters. Thus when Gallus says, in the tenth Eclogue,
that he will go and suffer in the woods, the young trees
are associated with his passion in a way that could have
occurred to no other poet :—
'Certum est in silvis, inter spelæa ferarum
Malle pati, tenerisque meos incidere amores
Arboribus crescent illæ ; crescetis, amores.'
:
'My mind is made up to prefer suffering in the woods
amongst the dens of wild beasts, and to engrave my loves
upon the saplings: the saplings grow grow (with them, my)
loves.'
This is ingenious, and affectionate also; and please.
observe the thoroughly classical brevity of the last four
words. Here, however, we have only the young trees
in general, and we know that it is one of the marks of
true affection to particularize, to distinguish the qualities
belonging especially to each of the things or persons
176
Fune - How Virgil particularizes.
that we love. Well, Virgil particularizes also, just like
a modern landscape-painter; and I take time to make
this observation in passing, that when the pseudo-
classical school opposed itself so strongly to the dis-
tinction between the species of trees which the modern
school of landscape felt to be essential, it would have
been easy to reply that their own idol, Virgil, did ex-
actly the same thing in poetry that the new school
was humbly endeavoring to do in the sister art of
painting. Thus, in the seventh Eclogue, Thyrsis says,
just at the last:
'Fraxinus in silvis pulcherrima, pinus in hortis,
Populus in fluviis, abies in montibus altis:
Sæpius at si me, Lycida formose, revisas,
Fraxinus in silvis cedat tibi, pinus in hortis.'
This illustrates at the same time both the two quali-
ties that I have been speaking of, for not only are the
trees mentioned specially, but they are connected with
a human interest:
'The ash is most beautiful in the woods, the pine in gar-
dens, the poplar by rivers, the fir on lofty mountains; but
if thou camest to see me oftener, beautiful Lycidas, the ash
would yield to thee in the woods, the pine in gardens.'
Nor would our analysis of the Virgilian spirit in this
passage be complete without the observation, that it
affords evidence against the theory that the ancients
could see no beauty in Nature except such as was con-
nected with personal ease or physical enjoyment. The
allusion to gardens is brief and cursory in the extreme,
whilst there is no mention of what are popularly called
:
June-Catholicity of Taste in Virgil. 177
fruit-trees; but the poet is clearly alive to the beauty
of the ash, to that of the poplar, - very different kinds
of sylvan beauty, whilst it may be especially observed
that the faculty of perceiving any thing to admire in
the 'fir on the lofty mountains' has been supposed
to be exclusively modern. Yet, although Virgil had
the catholicity of taste which appreciates many different
forms of beauty, he had, like all true lovers of Nature,
his own little private preferences, which it is interesting
to note when an accident of his verse reveals them.
For example: he preferred the olive-tree to the willow,
-a preference which, when I think of the perfect
beauty of willows that have never been mutilated by
farmers, I find it difficult to share, though it is possible
that a poet living so far south may have had in his
mind the peculiar grandeur of very ancient olive-trees,
and the value of their pale foliage, which he especially
notices, in scenes pervaded by the Italian azure of sky
and Mediterranean bays :
'Lenta salix quantum pallenti cedit olivæ,
Puniceis humilis quantum saliunca rosetis ;
Judicio nostro tantum tibi cedit Amyntas.'
'As much as the pliant willow is inferior to the pale olive-
tree; as much as the humble lavender is inferior to red roses;
so much, in our opinion, is Amyntas inferior to thee.'
Every lover of Nature has preferences of this kind,
and the poet supposes that the gods must have them
also; thus he reminds us that the vine was especially
beloved by Bacchus, the poplar by Hercules, the myrtle
by beautiful Venus, and 'his laurel' by Phoebus. But
12
178 June-Affectionate Comparison of Species.
'Phyllis amat corylos,' - Phyllis loves hazels, and so
long as Phyllis shall love hazels neither the myrtle nor
Apollo's laurel shall surpass them.
This comparison of species is full of affection, and
not a narrow affection either; for though the poet may
have had an especial liking for the olive, and probably
for the hazel also (there is reason to suppose that
Phyllis expresses a taste of the poet himself), he frankly
tells us that other trees have been preferred by other
personages, and gives each the honor that is its due.
This largeness is strikingly different from a bigoted
narrowness on this very subject, which is not unfre-
quently met with in our own time, and of which I have
lately given a very striking example. Here is evi-
dence sufficient, though in laconic passages, that the
Roman poet had a love for sylvan Nature, which if not
so cultivated by attention to minute detail as that of
a modern botanist, or a landscape-painter of the botani-
cal school, still paid far more attention to detail than
the wilfully ignorant criticism of the false modern clas-
sical school, which held the almost inconceivable the-
ory that trees were to be regarded simply as trees,
without distinguishing their species. I well know that
we are strongly tempted, on the faith of a word here
and there, to give credit to an ancient author for much
more knowledge and much keener perception than he
probably ever possessed; and that it is one of the com-
monest illusions of our complex intellectual civilization
to forget the simplicity of sight and thought in which
men lived long ago, and to attribute to them our own
Fune - A Little Virgilian Picture. 179
habits and ideas from a respectful unwillingness to
acknowledge any inferiority in them: but the exact
truth about their ways of thinking is still ascertain-
able. It is clear that Virgil had much of the sort of
vision which belongs to a modern painter. Let us not
exaggerate this praise: there is an immense difference.
between merely writing down the words 'fraxinus in
silvis pulcherrima,' and painting an ash-tree well, so as
to make us see that it is 'pulcherrima.' It is easy to say
that a bull has a white side and that the herbage he eats
is 'pale;' but it requires an incomparably higher culture
of the faculty which perceives color to paint the white
bull and the pale herbage in the right tints. However,
it may be affirmed with truth that Virgil had the faculty
of pictorial sight in the rudimentary state, because he
takes notice of the things that painters give their lives
to study; and it is perfectly conceivable, that had he
lived in our own time he might have become a painter
of rustic subjects, equal to Troyon in breadth and repose,
superior to him in delicacy. Here, in two lines, is a
picture that really reminds one of Troyon, - it was the
recollection of these very verses that made me mention
that painter just now, a picture as highly finished as it
can be in so brief a space, the subject being a bull with
landscape adjuncts, exactly the kind of subject that
Troyon painted with so much simplicity and truth:-
'Ille, latus niveum molli fultus hyacintho
Ilice sub nigra pallentes ruminat herbas.'
'He, with his snow-white side resting upon the soft hyacinth,
ruminates the pale herbage under the black ilex.'
180 June-Much Effect with little Labor.
You have the white bull, the dark ilex, and then the
middle tint of herbage, which is called pale by com-
parison with the tree. 'Black' is merely the popular
term for dark, whether dark green or dark purple; it is
still constantly used in this way in different languages,
especially with reference to trees: thus we have the
black poplar, the black forest, the black islands, &c.
It is not too much to say that another color is sug-
gested by the simple mention of the hyacinth, and
there is a delicate hint of pity for the flower crushed
under the weight of the animal; but this belongs to
poetry rather than to painting. I do not believe that
any artist in words ever painted so complete a picture
of animal and landscape with so few touches. You
have color (niveum, hyacintho), you have texture (molli),
and you have light and shade (nigra pallentes). What-
ever may be wanting in the tiny masterpiece is supplied
at once by our own memory and imagination, — form
is only indicated by the mention of the kind of animal
and the kinds of plants; but then we remember imme-
diately what is the shape of a bull, of an ilex, and of a
hyacinth.
To appreciate the full artistic quality of such a per-
fect bit of work as this, it is enough to place beside it
any piece of common descriptive verse having a similar
subject. But whilst thus heartily acknowledging Virgil's
peculiar gift, and the art with which he so skilfully used
it, a modern critic can hardly escape some feeling of
surprise at what seems to him the excessive brevity
of the classical writers. They said what they had to
Fune-Interests of Sylvan Life. 181
say so well, that the wonder is they were not tempted
to say more, or, if not more on the same subjects, that
they did not treat other subjects in the same manner.
Their inspiration does not seem to have been frequent
in its recurrence, or of long duration when it came. We
know that they corrected laboriously, and their correc-
tions, like those of a sculptor on the marble, would result
(with their taste) in a diminution of the mass. This
being so, it is a subject of special regret that so much
of the Georgics should have been occupied with mere
receipts and advice for the use of farmers.
The interests of the sylvan life are very much the
same in all ages, the differences which time has brought
about being more in the arms and instruments we use
than in the objects of our study or the manner of our
enjoyment. The ancients had not our guns and micro-
scopes, but they hunted and botanized after their own
more primitive fashion, chasing the same animals, and
gathering the same plants. In the fifth Eclogue there
is a prospective sense of the duration of sylvan things
which expresses itself very strongly in two verses:
'Dum juga montis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit,
Dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadæ ;
Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt.'
'So long as the wild boar shall love the ridges of the hills,
or the fish the streams; so long as the bees shall feed on
thyme, or the cicada drink the dew; thy name and honor
shall remain.'
Well, here, within so short a distance of the Val Ste.
Véronique, there are wild boars on the ridges of the
182 June - The Anchorite and the Cicada.
hills, there are fish in the clear streams, and the bees
feed on the wild thyme, and the cicada drinks the dew.
So permanent are sylvan things, that Virgil described.
prospectively all these neighbors of mine just nineteen
hundred years ago. Neighbors, indeed! though, per-
haps, it is not very neighborly of me to shoot the wild
boars, and catch the trout, and take the honey from the
bees; but my conscience is clear as to the cicada,— her
I have never injured or robbed, not being able to see
my advantage in so doing; and, therefore, I will call
her 'neighbor' without remorse. As we have been
quoting Latin lately, I may recall what an anchorite of
the desert said with a true affection for this humble
creature, that he had learned in the depth of his soli-
tude, - 'Soror, amica mea, cicada!'-'My sister, and
friend, cicada!' I never see one of them without think-
ing of this, and loving that holy anchorite.
}
June- Theocritus.
183
Theocritus
XXXIV.
Greek, French, and English — The real Subject of Greek
Idyl and Roman Eclogue — The Idyllic Shepherds - Their Immoral-
ity - A Protest - Nature of the Idyl- Few Landscape Pictures in
the great Idyllists - Method of the Idyllists - Their simplest Art
Cunning of the Idyllists in describing Things - The pervading
Sylvan Spirit - Virgil and Theocritus compared - Personal Expe-
rience of Theocritus — His lively Description of Repose near a Coun-
try House
Description by Theocritus Touches of Reality — The
true Idyllists call every thing by its own Name.
T
HERE are not many separate landscape studies
in Virgil's idyllic poetry; there are fewer still in
that of Theocritus. Greek and Roman remained within
the rigid limits of their art; and perhaps the Greek, by
the quality of his language, even exceeded the Roman in
that brevity that we approach with so much difficulty
when we care to rival it at all. So Theocritus, in the
twenty-fifth Idyl, speaks of the hill-tops with many
springs, πολυπίδακος ἀκρωρείης, which the best French
translation calls collines aux sources nombreuses, how
awkwardly! and which could not be adequately trans-
lated into English without borrowing Tennyson's ex-
pression, 'many-fountained,'
'Dear mother Ida, many-fountained Ida,'
which is itself an exotic form, borrowed from the very
Greek word that Theocritus used, taken evidently from
Homer, who uses it in connection with Ida.
But the real subject or motive of the Greek idyl and
184
June- The Idyllic Shepherds.
of the Roman eclogue, the imitation of it, is not external
nature; it is the life of man in Nature, of man as an
animal, or lower than any other animal, with pretty hills
and foliage for a background, and flower-bearing, grassy
lands to play in. It is strange that an immorality so
disgusting, so inconceivable by us, should ever have
been united with any simple and hearty love of Nature,
and it is the stranger that the immorality itself was of
a kind completely out of harmony with natural instinct
and law but the truth is, that in the measure of their
powers these ancient poets, when they wrote idyls, set
themselves to paint animal pictures with rustic back-
grounds, the animal being sometimes a bull, sometimes
a goat, but more frequently man. We have only to
read these poems to perceive at once how inevitable it
was for the ancients to arrive at the conception of the
satyr. The sentimental shepherds whom they celebrate
are morally so much beneath what we charitably hope
is the common human level, that it is really a relief and
a necessary transition to pass from them to the honestly
semi-bestial condition of half-animal, in which we see
at once that responsibility has been diminished by
monstrosity of organization. Had these poets simply
taken man as a part of Nature and described his passions
naturally, however frankly, we might have read their
descriptions with the indulgence that we feel for savages
in the South Sea Islands; but their groves are like the
Cities of the Plain, and one desires for them, if not the
consuming fire, at any rate the oblivion of Asphaltites,
- that dreariest, bitterest of seas, whose waters lie for
June-Nature of the Idyl.
ever, and so heavily-heaviest of all waters
185
on a vale
not morally more impure than the Arcadia of classic-
imagination.
*
I know that morality is not art, and that as we
began to talk of these things simply from the artistic
point of view, it is a complete change of key to pass.
into moral criticism. But it was impossible for me to
speak of the old idyllic poetry at all without this pro-
test; and now that the protest has got itself fairly
uttered I am free to return to art.
The nature of the idyl has been accurately defined
by a recent English writer on Greek poetry. The
name of the idyl,' he says, 'sufficiently explains its
nature. It is a little picture. Rustic or town life,
legends of the gods, and passages of personal experi-
ence, supply the idyllist with subjects. He does not
treat them lyrically, following rather the rules of epic
and dramatic composition. Generally there is a nar-
rator, and in so far the idyl is epic; its verse, too, is
the hexameter.
Perhaps the plastic arts deter-
mined the direction of idyllic poetry, suggesting the
name and supplying the poet with models of compact
and picturesque treatment. In reading the Idyls it
*Thus I have no hesitation in preferring the twenty-seventh idyl
of Theocritus to the twenty-third, notwithstanding the frank license
of the one and the decent language of the other. Indeed I think that
the twenty-third idyl of Theocritus, and some of Virgil's, are the most
essentially and perfectly abominable things, from the moral point of
view, in literature. Everybody knows this who has read them, but
somehow these authors escape the stigma of immorality because of their
sacred character as classics. The worst of modern literature is purity
itself in comparison.
186
June-Method of the Idyllists.
should never be forgotten that they are pictures, so
studied and designed by their authors: they ought to
affect us in the same way as the bas-reliefs and vases
of Greek art, in which dramatic action is presented at
a moment of its evolution, and beautiful forms are
grouped together with such simplicity as to need but
little story to enhance their value.'*
Although, as I have already observed, the landscape
pictures that can be detached are rare in the great
idyllists, they continually associate, as we have seen in
Virgil, the material of landscape with the human life,
which they paint in their little compositions; and so
closely, that if you cannot separate the landscape from
the figures, so it is hardly possible, on the other hand,
to separate the figures from the landscape. Thus, in
his first idyl, Theocritus begins with a pine-tree close
to fountains, and speaks of its whispering or rustling,
úρioμa, instantaneously connecting this vague music
with the music of a goatherd playing upon his pipe;
whilst the goatherd himself, in answer, connects the
sound of water falling from a rock with the song of a
shepherd. This was distinctly the method of the idyl-
lists, who blended figures and landscape as closely
together as they possibly could, often in a way that
criticism might fairly blame as being too obviously
intentional. The simplest and most natural way of -
doing this was by merely informing the reader that the
little incident narrated occurred in such or such a
* Studies of the Greek Poets.' By John Addington Symonds.
London: Smith and Elder. 1873.
1
June - Cunning of the Idyllists.
187
pleasant place, where this or that species of tree was
growing. 'Let us sit down here,' the goatherd says,
"under this elm, before this Priapus and these (carved)
Kraniades, where there are a rustic seat and oak-trees.'
When the poet describes a vase he takes the oppor-
tunity of doing a little leaf-painting at the same time,
by twining round the lips of it a garland of ivy mixed
with pelichrysum, giving a dainty little touch of color
just at the last, каρж@ крокóЄvтI, of saffron-colored
fruit. The vase, too, is varnished with 'odorous wax,'
the simple mention of which carries the imagination
instantaneously to the bees and their labors, and thence
to the flowers where the odorous wax is found. Nor
is this all; for, in continuing the description of the
vase, Theocritus, whilst speaking of the figures upon it,
says that near to one of them is a vine laden with
grapes, and round about the vase is a wreath of the
flexible acanthus. So in Virgil's third Eclogue the two
cups, made by the divine Alcimedon,' are decorated
with carvings of vine and ivy; whilst on two other cups
by the same artist, belonging to Damotas, the acanthus.
is used for the handles; and in the midst the artist has
represented Orpheus and the forests following him-
'sylvasque sequentes.' How completely the sylvan
spirit flows into every thing here!
Mr. Symonds, whom I have already quoted, thinks
that, whilst it is difficult to speak in terms of exag-
gerated praise concerning the appreciation of scenery
by Theocritus, Virgil lacks his vigor and enthusiasm
for the open-air life of the country. The sentiment that
188 June - Personal Experience of Theocritus.
we find in Virgil appears to be of a different nature.
It is not so fresh and lively, but is more indolent and
tender; still, it seems genuine also. The difference
between the two is very like a difference that may
frequently be observed between two landscape-painters
in our own day, one of whom is remarkable for sketching
vigorously in color, and the other for concentrated
finish and artistic arrangement of his material in the
studio. The two artists may have an equal love for
Nature, although the work of the first will seem to have
more vitality, and that of the second more accomplished
art. Theocritus writes like a man who is accustomed
to walk in all sorts of wild places, and who remembers
his experiences in such walks. Thus, in the fourth
Idyl, Corydon says, 'When you come to the mountain,
Battus, don't come unshod; for on the mountain-land
grow ῥάμνοι and ἀσπάλαθοι, prickly shrubs of Sicily.
Evidently this is the recommendation of a practical
pedestrian. Then he has the art of finding pleasant
spots to rest in; so Lacon says to his companion,
'Don't be in such a hurry, the fire is not at your
heels. You will sing more agreeably when you are
seated here under the wild olive-tree and those shrubs.
Cool water trickles here; we have grass and a leafy
couch, and the grasshoppers chirp close by.' Writing
like this takes us out of doors at once, and to the very
spot. In the seventh Idyl we have a rich description
of a pleasant country-house, and the arrival there:
'Then Lycidas turned to the left'-observe the vivid.
reality given by this detail and took the road to
June-Touches of Reality.
189
Pyxus. But Encritus and I turned towards where
Phrasidamus lived, and so did handsome little Amyntas.
We reclined rejoicing in deep beds of odorous mastic-
leaves, and in leaves just stripped from the vines; and
many poplars and elms swayed to and fro over our
heads, and close to us the sacred fountain babbled
whilst it flowed from the grotto of the nymphs. And
in the shade-giving branches the sun-browned cicadas
tired themselves with chirruping, and the ỏλoλvywv
made its murmuring noise far off* in bloomless thickets
of bramble. The larks and goldfinches sang, the turtle-
dove uttered her plaintive note, the brown-yellow bees.
flew round about the fountains, every thing smelt of the
rich late summer, of the fruit-time. Pears and apples
were beside us and at our feet, and the branches were
weighed down to the earth.'
Evidently this description is from memory; it is a
lively account of a rest in some house the poet himself
must have visited. There is especially one touch, the
poplars and elms waving to and fro over the heads of
the boon companions, which must have been got from
Nature. There are other touches scattered about the
idyls, which have a like reality. 'I began to love thee,'
the Cyclops says to Galatea, 'when first thou camest
with my mother to gather hyacinths upon the hill.
Whatever may be the differences between Theocritus
and his greatest imitator, one thing they have in com-
* The creature is unknown, and the translation of the word
can only be guessed at. M. Remer thinks it meant the green
frog.
190
June- The Aminta of Tasso.
mon, or perhaps it may be more accurate to say that one
quality was preserved in the imitation, and that is, their
habit of calling every thing by its own name.
It is un-
necessary to give examples of this, because every extract
that I have made is an example. The weak pastoral
poetry of their feeblest and latest imitators is not
marked by this masterly precision. Theocritus always
had before his mind's eye the image of a tree, when he
thought of a tree at all, much too clearly for him to be
ignorant of its species. The weak imitator does not see
an elm or a poplar, but only 'trees,' which in English
have generally the advantage of rhyming with breeze,
and 'groves,' which are useful because they rhyme with
loves.
XXXV.
The Aminta of Tasso His Indifference to
Verse Tasso's Treatment of Landscape
- Human Interest.
WHEN We
Scenery - His Musical
His Way of Sketching
HEN we pass from the early genuine pastorals to
such a pastoral as the 'Aminta' of Tasso, we
very soon find out that we have left sylvan Nature
behind us. We have shepherds, and satyrs, and pas-
toral costumes, and an abundance of pretty talk, but
we are no more in the fresh air of Theocritus than if the
Tuscan poet had studied nothing but a classical dic-
June-Tasso's Musical Verse.
191
tionary. He does not really care in the least about the
scenery of his poem; occasionally a tree is mentioned,
or the woods, or a rivulet, or a little lake, but curso-
rily, in the temper of a figure-painter who dashes in a
bit of background with what may happen to be upon.
his palette. The words of course come in well and
musically, as words: 'l'onde' rhymes prettily with
'fronde.
'Ho visto al pianto mio
Risponder per pietate i sassi e l'onde;
E sospirar le fronde
Ho visto al pianto mio;
Ma non ho visto mai,
Nè spero di vedere
Compassion nella crudele e bella.'*
These verses are quite typical of Tasso's treatment
of landscape. He may use it for rapid allusion, but will
not dwell upon it an instant longer than is necessary for
his immediate purpose, and recurs to human passion as
a workman who has glanced out of window applies him-
self again to his own business. So in the second scene
(Act I.) Aminta tells, very exquisitely, that pretty story
about the bee stinging, and how Filli, who was stung
on the cheek, was cured by Silvia's lips; after which he,
Aminta, who had not been stung by the bee, pretended
that he had been, and so got a sort of kiss from Silvia,
*I have known the stones and the water answer my complaint
from pity, and I have known the leaves sigh to it; but I have never
found, nor do I ever hope to find, compassion in her who is cruel and
beautiful.'
192
June-Tasso's Way of Sketching.
who did not know that she was kissing him; by which
act of innocent charity Silvia inflicted a deeper wound
than any bee could have inflicted. This little scene.
takes place ‘all' ombra d'un bel faggio,' under the shade
of a fine beech-tree, and in the course of the narrative
Aminta compares Silvia's sweet words to the mur-
muring of a slow rivulet that makes its way amongst
little stones, or to the noise of a light breeze under
the leaves.
'E le dolci parole, assai più dolci
Che 'l mormorar d'un lento fiumicello
Che rompa il corso fra minuti sassi,
O che 'l garrir dell' aura infra le frondi.'
But the poet instantly passes from these light
touches of landscape-sketching to the real subject of
his thoughts: 'Then I felt in my heart a new desire
to bring this mouth of mine nearer to her mouth.'
'Allor sentii nel cuor nuovo desire
D'appressar alla sua questa mia bocca.'
And when Dafne mentions a pond and an islet, it
is only to tell how Silvia looked at herself in the water
whilst she was dressing her hair and adorning it with
flowers.
!
June The French Imitation-Pastoral. 193
XXXVI.
The French Imitation-Pastoral - Le Brun - Le Brun's Good Inten-
tions-The Modern Genuine Pastoral-Lamartine's 'Laboureurs'-
Troyon and Rosa Bonheur - Millet and Jules Breton - George Sand
'La Petite Fadette' — Landry and Sylvinet
Landry and Sylvinet — A perfect Bit — Diffi-
culty of treating Rustic Subjects A Satirist of Florian.
WHEN
HEN you come to the French imitation-pastoral,
the indifference to landscape is pretty nearly
absolute. You have 'rochers' and 'bois' and 'forêts,
of course, but not the faintest sign that the writer has
ever walked in the woods with his eyes open. The
following lines from Houdard de Lamotte are a fair
specimen of the sort of landscape-painting you have to
expect:
'Aux plaintes de Daphnis les Nymphes s'attendrirent;
Dans le creux des rochers les échos en gémirent;
Comme aux accords d'Orphée on vit du fond des bois
Les lions attendris accourir à sa voix.'
The most curious thing about the French pastoral
writers of the eighteenth century is that they do really
seem to fancy themselves students of Nature. Le Brun
wrote a poem on 'La Nature, ou le Bonheur Philoso-
phique et Champêtre,' and in the first canto invokes the
wood-gods and the nymphs: -
'Et vous, de la Nature immortelles compagnes,
Vous, déités des bois, vous, nymphes des campagnes,
Laissez-moi parcourir vos bosquets ombragés
Que l'art contagieux n'a jamais outragés.'
13
194 June- The Modern Genuine Pastoral.
Here are decided intentions of taking walks in the
woods, but they come to nothing; and the poet does
not get beyond a very external interest in agriculture,
which leaves him at liberty to soliloquize at great length
upon things in general.
It was only after the mania for imitating Virgil and
Theocritus had completely spent itself that the genuine
modern school of pastoral art arose. The feeling which
inspired Theocritus exists in our own day, but now,
when it is genuine, it never expresses itself in the form.
that was natural to him. Most commonly, a modern
poet who has this inspiration gives utterance to it by
means of color upon canvas, making his idyl really
visible, according to the derivation of the word from
eidos and eîdw, and he who cares for this kind of poetry
may find good pages of it in the annual exhibitions.
of pictures. Sometimes our modern writers in verse
or prose describe rural things with idyllic grace and
sweetness, yet hardly ever with idyllic concision; and it
is for this reason chiefly that a painted idyl, which pro-
duces its effect instantaneously on the spectator, is
nearer to the original conception of the εἰδύλλιον.
should like very much to quote some of the best
modern work in writing, but it is almost impossible
to do so without invading one's space too much: such
quotations are like the young cuckoo in a small bird's
nest; they grow and grow till they push the native prog-
eny aside.
I
'Les Laboureurs' of Lamartine is a very good speci-
men of the genuine modern rustic poem. Here is one
June - Lamartine's 'Laboureurs.'
195
extract, spoiled, or nearly so, by being cut too short. It
is quite a picture :
'Laissant souffler ses bœufs, le jeune homme s'appuie
Debout au tronc d'un chêne, et de sa main essuie
La sueur du sentier sur son front mâle et doux;
La femme et les enfants tout petits, à genoux
Devant les bœufs privés baissant leur corne à terre
Leur cassent des rejets de frêne et de fougère,
Et jettent devant eux en verdoyants monceaux
Les feuilles que leurs mains émondent des rameaux;
Ils ruminent en paix pendant que l'ombre obscure
Sous le soleil montant se replie à mesure,
Et, laissant de la glèbe attiédir la froideur,
Vient mourir, et border les pieds du laboureur.
Il rattache le joug, sous sa forte courroie,
Aux cornes qu'en pesant sa main robuste ploie
Les enfants vont cueillir des rameaux découpés
Des gouttes de rosée encore tout trempés;
Au joug avec la feuille en verts festons les nouent,
Que sur leurs fronts voilés les fiers taureaux secouent
Pour que leur flanc qui bat et leur poitrail poudreux
Portent sous le soleil un peu d'ombre avec eux.'
This is just as truthful as the best bits of Virgil, and
it is a charming rustic scene. I have Italicized what
seem to me the best and happiest touches. We see
that this is strictly the same rustic inspiration that
animated Troyon and Rosa Bonheur, yet sweeter and
tenderer than theirs. Millet and Jules Breton, two
poets who have worked in color, have much more
human sympathy than the two illustrious animal-
painters just mentioned, and are nearer, but in their
own original way, to the temper of the literary artists.
196
June-La Petite Fadette.
But by far the greatest of all modern writers on rustic
subjects is George Sand. She alone has found the
means of conciliating a perfectly rustic tone of thought
with the exigences of accomplished art. You may read
her 'La Petite Fadette' in any farmhouse within sixty
miles of the place where it was written, and the peas-
ants will understand you and be grateful; you may read
the same book to the most learned critics in polite liter-
ature, and they will feel the freshness of Theocritus, the
consummate art of Virgil. When Landry is seeking
his twin-brother Sylvinet by the brook-side there occur
the most exquisite paragraphs, finished like portions of
a poem:
'Chacun sait pourtant qu'il y a danger à rester au bord de
notre rivière quand le grand vent se lève. Toutes les rives
sont minées en dessous, et il n'est point d'orage qui, dans la
quantité, ne déracine quelques-uns de ces vergnes qui sont
toujours courts en racines, à moins qu'ils ne soient très gros
et très vieux, et qui vous tomberaient fort bien sur le corps
sans vous avertir. Mais Sylvinet, qui n'était pourtant ni plus
simple ni plus fou qu'un autre, ne paraissait pas tenir compte
du danger. Il n'y pensait pas plus que s'il se fut trouvé à
l'abri dans une bonne grange.'
Landry finds his brother by the brook-side, and then
comes one of the most perfect bits in the whole story.
See how delicately finished it is, and yet how full of
Nature, and how free! It is precisely in the early Greek
idyllic manner, the unaffected manner of Theocritus :-
'Il se mit donc à siffler comme s'il appelait les merles pour
les faire chanter, ainsi que font les pâtours quand ils suivent
66
June - A Satirist of Florian.
197
les buissons à la nuit tombante. Cela fit lever la tête à
Sylvinet, et, voyant son frère, il eut honte et se leva vivement,
croyant n'avoir pas été vu. Alors Landry fit comme s'il
l'apercevait, et lui dit sans beaucoup crier, car la rivière
ne chantait pas assez haut pour empêcher de s'entendre:
Hé, mon Sylvinet, tu es donc là? Je t'ai attendu tout
ce matin, et voyant que tu étais sorti pour si longtemps, je
suis venu me promener par ici, en attendant le souper,
ой
je comptais bien te retrouver à la maison: mais puisque te
voilà, nous rentrerons ensemble. Nous allons descendre la
rivière chacun sur une rive, et nous nous joindrons au gué
des Roulettes.""
The difficulty of writing well about rustic subjects is
twofold. Either the writer may be untrue, as Florian
was by a false refinement, or he may be too realist, too
terre-à-terre, like a vulgar painter, and be excluded from
all access to the ideal. Our knowledge of Nature feels
itself insulted by the first, and our sense of artistic con-
venance by the second. The two faults, of utterly oppo-
site kinds, were very cleverly united in the same song
by a writer who felt the absurdity of Florian and the
crudeness of the realism that is entirely without an
ideal. He makes a poet go into the fields with his head
full of Florian's notions, and enter into a conversation
with a shepherdess of the least imaginative type. What
he says is the 18th-century pastoral, with its false ideal;
what she answers is the gross modern realism that has
no idea whatever. In the chanson the male speaker has
entirely the worst of it, yet before the tribunal of a com-
petent art-criticism she also would be condemned as
unfit for the world of art - that world which has laws of
198
June- The Nightingale.
its own about truth, where truth is studied earnestly, yet
never uttered without reserve.
Here is one stanza:
'HE.
'Permets qu'à ton corsage
Je place ce bouquet,
A tes pieds ce feuillage,
Sur ta tête ces bluets!
SHE.
Monsieur, tout ça m'ennuie,
Moi qui n'ai qu'mes sabiots,
S'il vous en prend l'envie
J'vous les casserai d'sus le dos.'
XXXVII.
The Nightingale - His wonderful Voice — His various Emotional Ex-
pression — His Music is also Poetry and Eloquence - The Charm of
the Nightingale's Singing - Byron The Opening of 'Parisina'
The Nightingale sings on a height — Chaucer's Love of the Night-
ingale - Goldfinch and Nightingale -A Poet's Paradise - Tradition
amongst the Peasants - Buffon's Description of the Nightingale's
Song - The Talk of the Birds — The Secret of the Bird-Language.
A
·
S an eloquent speaker dislikes interruption, and
never attempts to display his eloquence when
he cannot be sure of silence round about him, so the
nightingale says nothing in the daytime, when a thousand
other voices and noises of all kinds would interrupt his
melodious utterance, but reserves it for the silence of
the night, when he alone is king of the forest, and he
may fancy that all other creatures are listening. His
June-His Wonderful Voice.
199
song was too original and too beautiful to be mixed
with the vulgar noises of the day, and even the glare
of sunshine would have been too violent an accom-
paniment; but when the woods lie dark in the broad
shadows that are cast by the midnight moon, and only
a leaf glitters here and there as it trembles in the soft,
noiseless breezes of the summer night, then, on some
thin high branch, the nightingale sits and sings alone.
And what wonderful singing it is! Many a human
reputation has been overdone, but this reputation of the
nightingale, great as it has been in all countries that
are favored by his performances, and even in other coun-
tries, too, by hearsay, has never yet fully prepared any
sensitive person to hear him for the first time with-
out both delight and amazement. The wonder ever
remains that a creature so small and weak, so little
gifted with the graces of outward appearance, a little,
thin, gray bird that only weighs half-an-ounce the
weight of a letter should possess a voice as strong as
the voice of a prima donna at the Opera, and at the
same time so marvellously sweet and pure. But not
alone for its strength and its purity is the song of the
nightingale astonishing. Its variety and flexibility are
more astonishing still. No musician ever better under-
stood the value of piano and pianissimo, of forte and
fortissimo, no musician ever developed a crescendo with
more sure and delicate gradation. And then the clear,
shrill pipings, the long brilliant shakes, the sudden sharp
strokes of sound like the crash of a violinist's bow upon
the strings, the tender passionate cadences fading away
200
June-
- His Emotional Expression.
into the night air and dying slowly in a prolonged agony
till they grow so thin and faint that you know not
whether yet they have wholly ceased or not! The bird
runs over the whole range of emotional expression, from
the intoxication of loudest triumph that can be heard as
far as the shouting of a strong man, down to the sighing
of an airy voice that seems like the lamentation of an
inconsolable spirit. Often there is an evident artist-
pride in consummate executive accomplishment, often
the bird plays upon its own marvellous instrument as a
musician plays the flute or the violin, seeking for the
most varied and original effects, and rejoicing in them
when they are found. Again, the song of the night-
ingale being his only utterance, it is not music simply
as music is for us, but also poetry and eloquence. The
nightingale is not merely a musician playing on an
instrument, he is a singer as we say that the poets
themselves are singers. No one who listens can doubt
that he expresses an original emotion. The abundant
variety of his song is evidence that it is not simply
mechanical, and the pauses that he allows himself are
not merely to recruit from physical weariness, but much
more to seek a fitting expression for the emotion that
is beginning to succeed to that which has just been
expressed. If the reader thinks that it is too much
to claim for this the character of poetry, since there
is no conscious exercise of creative intellect, he will
scarcely deny to the bird a gift like that of some mu-
sician who in the late evening sits at his piano, and
in a long series of unpremeditated improvisations gives
June- Byron.
201
expression to his feelings as they arise. He, too, in a
certain sense, is a poet, though not in words. And the
true ineffable charm of the nightingale's singing is not
in the quality of the sound, exquisite as it is, but in
the wonder of the communication from the little bird
to us. 'What!' thinks the human listener, 'can the bird
feel all these mighty emotions? can he feel such glory
of triumph, such tender melancholy, such languor of
passion?' Man, as he listens, quite easily falls under
the spell. The very hour and season conspire together
against him. It is summer in its richness, it is night
in its beauty and calm. The heart is hushed and sub-
dued, the eyes are quite ready to moisten at any
suggestion of melancholy, or the imagination to be
aroused by any awakening voice. The voice comes.
mysteriously from an unseen being, the quiet of the
night is filled and flooded with it, we are bathed in
the sound as in moonlight, and then all our great human
feelings are played upon by that tiny creature as an
organ is played upon by the organist.
Some of the very sweetest lines in poetry have been
suggested by the nightingale. Byron, from his residence.
in southern climates, where the song of the bird is bolder
and more varied than in England, was familiar with it,
and has celebrated it in two of his best-known and most
beautiful passages. There is nothing in all poetry more
exquisitely finished than the opening lines of 'Parisina.'
Byron was always happy in his openings, but this one
comes upon the reader with a sudden sweetness, that
makes him feel in an instant the delicate firm touch
!
202
June - The Opening of 'Parisina.
of the master's hand. What a way of telling us that
it is late evening!
It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word;
And gentle winds and waters near
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave a deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dárk, and darkly pure,
Which follows the decline of day
As twilight melts beneath the moon away.'
In this passage the 'nightingale's high note' is the
dominant note of the whole composition, nor is there
any more perfect example in the poetic art of the im-
mense importance that a true master can give to a single
line. The bird is only mentioned once, and then with the
utmost brevity; but that 'high note' once sounded, fills
the whole exquisite description in the succeeding verses.
Byron seems to have been particularly impressed by
the height from which the voice of the bird announced
itself; and here, no doubt, is one of the elements of its
effect; just as it is in the bell's note from a cathedral
tower, or the Muezzin's voice from a minaret.*
* Not to multiply quotations, I have omitted the beautiful passage
near the beginning of the 'Giaour,' but may remind the reader of the
well-known line, ·
'His thousand songs are heard on high.'
Fune-Chaucer's Love of the Nightingale. 203
Chaucer, always so alive to every thing that could
add a charm to the woods and fields where he delighted
to wander, paid great attention to the songs of birds,
and to the nightingale especially. He tells us in 'The
Flower and the Leaf' how eagerly he listened for this
bird, although many others were singing in a way that
ought to have gladdened any one:-
'And eke the briddes songe for to here
Would have rejoiced any earthly wight,
And I that couth not yet in no manere
Heare the nightingale of all the yeare,
Full busily hearkened with herte and with eare,
If I her voice perceive coud any where.'
There is a charming description, in the same poem,
of a conversation between a goldfinch and a nightingale ;
the goldfinch singing first when he had eaten 'what he
eat wold,' and the nightingale answering him with so
merry a note that all the wood rang suddenly. Then
comes one of the most naïf passages in all Chaucer,
when he tells us how he wanted to get sight of the
nightingale, which at first was not easy (as any one
knows who has tried); however, he managed it at last,
and then felt so gladdened by seeing what he wanted
to see that he fancied himself in Paradise:
'Wherefore I waited about busily
On every side, if I might her see ;
And at the last I gan full well espy
Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree,
On the further side even right by me,
That gave so passing a delicious smell
According to the eglantere full well.
204 June- Tradition amongst the Peasants.
Whereof I had inly so great pleasure,
That, as methought, I surely ravished was
Into Paradise, where my desire
Was for to be.'
Beautifully, however, as the poets may have sung of
the nightingale, I doubt whether it ever occurred to the
most inventive of them to imagine such an exquisitely
poetical reason for his choice of the night-time for
singing as the simple peasants about the Val Ste.
Véronique have handed down by a believed tradition.
Some peasant-poet must have had this original fancy,
and then been pleased with it, and told it to his neigh-
bors, whose poetic sense preserved it with that inability
to distinguish between history and fiction which always
marks the uncultivated human being. They say, and
believe, that long ago the nightingale sang in the day-
time like other birds, but that once in a warm night of
May, when the vine was growing quickly, a bird of this
species went to rest upon a vine and fell asleep there;
and whilst he slept the tendrils grew very fast, and as
they grew they twined about his tiny legs and held
them, so that when morning came he could not get
away, though his comrades came to help him. The
poor bird died in this miserable situation, and his com-
rades were so impressed by what they had seen that
they dared no longer go to sleep at night, but watched.
in fear of the same sad fate, and sang to keep each
other awake. Even now, in the early summer, they
utter the same notes of warning, and what they say
is this: La vigne pousse-pousse-pousse-
vite vite
June-Buffon's Description.
203
vite vite vite vite vite!' When a peasant tells this he
always pronounces pousse-pousse - very slowly, and in
a low voice, as if he were telling you a secret that deeply
concerned you; but when he comes to the vite vite vite
he breaks into louder and higher tones, and finishes in
a hurried presto.
The finest and most complete description of the
nightingale's song that I ever met with is in Buffon.
It is remarkably accurate, and full of the closest study,
whilst the mastery of language displayed in the literary
workmanship is quite inimitable, so that after reading
it no other author would venture to attempt any such
piece of work with the hope of excelling it in the same
way. The most astonishing thing from the critical
point of view, in this masterpiece, is that, although
Buffon wrote in a language which is remarkably poor
in words that express varieties of sound, we never feel
this poverty in the least when reading it. The entire
passage is too long to quote, but the following extract
from it is sufficiently independent to be detached:-
'Il commence par un prélude timide, par des tons faibles,
presqu'indécis, comme s'il voulait essayer son instrument et
intéresser ceux qui l'écoutent ; mais ensuite prenant de l'assur-
ance, il s'anime par degrés, il s'échauffe, et bientôt il déploie
dans leur plenitude toutes les ressources de son incomparable
organe ; coups de gosiers éclatants; batteries vives et légères;
fusées de chant où la netteté est égale à la volubilité, murmure
intérieure et sourd qui n'est point appréciable à l'oreille, mais
très propre à augmenter l'éclat des sons appréciables ; roulades
précipitées, brillantes et rapides, articulées avec force et même
avec une dureté de bon goût; accents plaintifs cadencés avec
206
June - Talk of the Birds.
mollesse ; sons filés sans art mais enflés avec âme; sons en-
chanteurs et pénétrants,' &c.
Then follows a very sagacious observation on the
artistic utility of those intervals of silence which the
nightingale employs so well, and which answer, in his
singing, to the spaces of smooth wall in architecture, to
the spaces of blank paper in an etching.
After the month of June the nightingale sings no
more, but cries and croaksa lamentable change for the
worse; and more than that, a loss of all that we care
for in the creature. After that the bird is forgotten by
those whom he once enchanted, and dwells in perfect.
obscurity under the shadows of the deep woods that
were filled by his marvellous melody. Happier, how-
ever, than men who have been famous and are famous
no longer, he lives on in a prosaic way, without re-
gretting the wonderful nights when his voice was
supreme beneath the moon, and all things that had
ears must listen.
There is a popular superstition in the Val Ste.
Véronique, and in the country for some miles round,
that every bird repeats some phrase of its own in dis-
tinct French words, which we should all hear and under-
stand if we were only clever enough. It is believed
also that certain wise and elderly persons in the villages
do really understand the language of the birds, and they
seem to be disposed to profit by the popular illusion, which
they are at no pains to dispel by disclaiming the knowl-
edge imputed to them. Very probably this superstition
may have had its origin in mere tales of infancy. Some
June-Secret of the Bird Language.
207
parent may have pretended to know the language of
the birds to amuse or govern his children, and after-
wards the tradition of this may have remained. The
same pretension is to be found in Oriental story. But
there is one peculiarity about it in the neighborhood of
the Val Ste. Véronique, which is this. He who knows.
the bird-language is forbidden by the popular supersti-
tion to communicate it to any one until he lies upon
his death-bed, when he may teach it to one member of
his family; who, of course, is bound by the same law.
Now as it generally happens that a man lying upon
his death-bed has other things to think about than the
transmission of bird-lore, the consequence of course is
that the knowledge of it is conveniently attributable to
people who have not transmitted it. My father knew
their language,' a peasant-girl will tell you, 'but when
he came to die he did not teach it us.' In this way
a pleasant and permanent mystery is maintained, and
it is still believed that one or two ancient men and
women know the bird-lore, and may possibly commu-
nicate it when they come to die, if any one is there to
receive it.
208
Fune — The Ash.
The Ash · Cantharides
Elder-tree
get-me-Not
and Birch
XXXVIII.
The Elder-flower-
Elder-flower Wine
-The Robinia - Robinia
Honeysuckle - Forget-me-Not-Coloring of the For-
Dislike to certain Trees
Branching of the Robinia-Odor of the Flowers of the
Robinia - Wild Thyme Beloved by Hares and Bees — Honey-
suckle Creeping Bugle - Veronica - Galium - Goldfinch — This-
Lime-tree.
tle
HE ash comes into full leaf in June, and is one of
THE
our finest and most artistic trees. The country
people about the Val Ste. Véronique have a proverb to
the effect that it neutralizes poisons:-
'Dessous le frâne venin ne regne.'
Certain insects have also an especial belief in the
salubrity of the ash, or at least in its suitableness to
their own constitutions. Those remarkable insects, the
cantharides, fix upon it as a lodging for their colonies.
The Val is sufficiently far south for this to happen
occasionally, and when it does happen the effect is
most curious. The trees are entirely covered with the
glossy green insects, which emit such a pungent odor
that it is almost impossible to remain under them or
near them.
A much more agreeable, yet rather heavy and in-
toxicating fragrance, is that of the elder-flower, which
is abundant towards the middle of June. In grape-
producing countries the wine made from this flower is
June- The Elder-Tree.
209
*
always unknown, but in the north it yields its properties
by infusion, and the product, after fermentation, is used
as a substitute for champagne, often by very rich people.
As is generally the case with substitutes, there is little
real relation between the original wine and that which is
made to replace it. Elder-flower wine is not champagne,
nor any thing like it, but it has great claims to con-
sideration on its own merits; and although no poet has
ever sung its praises, they certainly ought to be sung,
and not coldly spoken only, as in this pedestrian prose.
The closeness of the relation between taste and perfume
is rarely more manifest than in this beverage, for to
drink it is to drink perfume, the perfume of an elder-
bush in June. I may add that the heaviness in the
natural fragrance is maintained in the somnolence which
the wine induces, for he who has indulged in it is sure
to be overpowered by drowsiness unless he resists with
all his might, or counteracts the sleepy drink by some
awakening stimulant.
The elder-tree sometimes grows high enough to be of
some importance in the near landscape, and its white
corymbs of flowers are visible at a great distance. The
way in which these corymbs are carried on the tree is
one of its chief beauties, their flat surfaces being in so
many different positions, but always in obedience to a
regular law of growth; the foliage, too, is elegant and
gracefully borne.
* Elder-flower wine is at least mentioned in a very well-known
Scottish ballad, 'The Laird of Cockpen: '
Mistress Jean she was making the elder-flower wine,
Now what brings the Laird at sic a like time?'
14
210
June-Honeysuckle.
The honeysuckle begins to flower a little later than
the elder-tree. When the elder is all covered with its
corymbs the honeysuckle flowers are opening, a bud or
two here and there entirely out, the rest not yet. Their
pink and yellow are pleasant with the peculiar tertiary
green of the older leaves, one of the best sober greens in
landscape. The new leaves are brighter and cruder.
A flower strictly contemporary with the elder, and of
some importance from its quantity, notwithstanding its
extreme minuteness, is the forget-me-not, the Myosotis
(called so because its leaf is like the ear of a mouse).
The effect of the color of this tiny flower is amazing
when you consider how little there is of it; but this is
due to a principle well known to modern painters, even
too well known, the principle of stippling with pure
color in minute touches. Here is one of those in-
stances in which Nature herself does this. If the
flower were wholly blue it would still act in the fore-
ground, when abundant, as a stippling with pure color,
but the principle is carried still farther. There is a
central eye of yellow entirely surrounded by sky-blue,
and the effect of the flower is due in great part to the
purity of the central spot. Even the least observant are
struck by the forget-me-not, and how much of the popu-
larity of the flower is due to its bright coloring may be
guessed if we suppose it green like its mouse-ear leaves.
No lover would have paid much attention to it then.
I alluded in a preceding chapter to the intense dislike
which some people feel for particular trees. Amongst
the trees which have bitter enemies may be mentioned
June-Robinia and Birch.
the acacia, or, more correctly, the robinia.
2ΙΙ
It was
brought into France from Canada by a botanist called
Robin, in the reign of Henry IV., and has thriven so
well that you find it all over the country.
The re-
markable rapidity of its growth is a great temptation to
its use as an ornamental tree; but now come the objec-
tions. Its enemies dislike it because the leaves grow
late in the spring, and some people cannot endure the
odor of its flowers; which to me, however, is very
agreeable, especially when it comes on the soft, mild,
evening air of June, and is thus wafted from a little
distance. Other objections are that the stem is ugly
because so deeply furrowed, and that the thin, light
foliage gives but little shade. I confess that there is
almost a contradiction in character between such a rude
stem and such delicate leaves and flowers, or at least a
very striking contrast, and I admit that the shade given
is not comparable to that of the lime-tree or the horse-
chestnut; still it may be answered, that we feel the
delicacy of the leaves all the more from the roughness.
of the furrowed trunk, and that the robinia gives as
much shade as the birch, whose beauty is generally
appreciated. The branching of the robinia is rather
straggling and wayward, so that the twigs do not com-
pose so well together as those of the ash or birch; but
even this is interesting as a special characteristic, for if
all trees threw their branches out in exactly the same
manner we should be wearied by their monotony.
There is a great deal of imprévu in the branching of the
robinia; no painter would invent such branching unless.
1
212
June - Wild Thyme.
he had studied it in Nature. Its spring colors, light
green leaves, and white flowers, are gay and pleasant.
As for the odor of the flowers, there are people who
detest the perfume of the rose, so that it is difficult
to please everybody.
Most people like the fragrance of wild thyme. There
are often great quantities of it in dry, stony places, where
its tiny dull-green leaves make an agreeable sober fore-
ground color, not harshly interrupted by the modest
violet of the flowers. Its strong perfume is due in part.
to the presence of camphor in the plant. It is beloved.
of hares and bees, and the scent is so refreshing that it
will revive a weary or fainting person. It is constantly
used by the clever French cooks to give flavor to their
dishes. The poets have loved it since classic times, and
with reason, for there is a great charm in the union of
its modest appearance with so sweet and healthy a per-
fume. It is one of the humble plants which form the
variegated carpet of the earth; a plant to be crushed
under hoof and foot, yet so strong and spreading that it
is never seriously injured, and in return for much ill-
usage only yields its fragrance the more abundantly.
The later weeks of June are remarkably rich in
flowers. The honeysuckle is then fully out (at least in
the Val Ste. Véroniqne). We have the creeping bugle
in abundance, with its fine blue corolla; the germander
veronica, with its veined flowers of tender blue; the
crosswort galium, the 'slender galingale' of poetry, with
yellow flowers, honey-scented; the emollient mallow;
and the harsh thistle with its purple glories. It is
Old Colony Series.
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June - Goldfinch.
213
curious that the thistle, which we so generally associate
with donkeys, should have given, in one language at
least, its name to that sweet singing-bird which, ac-
cording to Chaucer, had a singing conversation with
the nightingale - the goldfinch; in French, chardonneret,
from chardon, because it frequents the thistle. The
plant may also be associated with the fine arts, as
its spiky forms are peculiarly rich and interesting in
certain kinds of decorative drawing and silversmiths'
work. They are excessively difficult to draw, from
the complicated perspectives of the prickly wings on
the leaf-margins. Few artists have ever drawn a thistle
thoroughly, probably from a feeling that any complete
rendering of such a plant would lead to hardness in
execution.
Of the large plants which flower late the lime-tree
deserves special mention, for its agreeable qualities
as a shade-giving tree, and its pleasant color and
odor. Few trees are more intimately connected with
human life than this. It is so constantly used to shade
private and public walks, that most of us have re-
collections associated with it. The lime has also its
heroic traditions. It has never supplied masts for
war-ships like the fir, nor material for their strong
hulls like the oak, but it was used in ancient times
for bucklers; and its bark must have had a sacred
character, as it was worn by sacrificing priests. The
flower of the lime-tree is gathered in great quantities.
for medicinal purposes, and administered very exten-
sively in France as an infusion.
214
July-Gray Coloring after Heat.
XXXIX.
Gray Coloring after Heat - Blue Sky turns to Gray - French Landscape-
painting — Monotony of Sunshine - Favorable to Work — Abundant
Light - Ennui of Sunshine - Despondency caused by it
P
A
Oppres-
sion of Sunshine - 'Mariana in the South' The Black Shadow -
Auguste Bonheur's Interpretation of Sunshine - Changes in the Con-
dition of the Eye Sunshine of Different Degrees Streams in the
Val Ste. Véronique Dreary Scenes on Southern Rivers - The Loire
- Its Affluents The Great Bridges - The Herds - Processions for
Rain-Oppressive Heat - Sudden Coming of a Thunderstorm.
OWARDS the end of July, if the year has not
Tow
"
been exceptionally wet, the landscape of Eastern
France loses its freshness, and acquires that rather dull
and gray look which often astonishes English critics
in the works of the most faithful French landscape-
painters. From the artistic point of view I cannot think
that this gray look is altogether a misfortune, The
brightness of the spring color is quite gone, much of
the herbage is dried by a sun that is almost African
in its severity; but what the landscape loses in gayety
it gains in sobriety, and the tints, quiet as they are, often
go very well together, and richly deserve study. The
greens all become tertiary greens, but there is great
variety in them, and it is just the variety which a
cultivated colorist is sure to pay great attention to,
July - Monotony of Sunshine.
215
whilst a crude one will as surely neglect it. As an ac-
companiment to this dulling of all the greens, the sky
changes from the clear blue of early summer and the
dark blue of the first heats to a sort of gray, which is
very well known to the inhabitants of southern climates
-the dark gray of the hot weather. This particular
kind of gray is never to be seen at all in northern coun-
tries. It is a real sky-color, not cloud-color; but it is
far, indeed, from the blue which we most commonly
associate with the open heaven. I have often matched
it very carefully in oil and water color, and always
with renewed astonishment at the quantity of red and
yellow that it requires. These gray skies of the in-
tensely hot weather are often most accurately rendered
by the French landscape-painters, which makes north-
ern critics affirm that they cannot color.
There are long weeks of monotony in the fine
summers, that may be appreciated for their practical.
convenience by landscape-painters who work from Na-
ture, as the same effect of gray sunshine recurs day
after day; but their influence upon the mind is rather
a tranquillizing than an exciting influence. The mo-
notony of sunshine is like any other monotony; it tends
to lull the mind into a condition of fixed routine, in
which activity is still possible, yet repeats itself as the
days do. Through the long summer, which seems not
merely long but endless, we do always the same things
at the same hours, moving with the quiet regularity of
the shadow on the sun-dial. When the physical con-
stitution is inured to heat, there is no season of the
216
July- -Ennui of Sunshine.
year more favorable to regular work. The intense light
does not weary the eyes, it is astonishing how easily
they endure the solar glare, and it is easy to provide
an artificial shadow. Then the mind, being entirely
undisturbed by any considerations about the weather,
settles into a routine of habits, and pursues its objects
with a tranquil simplicity of purpose which is sure
to lead to some tangible result. There is light enough,
and there is time enough for every thing: thus, with
plenty of work and a sustained energy, a man may
pass through the long monotony of the southern sum-
mer without weariness, and even regret the conclusion
of it when it breaks up at last in thunder; but if
once the ennui of sunshine seizes you it is very terrible
and very difficult to contend against. Then the con-
stant gray-blue of the sky becomes hateful, the well-
known forms of the surrounding landscape, of which
nothing is relieved and nothing veiled, sicken you like
the mechanical repetition of a tune on the barrel-organ:
day after day you look vainly for the change that will
not come, and you sink at last into a kind of despond-
ency, which looks upon the condition of the world
as hopeless, a globe whose wretched inhabitants are
slowly roasted before a steady central fire from which
there is no escape. This temper has been accurately
described, or rather the feeling of it has been conveyed
to the reader, by Tennyson in Mariana in the South.'
Over and over again, in the poem, recurs the oppres-
sion of sunshine, the wearisome monotony of light. She
dreams of native breezes and runlets babbling down
July-Mariana in the South.
217
the glen, but awakes to the 'steady glare' of the
south:
'She woke: the babble of the stream
Fell, and without the steady glare
Shrank one sick olive sere and small.
The river-bed was dusty-white;
And all the furnace of the light
Struck up against the blinding wall.'
In the last stanza but one the same note recurs:
'And flaming downward over all
From heat to heat the day decreased,
And slowly rounded to the east
The one black shadow from the wall.'
This last touch of the black shadow is a repetition
of one given in the opening of the poem, where the
black shadow is the very first thing mentioned. It was
rightly chosen for two reasons, since not only did it
prepare the reader for the black shadow dwelling
steadily on a hopeless life, but it also truly depicted
an effect of glaring sunshine upon landscape. Here,
again, is a very common error of northern criticism.
In the north the black shadow does not exist, because
the sun is not glaring enough to produce it, and north-
ern criticism denies the truth of it when adequately
interpreted in painting. The poet is not scientifically
exact in calling the shadow black, as a painter in study-
ing from Nature will find it to be gray or green, purple
or brown, according to its situation; but as a poet-
ical artist Tennyson chose the right word, for it is
the word which conveys the idea of darkness best,—
218
July - The Black Shadow.
'dark' not being dark enough. It would be easy, too,
to prove that a painter who conveys the impression of
the black shadow paints it falsely. Auguste Bonheur
may be mentioned as an example. He paints southern
sunshine truly so far as the impression on the spectator
is concerned, falsely as to imitation of particular tints.
In very intense sunshine the eye adapts itself to cir-
cumstances, and for its own protection contracts so that
a glaring thing, such as a white ox, shall not hurt it.
Now, if you can look at a white ox at all in the glare of
a Burgundy July, even the lighted side of an oak-tree
will seem dark to you, and a cast shadow on foliage
will seem what in popular language is called 'black.'
Auguste Bonheur renders this effect with great truth,
but necessarily in a much lower key than Nature's.
And now comes the one important consideration which
reconciles art with Nature, and is always overlooked by
writers on these subjects. The eye looking at Nature
in glaring light, and the eye looking at a picture in
the quiet light of a gallery, is not in the same state;
but a picture of sunshine painted on Auguste Bonheur's
principles bears the same relation to the open pupil
in a shaded room that the natural scene bore to the
contracted pupil in the brilliant sunshine out of doors.
The rule which affirms that if you match shades by
holding the palette-knife up to Nature you will get right
relations of color, is true only of figure-painting and
still-life, when the model is carefully placed in a gal-
lery light. In open sunshine such a practice would
induce an artist to paint in too high a key, so that he
July — Sunshine of different Degrees. 219
could not convey the sense of darkness in shadow and
local color, which is one of the peculiar effects of really
intense light. Thus Turner, working in a high key,
expressed the sunshine of England; but his system,
good as it was for the pale northern landscape, was
inadequate to the expression of the southern summer,
with its apparently dark dull greens and grays, and
shadows far darker still.*
The chief misery of a long hot season - the want of
water — is entirely unknown in the Val Ste. Véronique,
where the pure little streams rush over their clean
granite beds with as much vivacity as if it had been
raining the day before. They are fed by springs* in
the upper hills, which never fail in the hot weather,
and the consequence is a perennial refreshment of
the valleys for several miles; but if you follow these
babbling rivulets farther down, you observe the gradual
loss of their early freshness and brightness, till finally
they are absorbed in the river of the plain, and in great
part lost by evaporation. Nothing, even in winter sce-
nery, is drearier than the bed of some broad southern
river after the torrid months have dried it. The Loire,
amongst French rivers, most abounds in dreary scenes
of this kind. For hundreds of miles you may follow
broad tracts of burning sand, or hot white pebbles
through which the stream finds its way tortuously, often
*This seeming darkness of certain tints in intense sunshine is
chiefly, no doubt, due to contrast. As a matter of fact (not of human
sensation), Tennyson's 'black shadows' must be lighter than a white
object in dull daylight. But art ought always to go by impressions and
sensations rather than scientific facts.
220
July-Processions for Rain.
breaking into several different channels, of which not
one is navigable; whilst the occasional trees along the
banks are too far from the water to get the slightest
benefit from it, and their foliage is burnt to the sem-
blance of a premature autumn. The most important
affluents in such a time often cease to flow altogether,
and consist of nothing but a long series of stagnant
pools, which infect the air, with hot stones or baked
mud between them. At such a time the great bridges
seem nothing but lines of useless arches built long ago
for some forgotten purpose. Leaves wither, flowers
fade, the pastures are scorched, and animals droop and
languish. Yet, even here, might the art of a true
landscape-painter find motives, like that of the poet,
in the very desolation of the persistent sunshine, which
has its own melancholy like the gloom of the north,
and, like it, cannot be borne without resignation. The
starving herds resign themselves to a condition of Na-
ture beyond their power to alter; the peasants go to
the priests and ask them to pray for rain, or get up
some procession. At length, in some ancient city, the
cathedral doors are opened wide, and out of the cool
pleasant gloom within comes forth into the fierce heat
of an August afternoon a mitred bishop, all gleaming
with gold and jewels, behind a heavy shrine carried on
eight priests' shoulders, with little windows in its gilded
sides, through which you may see the brown bones
of a saint who died long ago, and a long procession
winds slowly chanting about the quaint old streets.
Then the evening comes with its short twilight, and the
July - Oppressive Heat.
221
night without a breath in the motionless hot air. The
day dawns just like yesterday and the unnumbered
days before it. Will there ever be any change, or has
the sea forgotten to send her clouds for the refreshment
of the land? Is the sea dry like the rivers ?
'Tout est morne, brûlant, tranquille; et la lumière
Est seule en mouvement dans la nature entière.'
Suddenly in the fiery sky rolled a black cloud, like
volumes of smoke from a mine, and out of the cloud
came a ball of fire that struck an ash-tree close to the
house and split it, and sent fragments of the wood in
every direction like scattered lucifer-matches. Half a
second afterwards came a sound, not like thunder with
its reverberations, but like a deafening explosion. The
next day every leaf on that ash-tree was shrivelled and
brown, and the tree died. Then began the usual series
of thunderstorms, and every night the landscape was
illuminated by the flames of farm-buildings in the dis-
tance, and every morning brought news of loss or ruin,
of crops destroyed or animals too frightened to move.
burnt together in their stalls. So after the steady flame
of the sunshine comes the far more terrible flame of the
unavoidable lightning, and all night long the peasant,
awake and anxious, goes watching about his barns.
222
July - The Harvest-time
The Harvest-time
XL.
What our Bread costs - Merriment in Harvest
Strength of the Girls A Picture by Jules Breton - Jules Breton's
Poetry Alfred de Musset -The 'Chanson de Fortunio'- Rossetti
--'The Blessed Damozel'- Stalks of Wheat
needed in the World - Buckwheat.
Weight of Wheat
HERE is a time of the year, varying in date with
THE
the climate of different places, which is felt by
all to be the richest and mellowest time, and that is
when the wheat is garnered. The reapers go down.
from the hill villages into the fertile plains, walking in
bands through the sultry night, when not a cloud
obscures the starry sky, and the broad yellow harvest-
moon comes up in the east to light them. Many a
league do they march, singing the old harvest songs,
and at sunrise they are at work already in the ripe
wheat, and their sickles are set to the harvest. Oh the
toil and the endurance that are paid for the bread we
eat! From dawn to dusk, in the full blaze of morning,
noon, and afternoon, the reapers reap without ceasing,
except their little half-hours for food, and in the late
evening they load the harvest-wains. All that time
they have to bend to their toil, with the heat of the
earth in their faces and the heat of the sun upon their
backs. Their food is poor indeed, and the wonder is
how it supplies the waste of sweat and toil. And yet
July - A Picture by Jules Breton.
223
they all delight in the harvest-time, and keep to their
work gaily with many a merry jest. The strength of
the girls is surprising; often a girl will lead the line
and keep up to her work quite steadily, which confirms
the theory that women were made for labor. One of
these strong girls was the subject of a picture by Jules
Breton; but in his picture she has done with reaping,
and sits apart from her companions, who are dancing,
for they forget their fatigues in the dance. She has
reasons of her own for not joining them; very likely
some feeling of jealousy or disappointment; perhaps a
certain youth may have invited another maiden, and
now, according to peasant custom, is engaged to her
for the whole evening. Jules Breton writes admirable
verses, and in a little poem of his, which has been pub-
lished, I find some stanzas which may refer to this very
picture :-
'Dans la poussière ardente et les rayons de flammes
Joyeusement, les mains aux mains, dansent les femmes,
Mais la plus belle rêve, assise un peu plus loin.
Elle est là seule . . .
No wonder that painters like the harvest-time, it is
so rich in color, and in the association of human life
and labor with the bountiful gifts of Nature. The toil
that it brings is sweet and healthy toil, and the only
laborers who are really to be pitied are the few weaker
ones whose strength is hardly equal to the work. For
the rest it is a time of merriment and gladness, a change
of scene and of society for the laborers who come
from a distance, and the pay is far higher than in
1
224
July-Alfred de Musset.
ordinary times, which also disposes the heart of man
to gayety.
Wheat is almost sacred from the great service it
yields to man, so that it is not surprising that the poets
should speak of it with an especial tenderness and
delicacy. Thus Alfred de Musset, in one of his most
exquisite little songs, the Chanson de Fortunio,' com-
pares the fairness of a fair lady to wheat, and with
how pure a touch!
6
'Si vous croyez que je vais dire
Qui j'ose aimer,
Je ne saurais pour un empire
Vous la nommer.
Nous allons chanter à la ronde
Si vous voulez,
Que je l'adore, et qu'elle est blonde
Comme les blés.'
And when Rossetti describes the Blessed Damozel
in heaven, he can think of no more delicate comparison
for her hair than to say that it was like ripe corn:-
'Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.'
A stalk of wheat is not a very strong thing; it can
only just bear the weight of a very little bird, and even
that seems wonderful till we reflect how light a small
bird is, and how perfectly it is able to balance itself;
and yet on these slender stalks what an enormous
weight of bread-making material is carried! Many a
great ship is deeply laden with it, many a granary-floor
is covered till the great oak-beams visibly bend beneath
July — Buckwheat.
225
the load! And what tons upon tons of it does the
world need! There are more or less acceptable sub-
stitutes, but always far inferior to the wheat that gives
white bread. One of these, buckwheat, a cultivated
polygonum, is now in much favor with the peasants,
and ought to be with artists also, on account of its
wonderfully rich color. It is called sarrasin in France,
because the Moors took it into Spain, whence it came
northward. It grows easily on soil too poor for wheat,
and you may now see many little fields of it up amongst
the rocks in the poorer and wilder districts. Early in
September it is in the full richness of its color, the
stalks being of a beautiful red, that is easily heightened
when there are warm tones in the general light, which
often happens at that season of the year.
15
226
August — Soapwort.
XLI.
Soapwort-Use of Soapwort - Horsemint - Common Mint Wild
Carrot-Vervein - Polygonum - Change - Dock-leaves, their Color
- Hornbeam
tain-Ash.
L
Juniper Bracken · Heather
Cherry Moun-
ET us take a last look at the wild flowers before
the season for them is quite over. We never
could have omitted all mention of that handsome plant,
the common soapwort, or Saponaria, which in August
is prodigal of its large flowers, pink or nearly white, in
dense corymbs at the summit of the stem. Every house-
wife in country places where the plant grows, and where
people are simple enough and sensible enough to accept
a benefit directly from Nature without going to a shop
for it, — every housewife so situated well knows that to
put this plant into her washing-tub is as good as a lump
of soap. It grows abundantly by the streams here, so
those two great aids to cleanliness, soap and water, are
given by Nature together. The saponaria is not only
useful but beautiful: a stately, handsome plant, that
holds quite an important place, especially on the little
islets in the streams; but the pale tender color of its
flowers is not so conspicuous as the brilliant yellow of
the senecio, for example, which abounds at the same
season. However, it is not merely for brilliancy that a
plant may have pictorial value: sometimes the very
August-Horsemint.
227
opposite of brilliancy may be the reason why a judicious
artist would care for it. There is horsemint, whose pale
cottony leaves are very valuable as a cool gray green.
It makes great masses in some places, and has much the
same qualities as the mullein, except as to the flowers;
for whilst those of the mullein are of a fine lemon-
yellow, the tiny flowers of borsemint merely make a sort
of pale purplish gray. The flowers of common mint
are much more visible, and have some effect in quantity.
The large white umbel of the wild carrot is extremely
common at this season, but cannot be said to add much
to the beauty of foregrounds, except perhaps by giv-
ing a certain lightness. We must not omit that sacred
plant, the vervein, which the Romans used in their re-
ligious ceremonies, and which in war-time was carried
by heralds as the white flag of truce is now. The
Druids had a great respect for it also, and only culled
it after a sacrifice. This plant appears to make a great
fuss at starting near the ground with very big leaves, to
end meagrely at the top, where the twigs and flowers
are so thin and small. The tiny pale violet flowers are,
however, effective in the same way, though not to the
same degree, as those of the forget-me-not. Sometimes
they fill a ditch, for hundreds of yards, with their in-
numerable constellations.
One of the most beautiful and important of all
aquatic plants is the amphibious polygonum. Its rosy
flowers stand up boldly above the surface of the water,
whilst its long green leaves float upon it. This is a
good plant to study for pictures that have a pond or a
228
August-Change.
stream in the foreground, as it detaches itself well, and
the flat leaves give a good horizontal surface, whilst the
erect flower supplies a vertical object of the greatest use
for contrast. There is a good contrast of color, too,
between the flower and the leaf.
It would be tiresome to prolong this into a mere cat-
alogue, and the limits of these sylvan talks are nearly
reached. Vegetation never stands still, but there is a
time when it appears to pause, before the change tow-
ards decay. Yet even then the change has already
begun, and you have only to look around you to find
evidences of the coming destruction. In meadows and
pastures the docks soon take their rich deep red of
leaves and fruit, the stalks being yellowish streaked with
red, and quite harmonious; they are a most important
element of landscape. The curled dock makes especi-
ally magnificent color, with its dark-red stalks and leaves.
Some of the leaves of hornbeam turn pale yellow, and
others dark red. You have them pale yellow, dark red,
and fresh green, quite on the same branch or twig. The
juniper turns red altogether, much resembling the tint
known to painters and colormen as light red; but this
happens capriciously, as it seems, to one plant, whilst
others in the same place remain quite green as in sum-
mer. At the same time the bracken is just beginning
to turn yellowish brown at the tips and edges of the
leaves. The crude violet purple of the heather is en-
tirely gone, and in its place we have a sad brown
in the flowers. The leaves of the wild cherry-trees are
beginning to turn red, and the robinia leaves are turning
.
August-Mountain-Ash.
229
pale yellow. But where in all Nature is there such a red
as the vermilion berries of the rowan-tree, or mountain-
ash, the sorbier des oiseaux? There are such prodigal
quantities of it, too! I know a little village churchyard,
with a tiny old gray church, and just along the wall
there grows a row of rowan-trees that look like the
trees in the garden of Aladdin when the fire of sunset
is upon them; and there is a place near a mountain
village where the road winds between an avenue of
them, a sight to see in the autumn !
230
September - Sunlight on Thistles.
XLII.
Sunset-light on Thistles - Fruits not generally Conspicuous - The
Rowan The common Cornel - Elder-berry - Blackberry - Small
Polygonum - Ferns Persicaria - Wild Hop.
I
SPOKE just now of vermilion berries bathed in
the flame of sunset, and will add another obser-
vation about sunset-light. One of the finest sights in
Nature is a field of thistles in September, with the level.
rays of a golden sunset striking across and catching the
down of the heads. The light is detained by them, and
in them as it were, so that each thistle-head becomes
a distinct source of light; not with glittering reflection
like the ripples on water, but with a charming softness,
as if the rays were entangled in meshes of floss silk.
The reader may think, that after saying so much
about flowers I dismiss fruits very summarily; but it
so happens that fruits (I use the word, of course, in
the large botanical sense) are, as a general rule, less
visible than flowers, and in these chapters we have
talked almost exclusively of what is visible. Some
fruits are conspicuous, like those of the rowan-tree
lately mentioned; and the black, bitter fruit of the
common cornel, or dogwood, is visible enough at the
beginning of autumn in the hedges, the smooth leaves
turning pale as the fruit ripens. The elder-berries are
1
September-Blackberry.
231
out at the same time, berries from which a wine is made
greatly inferior to that from the flowers of the same
tree. It may be mentioned as a little detail worth re-
membering for foreground color, that the fruit of the
blackberry is red before it turns black. The leaves
of the bramble are, however, more important than the
fruit, as they have quite a peculiar way of changing
color in autumn. Many of them turn bright red quite
suddenly, whilst quantities of others will be spotted
with dark purple. The isolation of the red leaves may
be of use to an artist who wants an intense color in
small quantities. A very valuable cause of color in some
situations is the small polygonum, which, with its red
stalk and leaves just turning yellow, produces the most
beautiful dark gold in mass. The ferns begin to take
autumnal color rather capriciously; it seems to seize
upon some leaves to the neglect of others, and these
leaves will be entirely affected by it, passing from dark
brown near the root to yellow at the end. One of the
latest flowering plants is the fine polygonum called
Persicaria, often nearly two feet high, with a red stalk.
and spikes of rosy flowers; but the stalk strikes the
eye more than the flowers do. A very familiar plant,
the wild hop, has an appearance at this season which
bears some resemblance to flowers. The scales of the
spike become enlarged so as to entirely conceal the
fruit; and these dry scales are visible in September as
a pleasant light brown, the leaves being still green.
232
October-Ferns.
XLIII.
Ferns - Robinia Oak, Birch, Ash Poplar Chestnut Cherry
and Pear Pear Hornbeam Beech-Willow.
A
S we get deeper into autumn the changes of vege-
tation accelerate. The ferns turn red and yel-
low to begin with, to end in a uniform dry light red;
generally the change is completed about the middle of
October. Some trees turn yellow in places, a leaf or two
at a time, like the walnut; the robinia does the same:
indeed, in the robinia it is not by leaves but by leaflets
that the process begins. Oak, birch, and ash, begin by
showing yellow leaves here and there, like a sudden
attack of disease; but, considered as a whole, an ash-
tree passes from green through pale yellowish-green to
yellow. The poplar yellows all over gradually. Chest-
nuts at this time are much denuded of leaves; those
which remain are green, or brown, or yellow, about one-
third of each, and the yellow ones are often brown
about their edges. Cherry and pear-trees give most of
the red in the woods, the latter often reaching a bright
scarlet, which tells with great effect in the distance.
Some pear-trees turn darker than others, and there are
often both vivid red and fresh green together on the
same tree. So in hornbeam; you have pale yellow
leaves and leaves of reddish gold, whilst the rest are
October- - Angelica.
233
fresh green. In beech there are three colors, light
—
red, yellowish red, and green. A few days later the pale
yellow tinge of hornbeam is entirely gone, and has given
place to a rusty brown. Meanwhile the willows remain
still perfectly green.
XLIV.
Angelica - Leaves of Angelica - Bramble Blackberry - Scabious
Fforest
OF
་
Honeysuckle - Tufted Hair-grass.
are but
foreground plants, the angelica may be men-
tioned for its important size. The leaves a
little seen, being for the most part low down upon the
stem, but they become a very pale green, and turn
whitish or yellowish, often also inclining to purple. At
the same time the angelica becomes brown in the um-
bels, because the fruit is ripening fast; in doing which
it turns from green to brown. A little later, the leaves
turn pure Naples yellow. Once more, for the last time,
we must mention the bramble, now most rich in color
with deep crimson or bright vermilion, passing to russet
and green, and the abundant black fruit for a rich dark
at the bottom of the scale. When the morning mists
of October clear away and the bright sunshine succeeds,
as it does regularly about eleven o'clock, all the black-
berry leaves glitter in the bright light, and many of
234
October - Tufted Hair-grass.
·
them show a colored transparence like jewels. At the
same time they are often covered with threads of gos-
samer, on which are hung millions of minute drops,
each of them clearer than a diamond, and with a sparkle
of light inside it. Even so late as this you may occa-
sionally find a flower in all its perfection the scabious,
for instance which preserves for us the memory of
summer. A few honeysuckle flowers may be found in
October, although the plant is generally in berry. The
tall grassés become very beautiful at this season; the
tufted hair-grass may be mentioned specially for the re-
markable way in which it catches the light. Under
the sun it seems full of warm yellow light, almost as if
it were luminous by a light of its own; indeed the sun-
shine seems to get entangled amongst it as in the down
of a thistle, and this often gives great splendor to a fore-
ground, but the effect is to be seen only when you are
looking towards the sun.
October-Close of our Sylvan Year.
235
XLV.
What is a Year?- My Schemes
Close of our Sylvan Year
· Alexis
Master and Pupil - Holidays - Alexis and the Gamekeeper — A
Private Tutor A Young Abbé - Our Dinner-table - The Abbé sees
a Ghost - Alexis turns Sportsman - What Alexis learned during
the Sylvan Year - Conclusion.
HERE, perhaps, it, if we
ERE, perhaps, it is well that these notes should
come to an end; for we began them with the late
autumn, and have now completed our cycle. Our year
of retirement, our sylvan year, is drawing to its close,
and we leave the Val Ste. Véronique to return to the
outer world. We always begin by expecting too much.
from the time that lies before us, as if the experience of
the past were not there for a warning, with its long list
of schemes unrealized, its losses (especially of time), and
its disappointments. When I came with Alexis to our
lonely house in the valley, I expected more from this
space of calm and peace than it appears to have yielded
now that it lies behind me in a retrospect. A year,' I
thought, 'will do much towards the healing of my
sorrows; and in a year I can learn much, and acquire
a beneficial influence over Alexis.' But what is a year
in the life of a mature man? All the old impressions
remain just as vivid after it as before; and the more
painful they were then, the more vivid they are now.
Still the study of Nature has been good for me, and it
236
October My Schemes.
increased one's ac-
is agrecable to have renewed or
quaintance with the sylvan world. My plans for doing
something in science, and art, and literary study, were
larger than my powers of realization in so limited a
space of time: however, they have constantly and not
unprofitably occupied me. The paternal scheme, with
reference to Alexis, has been farther from any perfect
realization than the others. I had counted upon his
companionship in my pursuits, and hoped that I might
be able to teach him a good deal without his suspecting
that he was being instructed; but he very soon found
this out, and by calling every thing a lesson compelled
me to fix regular hours for study, exactly as if we had
been master and pupil at a school in fact, he called
them 'school-hours,' and asked for his liberty at other
times, or took it. He had full holiday on Thursday
and Saturday, on which days I was in no danger of.
being disturbed by him, for hé never made his appear-
ance, but went great distances on foot with my keeper
(who had been known as a famous poacher under the
nickname of the Weasel'). In a word, I discovered
that my didactic propensities must be greatly restrained
if I did not wish to frighten this young bird away into
the woods altogether. On the other hand, it was im-
possible to suspend his education for twelve months.
In this perplexity I took a neighbor (who lived ten
miles off) into my confidence, and he recommended
a private tutor for the young gentleman. The plan
seemed feasible, and the more so that there were so
many spare rooms at the Val Ste. Véronique : so one
6
October― A Young Abbé.
237
day a young abbé arrived, who knew, I suppose, what
every abbé knows, but who was utterly incapable of
conversation, and replied always in monosyllables, with a
modesty that was perfectly irritating. My dinner-table
had been tolerable with Alexis, when I did not put him.
out of humor by attempting to convey instruction to
his mind; but it was not tolerable with the abbé, and
the long spaces of silence must have been as uncomfort-
able to him as to me, for he made a request that he
might be served in his own apartments, a relief both
to him and me. He had not been accustomed, how-
ever, to solitude, so that the silence of the big house,
where we never heard any thing but the whistling of the
wind, or the cry of a bird or wild animal in the forest,
ended by preying upon his mind; and one day, pale with
terror, he declared he had seen a ghost, and announced
his sudden departure. From a malicious look of Alexis,
I suspected that he knew more about the ghost than
he chose to tell; however, the abbé left us with an un-
earthly expression on his otherwise not very interesting
physiognomy, and when he was gone I attempted to
resume my former office of pedagogue. My young pu-
pil, however, affirmed that it was now the long vaca-
tion, when nobody learned any thing; and no sooner had
the shooting season begun than he got himself invited
to a château twenty miles off, where, with a merry party
of young gentlemen, he did nothing but shoot from
morning till night. I was vexed with him at first
for his indifference to learning, his insensibility to the
melancholy events which had happened in our family,
238
October-Conclusion.
and his pleasure in escaping from my own paternal
society; but a little reflection soon set me right on
these points. His was not the age when learning of
any kind is a solace or a pleasure, nor does the for-
tunate elasticity of youth accept any bereavement,
however terrible, as a sufficient reason for perpetual
sadness; whilst as to the charms of my own society,
I quite understood that a lad, who for nine months had
sat at table opposite to a grave old face like mine,
might wish to see younger faces and merrier. How-
ever, I confess that what Alexis learned during our
time at the Val Ste. Véronique was not of a very intel-
lectual nature. He picked up a good deal of natural
history from the keeper, and acquired something of the
knowledge which distinguishes Red Indians, at least
in Cooper's novels; and he educated his legs, for he
became an excellent pedestrian. All this is excellent
in its way; but another year of our wood-life would
turn the boy into a half-savage, and unfit him for any
other society than that of his dear friend, the Weasel.
So our experiment of sylvan retirement is not likely to
be repeated, except for briefer spaces. We may, in
the future, permit ourselves the enjoyment of sylvan
weeks or months; but this long stay in the Val Ste.
Véronique will remain alone in our memory as- THE
SYLVAN YEAR.
ΤΟ "SYLVAN YEAR."
INDEX TO
Acacia-robinia, 211
Agriculture, its influence upon landscape,
III
Alder, in January, 49
'Aminta,' Tasso's, 190
Anchorite and cicada, 182
Angelica, in October, 233
Apricot-blossoms in March, 87
April weather, 101
Arcadia of classic imagination, 185
Art and Botany, 38
Arum, 148; in April, 120
Ash, giace of, 49; in March, Sr; in May,
156; in June, 208; its way of changing
color, 232
Aspen poplar, its leaves in May, 130
Beech, 116; its young leaves in May, 156;
its way of changing color in autumn,
233; winter foliage of, 36
Bees, III
Birch, 211; its stem, 43, 116; in May,
157; its resistance to heat and cold,
ib.; its uses, ib.; a defence of, 160
Bird-catcher, his feelings, 140
Bird-cherry, in March, 81; prunus, 161
Bird-music, 135
Birds associated with plants, 147; songs
of, 134; language of, 206-7
Bishop, anecdote of a French, 27
Bittercress, meadow, 120
Blackthorn, its wintry coloring, 46; in
March, So; in spring, 114
|
|
Botany and landscape-painting, 37; poet-
ical, 151
Bouleau, Jean, a forester, 26
Boy, anecdote of a, 69
Bracken, its change of color in August, 228
Bramble, in January, 37; stalks of, in Jan-
uary, 46; leaves of, 231; in October, 233
Breton, Jules, 195; a picture of his, 223
Broom, green of, 43; in flower, 121; its
loud self-assertion, 162
Browning, Mrs., her use of reeds in
poetry, 99
Biyony, its 100ts, 120
Buckwheat, 225
Buffon, his description of the nightingale's
song, 205
Bugle, the creeping, 212
Butter cup, its learned name, 165
Byron, how he celebrated the nightingale,
201
Caltha, the marsh, 168
Canadians, the French, 14
Cantharides, 208
Celandine, the lesser, 107
Chaucer, his intense love for nature, 105;
his habit of early rising, 124; his love of
daisies, 125; his description of the col-
ors of May, 131; his allusion to buds,
137-8; Chaucer and Virgil, 173; his
abounding eloquence, 174; his love of
the nightingale, 203
Cherry-tree, in April, 115
Boar, the domesticated, 25; the wild, Cherry-trees, wild, their change of color
56; as food, 35
Bonheur, Auguste, his painting of south-
ein sunshine, 218; Rosa, 195
in August, 228
Cherville, Marquis de, his observation of
nest-building, 143
240
Index.
Chestnut, ancient trees, 10, 51; pale | Etching, subjects for, 10
golden leaves of its broken branches,
14; Spanish, its young green leaves,
155; the Spanish, artistic merits of,
160; its way of changing color in au-
tumn, 232
Etymology, how it may be poetical, 120
Cicada and anchorite, 182
Fadette, la Petite, quoted from, 196
Ferns, in January, 46; their change of
color in September, 231
Figwort ranunculus, 106
Classical writers, their inferiority in the Fiis, their iesinous cones, 20
passion for natural beauty, 173
Color, natural, in patches, 43
Colors, intense and delicate, 163
Constable, the painter, his love of spring,
65; his preference for spring, 103;
quoted, ib.; his taste for a cultivated
country, 112
Coinel, its fruit, 230
Fleur-de-lis, 149
Floods in spring, 62
Florian, a satirist of, 197
Flower and leaf, 79
Forest, excursion in, 10; scenery of its
interior, 23
Forget-me-not, 210
French, the, their dislike to solitude, 112
Cowper, his description of the Empress Frost, hoar, beauty of, 54
Catherine's ice-palace, 58
Cowslip, 111
Cuckoo, 147, 148
Cuckoo-flower, 167
Cuckoo-pint, 167
Daffodil, splendor of, in March, 82
Dante, his suffering trees, 11; his 'selva
selvaggia,' 15; his feeling about the
forest, 18
Daubigny, his picture of spring, 64
Decay, its true nature, 108
December, how passed, 33
Deschanel, quoted, 38
Diaz, the painter, 39
Dinner, a game,
28
Discoveries, the early, 95
Dock, the sheep-sorrel, 129
Docks, their color in August, 228
Douglas, Gawin, his hymn of the birds
to the sun, 139-40
Diaba Verna, 106
Diawing of plants, 40
Furze, in March, 77
Galingale, 212
Galium, 212
Gentians, on the Alps, 114
Germander, 212
Girls, peasant, 223
Goldfinch, 143, 213
Gooseberry, the wild, in March, 81
Grasses, in January, 46; tufted hair, 234
Greek language in idyllic poetry, 183
Green, in winter, 46–7
Greenfinch, 143
IIarvest-time, 222
IIawthorn, in March, 79
IIazel, in January, 48
IIeat, its effects on landscape color, 214;
in July, 221
IIcather, its change of color in August,
228
Helps, Sir Arthur, his description of a
pine-wood, 170
IIcmlock, the young, 83
Dupont, Pienc, his song of 'Les Bœufs,' IIerbarium, the winter's, 8
171
Education, paternal, 5; public, 6
Eglantine, its vermilion fruit, 42
Elder, in March, 81; tree, 209; berries,
231
Emerson, quoted, 15; his feeling about
the woods, 18
Herrick, his poem on daffodils, 83
IIills in April, 102
Hill-tops with many springs, 183
Holly, 12; in winter, 48; its time of
flowering, 172
Honeysuckle, leaves of, in March, 76; its
time of flowering, 210-12; late flowers
of, 234
Index.
241
Hop, wild, its appearance in September, | Lime-tree, 213
Locality, instinct of, 13
231.
Hornbeam, its leaves in January, 36; its | Loire, the river, in summer, 219
change of color in August, 228; its
way of changing color in autumn, 233
Horse, and water ranunculus, 71
IIorse-chestnut, its leaves in March, 81;
its young leaves, 117; dislike of paint-
ers to it, 152; objections to, 153; in
May, 154; its name, 167
Horse-mint, 227
Lousewort, 166
Lungwort, 133
Lychnis, red, in flower, 150
Magpies, how they build, 143
Mallow, 212
'Mariana,' Tennyson's, quoted, 217
Marigold, marsh, 121
House, the writer's, in the Val Ste. Meadow bittercress, 167
Véronique, 8
House-martins, their nest-building, 145
Hut, a forester's, 24
Idyl, nature of the, 185
Idyllists, their method, 186; their cun-
ning, 187
Imitators of pastoral poets, their weak-
ness, 190
Immorality of the ancient poets, 184
Independence, associated with ploughing,
91
Iris, the yellow, in March, 76; the water,
149
Ivy, ground, 120
January, 35; an effect in, 38
Jean Cousin, principle of his glass-paint-
ing, 119
June, rich in flowers, 212
Millet, 195
Mistletoe, in January, 46
Mosses, in January, 46; minute, 47
Mountain-ash, 48
Mullein, the great, in winter, 45; in
April, 120
Musset, Alfred de, his 'Chanson de For-
tunio,' 224
Names of plants, their utility, 40, 166
Narcissus, the poet's, 83; legend of, 84
Nature, wild, incompleteness of the mod-
ern conception of it, 18; coloring of,
42; not harmonious in spring, 65;
her coloring, 122
Nest-building, 142
Nettles, in April, 120
Nightingale, the, his wonderful voice,
198, 199; his emotional expression,
200
Juniper, its change of color in August, November, landscape in, 7
228
Keats, his account of the origin of the
Narcissus legend, 83; his use of reeds
in poetry, 97
Lafontaine, his motto for the reed, 100
Lamartine, his 'Laboureurs,' 195
Lamotte, Iloudaid de, quoted, 193
Larch-wood, in early spring, 80
Leaf-drawing, 41
Leaves, dead, law of their adherence to
branches, 13; dried, their beauty, 35;
of preceding year, 118
Le Brun, 193
Lichen, 43
Lily of the valley, 131, 132
|
Oak, its leafage in January, 36; inferior
to walnut, 49; in March, 81; more
leafless in spring than in winter, 114;
its leaves sometimes golden in May,
130; its way of changing color in au-
tumn, 232
Observation, minute, artistic danger of,
38
Ophelia, her mention of pansies, 164
Osier, in March, 72
Oxen, their use in ploughing, 89
Oxslip, 111
Painters, their dislike to distinctness in
multitude, 153
Pansies, their merits and associations, 164
16
242
Index.
'Parisina,' Byron's poem, opening of, 201 | Sand, George, her exquisite writing on
Pascal, quoted, 100
rustic subjects, 196
Pastoral, in French imitations, 193; the Saplings and their leaves, 36
classic, 172
Peach-blossom in March, 87
Satyr, conception of the, 184
Scabious, its late flowers, 234
Shakspeare, his use of the willow in
'Othello,' 74
Pear-trees, their scarlet color in autumn, Science, barbarity of, 165
232
Peasant, an old, 94
Pedicularis, 166
Shelley, on daisies, 126
Periwinkle, the, 78; its Latin and French Shepherd, a, 17
names, ib.
Persicaria, flowers late, 231
Picture in Virgil, 179-80
Pine, cones of, in May, 169
Planting, 50
Ploughing with oxen, 89
Ploughshare in Virgil, 90
Poaching in France, 27
Shepherdess, a, ib.
Skies, gray, of hot weather, 215
Snow, 55
Soapwort, in March, 77; in August, 226
Socrates, his death, 86
Sow, a wild, 21
Sowing of two kinds, 93
Spenser, his conception of the forest, 52
Poets, of the eighteenth century, 60; their Spindle-tree, 79
love for spring, 63
Polygonum, the amphibious, 227
Poplar, aspen, in January, 49; in April,
116; its way of changing color in
autumn, 232
Potentilla, 133
Primrose, the common, 110
Privet, in March, 81
Pulmonaria, 133
Quince-tree, in January, 37; in March, 81
Ranunculus aquatilis, 70, 166; in May,
128
Rape, a field of, 113; in flower, 121
Reed, the common, 96
Retirement and occupation, 9
Reeds, in poetry, 97
Rising early, 124
Roads, ancient Gaulish, 11
Spring, its sudden arrival, 61; more the
season of poets than of painters, 63;
the feeling, 64
Spurge, its flower and leaf, 150
Starwort, 127
Stellaria, ib.
Streams in spring, 103
Summer, the landscape-painter's time of
harmony, 66; a wonderful, 68; the
thirst for, 69
Summers, fine, their monotony, 215
Sunshine, oppression of, 216; English,
219
Swallow, associated with the celandine,
ΙΙΟ
Swallows, their nest-building, 145
Sycamore-maple, in flower, 171
Sylvan life, permanence of its interests,
181
Robinia, 211; change of color in August, Tasso, his 'Aminta,' 190; his way of
229
Rose, fortunate name, 167
Rossetti, his poem of the wood-spurge,
151
Rowan-tree, its vermilion berries, 229
Rushes in January, 47; of preceding year,
I 20
Saint-Lambert, his poem of the 'Seasons'
quoted, 141
Sallow-willow, 72
sketching, 192
Teazle, in winter, 44
Tennyson, his use of the willow in the
'Lady of Shalott,' 74; his use of reeds
in poetry, 98
Theocritus, landscape studies in his
Idyls, 183; compared with Virgil,
187; his personal experience of Na-
ture, 188; his seventh Idyl quoted,
188-9
Index.
Thistle, 212, 213; in September, 230
Thomson, his poetry, 60; on ploughing,
91
Thrush, as a nest-builder, 143
Thunderstorms, 221
Thyme, wild, its fragrance, 212
Tomtit, 142-3
Trees, venerable, how important in sce-
nery, 51; prejudices against, 158
Troyon, 195
Trunks and branches in winter, 48
Vegetation, change of, in autumn, 232
Véronique, le Val Ste., I
Viburnum, in January, 48
Weasel, the, 30, 56, 236
Wheat, 224
Wheatfield, in April, 113
White, Gilbert, 134
243
Whitethorn, its wintry coloring, 46
Wilderness, the old dread of, 19
Willow, varieties of, 71; round-eared, in
blossom, 72; associated with unhappi
ness, 73; Latin for, 75; French for,
ib.; Italian for, b.; the time of his
glory, 102; in May, 155; beauty of it
when unmaimed, 160; keeps green
late, 233
Wine, elder-flower, 209
Winter, colors in, 42; mild, 53; com-
parative rigors of, 57; the perfect, 58
35
Wolves and boars, 34
Virgil, his use of the willow, 75; how
he mentions trees particularly, 176; | Winter scenery, beauties of, 15; color of,
his preference of olive to willow, 177;
-his affectionate comparison of species
amongst trees, 178; how far he may
be compared to a modern painter, 179
Virgil and Chaucer, 173
Virgil and Theocritus compared, 187
Walnut, bark of, 49; in March, 81; in
May, 156
Walls, old, 87
Woods, their color in January, 43
Wordsworth, his poem on the daffodil,
82; his poem on the lesser celandine,
108
Wrens, their nests, 144
Year, limits of a, 66; sylvan, close of,
235
THE
UNKNOWN RIVER.
An Etcher's Uoyage of Discovery.
BY
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON,
(6
AUTHOR OF
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART,” CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS,"
HOUSE," A PAINTER'S CAMP," ETC.
TOM.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1880.
ROUND MY

PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
IN reproducing an edition of "The Unknown
River" without the illustrations, the publishers
have not thought it important to make any
changes in the text. To the general reader their
absence will not lessen the charm of the narrative,
and those who prefer the more expensive edition
with the etchings can gratify their tastes.
TO
THE REV. HORATIO N. POWERS, D.D.,
ONE OF THE MOST VALUED OF MANY KIND FRIENDS
IN AMERICA,
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME.
PREFACE
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
N the revival of the too long neglected art of
IN
etching, we who in England and France have
tried to recover the right use of the needle have
had to contend against many difficulties; and little
of what we have hitherto done can be considered
more than tentative and experimental. Etching,
however, has this advantage over line-engraving, -
that the comparatively rapid and spontaneous
nature of the process, and its purely artistic and
intellectual aims, obtain indulgence for many im-
perfections which would not be tolerated in a craft
professing great mechanical finish. In etching, the
spirit of the work is of more consequence than
manual accuracy; and I have therefore allowed
several plates to be published in this series, in
which the manual work is rude, because they
expressed my meaning, though in a rough way.
252
Preface to the American Edition.
Nearly all the plates in this series — indeed, the
whole of the landscape subjects were etched
directly from Nature, often under circumstances
very different from the convenient surroundings
of an engraver's table at home, with rain pouring
over the plate, or daylight rapidly declining, joined
to serious apprehensions about passing some dan-
gerous rapid before I could get to a village inn, or
find shelter beneath the thatch of some humble
hamlet nestled in a nook of the wooded and rocky
shore. Hence they are literally no more than the
notes of impressions which an artist takes in his
memorandum-book. As for the two or three sub-
jects in which the author himself appears, it may
be remarked, that, as he could not pose and draw
at the same time, there was a peculiar difficulty in
these attempts, which the author, from want of
practice in figure-drawing, could scarcely be ex-
pected to overcome. A friend of mine, who is a
figure-painter by profession, kindly made one or
two slight sketches as helps; but, as the artist in
question belonged to the severest French classi-
cal school (with which, as an artist, I have no
affinity whatever, though as a critic I admire much
of what it has accomplished), his sketches were
Preface to the American Edition.
253
conceived in a temper so opposed to mine that
they turned out to be of no use for this particular
purpose. Dog Tom was introduced at the urgent
request of an unknown correspondent whose love
of dogs touched the author in a tender place, and
made him, somewhat rashly, turn animal-designer
for the occasion. American critics are therefore
requested to remember that the figures and dog
are thrown in, as it were, simply for the reader's
amusement, and not with any ambitious artistic
pretensions.
However, such as they are, it has been the good
fortune of these little plates to please many people
in Europe, and amongst them a few more than
ordinarily fastidious and capable judges. This
may be attributed to the fact that in etching them
the artist worked without the least reference to
criticism of any kind, in the simple enjoyment of
one of the pleasantest artistic expeditions imagi-
nable. Indeed, although working very hard the
whole time, I was under the delusion it may be
strictly said, labored under the delusion — that the
voyage was a perfect holiday, a belief that was
greatly encouraged by an absolute indecision as to
which plates should be published and which de-
254 Preface to the American Edition.
stroyed. Another piece of luck was, that I had
no time, nor acid, to bite the plates there and then,
and so innocently fancied that they were all very
pretty (an etching done according to the old nega-
tive process always looks pretty when it is first
drawn, because the lines glitter charmingly on the
black ground), and felt agreeably encouraged, the
evil hour of disappointment being put off until my
return to home and the printing-press, which told
the painful truth with a frankness equal to that
of the most unpleasantly honest dilettante in
England.
It may interest readers who share the author's
boating propensities to know that the voyage was
undertaken in a canoe fabricated by his own hands
of paper, on a light skeleton of laths. The whole
of the voyage was accomplished in this fragile
craft; but it is only honest to add that she became
leaky before it was over, and was condemned as
unriverworthy at the end. Not that I think, even
now, that paper is a bad material for canoes, but I
had not then (1866) hit upon the right material
for gluing it. I employed the enduit Ruolz, which
takes about twelve months to harden, and I had
not patience to wait the twelve months; so the
Preface to the American Edition.
255
sheets or bands of paper did not really adhere, and
the water oozed between them after a while. The
proper gum to use for fastening paper so as to
resist water is simply a strong solution of shell-lac
in spirits of wine. I have a canoe at present and
two small punts which are made of thin wood,
lined with paper, applied with shell-lac. When a
leak shows itself, it is stopped at once with a bit
of paper and a touch of the solution, which dries
immediately. An English oarsman tells me that
for the last two years he has used bits of calico
with the same solution in an old wooden canoe,
which remains serviceable, thanks to the shell-lac.
One result of the voyage narrated in this volume
was the invention of a machine which is a punt by
day on the water, and a hut by night on shore,
large enough to stretch a hammock in. The
American reader will no doubt pardon an allusion
to these fancies, and believe them compatible with
serious work in other ways. If it is boyish to like
boating, in all its forms (as some grave and wise
men seem to imagine), I hope to remain puerile
yet a little longer. The cold sapience of age
comes on rapidly enough to all of us; and it is
not a misfortune to be able still to feel an irra-
256
Preface to the American Edition.
tional delight in a canoe when she glides in safety,
and an imprudent indifference when she upsets.
The verses at the beginning of this book were
written during the late war, in anticipation of an
attack from the Germans, which took place shortly
afterwards; and I witnessed the combat for many
hours on the banks of the river, between Garibaldi,
who defended Autun, and a strong body of Bavari-
ans who attacked it, not exactly the moment for
descending the river in a paper canoe! Another
chapter was added that day to the long history of
that ancient city by the Arroux; and as I watched
the flight of the shells in the clear December air,
and saw, beneath the moon, the fiery tongues dart-
ing from the mouths of the enemy's guns, I thought
of
many a former siege in times when war was less.
noisy and less bloody, but more cruelly protracted.
How little I imagined, when writing the chapter
about Augustodunum in this book, that I should
see an army in battle-array drawn up against it,
a dark, thick line of Germans, with cannon glitter-
ing at intervals! Yet once again the Roman wall
rang in echoes to the war-trumpet, and once again
the river was stained with blood!
The wild rain drives in gusty showers,
And past the moon the storm-clouds fly.
The river, rising, hurries by
The gray 'old city of fair towers.'
The bayonets gleam in all her streets :
All hearts are anxious, homes are sad-
Oh, when shall victory make them glad,
And light the faces that one meets ?
O River! once so fair and clear,
Now dark as death thy currents flow;
They may be reddened—who can know? -
Before the closing of the year.
O River! made for my delight,
I see upon thy wintry flood
A floating corpse - a streak of blood,
And flames reflected in the night.
October, 1870.
17
THE UNKNOWN RIVER.
ON
CHAPTER I.
Na bright afternoon in autumn I lay on the green
bank of a little stream. The stream was so little
that my dog Tom cleared it at one bound, as in the eager
excitement of a wildly impossible chase he rushed after
flying game. Of course he never yet caught a bird on
the wing, but his faith in the practicability of such an
achievement does not seem to be in the least shaken by
the discouraging lessons of a constantly recurring expe-
rience. Only a peregrine falcon, strong-winged, sharp-
taloned, could follow and slay those partridges; but Tom
dashes after them through and over all manner of obsta-
cles, hoping, by perseverance, to attain his object, like
the man who ran after the express train.
Tom is a dog of immense energy when out of doors,
and the most listless indolence at home. He will run a
hundred miles in a day, or swim fifteen, but he will not
walk across the room without the most elaborate prepa-
ration in the way of stretchings which he believes to be
necessary; and when the little distance is at last accom-
plished he falls down with a grunt as if extenuated by
260
The Unknown River.
fatigue. Another peculiarity of his is the wonderful
difference in the state of his affections, for when in the
open air he is in the highest degree grateful for the least
word or gesture of his master, and very demonstrative
himself; whereas in the studio, where he passes too
many tedious hours, he has scarcely ever been known
to acknowledge a caress even by one movement of his
tail. He is by race a setter, and seemed destined to
a sporting career, but, as his master's fowling-piece has
not been used for some years, Tom's instincts are quite
undisciplined; and though in outward appearance the
finest setter in the whole neighborhood, so that all
sportsmen stop and look at him when he passes by, he
is a lamentable instance of the consequences of a neg-
lected education, and almost any dog of the same breed
is professionally his superior, if only he has passed
through a proper course of discipline.
We digressed into this talk about Tom after saying
that he jumped over a brook. The brook murmurs over
the pebbles about a hundred yards lower down, and
we hear the refreshing sound coming on the faint, cool
breeze; but the brook is very calm and quiet just here,
and washes its sandy banks with silent regularity, taking
the earth away grain by grain, an unceasing agent of
waste, and author of endless change.
There is no rest to faculties wearied by labor like rest
by a quiet stream, on a beautiful afternoon in summer.
If you distribute your work wisely, and are fortunate
enough to have work of a kind that may be done at your
own hours, you will take care, when the days are long,
+
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
261
to reserve some considerable part of the afternoon as
sacred to utter idleness, and, if a quiet stream is within
an easy distance, there you will go and rest. Most men
under such circumstances take a rod and fish, but it does
not always happen that there is any thing which the dig-
nity of manhood may avow an interest in catching. The
man who rents a salmon river in Scotland, or even the
Englishman whose trout stream is well preserved, may
go forth with the implements of the angler and a con-
sciousness of noble aims. But can anybody past boy-
hood pretend to take an interest in catching minnows,
unless, indeed, he be a Frenchman who has just landed a
goujon, and is vain of the exploit ?
It is curious how capable we all are of seeing people
and things every day of our lives without being once
prompted to ascertain any thing further about them,-
whence they come, whither they go, what their past has
been, or what may be reserved for them in the future.
The inhabitants of great cities, being satiated by the con-
tinual sight of innumerable persons and things, have this
indifference in the most strongly developed form, but it
may be observed in the country with regard to what is
most commonly seen there. For instance, brooks and
streams are very commonly met with in all northern
countries, and therefore very few people ever give a
thought to the geography of them, or have any thing
beyond a very vague and general notion of their course.
The inhabitants of the region through which the stream
passes usually know it at bridges and fords, and farmers
know it where it eats away the land, and where, in times
262
The Unknown River.
of flood, it is most likely to leave a deposit of sand and
pebbles; the angler, too, may have followed it for a few
miles, and some professional landscape-painter or ama-
teur may have explored a few of its most picturesque
parts. But no man living knows the whole stream, and
so there is always a great mystery about it; and any one
who cares to follow its course faithfully may enjoy all
the keen delights, and feel all the unceasing interest,
which belong to a true exploration.
In this especial sense our little river is indeed un-
known, and as I lay idly on its bank on that bright
autumn afternoon, it occurred to me clearly for the first
time that the river came from far, and went yet farther;
that it was not confined to the fields about my house,
and that this little scene was not a solitary gem, but
one only of a thousand links in a long chain of various
and unimagined beauty.
Why had not this been equally clear to me years be-
fore? Why do we dream ever in one place, or travel by
the same weary old roads, when infinite beauty and nov-
elty are open to us? It is because the beauty and the
novelty are so very near to us that we miss them, and
often so cheap that our pitiful small dignity despises
them as something puerile. When we are weary of the
monotony of life, and the whole human organism longs
for the refreshment of change, we would go to the end
of the earth, and, in order to defeat our purposes as
completely as possible, carry our habits with us. We are
accustomed to railways and newspapers, to bitter ale and
sweet tea; and we seek these things, and a thousand others
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
263
that habit has rendered necessary, wherever on earth we
go. And yet change more refreshing and novelty more
complete are here within one day of slowest travel, than
in journeys to Berlin and Vienna; for the truest change
and best novelty are not in length of travel, but in the
abandonment of habit, and especially in the zest of free
and personal discovery.
There is an unfortunate belief that this glorious pleasure
and passion of the discoverer are not now to be enjoyed
in Europe. It is supposed that since every State in that
region has been explored by many travellers, and even
more or less accurately surveyed by the makers of maps,
there is nothing new to be found there. The reason for
this appears to be a confusion between the genuine
pleasures of the discoverer and the satisfaction of his
pride. Of course there can be nothing to boast of in
discoveries such as those here narrated, but there is
much to be enjoyed. The explorer of a nameless Eu-
ropean river need not hope to be remembered like Liv-
ingstone or Speke, but he may set forth in the full
assurance of finding much that is worth finding, and of
enjoying many of the sensations, deducting those con-
nected with personal vanity, which give interest to more
famous explorations. It is necessary, however, to the
complete enjoyment of an excursion of discovery, that
the region to be explored, whether mountain or river, or
whatever else it may be, should not have been already
explored by others, or at any rate not with the same
objects and intentions. A geologist has a certain sat-
isfaction in marching, hammer in hand, over a tract of
264
The Unknown River.
country not yet conquered for geology; and an artist
likes to sketch in secluded valleys where it is not proba-
ble that any artist has been before. On the same prin-
ciple a traveller who is fond of boating has an especial
pleasure in descending some stream of which it may be
safely presumed that nobody ever descended it in a boat.
In this especial sense there is much yet to be done
in the way of exploration, even in the most known
countries.
No sooner had these ideas formed themselves in the
writer's mind, than the little stream by which he was
lazily reclining acquired a new importance; and the low
music of its shallows, instead of being, as formerly, the
lullaby of Mother Nature, became an awakening call
to action, and a promise of joyful change. A thousand
scenes rose rapidly before his mind, and the pipe which
had languidly yielded half an hour before the tiniest
puffs of smoke to the fragrant air now gave dense
clouds, in which the smoker saw endless visions. He
saw the deep, calm pools under the rich, overhanging
foliage where the currents fall asleep together, like tired
children that have filled the fields with their merry noise,
till weariness fell on their swift limbs, and hushed their
happy voices, and laid them in silent sleep under the
soft green leaves. He saw the rapids dashing into white
foam amongst the rocks, and the kingfisher glancing
above them like a sapphire-flash in the sun.
He saw
the picturesque farms and cottages by the unfrequented
shore, the gray, deserted castles, the antique cities,-
the remains of a thousand years. And then came the
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
265
majesty of the effects of Nature, the splendor of the sun-
set and the promise of the dawn, the mysterious poetry
of summer twilight, and the long hours alone beneath
the moon.
By this time it became impossible to remain quiet in
that place any longer. Tom was called back from his
vagrant courses and taken into his master's confidence.
Tom listened with the utmost attention whilst the novel
project was explained to him, and, although he may not
have clearly understood its details, he perceived at least
that action of some kind was meditated, and eagerly
expressed his willingness to take a share in it.
266
The Unknown River.
D
CHAPTER II.
URING the last few years the noble old art of etch-
ing has been revived by many painters. Some
of my friends have practised it with distinguished suc-
cess, and their example led me to recur to an art which I
had first attempted in boyhood, and then neglected for
many years. Of the means at my disposal for the illus-
tration of the projected voyage none seemed better than
etching, as it is the only kind of engraving which can be
done directly from Nature, and the only engraving, too,
which has enough of the spirit of liberty to harmonize
with such a state of mind as that of a wandering canoist.
It accepts laborious finish when the artist has time for
it, but it also allows of rapid sketching when he is in a
hurry. So it was decided that the voyage should be
written, and that the illustrations should be etched from
Nature on the way.
All the plates being prepared at home in my own
etching-room (nearly sixty of them), I laid them on
small drawing-boards, four to each board, and, by means
of two very small screws to each plate, fixed them to the
board so as to resist any jolting that they might be ex-
posed to. There was no necessity to pierce the plates
with holes to receive the screws, since, by placing the
screws near the edge of the copper, the screw-heads
held the plates firmly enough. I had previously tried
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
267
many experiments for the carriage of plates, but none
succeeded so well as this. If the coppers had been all
of precisely the same dimensions, they might have been
carried in a grooved box, such as photographers use for
their glasses; and this, no doubt, would have been a
considerable economy of space, and would, at the same
time, have saved the weight of all drawing-boards except
one.*
Having screwed my sixty plates to a quantity of small
drawing-boards, I slipped these boards into several
grooved boxes; each box provided with a lock and key.
I then calculated the probable length of the voyage, and,
having locked my boxes, sent them to inns at different
distances down the river, to await my arrival. Thus I
was never obliged to carry more than one box of plates
at a time. It is unnecessary to go into the detail of my
other preparations, which were of the kind now so well
known to canoe-men, and to all who take an interest in
canoe-travelling.
Here is the little village from which the expedition
started. The canoe had been transported thither in a
cart, and as we arrived in the evening it was not con-
sidered advisable to begin the voyage till the following
day. So I dined at the little inn, and after dinner went
out to walk in the village by the shore of the narrow
rivulet I was to embark upon on the morrow.
It was a clear, bright moonlight night (the etching, it
* It is necessary, however, when plates are carried in a grooved box,
without being fixed to a drawing-board, to revarnish their edges before
biting.
268
The Unknown River.
1
may be well to observe, is intended to represent a moon-
light), and I wandered first about the river, and then in
a small valley between precipitous little hills. I was in
the heart of the Morvan, a highland district in the east
of France, almost unknown to tourists. The river to be
explored was the Arroux, that passes by the antique
Augustodunum, and flows to the historic Loire. No-
body had explored it yet, and all the hazards of the
enterprise rose before me as I leaned over the low para-
pet of the one-arched bridge at Voudenay.
The stream flowed under the bridge, after a curve like
a snake in the grass, a silvery snake glittering under the
moon. It came from a rustic mill, and the monotonous
noise of the mill-wheel was the only audible sound, ex-
cept the wash of the swift current on its pebbly margin.
Beyond the bridge the stream looked dark and treacher-
ous (for the moon was behind me then), and it went and
buried itself in a black wood. This was all that could
be seen of it from Voudenay. It was very narrow, and
wilful and swift, and it hurried away into the black
wood as if it had some deadly unavowable work to do
there, somebody to stifle and drown in the awful shade
of the forest.
What would this adventure bring me to? No man
knew the river, no man had ever known it. Its course
was full of dangers. A thousand strong boughs were
waiting for me, stretching their gnarled and knotty arms
across the stream. There were festoons of briers and
thorns, there were deep black pools hidden under the
intricate branches, there were roots in the river, and
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
269
lower down I had to expect sharp rocks also. But could
I not swim? Yes, in water, but not amongst stones and
snags. Better the angry waves of the ocean, than these
treacherous, suffocating snares!
There was just so much of apprehension as sufficed
to give interest to the adventure. It amounted to a cer-
tainty that I should be upset (probably more than once),
and have to struggle for dear life, but it was not so
certain that I should struggle for it unsuccessfully. I
returned to the little inn, and had a long talk with a set
of peasants, and then went to bed in a room that looked
out upon the river, the moonlight falling on the counter-
pane. The night was exquisitely calm, the peasants left
the inn, and all the house was still.
I have accustomed myself to do with what suffices for
the peasantry, and can therefore lodge in the poorest
country inn or cottage without any painful sense of pri-
vation. This is a valuable accomplishment for an ex-
plorer of unknown rivers, who may have to lodge very
simply from time to time. Thus, my first night I slept
in the same room with a farmer's boy, my second with a
wheelwright, and my third with the family of a poor
miller; but I always had a bed to myself and clean
sheets (though coarse). A sleepy traveller needs no
more.*
We are afloat at last on the little river, which loses its
terrors in broad daylight. I am in the paper canoe, and
Tom is swimming behind. If that is the way he intends
* I much prefer the independence of a tent, but in this voyage it did
not seem practicable to carry a tent and provisions.
•
270
The Unknown River.
to follow me during the whole voyage he will incur much
useless fatigue. Why does not Tom simply run along
the bank? he would go twice as fast, with a tenth of the
fatigue. I stop the canoe and reason with poor Tom. I
explain all this to him both verbally and by signs, but
his only answer is to look at me imploringly, and lift up
his wet old nose, and splash with his fore-paws, and put
one of them timidly on the edge of the canoe. I remove
the paw, and use one word of menace: the sensitive
creature takes an expression of extreme sadness; I have
wounded his feelings. I speak more kindly, and explain
that the only objection is to his bigness; that he is dearly
beloved, but unhappily too big; and that the canoe can
never carry both of us. The kind tones encourage him
again; this time he puts both paws on the canoe, and is
within a hairbreadth of upsetting her. My only chance
of getting the great, heavy, clinging paws off is to hit
their owner a smart rap on the nose with the paddle.
The narrow stream winds rapidly between banks of
gravel, and four little boys are running along the shore,
keeping pace with the swift canoe. Poor Tom cannot
swim quite so fast, and has been left behind for several
turns of the river, but now he comes galloping like a
racehorse across the fields. Nothing could be easier
and more agrecable than the voyage has hitherto been,
but the stream, already very rapid, runs faster and faster,
and is evidently carrying me into a dense grove of trees,
which will probably be long, and which may offer very
serious difficulties. The worst of these very narrow
rivers is that there is not room to use the paddle, and
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
271
you are carried along by the impetuous current with a
very slight chance either of stopping yourself, if rush-
ing upon obvious peril, or of defending yourself against
the branches.
Here we are amongst the willows, carried rapidly
down a little sylvan tunnel, three or four feet wide and
about a yard high. It is wonderfully beautiful, if one
had only the time to appreciate its beauty; but the cur-
rent is so strong and impetuous, and the turns are so
numerous, that there is hardly time to think of any thing
but the management of the canoe. The little boys are
behind somewhere; I hear their loud chatter in the dis-
tance, and a yelping bark from Tom informs me that
he is yet alive, though I know not whether in water or
on land.
The first insurmountable obstacle is a young tree,
lying quite across the stream. It has not been cut down,
but the water has eaten away the earth about its roots,
and it has fallen across the current. If the place had
been a little more open I might have hauled the canoe
on shore and launched her a little lower down, but here
the dense underwood makes that manoeuvre impossible.
Here come the little boys! I have a long and strong cord
in the canoe; I tie a stone to one end of it, and throw it
over a branch to a boy on the other side, telling him to
tie it to the top of the fallen tree. Then, with the branch
for a fulcrum, I and the little boys on my side pull very
hard, and gradually the little tree rises and rises till the
course is clear. After overcoming other difficulties with
the help of the little boys, who were exceedingly useful,
272
The Unknown River.
I came to a place where the river was less impetuous,
and where I had leisure to admire its beauty. The
canoe was floating pleasantly through a rich wood of
oak and chestnut with here and there a group of grace-
ful poplars. It was a constant succession of scenes like
the one given opposite, whose exquisite loveliness it is
not easy to convey by Art.
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 273
THE
CHAPTER III.
HE etching which illustrated the end of our last
chapter was done on the copper from Nature at
a little place that seemed convenient for lunch. A few
square yards of firm sand-bank lay between the dense
underwood and a deep pool, and this sand-bank was
covered with short grass. The canoe was drawn up
here, and her owner took out the materials for luncheon,
and made what would have been a solitary meal, if Tom
had not come up in great glee, doubly delighted at find-
ing his master on terra firma, and all the signs of a
festival spread out around him. Tom loves his master
dearly, but his affection for beef and mutton is at least
equally strong; and it is probable that the happiest
hours of Tom's existence are such hours as this, when,
in addition to the excitement of travel, and the free ex-
penditure of his immense energy, he has the satisfaction
of dining with his master on terms of something like
equality. All the little boys had now been left behind
except one, and he, unfortunately for his own interest,
was on the other side of the stream. I wanted to get
him over and invite him to lunch, and crossed for the
purpose in the canoe; but the canoe only held one per-
son, and the youth did not sit steadily, so that before we
were two yards from the shore a capsize seemed inevita-
ble, and I put back. After luncheon the voyage was re-
18
274
The Unknown River.
sumed; the nature of it will be best gathered from the
etching.
There are two little villages in the region where I
was now voyaging, about a mile apart, and bearing the
same name of Voudenay; so, to know one from the
other, the inhabitants have called them Voudenay-l'Eglise
and Voudenay-le-Château. My first day's voyage was
from one of these villages to the other, total distance
one mile. The reader may laugh if he likes, but that is
about the proper degree of speed for an artist on his
travels.
After dark, as I wished to get a few miles lower down
the stream, I determined, as the moon did not rise till
rather late, to continue the voyage by lamp-light. The
canoe was provided with a carriage-lamp for the pur-
pose, which was fixed in the forepart of the deck, and it
was found quite possible to pursue a very intricate and
sometimes even perilous navigation by the help of this
artificial light. Where the narrow river was most thickly
shaded on both sides by dense vegetation, the branches
mecting immediately overhead, and festooned with over-
hanging creepers, the lamp-light gave a strange beauty
to the scene; and as the canoe floated somewhat rapidly
down this little green corridor, it seemed like a voyage
in fairyland. Every tiny leaf and spray, every slender
thread of stalk, came for one moment out of the black-
ness of night into the full brilliance of the lamp-light,
then passed into the darkness behind. An endless suc-
cession of this inexhaustible loveliness made the night
voyage one continual enchantment, and I was not sorry
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
275
to have seen a river under an aspect so strikingly new.
There exists, unfortunately, an especial difficulty in ren-
dering the peculiar beauty of these effects in etching;
and, knowing this, I have not wasted time in the at-
tempt. The art of etching cannot reserve white lines
of sufficient thinness and purity to give the effect of
lamp-light on delicate sprays and grasses. The effect
would be broadly given, and it would be possible enough
to reserve white lines, but not with the fineness neces-
sary to do full justice to the kind of delicacy which, in
subjects such as these, would become the particular
aim of the artist. Nothing struck me so much, in this
delightful little voyage with the lamp, as the exquisite
tenuity of the smaller plants as they came out with tiny
leaves and stems against the black void of night. This
might be approximately interpreted in wood-engraving,
which most naturally works in white lines, but not so
well in other processes. It was found that this voyag-
ing by night added considerably to the interest of the
exploration, for the mystery of the unknown was still
more strongly felt when all that lay before us was in
absolute darkness, and only became suddenly illumi-
nated as the lamp approached.
He who attempts the exploration of a river not re-
puted navigable must be prepared for passages of such
extreme difficulty that it may be necessary to remove
his canoe altogether from the water, and drag her over
the dry land. The morning after the voyage by lamp-
light I had a good deal of such work, so much that at
length I lost patience and hired a spring-cart in which
276
The Unknown River.
both the vessel and her owner were transported by
a fast-trotting horse to a place four kilometres lower
down, whilst Tom galloped along the road with a sense
of freedom much greater than any which he had enjoyed
amongst the tangled vegetation of the river's bank.
When the boat was launched again, the stream took
quite a new character. Instead of flowing with a cur-
rent of equal breadth, and almost equal rapidity, it now
alternately slept in calm pools and rushed hurriedly over
short pebbly shallows. It is difficult, in words, to convey
any idea of the variety of these beautiful pools, except
by simply saying that they are various. If there were
eighty of them, or a hundred of them, or however many
there may have been, there were just as many new and
admirable pictures. The shallows, too (though in pass-
ing rapidly over them we had not time to think of much
but the safety of the canoe), were by no means the least
interesting portions of the voyage, especially when they
turned mysterious corners, and opened out new glimpses
down the stream. At length we came to a pool so very
long and so very tranquil that it seemed as if it would
never end. The canoe glided over its glassy surface for
many a long minute, and, just as the explorer rested on
his paddle and the little vessel had gone forward alone
so long that the impetus was dying gradually away,
something unwonted was reflected in the smooth water;
and, instead of the accustomed intricacy of boughs and
fluttering of innumerable leaves, the voyager saw great
stones as of a feudal castle, and surely on the green
shore there stood a great ruin!
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
277
Whoever wishes to enjoy the sight of some noble ruin
should come upon it in this unpremeditated way. One-
half the delight of it is in the surprise. When you have
been told at starting, by a guide-book, that 'at three
miles from your inn is such a castle, now ruinous but
formerly belonging to the Counts of, &c.,' and read
the description of it in detail, you will either be quietly
pleased or provokingly disappointed; but you will never
feel the gladness of a delightful surprise. How noble
look the gray old towers when the mind has been occu-
pied all day with Nature and forgotten the history of
man! What a welcome interruption to the perpetual
sylvan harmony!
This ruined Castle of Igornay has towers, round and
square, and a great court-yard, now full of the pictur-
esque of a French farm. It has true machicolations,
and must have been a strong place formerly. I found
a young miller at the mill, who was more intelligent
than lads of his class usually are, and a diligent reader
of the newspaper. All the recent events in Italy and
America were familiar to him, and he asked me a hun-
dred questions. As it was cold, he made a blazing fire
for me, and when I left helped to carry the boat, so as to
avoid the mill-weir. There are some shallows just below.
Igornay, so the young miller waded and dragged the boat
after him, with me in it, till we got into deeper water;
he would not hear of my wading, though I told him I
was accustomed to it, and it would do me no harm. I
paid him with nothing but thanks.
Few hours of travel have ever been more delightful
278
The Unknown River.
than those which now followed. A misty morning had
ended in an afternoon of brilliant sunshine; the river was
seldom less than three or four feet deep, and it turned
continually, every turn offering some new and beautiful
picture. The splendid autumn trees burned in the glow-
ing light against the pure blue of an unclouded sky, and
their long reflections trailed in glimmering gold on the
calm surface of the quiet, sequestered pools. In such
delightful scenery as this two or three miles a day
seemed only too rapid travelling; I longed continually
to tie the boat to some tree, and etch whilst any light
remained. Soon, however, the stream narrowed again,
and an impetuous current rushed under closely woven.
boughs, and between many awkward snags. Many a
place seemed impassable, but the stream was too swift
and too narrow to admit of any going back, and there
was nothing for it but to shut one's eyes and dash at
the branches with the paddle lying useless on the deck.
Once the boat was jammed between a root and a tree
where the stream was strongest, but I got through by
pulling at the tree with both hands. As for landing, it
was out of the question; there was no land to be seen,
nothing but branches, branches everywhere, overhead,
before, behind, to the right and to the left, with an im-
petuous current under them, strong, swift, and deep.
Then I heard a roar of water amongst rocks, and, in an
instant, turning a corner, found myself at the foot of a
steep hill, thickly wooded as far as I could see; and
where the water had eaten into the hill the rocks were
bare, a long row of them, and there were stones in the
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
stream, over which it boiled with white foam.
279
How-
ever, there was paddle-room, and I was really far safer
than five minutes before under the branches. Whilst
happily congratulating myself on my escape from so
many difficulties, I turned a sharp corner; a long branch
lay athwart the stream from side to side, two feet above
the water; the boat passed under it, but I could not
diminish myself sufficiently to pass under it too, so was
upset in an instant, and fell in head first.
280
The Unknown River.
TH
CHAPTER IV.
HE shipwreck that ended the last chapter occurred
just at sunset. After a night's rest in a poor cot-
tage, the voyage was resumed in the brilliant light of a
new and cloudless day.
The river was still most dangerous, slipping furtively
and fast through the thickest underwood, turning sharply
in unforeseen ways and places, like a panther in the
dense jungle.
At last, after being hurried down a narrow channel,
with about as much freedom of will as the train in an
atmospheric tube, we came suddenly out upon a great
open pool. This was the confluence of the Arroux and
the Drée, and the Arroux had doubled his substance
by this alliance.
Before it, he had been a wild young rivulet of the
most imprudent and impetuous character; after it, he
had times of leisure, and lived in visible dignity, an im-
portant occupier of land. Imagine a constant succes-
sion of large and beautiful pools linked together by rapid
babbling shallows on which the canoe darted gayly and
swiftly without grounding. The pools were deep, with
sloping bottoms of the finest sand, perfect bathing-places
every one, and every one a picture.
Y
After many windings, one curve of the beautiful river
disclosed a noble city, rising far off on the slope of a
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
281
lofty hill, blue in the haze of the bright afternoon, with
massive walls and many towers. It is old Augusto-
dunum, once the sister of Rome and her rival, since
then strong in the middle ages with all the picturesque
strength of turret and battlement, now narrowed till
within the vast enclosure of the Roman fortifications the
market-gardener grows his vegetables, and the farmer
ploughs his fields. Still by the quiet river the Roman
wall stands rugged, rich branches hanging over it, heavy
and full, and striving to reach the flowing water. And:
the Roman gate still augustly receives the traveller as
he crosses the bridge over the Arroux, its gray arches
and pilasters borne high over the mighty portals with a
little statue of the Virgin between them, record of the
faith of the middle ages, and a gas-lamp to prove that
the modern time has come.
A great and wonderful Roman city, one of the noblest
in the Roman world, stood here on the banks of the
Arroux. In the circuit of her walls were more than two
hundred towers. She had a great amphitheatre, and
innumerable temples, and theatres, and baths. The soil
to this day is full of fragments of precious marbles from
the luxurious Roman dwellings. For a thousand years
the earth has been yielding a harvest of antiquities, still
inexhaustible; columns, and statues, and bronzes, and
pavements of Roman mosaic. And when the glorious
Roman city, SOROR ET AEMULA ROMAE, was utterly
ravaged and destroyed, there arose upon her site a
mediæval city, smaller, yet not less beautiful, so that a
king of France called it his 'City of Beautiful Towers.'
282
The Unknown River.
But the medieval city has disappeared almost as com-
pletely as the Roman. The classic amphitheatre is
razed to the ground; of the medieval cathedral (a great
edifice of the purest Gothic) there remains one arch in a
garden. The present cathedral is a church which stood
under the shadow of the old one. A few fragments of
the medieval city remain here and there, the house of
Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy, now a carpenter's shop,
a tower of the old Donjon, and here and there a few
houses of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Still
Autun is a picturesque and quaint place, full of endless
subjects for an etcher.
If there is any thing in the history of the past that
can move or interest the present, the past of this strange
city cannot leave us cold. Who could float here on the
Arroux, close to the Roman wall, without thinking of all
that has happened here, by the shore of this now peace-
ful river? A simple catalogue of the vicissitudes of this
city, unparalleled in the succession of her misfortunes,
reads like some marvellous poem. The story of all her
sieges has a Homeric grandeur.
First she was ravaged by Tetricus. After a resistance
of seven months she was punished by the conqueror of
Tetricus, Aurelian. Ruined by German hordes in the
third century, she was sacked again under Diocletian.
For twenty-five years she lay prostrate in her ashes, and
the lands about her were untilled. She was punished
again by Constantius after the defeat of Magnentius.
She was besieged by Chonodomarus and Vestralphus;
and after that by the Vandals; and after that by the Bur-
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
283
gundians; and then by Attila, who massacred the inhab-
itants and reduced the whole place to ashes. Childebert
and Clotaire ruined the city on the flight of Godmar.
The Saracens sacked Autun; the Normans sacked it in
885, and a few years later Rollo pillaged it again. After
the battle of Poictiers the English came and burned part
of the city. Admiral Coligny came and burned a pri-
ory and the palace of an abbot, pillaging the abbey:
Towards the end of the sixteenth century Autun was
beseiged by the Marshal Daumont, and her archives
used for gun-wadding.
There are great incidents in her history: the martyr-
dom of St. Symphorien, the visit of Bishop Proculus to
Attila. The reader may remember the great picture by
Ingres, of the young Symphorien led by the Roman
lictors to execution, his mother encouraging him from
the wall. And if Symphorien sacrificed himself for his
faith, Proculus did the same for his fellow-citizens. He
went to Attila's camp to entreat him to spare the city,
and Attila beheaded him.
+
A memorable circumstance, in another way, was the
visit of Constantine to Autun. Constantine had raised
the city from ruin and despair; rebuilt her edifices, re-
established her schools. Finally he came in person with
his court. The expression of the people's gratitude
moved him to tears. He forgave them five whole years
of taxes.
The saddest history connected with the city is that of
poor Queen Brunehault, early in the seventh century.
She wished to place her grandson (she had four) on the
284
The Unknown River.
throne of her son Tyherri, who was dead. Clotaire II.
had the four sons arrested. The queen herself was
arrested near the lake of Yverdun, and taken to Clo-
taire's camp in Burgundy. Three days of torture ended
by a derisive promenade on a camel through the camp.
Her grandsons were slaughtered before her eyes; then
she herself was tied to the tail of a wild horse. Her
body was brought to Autun and laid in a marble tomb.
But the grandest and noblest action of all that shed
lustre on the antique city is the refusal of the Count de
Charni to execute the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
There were eight hundred Calvinists in the place, and
the order came to slay them; but the advocate Jeannin
recommended the Bailly, de Charni, to disobey the
royal mandate, and they spared the Calvinists, to their
own eternal honor. In his disobedience De Charni
had the boldness to tell the king that he wished to leave
him time to reflect upon orders issued in anger; and the
Chancellor, on reading De Charni's letter to his majesty,
observed: 'C'est un juge de village qui nous préscrit
notre devoir !'
The bishops of Autun, when newly appointed, used
to make a solemn entry into their city. They had an
episcopal residence at Lucenay (an exquisitely beautiful
little place amongst the hills), and the new bishop left
this residence in state. But he did not enter Autun at
once. First he stopped at the monastery of St. Andoche,
without the walls, and the abbess was obliged to enter-
tain him and all his retinue. Near the convent there
was a country-house called Genetoie, and the proprietor
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
285
of it was obliged to give the bishop hot water for his
feet, an obligation much less heavy than that which fell
upon the abbess. The bishop went to Genetoie to await
the arrival of the chapter. When they came he pre-
sented himself at the closed door of the cloister, and
was refused admission twice, answering each time that
he was the bishop of Autun. The third time he was
admitted, and took the oath.
The accompanying illustration shows all that remain
of the house of Genetoie as it appeared when islanded
by the flood of 1866.
286
The Unknown River.
TH
CHAPTER V.
HE bishops made their entry into the city by the
bridge of St. Andoche, but one of them went out.
of it again by the other bridge, and his carriage-wheels
rattled on the road to Paris; and in Paris he took up a
new trade which he practised with the most distinguished
success. Can you fancy Talleyrand as a bishop going
about gravely in violet, and giving his precious benedic-
tion? All the portraits I ever saw of him represent him
in court dress, and nothing is more difficult than to rid
one's self, even temporarily, of an association. The con-
verse difficulty is that of imagining Pius IX. as an offi-
cer of dragoons. Had it been possible to see the two
together, in the garb of their first professions, who
would have guessed which was to become a famous
pope, and which an equally celebrated diplomatist ?
When Autun was left behind, the river went for half
a mile in such a stately manner that anybody would
have given it credit for being navigable in the most.
serious sense of the word, navigable for vessels laden
with much more valuable merchandise than the mate-
rials of an unpopular art. In this long, quiet reach the
lads from the college came to practise themselves in
swimming, and this led me to think about three youths.
who may have bathed here not so very long ago, but
whose history was at least as romantic as that of the
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
287
Greek and Roman heroes they read about in their text-
books at the college. One of these youths was called
Neapoleonne de Bounaparte,* and the two others were
brothers of his. Napoleon did not remain quite four
months at the college of Autun (the fact is unknown to
all his biographers), but his brother Joseph stayed here
as many years. Napoleon's little cell (the colleges had
cells in those days) still existed two or three years
since. It was positively known to be one of the five or
six that remained, but which there was no means of
ascertaining.
At length the towers of Autun, which showed them-
selves in glimpses during the windings of the river, and
completed in this way a hundred pretty compositions,
disappeared finally behind a spur of hill clothed with a
dense pine forest. Once more the canoe floated on a
quite lonely river without evidence of human labor or
habitation, except now and then the smoke of a distant
farm, or the cry of the drivers of oxen, generally the
name of each animal, sung out with a musical cadence.
It was pleasant to get into the perfect country again,
though Autun scarcely seems a city, and the Arroux
flows past it undisturbed by human interference except
when the strong brown-skinned horsemen ride up to
their waists in the water, and the fishermen cast their
nets.
Westwards rose the blue mass of the Beuvray, where
recent investigations have fixed the site of a city older
than Augustodunum, the Bibracte of the Gauls. But
*So entered on the college books.
288
The Unknown River.
Bibracte is almost without a history. Cæsar went there,
and said that it was a great stronghold, and took provi-
sions from it for his army, but left us scarcely a word of
description. Bibracte can never have been more than
a great fortified hill-village, or Gaulish oppidum, com-
posed of very rude huts, huddled close together, and
protected by solid walls built in the strong Gaulish way,
with logs nailed together with huge nails, and earth and
stone between them. Floating down the river in the
evening I saw the last flames of sunset die behind the
Beuvray, and the majesty of its purple crests was en-
hanced by its ancient strength. What is on the hill-
crest now? On the site of the buried city is a forest of
old gnarled beeches, and in the midst of the forest stands
a little camp of huts, where an antiquary passes his sum-
mers, with a band of faithful men. Even now, I thought,
in the evening, he is standing on some brow of rock,
and looking over the boundless plains. He can see the
lands beyond the Loire, and the whole course of the
river that I am obscurely exploring. And when the
twilight comes, and his evening walk is over, he will go
to his wooden hut and sleep amidst his trophies. A
pleasant, enthusiastic, absorbed life he has of it up
there! He tells me that there is danger in the delight
of it, the danger of a too complete abandonment to the
enjoyment of glorious Nature and the dear antiquarian
dream. He has a charming house in the city, with its
salons filled with pictures and its museum with antiqui-
ties, and only a rough hut up there on the mountain;
but every year as the summer comes he longs for the
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
289
little hut, and the free range of the wild forest, and
the fresh, high air, and the silence and the calm, and
the healthy days of toil, and the lonely evening walks
about the hill, and the vast, illimitable horizons. Who-
ever has once known this passion for wild Nature never,
whilst health lasts, can lose it. There comes upon him
every year, first a vague uneasiness, then a craving and
longing for something, he knows not what, and then he
begins to dream at night of regions beautiful and wild.
The streets of the town, even the spacious country-
house, begin to feel like prisons, and he wants to get
out into the forest, or on the mountain, or float on flow-
ing rivers and tossing seas.
In consequence of having etched the little plate which
the reader has just seen, I had to paddle some miles
after sunset, and did not reach the next village until
darkness had fairly set in. The river, fortunately, pre-
sented few of those dangers which had been so frequent
in the earlier part of its course. There were a few
rapids here and there, but not dangerous rapids, and
now and then one of those disturbed places called ' re-
mous,' produced by sudden alterations in the form of the
river's bed, often at a considerable depth. On the whole,
however, the river was safer here than anywhere else on
its whole course until it reached the plain of the Loire,
and this will be readily understood after a few words on
the geology of the district. The basin of Autun is a
wide valley hollowed in the rock, formerly a lake-bed,
and afterwards filled to the brim with alluvial deposits.
It is through these deposits that the river cuts its serpen-
19
290
The Unknown River.
tine course, and so long as it has to do with nothing but
soft loam, and sand, and little rounded pebbles, the navi-
gation is safe and easy. But when we come to the thick
granite lip of the great basin, we shall find that the stream
suddenly takes a new character. It is a lowland river in
the basin of Autun, a highland stream for twenty miles
as it crosses the rocky edge of the basin, and after that a
lowland river again as it meanders through the plain of
the Loire. This accounts for my getting safely to the
inn after dark; a little lower down all night-travelling
was out of the question.
But at the inn there was not a bed to be had, so I went
to a country-house on the other side of the river, belong-
ing to a rich land-owner whom I did not know personally,
but who had an encouraging reputation for hospitality.
Going to beg a night's lodging at a private house where
you are unknown requires more assurance, I think, than
any thing I ever attempted.
The master of the mansion was absent. The butler
put his head out of a bedroom window and heard my
petition. The butler was a very decent fellow; he
dressed himself and came downstairs, and kindly heard
all I had to say. For a moment I believed the difficulty
overcome, but unluckily the favorable impression which
I had succeeded in making on this man's mind availed
me nothing, for the supreme authority was the house-
keeper. She put her face out of a window, an ugly vis-
age whose thousand wrinkles were strongly illumined by
a candle in her skinny hand, and one glance assured me
that she would be inexorable Nothing could be more
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
291
decided than her refusal. And they talk of the tender-
heartedness of women!
How and where I passed that night shall be a mystery.
How do vagrants and vagabonds pass theirs?
This castle is the Castle of Chaseux, a picturesque old
ruin by the river-side, in a charming situation. The
effect is more picturesque in the etching than in the
reality, because he who only sees the drawing does not
realize the curiously small scale of the towers. They
are decidedly the tiniest towers I ever saw in any castle
of feudal times; but they looked larger, no doubt, when
they had their pepper-box roofs. For the rest the place
is not without grandeur, and it has some literary interest
as an occasional residence of Madame de Sévigné with
that cousin of hers, Roger de Rabutin, Count de Bussy,
commonly called Bussy Rabutin. How she could ever
forgive him his offences against decency, and his slan-
ders against herself, is one of the mysteries of the
womanly heart. I never had the curiosity to read any
thing of Bussy's except a few of his brevities. One does
not care to plunge into dirty water; it is enough for me
that Bussy shocked Louis XIV. (not an eminent model
of virtue) to such a degree that the indignant monarch
first put him into the Bastile, and afterwards banished
him to his estates in Burgundy. Here, at Chaseux, he
spent part of his seventeen years of exile; and it is one
of the most extraordinary instances of the irony of fate,
that the portrait of this wretched noble, who disgraced
his family and his age, actually now hangs in the little
village church where he heard mass, hangs over the
-
292
The Unknown River.
altar, and does duty as a saint. The dress and accesso-
ries have been repainted, to suit the present destination
of the work; but the worldly, seventeenth-century face
looks still out of its flowing wig, between the tall candles
on the altar. And the priest kneels, and the people bow,
and the incense rises before it!
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 293
CHAPTER VI.
HIS etching is intended to represent one of those
THIS etching is inter on the river which are amongst
effects of twilight on the river which are amongst
the charms of a lonely voyage. You see the great
masses of the magnificent trees, but you hardly see the
dark ground they stand upon, and it is not easy to tell
where the water ends and the land begins. For the full
enjoyment of such an hour as this, the scenery should be
previously unknown to you, that the sense of mystery
may be felt in its fullest intensity; but, on the other hand,
there ought not to be any apprehension of danger. It is
after a day of peril and adventure that you most enjoy
the peace of the solemn gloaming, when the reaches of
the river sleep in their glassy calm, and the heron lifts
himself languidly on the breadth of his great gray
wings.
The heron is not mentioned by accident or put in for
the sake of a poetical effect. He was there. He passed
the canoe like a winged shadow, and then rose in the
calm, pure air. Just then came a great flock of rooks,
and, as they were flying about four hundred feet above
me, the heron attained nearly the same altitude. The
impertinent rooks attacked the noble bird (fit game for
peregrine falcons !), and they plagued him and insulted
him till he knew not what to make of it.
But he pre-
sented his sharp, long beak to his assailants, and after
294
The Unknown River.
teasing him for a quarter of an hour they left him to take
his lonely way in peace.
Danger a-head! O captain! hearest thou not the
roar of the rapid?
It was time to cease gazing up into the unfathomable
blue; it was time to get a firm seat, and grasp the paddle
well! No more enjoyment of the poetry of the twilight,
only a wish for the 'light of common day," wherein all
sweet illusions fade.
It was a great rapid amongst boulders, the largest of
which were as big as the room you are sitting in, dear
reader. They were scattered to the right and to the
left, and one or two ugly fellows apparently barred the
way. The channels were narrow and deep, and the water
hissed and twisted amongst them like serpents. A-yel-
low glimmer from the evening sky shone on the swift
currents, and said, 'I show you all their complexity —
select!'
After another rapid, apparently much less dangerous
than the first, and in reality (as often happens) much
more so, the author arrived at Étang, a little old village,
with two fine bridges and a railway station just built.
There were some good subjects for etching in this place,
especially the old houses near the river.
A relic of great interest for me (who have a peculiar
weakness for tents and encamping) is preserved at the
house of a rich man in the neighborhood of Étang. It
is a fragment of the famous pavilion of Charles the
Bold, which fell into the hands of the victorious Swiss,
after the battle of Granson. The faded glory of its
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
295
magnificent embroidery recalled the costliest of all the
countless tents that ever trembled at the blast of trum-
pets; and such is the power of great associations, that
the last rag and remnant of a splendor which dazzled
men's eyes four hundred years ago gives poetry to the
house where it is preserved, and to the very landscape
that lies around it.
Étang possessed, at the time of my visit, the ugliest
church (and this is saying a great deal) ever erected in
the eighteenth century. Preparations were, however,
being made for rebuilding it in a better form; and, as
the new church was to be rather larger than the old one,
it was necessary to make new foundations in the sur-
rounding graveyard. This disturbed numbers of crosses
which marked the graves, and these crosses were thrown
all together into a corner. The graves themselves had
to be cut through, and, as the workmen simply dug the
new foundation without troubling themselves about the
bodies, they often cut them in two; so that many a dead
man had his legs amputated, or his head cut off, in a
manner quite unforeseen by his friends and relatives
when they interred him near the old church wall. The
writer witnessed some incidents of this kind which were
not much to his taste; and when the new church stands
in the glory of its Gothic arches and groined vault, and
windows of brilliant stained glass, if ever he visits the
place again he will never be able to see the stately walls
of the fabric without thinking of the mutilated remains
on each side of their deep foundations.
-
Two fine hills are visible from Étang, not mountains,
296
The Unknown River.
but true hills of noble aspect, with rocky heights and
deep ravines. One of these is the Beuvray, mentioned
in the preceding chapter as the probable site of Bibracte ;
and exactly opposite to the Beuvray, on the other side
of the river, is the hill of Uchon, which may not have
been the site of a Gaulish place of strength, but which
still carries on its rocky height the tall fragment of a
mediæval castle, once of considerable extent. I deter-
mined to explore this hill in detail, and gave a whole
day to it, with two guides, a village schoolmaster, who
kindly offered his services, and a fine boy who was one.
of his best scholars. The first thing to be seen was a
rocking-stone, a natural curiosity of sufficiently frequent
occurrence to need little description here. This stone,
commonly called 'La Pierre qui croule,' or by abbrevia-
tion 'La pierre croule,' is nearly at the crest of the hill,
in a large wood. Without the help of my guide I could
not possibly have found it. As in the case of other
rocking-stones, many attempts to remove it from its
pivot have been made by stupid peasants, who have
harnessed oxen to it with ropes; but the stone, which
weighs nearly thirty tons, has always resisted all such
attempts to deprive it of its peculiar virtue and pre-
eminence. When set in motion, its movement is SO
regular and sure that it cracks nuts without injuring the
kernel; and as the schoolmaster was provided with nuts
for the occasion, and we had a boy with us willing to
eat them, I had the opportunity of verifying this.
The 'Pierre qui croule' is close to a deep ravine; and
near it, on the summit of the hill, were many magnifi-
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
297
cent groups of rocks. Wherever a plough could be
driven, even on the very summit, the land was culti-
vated, and the cottages of the peasantry were scattered
amongst the rocks in the little fields. The hill has an
industry of its own, that of sabot-making, due to the
neighborhood of the forest. I and my companions called
at a cottage which was a workshop of sabotiers, and were
very kindly received. As I was very thirsty, I begged
the sabotiers to give me a drink of water, which one of
them immediately did, in a perfectly clean but most
extraordinary cup, a new sabot. I had some rum in
a flask, and offered a drink to all present; on which
the four workmen and three visitors provided them-
selves with sabots, and, having half filled them with
water, passed the flask to flavor it. A little incident
occurred then, which amused and delighted me by its
quaintness and originality. It was proposed to trinquer,
to klink,* and the seven sabots were solemnly struck
against each other in token of good-fellowship. They
were not the most elegant of cups, and they did not
ring very musically when struck; but, after drinking
out of glasses all one's life, it may be an agreeable nov-
elty, for once, to drink out of a wooden shoe.†
*The old Shakspearian word.
† What added to the fun was, that, in addition to the schoolmaster
and boy, a friend of mine accompanied me, who is a dignitary of Autun
(not mentioned in the text for that reason), and it was highly comic to
see his dignity condescend to such a drinking-vessel. Some time after-
wards, an old gentleman who had heard of this incident, but did not
know the name of my companion, told the story, with the remark that
'no eccentricity could astonish one in an Englishman, but the wonder
t
298
The Unknown River.
Uchon is the quaintest little hill-village that I ever
met with in my travels. Perched on the very highest
and steepest part of the hill, not safely on the summit,
but on the slope just below it, the village commands a
view of immense extent. There is not a place of equal
height for sixty miles before it, and the eye ranges to
the illimitable plain of the Loire. It is just the site for
a feudal castle, and accordingly we find the last remnant
of one, a tall fragment of wall, leaning, like the Tower
of Pisa, over the narrow road, with a fine Gothic fireplace
high up its side where the floor once was, and where
the lady sat in her lofty chamber, and looked out on the
world below. The most curious thing at Uchon is the
church, which simply follows the slope of the ground,
the floor in the interior being as steep as the hill-side
on which the edifice is built. As the altar is at the.
higher end, the effect produced is really fine, and might
be worth imitating artificially.
The walk was enlivened by a continual conversation
with the school-master, who was even more intelligent
than his usually intelligent class. Amongst other inter-
esting things, he mentioned several words which, so far
as he had been able to ascertain, were peculiar to the
place. Two of these were especially interesting, the
verb douler, to suffer (Lat. dolere), and the substantive
vialet, a foot-path (diminutive of via).
The writer, in his descent of the mountain, was in
was how Mr. Hamerton could find a Frenchman to share his freaks.'"
'That Frenchman,' replied the dignitary above mentioned, who happened
to be present, 'was myself.'
1
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
299
that state of excitement peculiar to landscape-painters
when they find themselves in a place full of good mate-
rial for study. The foregrounds were excellent, espe-
cially the magnificent old trees, and the groups of oxen
and peasants in the steep little fields composed in a
charmingly accidental way. The worst of it was, that,
being anxious to resume my voyage, I had not time to
etch upon the mountain; and the next etching I did was
at noon on the following day, when I had landed in a
quiet place for lunch, and the canoe lay idly on the
water.
300
The Unknown River.
CHAPTER VII.
HE river now flowed through very majestic sylvan
TH
scenery, equal in some places to the finest parts
of the Thames, and curiously destitute of every thing
that we in England are accustomed to consider especi-
ally French in character. The banks were often rocky,
and the foregrounds rich in heather and fern, with im-
mense quantities of broom. Out of this rose gigantic
oaks, that would have done credit to any park in Eng-
land. Here is a sketch of the trunk of one which I
found to be fifty feet in circumference.
This noble tree was in every respect one of the most
perfectly and equally developed I ever met with. Suf-
ficiently isolated for its growth not to be in the least
interfered with, and yet at the same time not too much
exposed to any prevailing wind, its massive column rose
straight upwards, and its enormous branches (themselves
equal to considerable trees) spread equally in every
direction. I have only given the trunk here because
the attempt to represent the whole tree always failed to
give any notion of its vast dimensions. Its crown of
foliage, too perfect and too regular to be picturesque,
was like a sylvan world erected on a pedestal. At some
distance the tree did not strike one as being particularly
big, probably on account of its beautiful proportions,
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
301
and the not inconsiderable size of its neighbors; but
once under the shade of the great branches, the specta--
tor suddenly becomes aware of the weight and size of the
enormous limbs, and then makes deductions concerning.
the strength of the trunk that can support them. The
impression is completed by making the tour of the trunk..
The whole tree is perfectly sound, and neither lightning.
nor human hand has ever lopped off one branch.
An impression prevails in England that the French
are indifferent to sylvan beauty, probably because wood
is their principal fuel, and therefore an immense destruc-
tion of young trees takes place yearly in the forests,
whilst the peasants amputate the arms of the older ones..
They often, however, preserve fine timber for ornament
as we do; and I learned without surprise that the fine
oaks, of which the giant just described was the chief and
king, enjoyed, in consequence of a decree of the owner
of the soil, absolute immunity from the axe. Many trees
in the same neighborhood, especially the old chestnuts,
must count their age by centuries; and the beeches that
crest the Beuvray, though not finely developed, owing
to the altitude of their situation, give every evidence of
antiquity. The park of Monjeu, an estate belonging to
the Talleyrand family, near Autun, is full of magnificent
timber even yet, though much was destroyed by the
imprudence of a man of business, who, in the owner's
absence, sold it to a contractor. The haste with which
this unfortunate contract was annulled, at a heavy loss,
so soon as M. de Talleyrand became aware of what
had been done, is a proof that he valued the timber
302
The Unknown River.
for something more than its mere salableness. But the
best evidence that the French are not indifferent to the
beauty of their trees is, that scarcely a single town,
however insignificant, is without its public avenues, in
which the trees are encouraged to attain their fullest
possible development. What English town, of equal
population, has any thing comparable to the magnificent
avenues that encircle Sens?
The navigation during this part of the voyage was
more agreeable to the traveller himself than likely to
prove interesting when narrated. Here and there the
rocky bed of the stream produced narrow passes of a
trifling degree of difficulty, and after them the river
widened into long and tranquil reaches, over which
drooped the heavy-leaved branches, dipping their ex-
tremities in the deep water that reflected them. At
length, when these were gilded by the refulgence of
sunset, the sound of a mill-wheel became audible in the
distance, and that pleasant rush of water that may indi-
cate either a rapid or a weir. Then a village church
came into sight, and finally a few roofs of picturesque
mossy thatch, which turned out to be the whole village.
The church was one of those simple old Romanesque
edifices which abound in this part of France. The
architects of to-day have broken with the Romanesque
tradition, and, in order to get more imposing effects of
height and size, have adopted a very plain kind of
lancet-Gothic. But for a little village church I think
nothing can be so well adapted as the Romanesque,
with its tiny apse and aisles, and its general air of snug-
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
303
ness, completion, and solidity on a most unpretendingly
small scale. A little Romanesque church never seems
to need any thing more; but a very plain, tall, lanky,
modern, Gothic church, with its invariable gawky tower
at the west end, looks hungry and uncomfortable, as if
the architect had been pinched in his financial condi-
tions, which he very generally is, and at the same time
obliged to give as many square yards of wall as possible
for the money.*
The church of this little village of St. Nizier had been
closed at the Revolution, and never opened since. The
inside was full of straw, and my canine companion rolled
his wet hide upon it in a manner which appeared to
indicate that he would consider it very eligible bedding
if we stayed all night there. Seeing no sign of any
thing like an inn amongst the half-dozen cottages which
constituted the whole burgh, I felt greatly inclined to
accept the dog's suggestion; but, although the church
was an ample and sufficiently comfortable bedroom, one
could not hope to find any dinner there, and I looked
about the small cottages if haply there might dwell
therein some man or woman skilled in the preparation
of food. Now a certain observant villager, seeing me
thus in quest of something which I had not found, came
*One of these churches was erected lately in a certain commune,
and when the plans had been made I asked the priest what sort of
architecture had been determined upon; but neither the priest, nor the
maire, nor any other notable of the place, could tell me, the fact being
that, though the plans had been presented for their august approval
and honored therewith, they did not know the difference between one
sort of architecture and another.
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The Unknown River.
with much courtesy and proffered me his services; and
it turned out that this villager was in a position to be
particularly useful to a traveller, for he was at the same
time innkeeper and mayor, a man capable at once of
nourishing the stranger, and casting over him the ægis
of political protection. He lived in a small cottage
whose worst defect, in my view, was that of being alarm-
ingly damp. It had been submerged in a great flood
which had happened a few weeks before, and the walls
were still full of moisture that oozed out from the plaster
on every side. However, here I stayed two nights, and
contended against the damp by means of a blazing fire
and warm bedding. The place was rather amusing, for
the inn was at the same time the village shop, and my
bed was in the shop itself; so I had ample opportunities.
for studying the inhabitants of the place. As all the
villagers went to bed about sunset they did not disturb
my privacy in the evening; but they began their shop-
ping at such an uncommonly early hour in the morning,
that it was rather a perplexing matter how and when to
go through the business of dressing. The most amusing
plan seemed to be to lie quietly in bed and watch them ;
but this, though agreeable to a sluggardly mind, did not
especially advance my own projects. One thing struck
me very much, and that was the total absence of any
visible stock-in-trade; yet notwithstanding this apparent
deficiency every article in demand always came forth at
once.
The innkeeper was a man of some culture, and both
could and did read, which is more than can be said of
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305
most French villagers of his class. I found books in
his house which interested me exceedingly, especially
'Charton's History of France,' which is carefully illus-
trated from authentic memorials of preceding centuries,
not with fancy compositions invented by some artist of
our own. My host was doing what he could to increase
the free library in the village, already considerable
enough to be a great treasury for a poor student. He
took me to see it, and I certainly had not expected to
find a library in a place where there was not a tiled roof,
nor even a priest.
Every one who has travelled (unless he be a down-
right gourmand) will probably have remarked, that it is
not the places where we have fared most luxuriously,
which usually leave the most agreeable impression upon
the mind. At the fine places we expect too much, I
think, and are almost always either disappointed or
within a very little of being so. I have heard a whole
carriage full of men do nothing but grumble and swear
as they drove home after a most extravagant Greenwich
feast, and I have seen the same men quite happy and
contented with a slice of beef and potatoes. In this
latter frame of mind, which expects nothing, and is
always satisfied with what fortune sends, did the present
writer stay his two nights at St. Nizier; and he left it
with a pleasing impression, as he walked down, paddle
in hand, towards the rocky shore, his canoe being borne
with great ceremony behind him by the mayor him-
self and one of the most active and influential mem-
bers of the Common Council. Nevertheless, it may be
306
The Unknown River.
acknowledged that the beautiful scenery lower down the
river was not a whit the less attractive for the fact, that
a renowned French cook kept an hotel somewhere in
those more favored regions, an hotel where a man
might not only eat, but dine.
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
307
A
CHAPTER VIII.
FTER St. Nizier the river became even more pic-
turesque as it proceeded. Rushing swiftly and
merrily between willowy islets it carried the traveller
along with very little consideration for his private tastes.
and preferences. The only possible exercise of choice
was at the moment of selecting the channel; after that,
retreat was simply out of the question, and all that could
be done was to keep as clear of accident as might be.
A river voyage has been compared over and over again
to the course of human life, and no wonder, for the
simile holds good in the minutest details, especially in
such a voyage as this. How very important, for exam-
ple, and at the same time how very difficult, it is to
choose the right channel when several lie before you of
which you are about equally ignorant! If you have
made a mistake, if you have chosen the wrong profession
or the wrong wife, then there is nothing for it but to try
to get along as safely and creditably as you can, and
avoid an upset if possible. If the mistake has been made
it cannot be unmade, but skill and courage may still often
save a man from its most disagreeable consequences.
There are lives which must be as easy as it would be to
paddle down the broad Loire with the ordnance map in
your pocket, which shows the safest way everywhere;
but these existences lose in interest what they gain in
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safety: and the most interesting life to live, like the best
river to explore, is one in which the course is not known
in detail beforehand, but constantly calls for the exercise
of skill and judgment, and is even to some degree
affected also by pure hazard.
The tiny hamlets on the shores of the river were often
very beautiful in their way, or, at least, very picturesque,
and quite unspoiled by any modern perfections and reg-
ularities of brickwork or of roof. Many of the best of
these hamlets are of great antiquity. I know one where
the cottages have not received any important addition,
and have not been repaired in any other sense than that
of simply replacing parts as they decayed, for the last
four or five hundred years. And the life in them has
followed the same unswerving tradition. The language,
the religion, the customs, of the inhabitants remain al-
most precisely what they were in the Middle Ages. The
oxen are yoked to the char as they were centuries ago;
the char itself is a precise copy of that used by remote
ancestors; the ploughs and other implements of agri-
culture are untouched by modern improvement. We
know little of the lives that are led in these out-of-the-
way cottages and hamlets, because it is so difficult for
us to get rid of London and Paris, of literature and sci-
ence, and modern thought and reflection; so difficult
to realize what a life must be which neither London nor
Paris influences in any perceptible way whatever; a life
quite beyond the range of literature, inaccessible even
to the cheapest of cheap newspapers, ignorant of every
thing which makes us men of the nineteenth century
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
309
instead of the fifteenth or the tenth. This simple patri-
archal existence will not, however, endure very much
longer; the light of modernism is breaking in upon it
already here and there, through chinks in its ancient
walls. It is difficult to find a place which is forty miles
from a railway, and the railway brings its influences wit:
it. A youth leaves the parental cottage for some distant.
place, and when he comes back gives his parents some
rude notions of geography. The region through which
flows the Unknown River' is so near to the Alps that
their white crests may be seen occasionally from the
summits of these hills; yet the peasants are not aware
that the Alps exist. Once, however, a young man went
to work at Grenoble, and he came back and told the
people in his village that there were high mountains on
which the snow never melted, even in the heats of sum-
mer. This is the way a little knowledge comes to them;
it comes personally, by oral communication, not by
books. A soldier comes back from Mexico, and tells
them that Mexico is beyond the sea. I was greatly
astonished at the little hamlet, here faithfully repre-
sented, to hear a man of saddened aspect speak of
Boston. 'What Boston?' I asked, wondering how he
should know of any Boston unless there were such a
place quite near to him in France. 'It is of Boston
in the United States of America, that I am speaking,
sir,' answered the man of the sad countenance, aston-
ishing me more and more, for what French peasant
knows that the United States exist, or the Atlantic
Ocean either? So then he told me his tale, and as it
310
The Unknown River.
is both a pretty tale and a true one, I repeat it here for
the reader,
It is simple and short enough. He and his wife were
very poor indeed, almost destitute, and so, though they
loved each other much, she went out as a nurse to Paris.
In Paris she entered the service of some rich Americans,
who, when they returned to their own country, offered
her terms so tempting that she crossed the Atlantic with
them. Year after year she sent her earnings to her hus-
band, and year after year he laid by the hard-won gold
until there was enough of it to buy the cottage he lived
in, and a little field or two; enough to keep them in inde-
pendence all their lives. He took me into the cottage,
and showed me his wife's portrait (blessings on photog-
raphy, that enables a poor man to have a portrait of the
absent or the dead!) and kissed it tenderly in my pres-
ence, and said how hard the long separation was, and
how he looked for her return. As he said this the tears
ran down his cheeks, and he showed me the bright good.
walnut furniture in the cottage, and the fields by the
river side, and said that all this comfort was her doing,
all this wealth her winning. She had learned to write
on purpose that she might write to him, and month after.
month her kindly letters came, cheering him under the
long trial of her absence. It was four years since she
had left the cottage, and for these four lonely years the
father had been like a widower, and the children had
grown around him. And now the months went ever
more and more slowly, as it seemed, when he wanted
them to go faster, for this very autumn she was to sail
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
311
and come to enjoy the peace she had created. May the
ship that brings her paddle prosperously across the wide
Atlantic, and the good woman find her way in safety to
her own cottage, and to the loyal heart that yearns and
waits for her so wearily!
'Fair stands her cottage in its place
Where yon broad water sweetly, slowly glides ;
It sees itself from thatch to base
Dream in the sliding tides.'
The character of the river became more and more
strikingly picturesque as it advanced towards the Loire.
Promontories of rock jutted into the stream, which took
sharp curves under steep and richly wooded banks, and
went to sleep in out-of-the-way corners, where it made
wonderfully perfect and tranquil harbors for the canoe.
Sometimes there would be a ruin on some height, which
though on a small scale was not without grandeur, and
afterwards the rich meadows and woods descended to the
level of the water. Then came a long decline where the
water rushed over a thousand dangerous crests of rock,
and after that a pool so long and sleepy and quiet that
it seemed as if the river had finally made up its mind
not to flow any more, but to lie for ever in that place
like a fish-pond. However, when it did awake and start
again, it started with such freshness and energy that the
interval of rest had evidently done it good, and it went
gambolling amongst the rocks in a manner which, if not
absolutely alarming to the canoist (one never confesses
to feelings of serious alarm) did at least call for the best
exercise of his skill.
In this manner we came to one of the very loveliest
312
The Unknown River.
places I ever saw in the course of all my wanderings, a
place where a rich avenue came down to the water's
edge. I left the canoe and walked up between the
stately trees. When the long avenue came to an end
I found myself in a noble demesne with a little lake,
and an island in the middle of it. On that island once
stood a noble feudal castle, where royal guests have been
entertained; and the castle lasted, in all its strength, till
the last century, when a great fire gutted it from roof
to basement. It would have been a noble ruin, but the
marquis, its proprietor, in sheer anger at the accident,
utterly effaced every vestige of the stronghold of his
ancestors; so that literally not one stone remains upon
another. An exquisite old gateway, of the loveliest
Renaissance work, with sculpture as delicate as that
of Melrose, has been re-erected at a little distance by
the present owner, who inhabits a simple modern house.
He intends to build a new castle more worthy of his an-
cient name; but an ancestral mansion, once destroyed,
can never be replaced. Even an ancient avenue may
be replaced in time: young trees will grow old, and they
succeed each other naturally in generations; but the real
feudal castle is one of those things that neither man nor
Nature restores when once it is destroyed and lost. We
may build an imitation of it, but not the thing itself; the
spirit that created it has departed, never to return.
There was something terribly childish in the anger of
that old marquis! The flames had destroyed the wood-
work; and so, in a pet, he finished what they could not
achieve, and levelled all his towers!
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 313
A
CHAPTER IX.
CERTAIN critic in the 'Athenæum' has lately
accused the author of this little narrative * of
'intense egotism;' and not very long since somebody
complained that he talked too much about his dog.
Now, in the present chapter, if the story of the voyage
is to be faithfully narrated, there ought to be a thrilling
account of a perilous and extraordinary shipwreck; but
if the writer is neither to talk about himself, nor his dog,
nor any thing that is his, how is he to tell the tale?
The truth is, that if you listen to critics you will never
publish any thing. One critic dislikes the egotistic bits,
another hates all landscape descriptions, another cannot
endure any allusion to past history, another feels bored.
by any thing resembling philosophical reflection, a fifth
scorns the repeater of an anecdote, and so on; till, if
you try to please them all, simple abstinence from writ-
ing is the only thing possible for you. On the other
hand, if you eliminate one of these elements in order to
please one critic, the others immediately complain that
it is wanting. It is a fact, that a very eminent publisher
complained to me a little while since that there was not
enough about myself in a MS. I sent him, and too much
about Julius Cæsar and the Gaulish System of fortifica-
* These chapters were first published in the Portfolio; an Artistic
Periodical.
4
314
The Unknown River.
tion. Now it so happens that the present chapter might
be dedicated plausibly enough to Julius Cæsar, for he
crossed the Arroux at this very place in his chase after
the Swiss; and no doubt it would be more modest, and
more scholarly, to give a learned little dissertation on
that event than an account of my own shipwreck. The
only objection is, that most readers would skip the spec-
ulations about Cæsar.
It was already rather late in the evening, and I was
sketching by the river-side at Laboulaye, and smoking
the pipe of consolation. The high-road passes not far
from the river at that place, and my dog-friend, hearing
the sound of wheels, went to see what sort of a carriage
was passing by. Soon after the carriage stopped, and I
heard the sort of bark which a dog gives when he meets
an old friend, a bark of joyous congratulation.
It was a fat doctor of my acquaintance, who was
driving towards Toulon-sur-Arroux in the cool of the
evening. It is his nature to be sociable, and he is a hater
of solitude. He had recognized Tom at once, which is
easy on account of the dog's uncommon size and beauty,
and so knew that I could not be far off. Then he ad-
mired the canoe. Would I take a passenger ? He
would be delighted to go with me to Toulon if I would
give him a berth. — Could he swim? - Swim! not in
the least, but he would risk the adventure nevertheless.
Well, but then he would most likely be drowned.
He did not care if he were.
Solitude is very pleasant, but students of landscape
get rather too much of it perhaps, and at times one will
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
315
incur a risk for the pleasure of a genial companion. So
it was settled that the doctor should send his servant
on to Toulon with his carriage, and that we should see
how the canoe would behave with both of us. Amongst
my stores I had a waistcoat containing India-rubber air-
bags, to be worn whilst descending particularly danger-
ous rapids; so I made the doctor put this waistcoat on,
and inflated the air-bags, till he looked like a pouter
pigeon. All being ready, we got into our places very
steadily, sitting face to face; and I took the paddle,
making my passenger promise to turn neither to the
right hand nor to the left. He quietly lit a cigar, and
sat as coolly as if he had been on a safe ship and a
deep and tranquil sea.
The river here was a series of rapids and deep pools,
where the swirling water was always trying to get you
under the steep walls of rock. It was necessary in
several places to cross a rapid to avoid being caught
between great boulders, and we had very near shaves
for it once or twice. The coolness of the doctor all this
time was admirable to behold. He smoked his cigar qui-
etly and sat with perfect equilibrium, so that I had no
trouble with him of any kind except for his weight,
which was considerable indeed. I praised his self-pos-
session, and he answered that he had perfect confidence
in my skill. I said I could not promise to get us through
such a succession of dangers without an accident. In
that case,' he replied, 'I am satisfied that you will do what
can be done, and am content to take the consequences.'
'But, if we capsize, you may be drowned in spite of the
316
The Unknown River.
waistcoat, the current is tremendous.' 'I'm not afraid
of death,' he answered with unfeigned courage.
He had hardly spoken the words, when, in attempting
to cross the rapid to avoid an ugly piece of polished
granite, about the shape and color of a whitened skull,
I found it could not be done without uncommon effort,
and broke the paddle in trying. Of course, after that,
the upset was inevitable. The doctor did not stir, but
smoked tranquilly still, not uttering a single word; the
canoe was carried against the granite, broadside on. She
rose upon it a foot or two, then slipped to the right a
little, the stern dipped, the water clasped me round the
waist and filled the well, and she (slowly as it seemed)
capsized. Just as she went over, but not before, I saw
the doctor throw away his cigar. Once in the water I
found myself hurried along irresistibly, but soon got my
head clear, and hoped, by surface swimming, to escape
contusions on the knees. In this way I got down the
rapid quite safely, and was hurled at last into a deep
pool, where, after the first plunge, I felt comparatively at
ease. Finding it impossible to land on the rocky side, I
allowed myself to float into an eddy, and was quietly car-
ried out of the central current into a sort of tiny haven
or bay, where I landed.
It then became necessary to think about the doctor.
He was not far behind. Like myself he had been car-
ried down the rapid, and was now bobbing about in the
great pool, thanks to the inflated waistcoat. But he had
not the slightest notion about directing himself, and had
got into a cercle vicieux, in a whirlpool that turned him
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
317
round and round. Seeing that he would probably be
carried out of the pool into some other rapid, I thought
it time to set about saving him, and called out that he
was not to grasp me, but simply lay his hands on my
shoulders. When I approached him in the water (rather
cautiously at first), he behaved with the same coolness
he had displayed in the canoe.
He laid a hand on each
shoulder so lightly that I hardly felt it, and I towed him.
easily into port.
He began by expressing polite regrets; but these were
interrupted by the arrival of the canoe, bottom upwards,
and many articles that had been in her. There was the
box of etchings, which I swam for first, and many another
thing. Luckily, I secured the canteen, and the doctor
prescribed brandy for both of us. After that, we hauled
the canoe under the copse, and left it.
After walking about half an hour through a dense
wood and over very rough and broken ground, we came
to the river again, where it spread itself into a little lake,
and at the lower end of the lake there was a weir and a
mill. We looked miserable creatures, both of us. We
had lost our hats, and the miller's wife took us for
beggars. But the doctor entered exactly as if the
place belonged to him, and declared that we must have
a change of raiment. Now, considering that we were
constructed by Nature on totally opposite principles
resembling each other as the Tower of London resem-
bles the Clock-tower at Westminster it is obvious that
the miller's clothes could not fit both of us. When
we were dressed in this disguise, the doctor filled the
318
The Unknown River.
miller's suit to overflowing, and looked like an overpacked
carpet-bag, whereas the present writer had the appear-
ance of a village school-boy who had suddenly outgrown
his habiliments. At first the miller's wife viewed us with
suspicion, but the doctor made himself so agreeable that
the cloud disappeared from her countenance, and the
light of it beamed upon us kindly.
By this time it was dark, and our hostess took clean,
coarse sheets out of her polished presses, and laid them
on two of the four beds that were in the room. But the
doctor wrote a few words on a slip of paper, and sent it
to Toulon by a little boy, and in a while his carriage.
came up to the mill with the boy in it, and under cover
of night we made our entry into the town, still in our
borrowed clothes. The worthy innkeeper was just
going to bed when we arrived, but the active little mar-
mitons, in their white jackets and caps, set to work with
alacrity at their tiny charcoal fires and shining copper-
pans. And we sat down, in our queer costume, to the
best of suppers, with wonderful appetites and joyous
laughter. And so pleasantly ended our shipwreck; but
it might have ended not so pleasantly as that. One
thing is certain, without the inflatable waistcoat the
doctor's patients would have benefited by his advice
no more.
As this chapter has been written from the beginning
in open defiance of criticism, I may as well sin to the
very end, and speak of the faithful hound that followed
He needed no inflatable waistcoat, but came danc-
ing down the rapids like a cork, and never left us. He
me.
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
319
is the most indefatigable of swimmers; mile after mile
did he follow the canoe, like some tame, affectionate
seal. And is he not to be mentioned, he, the un-
wearied follower, the brave defender, the faithful com-
panion and friend? No one dare approach the canoe
when he is there; and shall he not sup with us after
our shipwreck, and be honorably mentioned here?
Ce qu'il y a de meilleur dans l'homme, c'est le chien.
320
The Unknown River.
T¹
CHAPTER X.
HIS little etching gives a tolerably good notion
of the present condition of those fortifications
which, in the middle ages, were the citadel of Toulon-
sur-Arroux. The etching was made some time since;
had it been executed during the last few weeks, I should
have run considerable risk of being ill-used as a Prus-
sian spy. For it is not safe, in this month of Septem-
ber, 1870, to draw so much as the wicket-gate of a
cottage garden anywhere in France, whether you are
a Frenchman or a foreigner; and, if the latter, your
chances are so much the worse. It had formed part of
my plan to republish this series of papers with addi-
tional etchings on a larger scale, and I began these
additional plates in the month of July, intending to re-
visit the scenery of the whole river, and select about a
dozen of the finest subjects. I had done a few of these
when the great spy-mania took possession of all French
minds, at least in the lower classes, and there arose such
a hubbub about my doings over an extent of country
thirty miles in diameter, that it would have been abso-
lute madness to let myself be seen with any thing of
the nature of drawing materials about me. So the
larger etchings were brought to an abrupt termination.
The reader, who is by this time familiar with the slight
and purely artistic little plates which have illustrated
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
321
these chapters, will be amused at the notion that they
can be supposed to be of any imaginable utility to Von
Moltke and the Crown Prince in their brilliant invasion
of France; but the peasantry in these parts have made
up their ingenious minds on the subject, and, as to
arguing with them, one might as well try to argue with
a tribe of hostile savages. Like the country people in
England, they confound drawing with surveying, and
believe that artists are men employed to make maps.
Who employs them? that is the next question; and the
answer, of course, is, 'The King of Prussia.'* When I
made these little plates at Toulon, I was enjoying one of
the blessings and privileges of peace. He would be a
bold man to-day, who would sit down and draw a citadel
anywhere in France, even though it had been disman-
tled for the last three hundred years.
Here, again, is the bridge. If any one drew that
bridge to-day, it would clearly be that the Prussians.
might pass over it. But in those happy times of peace
the peasants felt rather flattered that a 'map' should be
made of their bridge; and the more knowing ones sug-
gested that, since the present writer made such good
maps of bridges, he would do well to make one of the
new railway-bridge at Étang, which was of iron, and
perfectly straight, and had been pushed from shore to
* In the good old times, before Bismarck was heard of, travailler pour
le 1 vi de Prusse used to mean working without any probability of payment.
In that sense, undoubtedly, the present writer, like most artists, has
worked a good deal for the King of Prussia. But tell it not in Gath,
repeat it not in the villages of Burgundy!—a pleasantry of that kind,
in these times, might cost the jester's life.
21
322
The Unknown River.
shore all in a single piece, just as you would put a plank
over a rivulet.
Toulon is a very quaint little town, with a rather pic-
turesque market-place on a hill-top, and the streets slop-
ing down on all sides to the river and the surrounding
country. On the top of the hill is the old citadel, of
which one tower serves for the tower of the old church.
The population of Toulon has diminished of late years,
but the church, which used to be considered quite large
enough for the place (a quaint old Norman-looking
edifice), has not satisfied the ambition of the present
incumbent, who saw big churches rising in all the neigh-
boring villages, and thought he might as well have a big
church too. So he raised a subscription and built one;
but a certain pillar of it was unfortunately erected im-
mediately over an old well, and the covering of the well
gave way, and the pillar went down into it, as a steel
ramrod used to go down the barrel of a rifle before these
breech-loading times.
In lonely travel the great secret of avoiding ennui is
to take an interest in the people as well as the scenery.
Any one who is on the look-out for characters is always
sure to meet with them. For instance, I found a doctor
at Toulon who smoked without ceasing when he was
awake, except when he laid down his pipe to take his
knife and fork. He was an old man, in perfect health,
and still in full professional practice. This last fact may
seem incompatible with incessant smoking, and would,
no doubt, be so in London; but in a tiny town where
everybody knew the doctor, he was indulged in his habit.
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
323
by everybody. I spent a good many hours with him,
and during the whole time he was doing one of two
things, either smoking his pipe or filling it. He had
read most of our best authors in the original, having
taught himself English alone, with the help of nothing
but books. He had a capital little English library at
home, and had read every volume in it: all Scott, all
Dickens, all Shakspeare, Byron, and many others.
His pronunciation was, of course, as bad as our pro-
nunciation of Latin; and I felt, on hearing him read
a little, as an old Roman would feel if he could go to
Oxford and hear the men there deliver Latin orations.
However, in this instance there was nothing to laugh
at, because there was no pretension; and the doctor
knew our literature better than many Englishmen do,
and understood it, and loved it. He had never heard
an English word pronounced by a native before he hit
upon me, so that I was a real trouvaille; and he was
extremely kind to me, and invited me to breakfast, point-
ing out a charming harbor for the canoe at the end of
his garden, as a temptation to future voyages.
But the best character in Toulon was the maire of the
place, Monsieur B., an artist of reputation in a much
more useful line than any etcher. I fear that no plate
of mine will ever give Monsieur B. half as much pleas-
ure and satisfaction as the plats of his cooking gave to
me. He keeps the hôtel where I stayed, and he made
me a little portable dèjeûner to take with me every morn-
ing when I set out to work. French cookery is always
either exquisite or abominable, and his was of the former.
324
The Unknown River.
Monsieur B. is a very celebrated man indeed. People
write from a distance to order a dinner, and then travel
to Toulon to eat it. Unfortunately, he is also celebrated
as the most irascible man in the country; which, con-
sidering the generally explosive character of French
tempers, is saying a good deal. As that man must be a
wonderfully perfect Sabbatarian who can win fame in
Scotland for his observance of the day of rest, so that
Frenchman must be irascible indeed who can make him-
self famous for his irritability. His powers of voluble
invective surpassed all that I had ever heard in the way
of scolding, and their effect was immensely enhanced
by the most scientific modulation of tone. His loud
voice disturbed me in the early morning as he scolded a
boy-cook for having used a pound of first-rate butter,
reserved especially for pastry, in cooking yesterday's
dinner. Now the misapplication of the butter was
commented upon in a restrained and subdued piano,
with deep concentrated rage; and now it passed with a
rapid crescendo to forte and a terrible fortissimo, that
made the very windows rattle. When a servant is to
be reprimanded, the first observations are made in the
utmost moderation, and if only Monsieur B. could stop
there, he would deserve the credit of being a reasonable
though vigilant master; but the sound of his own voice
exasperates him, and even when the culprit offers no
reply, his fault is described to him over and over again,
every time with increasing vehemence, till at length the
floodgates of invective are opened wide, and the torrent
rolls and roars.
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
325
Yet nothing can exceed Monsieur B.'s politeness to
his guests. In the midst of his loudest furies, he will
turn aside and speak to you with a serene countenance
and gentle voice, whilst over the door of the dining-room
is the inscription:-
'Rien ne doit déranger l'honnête homme qui dîne.'
326
The Unknown River.
CHAPTER XI.
HE admirers of beautiful scenery are often some-
TH
what narrow, and even bigoted, in their admira-
tion. It has been the fashion, for the last half-century,
to enjoy mountain scenery very much, and to undertake
long journeys in search of it; but the proof that this love
of Nature is rather the love of a certain kind of exhilara-
tion, to be had best in mountainous districts, is that most
people still remain perfectly indifferent to the beauty of
the plains. They can understand that you have reason-
able motives for going to Switzerland or the Tyrol, but
what can you see to care for on the Loire?
Mere pop-
lars, you know, and that sort of thing,' say the few who
have visited the river that Turner loved. Therefore I
feel a little apprehensive that the sympathy of many
readers, which has gone with me whilst I had to speak
of rocks and rapids, and heathery hills purple in the
evening, may leave me now that I come to the broader
waters and less romantic landscapes of the plain.
And yet, when the last rapid had been passed, and
the river spread into sleepy reaches, only occasionally
interrupted by the gentle murmur of a safe and sandy
shallow, over which the canoe glided like a boat on
some languid stream; when the sun at evening, instead
of suddenly and prematurely disappearing behind the
wooded heights, sank slowly in the immensity of the
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
327
clear heaven, till he set on the far horizon as he sets on
the summer sea, - there came upon the spirit of the voy-
ager such a sense of boundless space and free breathing
of balmy, illimitable air, as he never knew in the narrow
gorges where dark hills and dense woods overshadowed
him.
Every scene of Nature has its own character, and its
own charm. The plains have not the sublimities of the
hills, nor the guarded seclusion of the shaded valleys,
and we miss the weird shapes of the gray rocks that
breast the stream where its flowing is strongest; yet it
is glorious to see all the blue sky in the daytime, and all
the stars at night. And the river seems to gain a cer-
tain dignity too, with its assurance of perfect peace. It
has space for all its waters, and knows restraint no more.
The graceful trees only adorn its borders, but do not
arrest its course. If it winds in beautiful curves, it does
so from deliberate preferences. It would be easy, as it
seems, to go straight to its distant bourn, but to go indi-
rectly is yet a little easier; so it turns for its own pleas-
ure, and visits here a village, and there a solitary farm,
where the oxen stand knee-deep in the evening.
•
The gradual growth of a river might be illustrated by
drawings of its bridges. First you have the trunk of a
single tree, rudely flattened on the upper side by strokes
of a peasant's axe, and supported by two rude abutments
of unhewn granite blocks. A little lower down the
stream has become too wide for the single trunk to
cross it; so now you have two trees that meet on a rock
in the middle. After that you come to the first serious
328
The Unknown River.
attempt at construction: a wooden bridge for foot-
passengers only, the cattle and cart traffic still passing
through the water in a shallow ford a little below. Then
comes the first stone bridge, a single arch, if the people
are rich enough to afford a piece of accomplished engi-
neering; but, if the village masons have done the work,
more usually two or three tiny arches, that a stray cow
might possibly pass under, and which are pretty sure to
be choked with water in a flood which will wash over
the rude parapet. As the river widens it passes near
some town or city, and then we find the stately stone
bridge of careful masonry-three arches, perhaps -
where the high-road enters the town. After that the
number of arches increases, till at last you meet with
those long and stately constructions, whose fine perspec-
tive attracted Turner so much when he illustrated the
rivers of France.
The accompanying sketch, which represents the bridge
of Gueugnon, gives evidence that the Unknown River
has quite grown out of the romantic and tumultuous
period of its existence, and become a sober stream capa-
ble even of rendering service to navigation, if it were
worth while to deepen a few shallows here and there.
Indeed, from this bridge to the Loire the river is classed
amongst those which, if not positively navigable, might
easily be made so.
Gueugnon is rather an industrial place, as may be
guessed from the smoky chimneys in the etching, which
belong to some ironworks, where they make wire, and
sheet-iron for tinning. Here the traveller found an iron
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
329
canoe, flat-bottomed, and extremely even uncomfortably
narrow. She must have been terribly crank; but that
is a defect the body accustoms itself to so easily, that,
after a fortnight's practice, one sits in a crank boat as
easily as in a stiff one. There is usually a certain
amount of jealousy amongst boat-builders, and the me-
chanic who had, made the iron canoe spoke very dispar-
agingly of mine, which I took with British coolness;
merely inquiring whether he had ever descended the
rapids in his invention, which was entirely without a
deck, and would have certainly gone to the bottom like
a lump of lead after half a dozen waves had washed
into it. The crowd around us seemed to consider that
the best proof of the quality of my own vessel was her
successful voyage down the wildest parts of the river.
After that, the inimical mechanic became suddenly very
amiable, and conducted me over the ironworks, explain-
ing every process most politely. The reason for this
amiability became evident at last; for just as I left him,
and thanked him, he proposed to build me an iron canoe
which should be made exactly according to my own
fancy, and have a deck, and every thing I had a mind
to. In a word, he was a shipbuilder (on a very small
scale) touting for orders. Had the present writer been
a permanent resident at Gueugnon, it would have been
rather a tempting proposal, as there is no employment
in the world more congenial to his feelings than super-
intending the construction of a boat.
There is a great weir at Gueugnon, which offers a
slope of most excellent masonry very like a great rail-
330
The Unknown River.
way embankment, and when the water flows over it in
one smooth sheet, it would be delightful to glide down
it in a canoe. Unfortunately, however, there are rude
stones at the bottom, which would give the adventurer a
most unpleasant reception. I got amongst these stones
in the dark, and had plenty of trouble with them, - the
last inconvenience of that kind in the course of the
voyage.
There was a comfortable inn at Gueugnon - well,
comfortable is perhaps hardly the word for any French
inn of that class; but these things go by comparison, and,
after lodging in peasants' cottages amongst the hills, it
seemed quite stately and luxurious to sit at dinner in
the evening with two candles in tall candlesticks on the
table, and an attentive waiter at one's elbow.
The etching opposite shows the way in which I used
to have to seek for a lodging when belated; and it was
always disagreeable to me, mainly on account of the
necessary yet almost impossible explanations. How
can you make a peasant understand your purposes in
an artistic excursion of any kind? How, especially,
can you make him understand such purposes when
complicated with the amusement of canoing?
On a fine night it was positively more agreeable to
sleep in the canoe, in the manner represented at the
close of the chapter. Since then the author has invent-
ed much more luxurious arrangements ;
* but it was not
* This alludes to a contrivance by which a hut and a punt are united
in one construction. During the day, the punt, which is of wood,
contains a second punt of tinned iron. The iron punt is divided into
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
331
1
unpleasant to make a bed of rushes, and sleep soundly
and softly, covered up to the chin with waterproofs to
guard one from the dews of the night. Many a poor
soldier in the present war, forced to lie on the bare
ground, often stony and muddy, would consider these
contrivances a luxury. It was something, too, before
going to sleep, to look up at the moonlit clouds and the
stars in the depths between them.
several compartments, in the largest of which sits the canoist. All
the other compartments are closed. Two of them are kept accessible
by movable lids; one of these is used for provisions and the other for
clothing. That for provisions contains eight boxes fitted to each other
carefully, in which may be kept the different requisites for a week's
voyage, and a complete cooking apparatus. That for clothing con-
tains a change of dry clothes, a hammock, &c., and bedding. When
night comes the boat is drawn up on the shore, and the tin punt re-
moved from the interior of the wooden one. Two light frames are
then fixed upright in the wooden punt, and the tin one is easily lifted
upon these frames. A double curtain is then fixed all round, and we
have a hut with a wooden floor, a metallic roof, and canvas sides. In
this hut the hammock is easily suspended.
This contrivance has been completely realized in every detail, but I
have never had an opportunity of using it, because, during the sum-
mer of 1870 there was no water in the rivers, and since the beginning
of the Prussian War it would be madness to show one's self in any such
mysterious-looking invention, as it would set all the peasants per-
fectly mad. In times of sanity and peace it seems to me that nothing
could be better adapted for a tour such as that described in these
pages. It is unpleasant to have to leave work undone in order to go
five or six miles lower down a river to seek for a lodging. Many etch-
ings were left unfinished for that reason in the excursion here narrated,
and have consequently been thrown aside. Many subjects remarkably
suited for etching had also to be passed without illustration when the
weather was not mild enough for a bivouac.
332
The Unknown River.
ON
CHAPTER XII.
N leaving Gueugnon, in the cool of a bright autumn
evening, I saw a magnificent piece of black oak
which had been disengaged from the bed of the river
during the great inundation, and thrown upon the high
shore. The whole trunk was complete, and measured
seventy feet in length by forty in girth. I cut it in
several places with a penknife and found it as black as
ebony. How many centuries it had lain in the river's
bed I know not, but, judging from the color and condi-
tion of the wood, which was all black bog-oak of the
finest quality, the tree must have lain beneath the flow-
ing water as long as the black oak in the deepest bogs
of Ireland. What noble chambers might have been
furnished out of it! what rich inlaying of parquets
and wainscot would it not have supplied!
The landscape now began to wear an aspect of un-
common sadness and desolation. The river divided
itself into many straggling currents in a wide desert
of sand and pebbles. A low, yellow precipice of the
same material hid all the fields from my sight, as I sat
low in the canoe on the level of the dreary gray water.
How mournfully, too, the water seemed to murmur
down its tortuous, divided channels! For miles and
miles there was nothing to be seen except a great
château on the top of a bare slope, a long, ugly, melan-
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
333
choly building, enough to make one miserable to look at
it, and think that any one could be condemned to live
in it.
This
When I came near this château, the twilight was
already very far advanced, and I landed to eat a little
supper.
The land was bare of trees, a desolate expanse
of uncultivated soil, where a herd grazed in the distance.
Suddenly I wondered not to see Tom galloping towards
me, as he generally had done at these improvised meal-
times on the shore. I called and whistled for him long
and loudly, but in vain, and during all that remained of
the voyage I saw his affectionate face no more.
caused me some anxiety, and rather spoiled my pleasure,
but I trusted that he would find his way home again.
On my return I made inquiries, and found that he had
first returned to the inn at Gueugnon, after losing me
in the tortuous channels of the river, and stayed at the
inn till déjeuner the next morning. After his meal he
suddenly disappeared, and the innkeeper could give no
further account of him. The same evening, however,
he arrived at my house, a distance of fifty kilometres,
where he rushed to his kennel at once, and fell down in
it like lead, exhausted. The next day he was all right
again. But it was a severe run, for no doubt he had
made the fifty kilometres a hundred, and followed the
'river's brink in the thick underwood; often, I dare say,
swimming against the stream. I never knew such a
persistent swimmer. He never had the sense to follow
the canoe on the bank, but would always swim behind
it, however cold the water or long the distance. It was
334
The Unknown River.
this which had separated him from me. Being rather
pressed for time in the late evening, I had pushed on
too fast for Tom.
The voyage had been a lonely one from the beginning,
but it seemed doubly solitary after the loss of my com-
panion. I had never been able to do with him in the
canoe, he was much too large and heavy for that, —
but every time I landed, either to make an etching or
eat a dinner and I never did either afloat - Tom had
always joined me, and so the long solitude had been
made less difficult to endure. I humbly thank Divine
Providence for having invented dogs, and I regard that
man with wondering pity who can lead a dogless life.
The dreary hours and the dreary landscape both came
to an end at the same time. The moon rose, trees began
to reappear on the river's brink, the scattered currents
met together again, and there were vistas of prolonged
perspective. I remember one especially, a scene of
most perfect and extraordinary beauty. For a length of
about a thousand fathoms the stream was straight as a
cathedral aisle, and at about half the distance there was
a transept on each side, that might have been designed
by art. All along, the shores were shaded by the richest
foliage. Boughs hung gracefully till they dipped their
golden leaves in the glassy water. Tall poplars rose at
intervals, like towers, to mark the far perspective. It
was midnight. A pure semi-transparent mist filled the
still and silent air, and above in the clear heaven shone
the round and brilliant moon. Not a sound was to be
heard but the alternate dip of the paddle, which I used
An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery.
335
as gently as might be, for it seemed wrong to break so
beautiful a mirror. At last I toiled no more, and the
little boat glided on and on with its own motion, as if
drawn by invisible spirits. During the whole voyage I
had found nothing so exquisite as this, nor has any other
impression fixed itself so perfectly in my memory.
That scene was too ethereal to be etched; but next day
I drew this bridge, partly because it was the last bridge
on the Unknown River, and partly as a memorial of the
great and disastrous flood. In these terrible months of
1870, when a thousand bridges that spanned the fair
rivers of France have been ruined to check the progress
of an invader more to be dreaded than any inundation,
men pray that the rains may fall and the waters rise till
the streams are all torrents and the plains all inland
seas.
After this bridge, the scenery of the shore began to
assume the large aspect that belongs to the stately Loire.
A steep bank rose in the distance, clothed with vines
and crowned with a group of buildings clustering round
convent-towers. The current became swifter, as if the
Unknown River were hastening to its end; it curved
rapidly once or twice, then suddenly behold an expanse
of broad water before me, flowing westwards, and, before
I had time quite perfectly to realize the change, the
canoe was carried out upon the Loire.
And so the voyage came to a successful end, and for
the first time since first his waters flowed, the Unknown
River has been navigated. Shall I conclude with a
triumphant boast, and affirm that although Gaul and
336
The Unknown River.
Roman have dwelt upon its shores, and reddened it in
sanguinary conflict, its perfect exploration was reserved
for the audacity of an Englishman? Let me rather,
more modestly, rejoice in sharing that capacity for tak-
ing pleasure in the beauty of natural scenery which
belongs to so many in our own time. It is this, much
more than any particular satisfaction in the somewhat
monotonous business of paddling, which constitutes the
principal charm of all canoe voyages; and it is this,
more peculiarly and especially, which made privations
light to me, and labor pleasant, and time swift, dur-
ing the weeks I spent in, 'An Etcher's Voyage of
Discovery.'
Results.
337
A
RESULTS.
FEW words concerning the especial purpose of
this voyage etching from Nature-may pos-
sibly be of use to a few readers who may undertake
etching tours.
No art is more agreeable for direct work from Nature
than etching is. The rapidity of it, and its freedom, are
greatly in its favor, and so is its remarkable indepen-
dence of damp and wet. Many of the plates in this
series were immersed in the river, after being etched,
when the artist was upset; others were executed in bad
weather, with the rain literally pouring over the copper
in a manner which would have rendered any other kind
of drawing quite impossible. In the course of the ex-
cursion I did sixty plates, from which these are selected.
It is better, I think, to be rather prolific in production,
and select afterwards the plates which seem most suc-
cessful, than to spend much time in correcting bad plates
in the studio. My advice to etchers would be to spend
time rather in doing many plates than in polishing and
mending a few. This may be contrary to the feeling of
some painters, who rightly, in their art, obey the maxims
of Boileau; but whatever value an etching may have
depends mainly on the inspiration of the moment. If it
were only possible to possess that inspiration always, the
22
338
Results.
art would be easier than it is. The only consolation I
have to suggest for the many failures and the disap-
pointing uncertainty which ever attend it, is that it leads
us to work from Nature, and look at Nature, in the most
essentially artistic spirit.
THE END.
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