PRECIOUS THOUGHTS Bloral Rut J^Eligiauj. GATHERED FROM THE WORKS OP JOHN RUSKIN, A.M. Mes. L. C. TUTHILL. " A •«ery Sea of Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will, yet wherein the toughegl pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients." Sartok Resartus. NEW YOKK: JOHN WILEY & SON, PUBLISHEES, 15 AsTOR Place. 1875. ^^ /^ (T O/l Entered, ao^ording to Act of Congress, in the year 186?, by JOHN WILEY & SON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for tl f- Southern District of New York. John F. Trow & Son, Printers, 205-213 East i2TH St., New York. m 51 # PREFATORY McrCH time is wasted by human beings, in general, on establishment of systems ; and it often takes more labour to master the intricacies of an artificial connexion, than to remember the separate facts which are so carefully con- nected. I suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of much more use, each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more convenient portableness of the same. To cultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had in their own wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is a better con- nexion for them than any other ; and, if they cannot, then, so that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a practi- cal disposition, not much difference whether he gets them by handfuh^^ or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick. I purpose, therefore, henceforward to trouble myself little with sticks or twine, but to arrange my chapters with a view to convenient reference, rather than to any careful division of subjects, and to follow out, in any by-ways that may open, on right hand or left, whatever question it seems useful at any moment to settle. * Or lasketfulsf 4363-17 ^ DEDICATORY ANJ) EXPLANATORY. S. S. B. The volume of Selections from the numerous works of John Euskin, W'liich was published some years since, I devoted mainly to " Nature " and to "Art," Ruskin's specialty, leaving only a small portion of the book to " Morals" and " Religion." Consequently, manifold thoughts, on these lat- ter topics, remained in those voluminous works as hidden treasure, inac- cessible to the many — thoughts valuable to the Christian philosopher, the statesman, and, indeed, to readers in general. "Without repeating any of the former selections, I have culled from that great treasure-house of thought the gems for this volume, which I take special pleasure in dedicating to you, my dear S., as an appreciative admirer cf the writings of John Ruskin. Affectionately and fervently yours, LOUISA C. TUTHILL. Pbincetok, N. J. CONTENTS. Admiration, natural, 152. Advancement, 3. All carving and no meat, TS. All things have their place, 235. Alpine peasant, the, 135. Angel of the sea, the, 7 Asceticism, 264. Associations of beauty, 34 Associations, human, 58. Assimilation and individuality, 250. B. Beauty, the Christian theory of, 116. Beauty, associations of, 34. Be what nature intended, 56. Boyhoods, the two, 325. Brotherhood, 107. Browning's appeal for Italy, Mrs., 181. Candid seeing, 120. Care for posterity, 310. Cathedrals, the* old, 228. Cheerfulness, 265. Church, the, 31. Church, the true, 78. Church, in the New Testament, the, 53. Church, members of the, 76. Classical, the, 201. Clergymen, 32. Cloud-balancings, 80. Clouds as God's dwelHng-place, 285. Colour, the sanctity of, 58. Colour, the nobleness of, 106 Companionship with nature, 77 Concession and companionship, Ml Criticism, base, 50. Criticism, just, 22. Craig Ellachie 1 stand fast, 301, D. Dante, Spenser and, 183. Dark signs of the times, 41, Death, fear of, 88. Defenders of the dead, 130. Development, 99. Downright facts plainly told, 1. Discernment of Christian character 76. Divine law, 30. Discipline and interference, 230. Dissectors and the dreamers, the, 34» Division of labour, 206. Doers, 15. Doubts, pagan, 297. Dreamers, 225. Durer and Salvator, 302. E. Education, modern, 44. Education, the pagan system of, 342. Earth's children, the humblest of the, 13. Earth-veil, the, 92. Emotion, ignoble, 195. Emotions excited by the imagina tion, 280. Entanglement, modern, 150, CONTENTS. F. Facts, seeking for, 128. Faith, truth, and obedience, 2. Fancy and reality, 265. Fear of death, 88. Flowers, T9. Flowers, the love of, 91. Food of the soul, the, 205. Formative period, the, 132. Generalization, right, 131. Gentleman, the true, 155. Genius, the man of, 200. Gloom, 311. God's place in the human heart, 75. Goodness of God in creation, 244. Government, the Divine, 151. Government, the principles of good, 247. Good teaching, 134. Greatness and minuteness, 6, Gradation, 103. Great results, 4. H. Harvest is ripe, the, 109. Helpful or the Holy One, the, 19. Highlander, the, 275. How to live, 119. Household altar, the, 279. Human beings, three orders of, 152. Human heart, God's place in the, 75. Idolatry, 240. Infidelity, 315. Infidelity in p]ngland, 105. Infidel creed, the modern, 210. Influence of custom, 98. Infinity, 66. Intemperance, 121. Involuntary instruments of good, 257. individuality, assimilation and, 250. Illustrations from the Bible, 33. Imagination, 139. Imagination, emotions excited bj the, 280. Imagination, excitement of the, 68. Imperfection, 12. Italy, Mi-s. Browning's appeal foi 181. Interference, Discipline and, 230. Judgment, mercy, and truth, 14. Justice to the living, 129. Justice, mercy, and truth, 204. K. King's messengers, the, 32. Knowledge, the noble ends of, 286. Knowledge, partial. 21. Knowledge, practical, 49. Kjiowledge, progi-essive, 193. Labour in little things, 40. Law or loyalty, obedience to, 242. Life, 251. Life, human, 263. Life and love, 110. Life never a jest, 281. Life, the type of strong and nobl* 148. "Let alone" principle, the, 229. Lessons from leaves, 9. Lessons from rocks, 232. Liberty, true, 72. Liberty, the best kind of, 179, Love and fear, 255. Love and trust, 104. Love of change, 137, 197. Love of Nature, 43. Loss, 180. M. Man the image of God, 222. Man of genius, the, 200. Man's dehght in God's works, 272. CONTENTS. IX Man's nature, 1 20. Man's isolation, 220. Manual labour, 48. Men of gross minds, 39^ * Mark, St., 20. Making a right choice, 132. Mercantile panics, 28. Missing the mark, 109. ^Modern entanglement, 150 Modern greatness, 149. Mother-nation, the, 203. Mountain influence, 214. Mystery of clearness, the, 20. Mystery in language, 235. Mystery and unity, 11. K Nature, love of, 43. Nature, companionship with, TY. Nature, explaining, 90. Nation's place in history, a, 141. Nwarness and distance, 66. Nebuchadnezzar curse, the, 23. Novelty, 61. 0. Obedience to law, or loyalty, 242. Obedience, faith, truth, and, 2. Opinions, 35. Pagan doubts, 297. Pagan system of education, the, 342. Patronage of Art, *I1. Peace and war, 68. Pedestrians, 39. Perfect and partial truth, 236. Pictures, the use of, 117. Pines and the Swiss, 114. Pine trees, 9. Plagiarism, 228. Pleasures of sight, the, 70. Political economy, 52. Power of intellect, 191. Poor, oppression of the, 23. Poor? who are the, 25. Posterity, care for, 310. Psalm, the nineteenth, 123. Practical knowledge, 49. Presence of G-od, 270. Precipices, 116. Pride, 71. Prophetic designers, 204. Prophetic dreams, 299. Public favour, 51. Purist and the sensualist, the, 143: Pre-eminence of the soul, the, 283. Quietness, 155. Q. R. Rainbow, the, 107, Recreation, 89. Reality, 236. Reality, fancy and, 265. Respect for the dead, 237. Respectability of artists, 35. Responsibility of a rich man, 45 Reformation, the, 153. Rehgion, influence of art on, 179. Reverence, 233. Right generalization, 131. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 139. S. Sacrifice, the spirit of, 257. Sailors' superstitions, 57. St. Mark, 20, Satan, Milton's and Danto's, 271. Sanctification, 118. Science, 65. Science and art, the real use of, 1( Seeking for facts, 128. Seriousness and levity, 134. Self-government, 120. Self-knowledge, want of, 45. Shamefacedness, 221. Simplicity, 197. Smoke and the whirlwind, 150. "Stand fast, Craig Ellachiel" 301. Sight, the pleasures of, 70. Spenser, theology of, 344. Spenser, Dante and, 183. CONTENTS. States of the forest, the, 341. Striving after perfection, 112. Speculations, 54. Sublimity, 12. Symbol of fear, the, 101. Symbolism, Christian, 300. T. Thankfulness, 300. Theory of beauty, the Christian, 176. The thinker and the perceiver, 140. " Thy Kingdom come," 59. Tithes, 278. Towers of rock, 136. Trees and communities, 142. Trees, pine, 9. Trees, sacred associations with olive, 196. Trifles, care for, 302. True contentment, 4. The truth of truths, 74. Truth, nothing but, 313. Truth, symbols of. 111. Truth, perfect and partial, 236, Types, 89. IT Utilitarianism, 282. Unkiudnose>, the memory of, 41. V. Visible and the tangible, the, 148. Virtues squared and counted, 168 Voluntarily admitted restraints, 1 i I Vulgarity, 64. Vulgar fractions, 42. W. War, 37. War, peace and, 68. War, advantages of; 38. Wants of modern art, 46. Warning, a solemn, 251. Wealth, 40. Weak tilings made strong, 7 3 What use? 297. Work and play, 336. Work, the necessity of, 36. World a hostehy, tlus, 28f. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. DOWNRIGHT PACTS PLAINLY TOLD. 1 HAVE been much impressed lately by one of the results of the quantity of our books; namely, the stern impossibility of getting anything understood, that required patience to understand. I observe always, in the case of my own writ- ings, that if ever I state anything which has cost me any trou- ble to ascertain, and which, therefore, will probably require a minute or two of reflection from the reader before it can be accepted, — that statement will not only be misunderstood, but in all probability taken to mean something very nearly the reverse of what it does mean. Now, whatever faults thej;e may be in my modes of expression, I know that the words I use will always be found, by Johnson's dictionary, to bear, first of all, the sense I use them in ; and that the sentences, whether awkwardly turned or not, will, by the ordinary rules of grannnar, bear no other interpretation than that I mean them to bear ; so that the misunderstanding of them must result, ultimately, from the mere fact that their matter sometimes requires a little patience. And I see the same kind of misinterpretation put on the words of other writers, whenever they require the same kind of thought. I was at first a little despondent about this ; but, on the whole, I believe it will have a good efiTect upon our literature for some time to come ; and then, perhaps, the public may recover it^ patience again. For certaitdy it is excellent dis- 2 I»P.ECI©10»S<.15fIOUGHTS. cipline for an author to feel that he most say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them ; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Genei-ally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way ; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else. FAITH, TRUTH, AND OBEDIEXCE. In the pressing or recommending of any act or manner of acting, we have choice of two separate lines of argument : one based on representation of the expediency or inherent value of the work, which is often small, and always disputa- ble ; the other based on proofs of its relations to the higher orders of human virtue, and of its acceptableness, so far as it goes, to Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is commonly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly the more conclusive ; only it is liable to give offence, as if there were irreverence in adducing considerations so weighty m treating subjects of small temporal importance. I believe, however, that no error is more thoughtless than this. What is true of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing ; but my excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memo- ries, nor loyally enough in our lives. The snow, the vapor, and the stormy wind fulfil His word. Are our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these — that we should forget it? I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giving to some pasr PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 3 sages the appearance of irreverence, to take the higher line of argument wherever it appeared clearly traceable ; and this, I would ask the reader especially to observe, not merely because I think it the best mode of reaching ultimate truth, gtill less because I think the subject of more importance than many others ; but because every subject should surely, at a period like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years that appi'oach us is as solemn as it is full of mystery; and the weight of evil against which we have to contend, is increasing like the letting out of water. It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics, or the entertainment of the arts. The blasphemies of the eaith are sounding louder, and its miseries heaped heavier every day; and if, in the midst of the exertion which every good man is called upon to put forth for their repression or relief, it is lawful to ask for a thought, for a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any direction but that of the immediate and ovei'whelming need, it is at least incumbent u[)on us to approach the ques- tions in which we would engage him, in the sjarit which has become the habit of his mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness may be checked by the withdrawal of an hour which has shown him how even those things which seemed mechanical, indifferent, or contemptible, depend for their perfection upon the acknowledgment of the sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, for which it has been the occupation of his life to contend. ADVANCEMENT. Between youth and age there will be found differences of seeking, which are not wrong, nor of false choice in either, 4 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. but of different temperament, the youth sympathizing more with the gladness, fulness, and magnificence of things, and the gray hairs with their completion, sufficiency, and repose And so, neither condemning the delights of others, nor alto- gether distrustful of our own, we must advance, as we live on, from what is brilliant to what is pure, and from what ia promised to what is fulfilled, and from w^hat is our strength to what is our crown, only observing in all things how that which is indeed wrong, and to be cut up from the root, is dis- like, and not affection. GREAT RESULTS. Men often look to bring about great results by violent and unprepared effort. But it is only in fair and forecast order, " as the earth bringeth forth her bud," that righteousness and praise may spring forth before the nations. TRUE CONTENTMENT. riie things to be desired for man in a healthy state, are that he should not see dreams, but realities ; that he should not destroy life, but save it; and that he should be not rich, but content. Towards which last state of contentment I do not see that the world is at present approximating. There are, indeed, two forms of discontent ; one laborious, the other indoletit and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 5 ambition meekness. It is because of the special connexion of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall "inherit the earth." Neither covetous men nor the Grave, can inherit anything ;* they can but con- sume. Only contentment can possess. The most helpful and sacred work, therefore, which can at present be done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching must be done) not how " to bet- ter themselves," but how to " satisfy themselves." It is the curse of every evil nation and evil creature to eat, and not be satisfied. The words of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied. And as there is only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger, the bread of^ustice or righteous- ness ; which hungering after, 'men shall always be filled, that being the bread of Heaven ; but hungering after the bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom. And, in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is neces- sary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life, — this, at present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life — that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance; not exclud- ing the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, aiid tak- ing no troublous thought for coming days : so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or provision,! but wholly of accumulation ; — ^the life of domestic afiection and domes- tic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and * "There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough : the grave ; and the barren womb ; the earth that is not tilled with water ; and the fire, that saith not. It is enough ! '' f A bad word, being only " foresight" again in Latin ; but wo have n« other good English word for the sense into which it has been warped. G PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. kind pleasure; — therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world. What length and severity of labor may be ultimately found necessary for the procuring of the duo comforts of life, I do not know ; neither what degree of refinement it is possible to unite with the so-called servile occupations of life : but this 1 know, that right economy of labor will, as it is understood, assign to each man as much as will be healthy for him, and no more ; and that no refinements are desirable which cannot be connected with toil. GREA-fNESS AITD MI:N'UTENESS. In one sense, and that deep, there is no such thing as mag- nitude. The least thing is as the greatest, and one day as a thousand years, in the eyes of the Maker of great and small things. In another sense, and that close to us and necessary, there exist both magnitude and value. Though not a spar- row^ falls to the ground unnoted, there are yet creatures Avho are of more value than many; and the same Spirit which weighs the dust of the earth in a balance, counts the isles as a little tiling. The just temper of human mind in this matter may, never- theless, be told shortly. Greatness can only be rightly esti- mated when minuteness is justly reverenced. Greatness ^is the aggregation of minuteness ; nor can its sublimity be felt truthfully by any mind unaccustomed to the affectionato watching of what is least. I have noticed lately, that some lightly-budding philoso- phers have' depreciated true greatness; confusing the rcla* tions of scale, as they bear upon human instinct and morality ; PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 7 reasoning as if a mountain were no nolDler than a grain of Band, or as if many souls were not of mightier interest thac one. To whom it must be shortly answered that the Lord of power and life knew which were his noblest works, when He bade His servant watch the play of the Leviathan, rathe :• than dissect the spawn of the minnow; and that when it comes to practical question whether a single soul is to be jeoparded for many, and this Leonidas, or Curtius, or Win- kelried shall abolish — so far as abolishable — his own spirit, that he may save more numerous spirits, such question is to be solved by the simple human instinct respecting number and magnitude, not by reasonings on infinity. THE AXGEL OF THE SEA. The great Angel of the Sea — rain; — the Angel observe, the messenger sent to a special place on a special errand. ]^ot the diffused perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but the going and returning of intermittent cloud. All turns upon that intermittence. Soft moss on stone and rock ; — • cave-fern of tangled glen ; — wayside well — perennial, patient, silent, clear; stealing tlirough its square font of rough-hewn stone ; ever thus deep — no more — which the winter wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, incapable of stain as of decline — where the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and th insect darts undefiling. Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, lifted even in flood scarcely over its stepping-stones,— but through all sweet summer keeping tremulous music with harp-sti'ings of dark water among the silver fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the south the strong river Gods have all hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted and burning, 8 PRECIOFS TTIOUGITTS. white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie ghastlj and bare; but here the soft wings of the Sea Angel droop still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter on the hills : strange laughings, and glitterings of silver streamlets, })oin suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trick* ling tinsel, answering to them as they wave. Nor are those wings colorless. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and gray ; not knowing that we owe to it perhnps the fairest, though not the most dazzling of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the rain- clouds in the dawn form soft level fields, which melt imper- ceptibly into the blue ; or when of less extent, gather into apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud above ; and all these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-color, and purple, and amber, and blue ; not shin- ing, but misty-soft; the barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of cloud, like floss silk ; look- ing as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain. No clouds form such skies, none are so tender, various, inimitable. For these are the robes of love of the Angel of the Sea. To these that name is chiefly given, the " spreadings of the clouds," from their extent, their gentleness, their fulness of rain. Note how they are spoken of in Job, xxxvi. v. 29-31. "By them judgeth he the people; he giveth meat in abun- dance. With clouds he covereth the light. He hath hidden the light in his hands, and commanded that it should return. He speaks of it to his friend ; that it is his possession, and that he may ascend thereto." That, then, is the Sea Angel's message to God's friends ; ihat^ the meaning of those strange golden lights and purple flushes before the morning rain. The rain is sent to judge, and feed us ; but the light is the possession of the friends oi PRECIOUS TnOUGHTS. God, and they may ascend thereto, — where the tabernacle veil will cross and part its rays no more. PINE TEEES. Magnificent ! — nay, sometimes, almost terrible. Other trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self-contained ; nor can I ever without awe stay long under a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to its companies of pine, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the one beside it — upright, fixed, spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not knowing each other — • dumb for ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them ; — those trees never heard human voice ; they are far above all sound but of the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All comfortless they stand, betw^een the two eter- nities of the Vacancy and the Rock : yet with such iron will, that the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside them — fragile, weak, inconsistent, corapai-ed to their dark energy of delicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride : — unnum- bered, unconquerable. LESSONS FROM LEAVES. We men, sometimes, in what we presume to be humility, ^,ompare ourselves with leaves ; but we have as yet no right 10 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. to do so. The leaves may well scorn the comparison. We who live for ourselves, and neither know how to use nor keep the work of past time, may humbly learn, — as from the ant, foresight, — from the leaf, reverence. The power of every great people, as of every living tree, depends on its not effac- ing, but confirming and concluding, the labors of its ances- tors. Looking back to the history of nations, we may date the beginning of their decline from the moment when they ceased to be reverent in heart, and accumulative in hand and brain ; from the moment when the redundant fruit of age hid in them the hollo wn ess of heart, whence the simplicities of custom and sinews of tradition had witliered away. Had men but guarded the righteous laws, and protected the pre- cious works of their fathers, with half tlie industry they have given to change and to ravage, they Avould not now have been seeking vainly, in millennial visions and mechanic servitudes, the accomplishment of the promise made to them so long ago : " As the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands ; they shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble ; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them." This lesson we have to take from the leaf's life. One more we may receive from its death. If ever in autumn, a pen- siveness falls upon us as the leaves drift by in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty monu- ments ? Behold how fair, how far prolonged, in arch and aisle, the avenues of the valleys ; the fringes of the hills! So stately, — so eternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the glory of the earth, — they are but the moini- ments of those poor leaves thnt flit faintly past us to die. Let them not pass, without our understanding their last counsel and example : that we also, careless of monument by the PRECIOUS TnoTJGnTS. n grave, may build it in the world — monument by wliich men may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived. MYSTERY AND UNITY. This system of braided or woven ornament was not con- fined to trie Arabs ; it is universally pleasing to the instinct of mankind. I believe that nearly all early ornamentation is full of it, — more especially, perhaps, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon ; and illuminated manuscripts depend upon it for their loveliest effects of intricate color, up to the close of the thirteenth century. There are several very interesting metaphysical reasons for this strange and unfailing delight, felt in a thing so simple. It is not often that any idea of utility has power to enhance the true impressions of beauty; but it is possible that the enormous importance of the art of weaving to mankind may give some interest, if not actual attractiveness, to any type or image of the invention to which we owe, at once, our comfort and our pride. But the more profound reason lies in the innate love of mystery and unity ; in the joy that the human mind has in contemplating any kind of maze or entanglements so long as it can discern, through its confusion, any guiding clue or connecting plan : a pleasure increased and solemnized by some dim feeling of the setting forth, by such symbols, of the intricacy, and alternate rise and fall, subjection and supremacy, of human fortune; the / " Weave the warp, and weave the woo^" of Fate and Time. 12 . PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. IMPERFECTION. Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect ; part of it is decaying, part nascent, The foxglove blossom, — a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom, — is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies- which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its sym- metry. All admit irregularity as they imply change ; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exer- tion, to paralyse vitality. All things are literally better, love- lier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. SUBLIMITY. Impressions of awe and sorrow being at the root of the sensation of sublimity, and the beauty of separate flowora not being of the kind which connects itself w^ith such sensar tion, there is a wide distinction, in general, between flower loving minds and minds of the highest order. PKECIOITS THOUGHTS. 13 l^E HUMBLEST OF THE EARTH-CHILDREN". Lichen, and mosses (though these last in their luxuriance are deep and rich as herbage, yet both for the most part humblest of the green things that live), — how of these ? Meek creatures ! the first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks ; creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender honor the scarred disgrace of ruin, — laying quiet finger on the trembling stones, to teach them rest. No words, that I know of, will say what these mosses are. None are delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green, — the starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the Rock Spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass, — the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest ofiices of grace. They will not be gath- ered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token ; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the wearied child his pillow. And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us. When all other service is vain, from plant and tree, tliQ soft mosses and grey lichen take up their watch by the head- stone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time, but these do service for ever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave. Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they are the most honored of the earth-children. Unfading, as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in 14 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. frost. To thera slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is ewtrnsted the weaving of the dark, eternal, tapestries of the hills ; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of tlieir endless imagery. Sharing the stilhiess of the miimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance ; and while the winds of departing sj^ring scatter the w^hite hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip-gold, — far above, among the moun- tains, the silver lichen spots rest, star-like on the stone, and the gathering orange-stain upon the edge of yonder western peak, reflects the sunsets of a thousand years. JUDGMENT, MERCY, AND TRUTH. When people read, " the law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Christ," do they suppose that the law was ungracious and untrue? The law was given for a founda- tion; the grace (or mercy) and truth for fulfilment; — the whole forming one glorious Trinity of judgment, mercy, and truth. And if people would but read the text of their Bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of superstitionsly, they would see that throughout the parts which they are intended to make most personally their own (the Psalms) it is always the Law which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms respecting mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost ; but those respecting the law are always full of delight. David cannot contain himself for joy in thinking of it, — he is never weary of its praise : — ■ " How love I thy law !*it is ray meditation all the day. Thy testimonies are my dehght and my counsellers ; sweeter, also^ than honey and the honeycomb." PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 15 DOERS. Mf^n in their several professed employments, looked at broadly, may be properly arranged under five classes : — 1. Persons who see. These in modern language are some times called sight-seers, that being an occupation coming more and more into vogue every day. Anciently they used to be called, simply, seers. 2. Persons who talk. These, in modern language, are usually called talkers, or speakers, as in the House of Com- mons, and elsewhere. They used to be called prophets. 3. Persons who make. These, in modern language, are usually called manufacturers. Anciently they were called poets. 4. Persons who think. There seems to be no very distinct modern title for this kind of person, anciently called philoso- j^hers ; nevertheless we have a few of them among us. Of the first two classes I have only this to note, — that we ought neither to say that a person sees, if he sees falsely, nor speaks, if he speaks falsely. For seeing falsely is worse than blindness, and speaking falsely, than silence. A man who is too dim-sighted to discern the road from the diteh, may feel which is which ; — but if the ditch appears manifestly to him to be the road, and the road to be the ditch, what shall become of him ? False seeing is unseeing, — on the negative side of blindness ; and false speaking, unspeaking, — on the negative side of silence. To the persons who think, also, the same test applies very shrewdly. Theirs is a dangerous profession ; and from the time of the Aristophanes thought-shop to the great German establishment, or thought-manufactory, whose productions have, unhappily, taken in part the place of the older and more ser\'iceable commodities of Nuremberg toys and Berlin 1 6 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. wool, it has been often harmful enough to mankiLd. It should not be so, for a false thought is more distinctly and visibly no thought than a false saying is no saying. But it ia touching the two great productive classes of the doers and makers, that we have one or two important points to note here. Has the reader ever considered, carefully, what is the meaning of the word " doing ? " When, accidentally or mechanically, events take place without a purpose, we have indeed effects or results, and agents or causes, but neither deeds nor doers. Now it so happens, as we all well know, that by far the largest part of things happening in practical life are brought about with no deliberate purpose. There are always a num- ber of people who have the nature of stones ; they fall on other persons and crush them. Some again have the nature of weeds, and twist about other people's feet and entangle them. More have the nature of logs, and lie in the way, so that every one falls over them. And most of all have the nature of thorns, and set themselves by w^ay sides, so that every passer-by must be torn, and all good seed choked ; or perhaps make wonderful crackling under various pots, even to the extent of practically boiling water and working pis- tons. All these people produce immense and sorrowful effect in the world. Yet none of them are doers : it is their nature to crush, impede, and prick: but deed is not in them.* And farther, observe, that even when some effect is finally * "We may, perhaps, expediently recollect as much of our botany as to teach us that there may be sharp and rough persons, like spines, who yet have good in them, and are essentially branches, and can bud. But the true thorny person is no spine, only an excrescence ; rootless evermore, — ■ leafless evermore. No crown made of such can ever meet glory of Angel'ff hand. (In Memoriam, Ixviii.) PRECIOUS THOFGHTS. 17 intended, yon cannot call it the person's deed, unless it i? %ijhat he intended. If an ignorant person, purposing evil, accidentally does good (as if a thief's disturbing a family should lead them to discover in time that their house was on fire) ; or viae versa if an ignorant person intending good, accidentally does evil (as if a child should give hemlock to his companions for celery), in neither case do you call them the doers of what may result. So that in order to a true deed, it is necessary that the effect of it should be foreseen. Which, ultimately, it cannot be, but by a person who knows, and in his deed obeys, the laws of the universe, and of its Maker. And this knowledge is in its highest form, respecting the will of the Ruling Spirit, called Trust. For it is not the knowledge that a thing is, but that, according to the promise and nature of the Ruling Spirit, a thing will be. Also obedience in its highest form is not obedience to a constant and compulsory law, but a persuaded or voluntary yielded obedience to an issued command. And because in His doing always certain, and in His speak- ing always true, His name who leads the armies of Heaven is " Faithful and True," and all deeds which are done in alliance with those armies, be they small or great, are essen- tially deeds o^ faith^ which therefore, and in this one stern, eternal sense, subdues all kingdoms, and turns to flight the armies of the aliens, and is at once the source and substance of all human deed, rightly so-called. What, let us ask next, is the ruling character of the person who produces — the creator or maker, anciently called the poet? We have seen what a deed is. What then is a " crea- tion ?" Nay, it may be replied, V) " create" cannot be said of man's labor. IB PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. On the contrary, it not only can be said, "but is and must be said continually. You certainly do not talk of creating a vv atch, or creating a shoe ; nevertheless you do talk of creat- ing a feeling. Why is this ? Look back to the greatest of all creation, that of the world. Suppose the trees had been ever so well or so ingeniously put together, stem and leaf, yet if they had not been able to grow, w^ould they have been well created? Or suppose the fish had been cut and stitched finely out of skin and whale- bone; yet, cast upon the waters, had not been able to swim? Or suppose Adam and Eve had been made in the softest clay, ever so neatly, and set at the foot of the tree of knowledge, fastened up to it, quite unable to fall, or do anything else, w^ould they have been *vell created, or in any true sense created at all ? It wiU, pe^'haps, appear to you, after a little forth er thought, that to create anything in reality is to put life into it. A poet, or creator, is therefore a person who puts things together, not as a watchmaker steel, or a shoemaker leathe but w^ho puts life into them. His work is essentially this : it is the gathering and arrang- ing of material by imagination, so as to have in it at last the harmony or helpfulness of life, and the passion or emotion of life. Mere fitting and adjustment of material is nothing; that is watchmaking. But helpful and passionate harmony, ' essentially choral harmony, so-called from the Greek woi'd " rejoicing," is the harmony of Apollo and the Muses ; the word Muse and Mother being derived from the same root, meaning "passionate seeking," or love, of which the issue is passionate finding, or sacred invention. For which reason I could not bear to use any baser word than this of invention And if the reader will think over all these things, and follo\« PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 19 tliem out, as I think be may easily with this nuch of vAwq given him, he will not any more think it wrong in me tc j^lace invention so high among the powers of man, or any more think it strange that the " last act of the life of Socrates should have been to purify himself from the sin of having negligently listened to the voice within him, which, through all his past life, had bid him labor, and make harmony." ■> THE HELPFUL, OR THE HOLY OISrE. When matter is either consistent, or living, we call it pure, or clean; when inconsistent, or corrupting (unhelpful), w'e call it impure, or unclean. The greatest uncleanliness being that which is essentially most opposite to life. Life and consistency, then, both expressing one character (namely, helpfulness, of a higher or lower order), the Maker of all creatures and things, " by whom all creatures live, and all things consist," is essentially and for ever the Helpful One, or in softer Saxon, the " Holy" One. The word has no other ultimate meaning: Helpful, harm- less, undefiled : "living" or "Lord of Life." THe idea is clear and mighty in the cherubim's cry: " Helpful, helpful, helpful. Lord God of Hosts ;" ^^ e. of all the hosts, armies, and creatures of the earth. A pure or holy state of anything, therefore, is that in which all its parts are helpful or consistent. They may or may not be homogeneous. The highest or organic purities are composed of many elements in an entirely helpful state. The highest and first law of the universe — and the other name of life, is, therefore, "help." The other name of death ia " separation." Government and co-operation are in all thinga 20 PnECIOUS THOUGHTS. and eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and competition etemaily, and in all things, the laws of death. ST. MARK. '' And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus.'' If as the shores of Asia lessoned upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his hand was on the plough, and ■wno nad been judged, by the chiefest of Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the work,* how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be represented among men ! how woful, that the w^ar-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following the Son of Consohition ! THE MYSTERY OF CLEARNESS. In an Italian twilight, when, sixty or eighty miles away, the ridge of the "Western Alps rises in its dark and serrated blue against the crystalline vermilion, there is still unsearch- abjeness, but an unsearch ableness without cloud or conceal- ment, — an infinite unknown, but no sense of any veil or inter PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 21 firence between us and it: we are separated from it not l>y any anger or storm, not by any vain and fading vapor, but only by the deep infinity of the thing itself. I find that the great religious painters rejoiced in that kind of unknow ableness, and in that only ; and I feel that even if they had iiad all the power to do so, still they would not have put x^osy mists and blue shadows behind their sacred figures, but only the far-away sky and cloudless mountains. Probably the right conclusion is that the clear and cloudy mysteries are alike noble ; but that the beauty of the wreaths of frost mist, ^olded over banks of greensward deep in dew, and of the pur- ple clouds of evening, and the wreaths of fitful vapor gliding through groves of pine, and irised around the pillars of water- falls, is more or less typical of the kind of joy which we should take in the imperfect knowledge granted to the earthly life, while the serene and cloudless mysteries set forth that belonfrins: to the redeemed life. PARTIAL KNOWLEDGE. Our happiness as thinking beings must depend on our being content to accej^t only partial knowledge, even in those matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect intelligibility and complete declaration in eveiy moral sub- ject, we shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and power of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and live in the cloud ; content to see it opening hei'e and closing there ; rejoicing to catch, through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of stable and sub- stantia! things ; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread 22 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. wliere the untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness wearied. jtrsT criticism:. Men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes, than of that which falls impotently on the grave. And thus well says the good and deep-minded Richard Hooker : " To the best and wisest, while they live, the world is continually a froward opposite ; and a curious observer of their defects and imperfections, their virtues afterwards it as much admireth. And for this cause, many times that which deserveth admiration would hardly be able to find favor, if they which propose it were not content to profess themselves therein scholars and followers of the ancient. For the world will not endure to hear that we are wiser than any have been which went before." — Book v. ch. vii. 3. He therefore who would maintain the cause of contemporary excellence against that of elder time, must have almost every class of men arrayed against him. The generous, because they would not find matter of accusation against established dignities ; tho envious, because they like not the sound of a living man's pi-aise ; the wise, because they prefer the opinion of centuries to that of days ; and the foolish, because they are incapable of forming an opinion of their own. Obloquy so universal is not lightly to be risked, and the few who make an effort to stem the torrent, as it is made commonly in favor of their own works, deserve the contempt which is their only reward. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 23 THE NEBUCHADNEZZAR CURSE. lliough God " hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to tho end." This Nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends us to grass like oxen, seems to follow but too closely on the excess or con- tinuance of national power and peace. In the perplexities of nations, in their struggles for existence, in their infancy, their impotence, or even their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler passions. Out of the suffering comes the serious mind ; out of the salvation, the grateful heart ; out of tlie endurance, the fortitude ; out of the deliverance, the faith ; but now when they have learned to live under providence of laws, and with decency and justice of regard for each other ; and when they have done aw\iy with violent and external sources of suffering, worse evils seem arising out of their rest, evils that vex less and mortify more, that suck the blood though they do not shed it, and ossify the heart though they do not torture it. OPPRESSION or THE POOR. You cannot but have noticed how often in those parts of the Bible which are likely to be oftenest opened when people look for guidance, comfort, or help in the affairs of daily life, namely, the Psalms and Proverbs, mention is made of the guilt attaching to the Oppression of the poor. Observe : not the neglect of them, but the Oppression of them • the word 24 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. is as frequent as it is strange. You can hardly open either of tho;se hooks, hut somewhere in their pages you will find a description of the wicked man's attempts against the poor, such as — *' He doth ravish the poor when he getteth hira into his net." " His mouth is full of deceit and fraud ; in the secret places doth he murder the innocent." " They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oj)pres- 8ion." "Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth." Yes: "Ye weigh the violence of your hands;" weigh these words as well. The last things we usually think of weighing are Bible words. We like to dream and dispute over them, but to weigh them and see what their true con- tents are — anything but that ! Yet weigh them ; for I have purposely taken these verses, perhaps more strikingly to you read in this connexion, than separately in their places out of the Psalms, because, for all people belonging to the Esta- blished Church of this country these Psalms are aj^pointed lessons, portioned out to them by their clergy to be read once through every month. Presumably, therefore, whatever portions of Scripture we may pass by or forget, these, at all events, must be brought continually to our observance as use- ful for direction of daily life. N^ow, do we ever ask ourselves what the real meaning of these passages may be, and who these wicked people are, who are " murdering the innocent ?" You know it is rather singular language this ! — rather strong language, we might, perhaps, call it — hearing it for the first time. Murder ! and murder of innocent people ! — nay, even a sort of cannibalism. Eating people, — yes, and God's peo- ple, too — eating My people as if they were bread ! sworda drawn, bows bent, poison of serpents mixed! violence of PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 25 hands weighed, measured, and trafficked with as so much coin ! where is all this going on ? Do you suppose it was only going on in the time of David, and that nobody but Jew5 ever murder the poor ? If so, it would surely be wiser not to mutter and mumble for our daily lessons what does not concern us ; but if there be any chance that it may concern us, and if this description, in the Psalms, of human guilt is at all generally applicable, as the descriptions in the Psalms of human sorrovv are, may it not be advisable to know wherein this guilt is being committed round about us, or by ourselves? and when we take the words of the Bible into our mouths in a congregational way, to be sure whether we mean sincerely to chant a piece of melodious poetry relating to other peoplo (we know not exactly whom) — or to assert our belief in facts bearing somewhat astringently on ourselves and our daily business And if you make up your mhids to do this no longer, and take pains to examine into the matter, you will find that these strange words, occurring as they do, not in a few places only, but almost in every alternate psalm, and every alternate chapter of Proverbs or prophecy, with tre- mendous reiteration, were not w^ritten for one nation or one time only, but for all nations and languages, for all places and all centuries ; and it is as true of the wicked man now as ever it was of Nabal or Dives, that " his eyes are set against the poor." "WHO ARE THE POOR ? May we not advisedly look into this matter a little, and ft«k, Who are the poor ? No country is, or ever will be, without them : that is to 2 26 PEECIOFS THOUGHTS. Bay, without the class which cannot, on the average, do mora by its Labour than provide for its subsistence, and which has no accumulations of property laid by on any considerable scale. 'Now there are a certain number of this class whoni we cannot oppress with much severity. An able-bodied and iiitelligent workman — sober, honest, and industrious, will almost always command a fair price for his work, and lay by enough in a few years to enable him to hold his own in the labour market. But all men are not able-bodied, nor intelli- gent, nor industrious ; and you cannot expect them to be. Nothing appears to me at once more ludicrous and more melancholy than the way the people of the present age usu- ally talk about the morals of labourers. You hardly ever address a labouring man npon his prospects in life, without quietly assuming that he is to ])ossess, at starting, as a small moral capital to begin with, the virtue of Socrates, the philo- sophy of Plato, and the heroism of Epaminondas. " Be assured, my good man," — you say to him, — " that if you work steadily for ten hours a day all your life long, and if you drink nothing but water, or the very mildest beer, and Hve on very plain food, and nevei lose your temper, and go ^j church every Sunday, and always remain coritent in the position in wliich Providence has placed you, and never grumble, nor swear, and always keep your clothes decent, and rise early, and. use every opportunity of improving your- self, you will get on very well, and never come to the parisli." All this is exceedingly true ; but before giving the advice FO confidently, it w^ould be w^ell if we sometimes tried it prac- tically ourselves, and spent a year or so at some hard manual labour, not of an entertaining kind — ploughing or digging, for instance, with a very moderate allowance of beer ; nothing but bread and cheese for dinner ; no papers nor muffins in the morning; no sofas nor magazines at night; one small PEECIOUS THOVGHTS. 27 room for parlour and kitchen ; and a large family of children always in the middle of the floor. If we think we couldj under these circumstances, enact Socrates or Epaminondaa entirely to our own satisfaction, we shall be somewhat justi- fied in requiring the same behaviour from our poorer neigli lours ; but if not, we should surely consider whether among the various forms of oppression of the poor, we may not rank as one of the first and likeliest — the oppression of expecting too much from them. But there will always be some in the ^^rld who are not altogether intelligent and exemplary, and ocoasionally drunk on Saturday night, and who like sleep on Sunday morning better than prayers, and of unnatural parents who send their children out to beg instead of to go to school. Now these are the kind of people whom you can oppress, and whom you do oppress, and that to purpose, — and with all the more cruelty and the greater sting, because it is just their own fault that puts them into your power. You know the words about wicked people are, " He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him iiito Ms netP This getting into the net is constantly the fault or folly of the sufferer— his own heedlessness or his own indolence ; but after he is once in the net, the oppression of him, and making the most of hia distress, are ours. The nets which we use against the poor are just those worldly embarrassments which either their ignorance or their improvidence are almost certain at some time or other to bring them into : then, just at the time when we ought to hasten to help them, and disentangle them, and teach them how to manage better in future, we rush forward to pillage them, and force all we can out of them in their adversity. For, to take one instance only, remember this ia literally and simply what we do, whenever we buy, or try to buy, cheap goods — goods offered at a price which we knovy 28 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. cannot be remunerative for tlie labour involved in them Whenever we buy such goods, remember we are stealing somebody's labour. Don't let us mince the matter. I say, in plain Saxon, stealing — taking from him the proper reward of his work, and putting it into our own pocket. You know well enough that the thing could not have been offered you at that price, unless distress of some kind had forced the pro- ducer to part with it. You take advantage of this distress, and you force as much out of him as you can under the cir- cumstances. The old barons of the middle ages used, in (general, the thumb-screw to extort property; we moderns hunger, or domestic affliction, but the fact of extortion remains precisely the same. Whether we force the man's property by pinching his stomach or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically ; morally, none wdiatever. We use a form of torture of some sort in order to make him give up his property. MEECANTir.F PANICS. No merchant deserving the name ought to be more liable to a " panic " than a soldier should ; for his name should never be on more paper than lie oould at any instant meet the call of, happen what will. I do not say this without feel- ing at the same time how difficult it is to mark, in existing commerce, the just limits between the spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Something of the same temper which makes the English soldier do always all that is possible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influence with that of meie avarice in tempting the English merchant into risks which ho cannot justify, and efforts which he cannot sustain ; and the PRECIOUS TH OUGHTS. 29 same passion for adventure which our travellers gratify every summer on perilous snow wreaths, and cloud-encompassed precipices, surrounds with a romantic fascination the glitter ing of a hollow investment, and gilds the clouds that curl round gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a more serious feel- ing frequently mingles in the motley temptation ; and men apply themselves to the task of growing rich, as to a laboui' of providential appointment, from which they cannot pause without culpability, nor retire without dishonour. Our large trading cities bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the mill-wlieel and the erane takes the place of other devotional music : and in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety : the merchant rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon ves- pers. But, with every allowance that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the fact remains the same, that by far the greater number of the transaction^ which lead to these times *of commercial embarrassment ma^ be ranged simply under two great heads, — gambling an^ stealing ; and both of these in their most culpable fori/^ namely, gambling with money which is not ours, and stea^ ing from those who trust us. I have sometimes thought a day might come, when the nation would perceive that a well- educated man who steals a hundred thousand pounds, involv- ing the entire means of subsistence of a hundred families, deserves, on the whole, as severe a punishment as an ill-edu- cated man w^ho steals a purse from a pocket, or a mug from a pantry. 80 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. DIVINE LAWS. I am very sure that no reader who lias guen any attention to the tendency of what I have written, will suppose nie to underrate the importance, or dispute the authority, of law It has been necessary for me to allege these again and again, nor can they ever be too often or too energetically alleged, against the vast masses of men who now disturb or retard the advance of civilisation ; heady and high-minded, desplsera of discipline, and refusers of correction. But law, so far as it can be reduced to form and system, and is not written upon the heart, — as it is, in a Divine loyalty, upon the hearts of the great hierarchies who serve and w^ait about the thi-one of the Eternal Lawgiver, — this lower and formally expressible law has, I say, two objects. It is either for the definition and restraint of sin, or the guidance of simphcity ; it either explains, foi'bids, and punishes wickedness, or it guides the movements and actions both of lifeless things and of the niore imple and untaught among responsible agents. And so long, lerefore, as sin and foolishness al'e in the world, so long it ill be necessary for men to submit themselves painfully to lis lower law, in proportion to their need of being corrected, t.ad to the degree of childishness or simplicity by which they approach more nearly to the condition of the unthinking and inanimate thhigs which are governed by law altogether ; yet yielding, in the manner of their submission to it, a singular lesson to the pride of man,— being obedient more perfectly in proportion to their greatness. But, so far as men becomo good and wise, and rise above the state of children, so far they become emancipated from this written law, and invested with the perfect freedom which consists in tlie fulness and joyfulness of compliance with a higher and unwritten law i ^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 31 a law so universal, so subtle, so glorious, that nothing but the heart can keep it. JSTow pride ojDposes itself to the observance of this Divine law in two opposite ways : either by brute resistance, which is the way of the rabble and its leaders, denying or defying law altogether, or by formal compliance, which is the way of the Pharisee, — exalting himself while he pretends to obe- dience, and making void the infinite and spiritual command- ment by the finite and lettered commandment. And it is easy to know which law we are obeying : for any law which we magnify and keep through pride, is always the law of the letter ; but that which we love and keep through humility, is the law of the Spirit. And the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. THE CIIUKCH. The Church is a body to be taught and fed, not to teach and feed: and of all sheep that are fed on the earth, Christ's Sheep are the most simple (the children of this generation are wiser) : always losing themselves ; doing little else in this world but lose themselves; — never finding themselves ; alway? found by Some One else ; getting perpetually into slonghs, and snows, and bramble thickets, like to die there, but fof their Shepherd, who is for ever finding them, and bearing them, back, with torn fleeces and eyes full of fear. 82 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. CLERGYMEN. As to the mode in which the officers of the Church shouhl be elected or appointed, I do not feel it my business to say anything at present, nor much respecting the extent of their authority, either over each other or over the congregation, tins being a most difficult question, the right solution of which evidently lies betw^een two most dangerous extremes — insubordination and radicalism on one hand, and ecclesias- tical tyranny and heresy on the other : of the two, insubor- dination is far the least to be dreaded — for this reason, that nearly all real Christians are more on the watch against their pride than their indolence, and would sooner obey their clergyman, if possible, than contend wnth him; while the very pride they suppose conquered often returns masked, and causes them to make a merit of their humility and their abstract obedience, however unreasonable : but they cannot so easily persuade themselves there is a merit in abstract disobedience. THE king's messengers. The word ambassador has a peculiar ambiguity about it, owing to its use in modern political affiiirs ; and these clergy- men assume that the word, as used by St. Paul, means an Ambassador Plenipotentiary ; representative of his King, and capable of acting for his King. What right have they to assume that St. Paul meant this ? St. Paul never uses the word ambassador at all. He says, simply, " We are in embas- sage from Christ ; and Christ beseeches you tln-ough us.** PKECIOUS TIIOTJGHTS. 38 Most true. And let it further be granted, that every word that the clergyman speaks is literally dictated to him by Christ ; that he can make no mistake in delivering his mes. sage ; and that, therefore, it is indeed Christ himself who speaks to us the word of life through the messenger's lips. Does, therefore, the messenger represent Christ ? Does the channel which conveys the waters of the Fountain represent the Fountain itself ? Suppose, when we went to draw water at a cistern, that all at once the Leaden Spout should become animated, and open its mouth and say to us. See, I am Vica- rious for the Fountain. Whatever respect you show to the Fountain, show some part of it tp me. Should we not answer the Spout, and say. Spout, you were set there for our service, and may be taken away and thrown aside if anything goes wrong with you. But the Fountain will flow for ever. Observe, I do not deny a most solemn authority vested in every Christian messenger from God to men. I am prepared to grant this to the uttermost ; and all that George Herbert says, in the end of the Clmrch-porch, I would enforce, at another time than this, to the uttermost. But the Authority is simply that of a King's messenger ; not of a King's Bepre' sentative. There is a wide diffcM-ence ; all the difference between humble service and blasphemous usurpation. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE BIBLE. You are not philosophers of the kind who suppose that the Bible is a superannuated book ; neither are you of those who think the Bible is dishonoured by being referred to for judg- ment in small matters. Tlie very divinity of the Book seem« to me, on the contrary, to justify us in referring every thing 2* 84 PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. to it, with respect to which any conclusion can be gathered from its pages. Assuming then that the Bible is neither Buperannuated now, nor ever likely to be so, it will follow that the illustrations which the Bible employs are likely to be clear and intelligible illustrations to the end of time. I do not mean that everything spoken of in the Bible histories must continue to endure for all time, but that the things which the Bible uses for. illustration of eternal truths are likely to remain eternally intelligible illustrations. THE DISSECTORS AND THE DREAMERS. All experience goes to teach us, that among men of ave- rage intellect the most useful members of society are the dissectors, not the dreamers. It is not that they love nature or beauty less, but that they love result, effect, and progress more; and when we glance broadly along the starry crowd of benefactors to the human race, and guides of human thought, we shall find that this dreaming love of natural beauty — or at least its expression — has been more or less checked by them all, and subordinated either to hard w^ork or watching of human nature. ASSOCIATIONS OF BEAUTY. Beauty has been appointed by the Deity to be one of the elements by which the human soul is continually sustained j it is therefore to be found more or less in all natural objects, but in order that we mav not satiate ourselves with it, and PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 35 weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its utmost degrees. When we see it in those utmost degrees, we are attracted to it strongly, and remember it long, as in the case of singularly beautiful scenery, or a beautiful countenance. On the other hand, absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty ; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life. BESPECTABILITY OF ARTISTS. I believe that there is no chance of art's truly flourishing in any country, until you make it a simple and plain business, providing its masters with an easy competence, but rarely with anything more. And I say this, not because I despise the great painter, but because I honour him; and I should no more think of adding to his respectability or happiness by giving him riches, than, if Shakspeare or Milton were alive, I should think we added to their respectability, or were likely to get better work from them, by making them mil- lionaires. OPINIONS. In many matters of opinion, our first and last coincide, though on different grounds ; it is the middle stage which ia farthest from the truth. Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, — which it is the pride of utmost age to recover. 36 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. ^ THE NECESSITY OF WORK. . By far the greater part of the suffering and crime which exist at this moment in civilized Europe, arises simply from people not understanding this truism — not knowing that pro- duce or wealth is eternally connected by the laws of heaycn and earth with resolute labour; but hoping in some way to cheat or abrogate this everlasting law of life, and to feed where they have not furrowed, and be warm where they have not woven. I repeat, nearly all our misery and crime result from this one misapprehension. The law of nature is, that a certain quantity of work is necessary to produce a certain quantity oi good, of any kind whatever. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it: if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. But men do not acknowledge this law, or strive to evade it, hoping to get their knowledge, and food, and pleasure for nothing ; and in this effort they either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant and miserable, or they obtain them by making other men work for their benefit; and then they are tyrants and robbers. Yes, and worse than rob- bers. I am not one who in the least doubts or disputes the progress of this century in many things useful to mankind ; * but it seems to me a very dark sign respecting us that we look with so much indifference upon dishonesty and cruelty in the pursuit of wealth. In the dream of Nebuchadnezzar it was only the feet that were part of iron and part of clay ; but many of us are now getting so cruel in our avarice, that it seems as if, in us, the heart were part of iron, and part of clay. PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. 35 weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its utmost degrees. When we see it in those utmost degrees, we are attracted to it strongly, and remember it long, as in the case of singularly beautiful scenery, or a beautiful countenance. On the other liand, absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty ; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life. EESPECTABILITY OP AETISTS. I believe that there is no chance of art's truly flourishing in any country, until you make it a simple and plain business, providing its masters with an easy competence, but rarely with anything more. And I say this, not because I despise the great painter, but because I honour him ; and I should no more think of adding to his respectability or happiness by giving him riches, than, if Shakspeare or Milton were alive, I should think we added to their respectability, or were likely to get better work from them, by making them mil- lionaires. OPINIONS. In many matters of 02:)inion, our first and last coincide, though on different grounds ; it is the middle stage which ia f{\rthest from the truth. Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, — which it is the pride of utmost age to recover. 38 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. we may be dealing blows in the dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly awakened from slumber by an" unknown adversary. But I believe the struggle was inevitable, and that the sooner it came, the more easily it was to be met, and the more nobly concluded. THE ADVANTAGES OF WAR. I believe that war is at present productive of good more than of evil. I will not argue this hardly and coldly, as I might, by tracing in past history some of the abundant evi- dence that nations have always reached their highest virtue, and w^rought their most accomplished works, in times of straitening and battle ; as, on the other hand, no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and triumphant peace without receiv- ing in its own bosom ineradicable seeds of future decline. I will not so argue this matter ; but I will appeal at once to the testimony of tliose whom the war has cost the dearest. I know what w^ould be told me, by those who have suffered nothing; whose domestic haj^piness has been unbroken, whose daily comfort undisturbed ; whose experience of calamity con- sists, at its utmost, in the incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune which they could meet fourfold without inconveni- ence. They are bound by new fidelities to all that they have saved, — ^by new love to all for whom they have suffered; every affection which seemed to sink with those dim life-stains into the dust, has been delegated, by those who need it no more, to the cause for which they have expired ; and erery PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 30 mouldering arm, wliich will never more embrace the belovod ones,^ has bequeathed to them its strength and its faithful ncss. , MEN OF GEOSS MINDS. During tbe last age lived certain men of high intellect who had no love of nature whatever. They do not appear ever to have received the smallest sensation of ocular delight from any natural scene, but would have lived happily all their lives in drawing-rooms or studies. And, therefore, in these men we shall be- able to determine, with the greatest chance of accuracy, what the real influence of natural beauty is, and what the character of a mind destitute of its love. Take, as conspicuous instances, Le Sage and Smollett, and you will find, in meditating over their works, that they are utter- ly incapable of conceiving a human soul as endowed with any nobleness whatever; their heroes are simply beasts endowed with some degree of human intellect; — cunning, false, pas- sionate, reckless, ungrateful, and abominable, incapable of noble joy, of noble sorrow, of any spiritual j^erception or hope. I said, "beasts with human intellect;" but neither Gil Bias nor Roderick Random reach, morally, anything near the level of dogs. PEDESTRIANS. To any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk along n )t more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, 40 PEECIOTJS THOUGHTS. is the most amusing of all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact jDroportion to its rapidity. Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling at all ; it is merely " being sent" to a place, and very little different from becom- ing a parcel ; the next step to it would of course be tele- graphic transport, of which, however, I suppose it has been truly said by Octave Feuillet, "7/ y auraif des gens assez hefes pour trouver 9a amusant." WEALTH. Wealth is simply one of the greatest powers which can be entrusted to human hands : a power, not indeed to be envied, because it seldom makes us happy ; but still less to be abdi- cated or despised : while, in these days, and in this country, it has become a power all the more notable, in that the poS' sessions of a rich man are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold or coffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over whose bodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction, exercises harmful or help- ful influence, and becomes, in that alternative, Mamioon either of Unrighteousness or of Kighteousness. LABOR IN LITTLE THINGS. We have no right at once to pronounce ourselves the wisest people because we like to do all things in the best way. There are many little things which to do admirably iS to PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 41 » waste both time and cost; and the real question is not so much whether we have done a given thing as well as possi- ble, as whether we have turned a given quantity of labonr to tiie best account. THE MEMORY OF UNKINDNESS. He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feel- ing how impotent there are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart, which' can only be discharged to the dust. DARK SIGNS OF THE TIMES. Indeed it is woeful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the wisdom, of the aged ; and among the many dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest. But with whom is the fault? Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had not lost its honour ; nor did childhood ever refuse its reverence, except where age had forgotten correction. The cry, " Go up thou bald head," will never be heard in the Innd which remembers the precept, " See that ye despise not one of these little ones ;" and although indeed, youth may become despicable, when its eager hope is changed into presumption, and its progressive power into arrested pride, there is something more despica- 42 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. ble still, in the old age which has learned neither judgment nor gentleness, which is weak without charity, and cold with, out discretion. VULGAK FRACTIONS. If you will not amuse, nor inform, nor help anybody ; you will not amuse, nor better, nor inform yourselves; you will sink into a state in which you can neither show, nor feel, nor see, anything, but that one is to two as three is to six. And in that state what should we call ourselves ? Men ? I think not. The right name for us would be — numerators and denominators. Vulgar Fractions. May we not accept this great principle — that, as our bodies, to be in health, must be generally exercised, so our minds, to be in health, must be generally cultivated ? You would not call a man healthy who had strong arms but was paralytic in his feet ; nor one who could walk well, but had no use of his hands ; nor one who could see well, if he could not hear. You would not voluntarily reduce your bodies to any such partially developed state. Much more, then, you would not, if you could, help it, reauce your minds to it. Now, your minds are endowed with a vast number of gifts of totally different uses — limbs of mind as it were, which, if you don't exercise, you cripple. One is curiosity ; that is a gift, a capa- city of pleasure in knowing ; which if you destroy, you make yourselves cold and dull. Another is sympathy ; the power of sharing in the feelings of living creatures, which if you destroy, you make yourselves hard and cruel. Another of your limbs of mind is admiration ; the power of enjoying beauty or ingenuity, which, if you destroy, you make you»* PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 43 selves base and irreverent. Another is wit ; or the power of playing with the lights on the many sides of truth ; which if you destroy, you make yourselves gloomy, and less useful and cheering to others than you might be. So that in choosing your way of work it should be your aim, as far as possible, to bring out all these ficulties, as far as they exist in you ; not one merely, nor another, but all of them. And the wa}' to bring them out, is simply to concern yourselves attentively with the subjects of each faculty. To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, and thinking about fthem ; and to cultivate admiration, you must be among beau- tiful things and looking at them. / y LOYE OF IfATURE. Though the absence of the love of nature is not an assured condemnation, its presence is an invariable sign of goodness itf heart and justness of moral perception^ though by no I Qeans of moral practice ; that in proportion to the degree in ifhich it is felt, will probably be the degree in which all uobleness and beauty of character will also be felt; that when it is originally absent from any mind, that mind is in many other respects hard, worldly, and degraded ; that where, hav- ing been originally present, it is repressed by art or educa- tion, that repression appears to have been detrimental to the person suffering it ; and that wherever the feeling exists, it acts for good on the character to which it belongs, though, as it may often belong to characters weak in other respects, it may carelessly be mistaken for a source of evil in them. 44 PEECIOFS THOUGHTS. MODERN EDUCATION. What do you suppose was the substance of good educar tion, the educati(»n of a knight, in the Middle Ages ? What was taught to a boy as soon as he was able to learn anything ? First, to keep under his body, and bring it into subjection and perfect strength ; then to take Christ for his captain, to live as always in his presence and, finally, to do his devoir — mark the word — to all men ? Now, consider first, the differ- ence in their influence over the armies of France, between the ancient word " devoir," and modern Avord " gloire." And, again, ask yourselves what you expect your own chil- dren to be taught at your great schools and unit^ersities. Is it Christian history, or the histories of Pan and Silenus? Your present education, to all intents and purposes, denies Christ, and that is intensely and peculiarly modernism. Or, again, what do you suppose was the proclaimed and imderstood principle of all Christian governments in the mid- dle ages ? I do not say it was a principle acted up to, or that the cunning and violence of wicked men had not too often their full sway then, as now; but on what principles were that cunning and violence, so far as was possible, restrained? By the confessed fear of God, and confessed authority of his law. You will find that all treaties, laws, transactions whatsoever, in the middle ages, are based on a confession of Christianity as the leading rule of life ; that a text of Scripture is held, in all public assemblies, strong enough to be set against an appearance of expefliency ; and although, in the end, the expediency might triumph, yet it was never without a distinct allowance of Christian principle, as an efficient element in the consultation. Whatever eri-or might be committed, at least Christ was opeiily confessed. Now what is the custom of vour British Parliament in these PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 45 days? You know that nothing would excite greater n»ani- festalions of contempt and disgust than the slightest attempt to introduce the authority of Scripture in a political consul • tation. That is denying Christ. It is intensely and pecuharl) modernism. WANT OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE. Half the evil in this world comes from people not knowing A'hat they do like, not deliberately setting themselves to find out what they really enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for instance: they don't know that^ — they rather think they like keeping it ; and they do keep it under this false impression, often to their great discomfort. Every body likes to do good ; but not one in a hundred finds tlm out. THE RESPONSIBHITY OF A EICH MAN. A rich man ought to be continually examining how he may spend his money for the advantage of others ; at present, others are continually plotting how they may beguile him into spending it apparently for his own. The aspect which he presents to the eyes of the world is generally that of a person holding a bag of money with a staunch grasp, and resolved to part with none of it unless he is forced, and all the people about him are plotting how they may force him ; that is to say, how they may persuade him that he wants this thing or that ; or how they may produce things that he wiH 46 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. covet and buy. One man tries to persuade him that he wants perfumes; another that he wants jewellery ; another that lio wants sugarplums ; another that he wants roses at Christmas. x\nybody who can invent a new want for him is supposed to be a benefactor to society ; and thus the enei-gies of the ]>oorer peoi3le about him are continually directed to the pro- duction of covetable, instead of serviceable things ; and the rich man has the general aspect of a fool, plotted against by ail the world. Whereas the real aspect wliich he ought to have is that of a person wiser than others, entrusted with the management of a larger quantity of capital, which he admi- nisters for the profit of all, directing each man to the labour which is most healthy for him, and most serviceable for the community. THE WANTS OF MODERN ART. We don't want either the life or the decorations of the thirteenth century back again ; and the circumstances with which you must surround your workmen are those simply of happy modern English life, because the designs you have now to ask for from your workmen are such as will make modern English life beautiful. All that goi-geousness of the middle ages, beautiful as it sounds in description, noble as in many respects it w^as in reality, had, nevertheless, for foundation and for end, nothing but the pride of life — the pride of the so-called superior classes ; a pride which supported itself by violence and robbery, and led in the end to the destruction both of the arts themselves and the States in which they flourished. The great lesson of history is, that all the fine arts hitherto PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 4^ ■ — having been supported by the selfish power of the noblesse, and never having extended their range to the comfort or the relief of the mass of the people — the arts, I say, thus prac- tised, and thus matured, have only accelerated the ruin of tlie Btates they adorned ; and at the moment when, in any king- dom, you point to the triumphs of its greatest artists, you point also to the determined hour of the kingdom's decline. The names of great painters are like passing bells ; in the name of Velasquez, you hear sounded the fall of Spain ; in the name of Titian, that of Venice ; in the name of Leo- nardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this; for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile ; and hitherto the greater the art, the more Bui'ely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride, or the provoking of sensuaHty. Another course lies open to us. We may abandon the hope— or if you like the words better — we may disdain the temptation, of the pomp and grace of Italy in her youth. For us there can be no more the throne of marble — for us no more the vault of gold — but foi- us there is the loftier and lovelier privilege of bringing the power and charm of art within the reach of the humble and the poor ; and as the magnificence of past agea lailed by its narrowness and its pride, ours may prevail and continue, by its universality and its lowliness. We want now, no more feasts of the gods, nor martyr- doms of the saints ; we have no need of sensuality, no place for superstition, or for costly insolence. Let us have learned and iaithful histoiical paintings ; touching and thoughtful representations of human nature in dramatic paintings; poetical and familiar renderings of natural objects, and of landscape ; and rational, deeply-felt realizations of the events which are the subjects of our religious faith. And let these 48 PRECIOUS TriOUGHTS. tilings we want, as far as possible, be scattered abroad, and made accessible to all men. MANUAL LABOUR. How wide the separation is between original and second- hand execution, I shall endeavour to show elsewhere ; it is not so much to our purpose here as to mark the other and ?nai'e fatal error of despising manual labour when governed by intellect ; for it is no less fatal an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect, than to value it for its own sake. We are always ir these days endeavouring to separate the two ; we want one mart to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative ; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his bro- ther ; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity. It would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen in some kind, and the dishonour of manual labour done away with altogether ; so that though there should still be a trenchant distinction of race between nobles and commoners, there should not, among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal profes- sions. All professions should be liberal, and there should be less pride felt in peciiHarity of employment, and more in PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 49 excellence of achievement. And yet more, in each severa profession, no master should be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his own colours ; the archi- tect work in the mason's yard with his men ; the master- manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in his mills ; and the distinction between one man and another be only in experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must naturally and justly obtain. PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE. In literary and scientific teaching, the great point of eco- nomy is to give the discipline of it through knowledge which will immediately bear on practical life. Our literary work has long been economically useless to us because too much concerned with dead languages ; and our scientific work will yet, for some time, be a good deal lost, be(!ause scientific men are too fond or too vain of their systems, and waste the stu dent's time in endeavouring to give him large views, and make him perceive interesting connections of facts ; when there is not one student, no, nor one man, in a thousand, who can feel the beauty of a system, or even take it clearly into his head ; but nearly all men can underetand, and most will be interested in, the facts which bear on daily life. Botanist's have discovered some wonderful connection between nettles and figs, which a cowboy who will never see a ripe fig in his life need not be at all troubled about ; but it will be interest- ing to him to know what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will give to porridge ; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be got but once, in a spring-time, to look well at the beautiful circlet of the white nettle blossom, and 3 f'O PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. work out with his schoolmaster the curves of its petals, and the way it is set on its central mast. So, the principle of cliemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, than their knowing how to find whether the water is wholesome in the back-kitchen cistern, or whether the seven-acre field wants sand or chalk. BASE CRITICISM. It may perhaps be said that I attach too much importance to the evil of base criticism ; but those w^ho think so have never rightly understood its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of Johnson's (Idler, No. 3, April 29, 1758): " Little does he (who assumes the character of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to bB noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand." And truly, not^ in this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is not, to my mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power of a fool. In the world's affairs there is no design so great or good but it will take twenty wise men to help it forward a few inches, and a single fool can stop it ; there is no evil so great or so terrible but that, after a multi- tude of counsellors have taken means to avert it, a single fool will bring it down. Pestilence, famine, and the sword, are given into the fool's hand as the arrows into the hand of the giant : and if he were fairly set forth in the right motley, the web of it should be sackcloth and sable ; the bells on his cap, passing bells ; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps/ and his bauble, a sexton's spade. PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 51 PUBTJC FAVOUK. There is great difficulty in making any short or general statement of the difference between great and ignoble minda in their behaviour to the " public." It is by no means uni versally the case that a mean mind, as stated in the text, will Lend itself to what you ask of it ; on the contrary, there is one kind of mind, the meanest of all, which peipetually complains of the public, contemplates and proclaims itself as a " genius," refuses all wholesome discipline or humble office, and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin ; also, the greatest minds are marked by nothing more distinctly than an incon- ceivab-e humility, and acceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from every- body, and do anything that anybody asks of them, so long aa it involves only toil, or what other men would think degra- dation. But the point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly rises some day between the public and them, respecting some matter, not of humiliation, but of Fact. HTour great man always at last comes to see something the public don't see. This something he will assuredly persist in asserting, whether with tongue or pencil, to be as he sees it, not as they see it ; and all the world in a heap on the other side, will not get him to say otherwise. Then, if the world objects to the saying, he may happen to get stoned or buint for it, but. that does not in the least matter to him : if the world has no particular objection to the saying, he may get leave to mutter it to him- self till he dies, and be merely taken for an idiot ; that also docs not matter to him — mutter it he will," according to what he perceives to be fact, and not at all according to the roar ing of the walls of Red sea on the right hand or left of him Hence the quarrel, sure at some time or other, to be started between the public and him ; while your mean man, though 52 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. . he will s[)it and scratch spiritedly at the public, while it does not attend to him, will bow to it for its clap in any direction, and say anything when he has got its ear, which he thinks will bring him another clap ; and thus, as stated in the text, he and it go on smoothly together. There are, however, times when the obstinacy of the mean man looks very like the obsthiacy of the great one; but if you look closely into the matter, you will always see that the obstinacy of the first is in the pronunciation of " I ;" and of the second, in the pronunciation of " It." POLITICAL ECONOMY. A nation's labour, well applied, should be amply sufficient to provide its whole population with good food and comfort- able habitation ; and not with those only, but with good education beside:^, and objects of luxury, art treasures, such as these you have around you now. But by those S'.me laws of Nature and Providence, it' the labour of the nation or of the individual be misapplied, and much more if it be insuffi- cient, — ir the nation or man be indolent and unwise, — suifcr- ing and want result, exactly in jiroportion to the indolence and improvidence, — to the refusal of labour, or to the misap- plication of it. Wherever you see want, or misery, or degradation, in this world about you, there, be sure, either industry has been wanting, or industry has been in error. It is not accident, it is not Heaven-commanded calamity, it is not the original and inevitable evil of man's nature, w^hich fill your streets with lamentation, and your graves with prey. It is only that, when there should have been providence, there has been waste ; when there should have been labour, PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 5b there lias been lasciviousness ; and wilfulness, when there should have been subordination.* "the church" IX THE NEW TESTAMENT. The word occurs in the N^ew Testament, one hundred and fourteen times. In every one of those occuri-ences, it bears one and the same grand sense : that of a congregation or assembly of men. But it bears this sense under four differ- ent modifications, giving four separate meanings to the w^ord. These are — I. The entire Multitude of the Elect; otherwise called the Body of Christ ; and sometimes the Bride, the Lamb's Wife ; including the Faithful in all ages; Adam, and the children of Adam, yet unborn. In this sense it is used in Ephesians v. 25, 27, 32 ; Colos- sians i. 18, and several other passages. II. The entire multitude of professing believei'S in Christ, existing on earth at a given moment ; including false bre- thren, wolves in sheep's clothing, goats, and tares, as well as sheep and wheat, and other forms of bad fish with good in the net. In this sense it is used in 1 Cor. x. 32 ; xv. 9 ; Galatians i. 13; 1 Tim. iii. 5, &g. III. The multitude of professed believers, living in a cer- tain city, place, or house. This is the most frequent sense iu which the word occurs, as in Acts vii. 38 ; xiii. 1 ; 1 Cor* i. 2 ; xvi. 1 9, &g. IV. Any assembly of men: as in Acts xix. 32, 41. * Proverbs xiii. 23, " Much food is in the tillage of the poor, but there Is that is destroyed for want of judgment." 54 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. That in a hundred and twelve out of the hundred and four* teen texts, the word bears some one of these four meanings, is indisputable. But there are two texts in which, if the \^ord had alone occurred, its meaning might have been douHful. These are Matt. xvi. 18, and xviii. 17. SPECULATIONS. There are some speculations that are fair and honest — spe- culations made with our own money, and which do not involve in their success the loss, by others, of what we gain. But generally modern speculation involves much risk to others, with chance of profit only to ourselves: even in its best conditions it is merely one of the forms of gambling or treasure-hunting; it is either leaving the steady plough and the steady pilgrimnge of life, to look for silver mines beside the way ; or else it is the full stop beside the dice-tables in Vanity Fair — investing all the thoughts and passions of the soul in the fall of the cards, and choosing rather the wild accidents of idle fortune than the calm and accumulative rewards of toil. And this is destructive enough, at least to our peace and virtue. But it is usually de.structive of far more than our peace, or our virtue. Have you ever deliberately set yourselves to imag'ne and measure the suffering, the guilt, and the mortality caused necessarily by the failure of any large-dealing merchant, or largely-branched bank? Take it at the lowest possible supposition — count, at the fewest you choose, the families whose means of support have been involved in the catastrophe. Then, on the mornhig after the intelligence of ruin, let us go forth amongst them hi earnest thought; let us use that imagination which we waste so often PRECIOUS THOTJGHTS. 65 on fictitious sorrow, to measure the stern facts of that raulti* tndinous distress; strike open the private doors of their cliambers, and enter silently into the midst of the domestic misery ; look upon the old men who had reserved for their failing sti-ength some remainder of rest in the evening-tide of life, cast helplessly back into trouble and tumult; look upon the active strength of middle age suddenly blasted into inca- pacity—its hopes crushed and its hardly-earned rewards snatched away in the same instant — at once the heart withered and the right arm snapped ; look upon the piteous children, delicately nurtured, whose soft eyes, now large with wonder at their parents' grief, must soon be set in the dim- ness of famine ; and far more than all this, look forward to the length o: sorrow beyond — to the hardest labour of life now to be undergone, either in all the severity of unexpected and inexperienced trial, or else, more bitter still, to be begun again, and enduied for the second time, amidst the ruins of cherished hopes aid the feebleness of advancing years, embit- tered by the continual sting and taunt of the inner feeling that it has all been brought about, not by the fair course of appointed circumstaice, but by miserable chance and wanton treachery ; and, last of all, look beyond this^to the shat- tered destinies of thv)se who have faltered under the trial, and sunk past recover; to despair. And then consider whe- ther the hand which has poured this poison into all tho springs of life be one whit less guiltily red with human blood than that which literaLy pours the hemlock into the cup, or guides the dagger to th3 heart ? We read with horror of the crimes of a Borgia o- a Tophana ; but there never lived Boi'gias such as live now n the midst of us. The cruel lady of Ferrara slew only in the strength of passion — she slew only a few, those who tlwarted her purposes or who vexed her soul ; she slew sharply and suddenly, embittering the fate 56 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. of her victims with no foretastes of destruction, no prolonga- tions of pain ; and, finally and chiefly, she slew, not without remorse, nor without pity. But ^oe, in no storm of passion — in no blindness of wrath, — we, in calm and clear and nntempted selfishness, pour our poison — not for a few only but for multitudes ; — not for those who have wronged us, or resisted, — but for those who have trusted us and aided ; — we, not with sudden gift of merciful and unconscious death, but with slow waste of hunger and weary rack of disappoint- ment and despair ; — we, last and chiefly, do our mtirdering, not with any pauses of pity or scorching of conscipnce, but in facile and forgetful calm of mind, — and so, forsooth, read day by day, complacently, as if they me^it any one else than ourselves, the w^ords that forever /describe the wicked : " The poison of asps is under thei^hps, and their feet are swift to shed blood." BE WHAT NATURE INTENDED. Pure liistory and pure topography are post precious things ; in many cases more useful to the hum;in race than high in:ia- ginative work ; and assuredly it is iitended that a large majority of all who are employed in si't should never aim at anytliing higher. It is onli/ vanity, uA'cr love, nor any other noble feeling, which prompts men to desert their allegiance to the sim])le truth, in vain pursuitlof the imaginative truth which has been appointed to be for ^vermore sealed to them. Nor let it be supposed that axists who possess minor degrees of imaginative gift need/be embarrassed by the doubtful sense of their own powa'S. In general, when the imagination is at all noble, it is /irresistible, and therefore rRECious THOUGHTS. 65 those who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a plaii topogiapher if you possibly can ; if Nature meant you to he anything else, she will force you to it ; but never try to be a |)roi)het ; go on quietly wdth your hard cainp-woi k, and the spirit will come to you in the camp, as it did to Eldad and Medad, if you are appointed to have it; but try above all things to be quickly perceptive of the noble spirit in others, and to discern in an instant between its true utterance and the diseased mimicries of it. In a general way, remember it is a far better thing to find out other great men, than to become one yourself: for you can but become one at best, but you may bring others to light in numbers. * sailors' superstitions. It is one notable effect of a life passed on shipboard to destroy weak beliefs in appointed forms of religion. A sailor may be gi-ossly superstitious, but his superstitions will be connected with amulets and omens, not cast in systems. He must accustom himself, if he prays at all, to pray anywheie and anyhow. Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, he perceives those decoi-ations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day, and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all, and they l^ive it plenary and brief, without hstening to confession. 68 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. SANCTITY OF COLOUR. 1 do not think that there is anything more neoessniy to tlie progress of European art in the present clay than the complete understanding of this sanctity of Colour. I had much pleasure in finding it, the other day, fully understood and thus sweetly expressed in a little volume of poems by a Miss Maynard : " For still in every land, though to Thy name Arose no temple, — still in every age, Though heedless man had quite forgot Thy praise, We praise Thee ; and at rise and set of sun Did we assemble duly, and intone A choral hymn that aU the lands might hear. In heaven, on earth, and in the deep we praised Thee, Singly, or mingled in sweet sisterhood. But now, acknowledged ministrants, we come, • Co-worshippers with man in this Thy house, We, the Seven Daughters of the Light, to praise Thee, Light of Light ! Thee, God of very God !" A Bream of Fair Colours. These poems seem to be otherwise remarkable for a very unobtrusive and pure religious feeling in subjects connected with art. HUMAIS- ASSOCIATIONS. Put the fine dresses and jewelled girdles into the best group you can ; paint them with all Veronese's skill : will they satisfy you ? Not so. As loniT as thev are in their due services and PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 59^ subjection — while their folds are formed by the motion of men, and their lustre adorns the nobleness of men — so long the lustre and the folds are lovely. But cast them from the human limbs ; — golden circlet and silken tissue are withered; the dead leaves of autumn are more precious than they. This is just as true, but in a far deeper sense, of the weav- ing of the natural robe of man's soul. Fragrant tissue of flowers, golden circlets of clouds, are only fair when they meet the fondness of human thoughts, and glorify human visions of heaven. "thy KIJfGDOM COME." So far as in it lay, this century has caused every one of its great men, whose hearts were kindest, and whose spirits most perceptive of the work of God, to die without hope : — Scott, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Turner. Great England, of the Iron-heart now, not of the Lion-heart ; for these souls of her children an account may perhaps be one day required of her. She has not yet read often enough that old story of the Samaritan's mercy. He whom he saved was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho — to the accursed city (so the old Church used to understand it). He should not have left Jerusalem ; it was his own fault that he went out into the desert, and fell among the thieves, and was left for dead Every one of these English children, in their day, took the desert bypath as he did, and fell among fiends — took to mak- ing bread out of stones at their bidding, and then died, torn and famished ; careful England, in her pure, priestly dress, 60 ■ PKEClOUS THOUGHTS. passing by on the other side. So far as we are concerned, that is the account we have to give of them. * So far as they are concerned, I do not fear for them ; — there being one Piiest who never passes by. The longer I live, the more clearly I see how all souls are in His hand — the mean and the great. Fallen on the earth in their base- ness, or fading as the mist of morning in their goodness ; still in the hand of the potter as the clay, and in the temple of their master as the cloud. It was not the mere bodily death that He conquered — that death had no sting. It was this spiritual death which He conquered, so that at last it should be swallowed up — mark the word — not in life ; but in victory. As the dead body shall be raised to life, so also the defeated soul to victory, if only it has been fighting on its Master's side, has made no covenant with death ; nor itself bowed its forehead for his seal. Bhnd from the prison-house, maimed from the battle, or mad from the tombs, their souls shall surely yet sit, astonished, at His feet who giveth peace. Who giveth peace ? Many a peace we have made and named for ourselves, but the falsest is in that marvellous thought that we, of all generations of the earth, only know the right ; and that to us, at last, — and us alone, — all the schemes of God, about the salvation of men, has been shown. "This is the light in which we are walking. Those vain Greeks are gone down to their Persephone for ever — Egypt and Assyria, Elam and her multitude, — uncircumcised, their graves are round about them — Pathros and careless Ethiopia — filled with the slain. Rome, with her thirsty sword, and poison wine, how did she walk in her darkness ! We onl^ * It is strange that the last words Turner ever attached to a picturs should have been tlicse : — " The priest held the poisoned cup." Compare the words of 1798 with those of 1850. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 03 have no idolatries — ours are the seeing eyes ; in our pure hands at last, the seven-sealed book is laid ; to our true tongues entrusted the preaching of a perfect gospel. Who shall come after us ? Is it not peace ? The poor Jew, Zimri, who slew his master, there is no peace for him : but, for us ? tiara on head, may we not look out of the windows of heaven ?" Another kind of peace I look for than this, though I hoar It said of me that I am hopeless. I am not hopeless, though my hope may be as Veronese's : the dark-veiled. Veiled, not because sorrowful, but because blind. T do not know what my England desires, or how long she will choose to do as she is doing now ; — with her right hand casting away ti e souls of men, and with her left the gifts of God. In the prayers which she dictates to her children, she tells them to light against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Some day, perhaps, it may also occur to her as desirable to tell those children what she means by this. What is the world which they are to " tight with," and how does it differ from the world which they are to " get on in ?" The expla- nation seems to me the more needful, because I do not, in the book we profess to live by, find anything very distinct about fighting with the world. I find something about fight- ing with the rulers of its darkness, and something also about overcoming it ; but it does not follow that this conquest is to be by hostility, since evil may be overcome with good. But I find it written very distinctly that God loved the world, and that Christ is the light of it. What the much used words, therefore, mean, I cannot tell. But this, I beheve,' they should mean. That there is, indeed, one world which is full of care, and desire, and hatred : a G2 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. world of war, of which Christ is not the light, which indeed is without light, and has never heard the great " Let there be." Which is, therefore, in truth, as yet no w^orld ; but chaos, on the face of which, moving, the Spirit of God yet causes men to hope that a world will come. The better one, they call it : perhaps they might, more wisely, call it the real one. Also, I hear them speak continually of going to it, rather than of its coming to them ; which, again, is strange, for in that prayer which they had straight from the lips of the Light of the world, and which He apparently thought sufficient prayer for them, there is not anything about going to another w-orld ; only something of another government coming into this ; or rather, not another, but the only govern- ment, — that government which will constitute it a world indeed, New heavens and new earth. Earth, no more with« out form and void, but sown with fruit of righteousness. Firmament, no more of passing cloud, but of cloud risen out of the crystal sea — cloud in which, as He was once received up, so He shall again come with power, and every eye shall see Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Kindreds of the earth, or tribes of it ! * — the " earth begotten," the Chaos children— children of this present world, with its desolate seas and its Medusa clouds : the Dragon children, merciless : they who dealt as clouds without water : serpent clouds, by whose sight men were turned into stone ; — the time must surely come for their wailing. "Thy kingdom come," we are bid to ask then ! But how shall it come ? With power and great glory, it is written ; and yet not with observation, it is also written. Strange kingdom ! Yet its strangeness is renewed to us with every dawn. * Compare Matt. xxiv. 30. PEECIOUS THOFGHTS. 63 "When the time comes for us to wake out of the world's Bleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the night ? Singing of birds, first, broken and low, as, not to dying eyes, but eyes that wake to life, " the casement slowly grows a glimmering square ;" and then the gray, and then tlie rose of dawn ; and last the light, whose going forth is to the ends of heaven. This kingdom it is not in our power to bring ; but it is, to receive. Nay, it has come ah-eady, in part ; but not received, because men love chaos best ; and the Night, with her daugh- ters. That is still the only question for us, as in the old Elias days, " If ye will receive it." With pains it may be shut out still from many a dark place of cruelty; by sloth it may be still unseen for many a glorious hour. But the pain of shut- ting it out must grow greater and greater : — harder, every day, that struggle of man with man in the abyss, and shorter w^ages for the fiend's work. But it is still at our choice ; the simoom-dragon may still be served if we will, in the fiery desert, or else God walking in the garden, at cool of day. Coolness now, not of Hesperus over Atlas, stooped endurer of toil ; but of Heosphorus over Sion, the joy of the earth.* The choice is no vague or doubtful one. High on the desert mountain, full descried, sits throned the tempter, with his old promise — the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them. He still calls you to your labour, as Christ to your rest ; — ■ labour and sorrow, base desire, and cruel hope. So far as you desire to possess, rather than to give ; so far as you look for power to command, instead of to bless ; so far as your own prosperity seems to you to issue out of contest or rivalry of any kind, with other men, or other nations; so long as the * Ps. xlviii. 2. — ^This joy it is to receive and to give, because its oflBcera (governors of its acts) are to be Peace, and its exactors (governors of its dealings), Righteousness — Is. Ix. It. 64 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. hope before you is for supremacy instead of love ; and youi desire is to be greatest, instesfd of l-east ;-^iirst, instead of last ; — so long you are serving the Lord of all that is last, and least ; — the last enemy that shall be destroyed — Death ; and you shall have death's crown, with the w^orm coiled in it ; and death's wages, with the worm feeding on them ; kindred of the earth shall you yourself become ; saying to the grave, "Thou art my father;" and to the worm, "Thou art my mother, and my sister." I leave you to judge, and to choose, between this labour, and the bequeathed peace ; this wages, and the gift of the Morning Star ; this obedience, and the doing of the Avill which shall enable you to claim another kindred than of the earth, and to hear another voice than that of the grave, say- ing, " My brother, and sister, and mother." VULGAEITY. There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and real vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want of power to understand the universality of the ideal truth; the absence of sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in them so much of divine, that nothing 'S small to them, and nothing large ; but with equal and Tinofiended vision they take in the sum of the world, — Straw Street and the seventh heavens, — in the same instant. A certain portion of this divine spiiit is visible even in the lower examples of all the true men ; it is, indeed, perhaps, the clear- est test of their belonging to the true and great group, that they are continually touching what to the multitude appear PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 65 vulgarities. The higher a man stands, tlie more the word *' vulgar" becomes unintelligible to him. We may dismiss this matter of'vulgarity in phdn and few words, at least as far as regards art. Theie is never vul- g.irity in a whole tiulh, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity ia only in concealment of truth, or in affectation. SCIENCE. The common consent of men proves and accepts the propo- sition, that whatever part of any pursuit ministers to the bodily Cv^mforts, and admits of material uses, is ignoble, and whatsoever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble ; and that geology does better in reolothing dry bones and reveal- ing lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron ; astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven than in teaching navigation ; botany better in displaying structure than in expressing juices; surgery better in inves- tigating organization than in setting limbs; only it is or- dained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something also to its practical applicabilities ; that all the great phenomena of nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us partly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the gloi-y of Him in whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire as the imperfection of their natui-e may admit ; that the strong torrents which in their own gladness fill the hills with hollow thunder and the vales 66 PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. | with winding light, have yet their bounden charge of field to feed and barge to bear ; that the fierce flames to which the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for us the metal vein and quickening spring ; and that for our incitement, I say not our reward, for knowledge is its own reward, herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness and stars their times. INFINITY. That which we foolishly call vastness is, rightly considered, not more wonderful, not more impressive, than that which we insolently call littleness, and the infinity of God is not myste- rious, it is only unfathomable, not concealed, but incompre- hensible : it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea. NEARNESS AND DISTANCE. Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away ; they were shaped for their place, high above your head ; approach them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapour. Look at the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads. The child looks up to PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 67 It in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is to them all as the celestial city on the world's hori- zon ; dyed with the depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the far- . off sky ; aj^proach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away about its foundations, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at last met by the Eternal '• Here shall thy waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness ; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened into wast- ing snow; the storm-brands of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment. NOVELTY. " Custom hangs upon us, with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almo-t as life." And if we grow impatient under it, and seek to recover the mental energy by more quickly repeated and brighter novelty, it is all over with our enjoyment. There is no cure for this evil, any more than for the weariness of the imagina- tion already described, but in patience and rest : if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monoto- nous : and then we are reduced to that old despair, " If watei chokes, what will you drink after it?" And the two points of practical wisdom in this matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible at a time ; and, secondly, to 68 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. l^rescrve, as much as possible in the world, the souices of uoveltj. EXCITEMENT OF THE IMAGINATION. Remember that when the imagination and feelings are strongly excited, they will not only bear with strange things, but they will looh into minute things with a delight quite unknown in hours of tranquillity. You surely must remem- ber moments of your lives in which, under some strong excitement of feeling, all the details of visible objects pre- sented themselves with a strange intensity and insistance, whether you would or no; urging themselves upon the mind, and thrust upon the eye, with a force of fascination which you could not refuse. Now, to a certain extent, the senses get into this state whenever the imagination is strongly excited. Things trivial at other times assume a dignity or| significance which we cannot explain ; but which is only the more attractive because inexplicable: and the powers of attention, quickened by the feverish excitement, fasten and feed upon the minutest circumstances of detail, and remotest traces of intention. PEACE AND WAR. Both peace and war are noble or ignoble accoiding to their kind and occasion. No man has a profounder sense of the horror and guilt of ignoble war than I have. I have person, ally seen its effects, upon nations, of unmitigated evil, on soul PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 69 and body, with perhaps as much pity, and as much bitterness of indignation, as any of those wlioni yon will hear conti- nually declaiming in the cause of pence. But peace may be sought in two ways. One way is as Gideon sought it, whei he built his altar in Ophrah, naming it, " God send peace," yet sought this peace that he loved, as he was ordered to seek it, and the peace was sent, in God's way : — " the coun- try was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon." And the other way of seeking peace is as Menahem sought it when he gave the King of Assyria a thousand talents of silver, that ''his hand might be with him." That is, you may either win jfour peace, or buy it : — win it, by resistance to evil ; — buy it, by compromise with evil. You may buy your peace, with silenced consciences ; — you may buy it, with broken vows, — buy it, with lying words, — buy it, with base connivances, — buy it, with the blood of the slain, and the cry of the cnp- tive, and the silence of lost souls — over hemispheres of the ep.rth, while you sit smiling at your serene hearths, lisping comfortable prayei'S evening and morning, and counting your pretty Protestant beads (which are flat, and of gold, instead of round, and of ebony, as the monks' once were), and so mutter continually to yourselves, "Peace, peace," when there is No peace ; but only captivity and death, for you, as well as for those you leave unsaved ; — and yours darker than tjieirs. I cannot utter to you what I would in this matter; we all see too dimly, as yet, what our great world-duties are, to allow any of us to try to outline their enlarging shadows. But think over what I have said, and in your quiet homes reflect that their peace was not won for you by your own hands ; but by theirs who long ago jeoparded their lives for you, their children ; and remember that neither this inherited peace, nor any other, can be kept, but through the same jeo- 70 PIJECIOUS THOUGHTS. pardy. No peace was ever won from Fate by subterfuge oi agreement; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin ; — victory over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that which cor- rupts. For many a year to come, the sword of every right- eous nation must be whetted to save or to subdue ; nor will it be by patience of others' suffering, but by the offering of your own, that you will ever draw nearer to the time when the great change shall pass upon the iron of the earth ; — when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks ; neither shall they learn war any more. THE PLEASURES OF SIGHT. Had it been ordained by the Almighty that the highest pleasures of sight should be those of most difficult attain- ment, and that to arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces tower over tower, and pile artifi- cial mountains around insinuated lakes, there would have been a direct contradiction between the unselfish duties and inherent desires of every individual. But no such contradic- tion exists in the system of Divine Providence, which, leav«- ing it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse this sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and thoughtless vanities as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sick- ened satiety, incapable of pleasure unless, Caligula-like, it concentrate the labour of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour, leaves it also open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves susceptible of deep delight from the PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1} meanest objects of creation, and of a delight which shall not separate us from our fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but which shall bind us closer to men and to God, and be with us always, harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging and eternal. TKIDE. Pride is bnse from the necessary foolishness of it, because at its best, that is when grounded on a just estimation of our own elevation or superiority above certain others, it cannot but imply that our eyes look downward only, and have never been raised above our own measure, for there is not the man so lofty in his standing nor capacity but he must be humble in thinking of the cloud habitation and far sight of the angelic intelligences above him, and in perceiving what infinity there is of things he cannot know nor even re.lch unto, as it stands compared with that little body of things he can reach, and of which nevertheless he can altogether under- stand not one : not to speak of that wicked and fond attri- buting of such excellency as he may have to himself, and thinking of it as his own getting, which is the real essence and criminality of pride, nor of those viler forms of it, founded on false estimation of things beneath us and iri-a- tional contemning of them : but taken at its best, it is still base to that degree that there is no grandeur of feature which it cannot destroy and make despicable. 72 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. TRUE LIBERTY Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chain mail — strength and defence, though some- thing also of an incumbrance. And this necessity of restraint, remember, is just as honourable to man as the necessity of labour. You hear every day greater numbers of foolish peo- ple speaking about liberty, as if it were such an honourable thing : so far from being that, it is, on the whole, and in the broadest sense, dishonourable, and an attribute of the lower Dreatures. No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always something that he must, or must not do ; while the fish may do w^hatever he likes. All the kingdoms of the world put together are not half so large as the sea, and all the railroads and wheels that ever were, or will be, invented are not so easy as fins. You will find, on fairly thinking of it, that it is his Restraint which is honourable to man, not his Liberty ; and, what is mole, it is resti-aint which is honourable even in the lower animals. A butterfly is much more free than a bee; but you honour the bee more, just because it is subject to certain laws which fit it for orderly function in bee society. And through- out the w^oild, of the two abstract things, liberty and restraint, restraint is always the more honourable. It is true, indeed, that in these and all other matters you never can rea- son finally from the abstraction, for both liberty and restraint are good when they are nobly chosen, and both are bad when they are basely chosen; but of the two, I lepeat, it is restraint which characterizes the higher creature, and betters the lower creature : and, from the ministeiing of the archangel to the labour of the insect, — from the poising of the planets to the gravitation of a grain of dust, — the power and glory of all creatures, and all matter, consist in their obedience, not in PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. IH their freedom. The Sun has no liberty- -a dead leaf has much. The dust of which you are formed has no liberty. Its liberty will come — with its corruption. WEAK THINGS MADE STRONG. Is not this a strange type, in the very heart and height of these mysterious Alps — these wrinkled hills in their snowy, cold, grey-haired old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet at their feet, muttering and whispering to us garra- iously, in broken and dreaming fits, as it were, about their childh(3od — is it not a strange type of the things which " out of weakness are made strong !" If one of those little flakes of mica-sand, hurried in tremulous spangling along the bot- tom of the ancient river, too light to sink, too faint to float, almost too small for sight, could have had a mind given to it as it was at last borne down with its kindred dust into the abysses of the stream, and laid (would it not have thought ?) for a hopeless eternity in the dark ooze, the jnost despised, forgotten, and feeble of all earth's atoms ; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an eaith-wasp to build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen ; — what would it have thought, had it been told that one day, knitted mto a strength as of impe- rishable ii'on, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should hew that Alpine tower ; that against it — poor, helpless, mica flake! — the wild north winds should rage in vain; beneath it — low-fallen mica flake! — the snowy hills should lie bowed like flocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the earth fade away in unregarded blue; and around it — weak, wave-drifted mica 4 74 PBECIOIJS THOUGHTS. flake !- — the gieat war of the firmament !?hc.ald burst in thun der, and yet stir it not ; and the fiery arrows and angry meteors of the night fall blunted back from it into the air ; and all the stars in the clear heaven should light, one by one as they rose, new cre.-sets upon the points of snow tliat. li'inged its abiding-place on the imperishable spire ! THE TRUTH OF TRUTHS. Truth is to be discovered, and Pardon to be won for every man by himself. This is evident from innumerable texts of Scripture, but chiefly from those which exhort every man to seek after Truth, and which connect knowing with doing. We are to seek after knowledge as silver, and search for her as for hid treasures; tlierefore, from every man she must be naturally hid, and the discovery of her is to be the reward only of personal search. The kingdom of God is as treasuie hid in a field ; and of those Avlio profess to help us to seek for it, we are not to put confidence in those who say, — Here is the treasure, we have found it, and have it, and will give you sonie of it ; bat to those who say, — We think that is a good place to dig, and you will dig most easily in such and such a way. Farther, it has been promised that if such earnest search be made. Truth shall be discovered: as much truth, that is, as is necessary for the f)erson seeking. These, therefore, I liokl, for two fundamental principles of religion, — that, without seeking, truth cannot be known at all; and that, by seeking, it may be discovered by the simplest. I say, without seek- ing it cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in Articles, nor in any wise "pre- PEEClOrS THOUGH l>5 75 prired and sold " in packages, ready for use. Truth must Le ground for every man by himself out of its husk, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labour of his own. In what science is knowledge to be had cheap ? or truth to be told over a velvet cushion, in half an hour's talk every seventh clay ? Can you learn chemistry so ? — zoology ? — anatomy ? and do you expect to penetrate the secret of all secrets, and to know that whose price is above rubies ; and of which the depth saith, — It is not in me, in so easy fashion ? There are doubts in this matter which evil spirits darken with their wings, and that is true of all such doubts which we were told long ago — they can "be ended by action alone," As surely as we live, this trnth of truths can only so be discerned : to those who act on what they know, more shall be revealed ; and thus, if any man will do His will, he shall know the doctiine whether it be of God. Any man : — not the man who has most means of knowing, who has the sub- tlest brains, or sits under the most orthodox preacher, or has his library fullest of most orthodox books — but the man who strives to know, who takes God at His word, ai;d sets himself to dig up the heavenly mystery, roots and all, before sunset, and the night come, when no man can work. Beside such a man, God stands in more and more visible presence as he toils, and teaches him that which no preacher can teach — no earthly authoiity gainsay. By such a man, the preacher must himself be judged. Anything which makes religion its second object, makes religion no object. God will put up with a great many tlunga L, Id PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. in the human heart, but there is one thing Ho will not put up with in it — a second place. He who offers God a second place, offers Him 7io place MEMBEES OF THE CHUKCH. Men not in office in the Church suppose themselves, on that ground, in a sort unholy ; and that, therefore, they may sin with more excuse, and be idle or impious with less danger, than the Clergy : especially they consider themselves relieved from all ministerial function, and as permitted to devote their whole time and energy to the business of this world. 'No mistake can possibly be greater. Every member of the Church is equally bound to the service of the Head of the Church ; and that service is preeminently the saving of souls. There is not a moment of a man's active life in which he may not be indirectly preaching ; and throughout a great part of his life he ought to be direct I]/ preaching, and teaching both strangers and friends; his children, his servants, and all who in any way are put under him, being given to him as especial objects of his ministration. DISCERNMENT OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. If we hear a man profess himself a believej* in God and ii; Christ, and detect him in no glaring and wilful violation ol God's law, we speak of him as a Christian ; and, on the other hand, if we hear him or see him denying Christ, either in his words or conduct, we tacitlv assume him not to be a Chris- PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. 77 tian. A mawkish chanty prevents us from outspeaking ia tliis matter, and fiom earnestly endeavouring to discern who are Chiistians and who are not; and tiiis I hold to be one of the chief sins of the Church in the present day; fur thus wicked men are put to no shame; and better men are encou- raged in their failings, or caused to hesitate in their virtues, by the example of those whom, in false charity, they choose to call Christians. i PATRONAGE OF ART. As you examine into the career of historical painting, you will be more and more struck with the fact I liave stated to you, — that none was ever truly great but that which repre- sented the living forms and daily deeds of the people among whom it arose ; — that all precious historical work records, not the past but the present. Remember, therefore, that it is not so much in buying pictures, as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image; but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practi- cal duty and faithful devotion. COMPANIONSHIP WITH NATURE. To the mediaeval knight, from Scottish moor to Syrian sand, the world was one great exercise ground, or fitld of 78 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. adventure ; the staunch pacing of his charger penetrated the l)athlesisness of outmost forest, and sustained the sultriness of the most secret desert. Frequently alone, — or, if accompa- nied, for the most part only by retainers of lower rank, inca- pable of entering into complete sympathy with any of his thoughts, — he must have been compelled often to enter into dim companionship with the silent nature around him, and must assuredly sometimes have talked to the wayside flowers of hio love, and to the fading clouds of his ambition. ALL CARVING AND NO MEAT. The divisions of a church are much like the divisions of a sermon ; they are always right so long as they are necessary to edification, and always wrong when they are thrust upon the attention as divisions only. There may be neatness ia carving when there is richness in feasting; but I have heard many a discourse, and seen many a chuich wall, in which it was all carving and no meat. THE TRUE CHURCH. The Church whicli is composed of Faithful men, is the one true, indivisible and indiscernible Church, built on the foun- dation of Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. It includes all who have ever fallen asleep in Christ, and all yet unborn, who are to be saved in Him ; its Body is as yet imperfect ; it will not be perfected till the last saved human spirit is gathered to its God. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 79 A man becomes a member of this Church on!} oy believing in Christ with all his heart; nor is he positively recognizable for a member of it, when he has become so, by any one but God, not even by himself. Nevertheless, there are certain signs by which Christ's sheep may be guessed at. Not by their being in any definite Fold — for many are lost sheep at times : but by their sheep-like behaviour ; and a great many are indeed sheep which, on the far mountain side, in their peacefulness, we take for stones. To themselves, the best proof of their being Christ's sheep is to find themselves on Christ's shoulders ; and, between them, there are certain sym- pathies (expressed in the Apostles' Creed by the term " com- munion of Saints"), by which they may in a sort recognise each other, and so become verily visible to each other foi mutual comfort. FLOWERS. Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary human- ity; children love them; quiet, tender, contented ordinary people love them as they grow ; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered : They are the cottager's treasure ; and in the crowded town, mark, as with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers in whose heart rests the covenant of peace. Passionate or reli- gious minds contemplate them with fond, feverish intensity the afiection is seen severely calm in the works of many old religious painters, and mixed with more open and true coun- try sentiment m those ot our own pre-Raphaelites. To tlio child and the girl, the peasant and the manufacturing ope- icili.c, to the grisette and the nun, the lover and monk, 80 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. they are procions always. But to the men of supreme powei and thought fulness, precious only at times ; symbolically and pathetically often to the poets, but rarely for their own sake. Tliey fall forgotten from the great workmen's and soldiers' bands. Such men will take, in thankfulness, crowns of leaves, or crowns of thorns — not crowns of flowers. THE CLOUD-BALANCINGS. When the earth had to be prepared for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate being was spread between him and its darkness, in which were joined, in a sub- dued measure, the stability and insensibility of the earth, and the passion and perishing of mankind. But the heavens, also, had to be prepared for his habita- tion. Between their burning light, — their deep vacuity, and man, as between the earth's gloom of iron substance, and man, a veil had to be spread of intermediate being ; which should appease the unendurable glory to the level of human feeble- ness, and sign the changeless motion of the heavens with a semblance of human vicissitude. Between earth and man arose the leaf. Between the heaven and man came the cloud. His life being partly as the foiling leaf, and partly as the flying vapor. Has the leader any distinct idea of what clouds are ? We liad some talk about them long ago, and perhaps thought their nature, though at that time not clear to us, would be easily enough understandable when we put ourselves seriously to make it out. Shall we begin with one or two easiest que9> tions ? PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. «1 That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the vjilley, level and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an inundation — why is it so heavy ? and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendour of morning, when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more. Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks — why are they so light, — their bases high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps? why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, while the valley vapour gains again upon the earth like a shroud ? Or that ghost of a c^oud, which steals by yonder clump of pines; nay, which does not steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet round them, and yet — and yet, slowly : now falling in a fair waved line like a woman's veil; now fading, now gone: we look away for an instant, and look back, and it is again there. What has it to do with that clump of pines, that it broods by them and weaves itself among their branches, to and fro ? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among the moss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or has some strong enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within those bars of bough ? And yonder filmy crescent, bent like an archer's bow above the snowy summit, the highest of all the hill, — that white arch which never forms but over the siipreme crest, — how is it stayed there, repelled pparenLly from the snow — nowhere touciiing it, the clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving it —poised as a white bird hovers over its nest ? Or those war-clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon- crested, tongued with fire; — how is their barbed strength bridled? what bits are these they are champing with their 4* 82 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. vaporous lips; flinging off flakes of black foam? Leaguecl leviathans of the Sea of Heaven, out of their nostrils goeth smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. The sword of him that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. Where ride the captains of their armies ? Whei-e are set the measures of their march ? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from morning until evening — what rebuke is this which has awed them into peace ? what hand has reined them back by the way by which they came. I know not if the reader will think at first that questions Mke these are easily answered. So far from it, I rather believe that some of the mysteries of the clouds never will be under- stood by us at all. " Knowest thou the balancings of the clouds?" Is the answer ever to be one of pride ? "The wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge ? " Is our knowledge ever to be so? It is one of the most discouraging consequences of the varied character of this work of mine, that I am wholly unable to take note of the advance of modern science. What has conclusively been discovered or observed about clouds, I know not ; but by the chance inquiry possible to me I find no book which fairly states the difficulties of accounting for even the ordinary aspects of the sky. I shall, therefore, be able in this section to do little more than suggest inquiries to the reader, putting the subject in a clear form for him. All men accustomed to investigation will contirra me in saying that it is a great step when we are personally quite certain what we do not know. First, then, I believe we do not know what makes clouds float. Clouds are water, in some fine form or another : but water is hea\ ier than air, nnd the finest form you can give a heavy thing will not make it float in a light thing. On it, PRECIOUS THOUGHl-S. 8S yes ; as a boat : but in it, no. Clouds are not boats, nor boat-shaped, and they float in the air, not on the top of it " Nay, but though unlike boats, may they not be like feath- ers ? If out of quill substance there may be constructed eider down, and out of vegetable tissue, thistle-down, both buoyant enough for a time, surely of water-tissue may be constructed also water-down, which will be buoyant enough for all cloudy purposes." Not so. Thro\v out your eider plumage in a calm day, and it will all come settling to the ground ; slowly indeed, to aspect; but practically so fast that '\11 our finest clouds would be here in a heap about our ears in an hour or two, if they were only made of water feathers. ^' But- may they not be quill feathers, and have air inside them ? May not all their particles be minute little bal- loons?" A balloon only floats when the air inside it is either speci- fically, or by heating, lighter than the air it floats in. If the cloud-feathers had warm air inside their quills, a cloud would be warmer than the air about it, which it is not (I believe). And if the cloud-feathers had hydrogen inside their quills, a cloud would be unwholesome for breathing, which it. is not — at least so it seems to me. "But may they not have nothing inside their quills?" Then they would rise, as bubbles do through water, just as certainly as, if they were solid feathers, they would fall. All our clouds would go up to the top of the air, and swim in eddies of cloud-foam. " But is not that just what they do ? " No. They float at different heights, and with definite forms, in the body of the air itself. If they rose like foam, the sky on a cloudy day would look like a very large flat glass of champagne seen from below, with a sti-eam of bubbles (or clouds) going up as fast as they could to a flat foam-ceiling. 84 p^i:cious thoughts. *'.But may they not be just so nicely mixed out tf some thing and nothing, as to float where they are wanted ? " Yes : that is just what they not only may, but must be only this way of mixing something and nothing is the very thing I want to explain or have explained, and cannot do it, nor get it done. Except thus far. It is conceivable that minute hollow spherical globes might be formed of water, in which the enclosed vacuity just balanced the weight of the enclosing water, and that the arched sphere formed by the watery film was strong enough to prevent the pressure of the atmosphere from breaking it in. Such a globule would float like a bal- loon at the height in the atmosphere where the equipoise between the vacuum it enclosed, and its own excess of weight above that of the air, was exact. It would, probably, approach its companion globules by reciprocal attraction, and form aggregations which might be visible. This is, I believe, the view usually taken by meteorologists, I state it as a possibility, to be taken into account in examin- ing the question — a possibility confirmed by the scriptural words which I have taken for the title of this chapter. Nevertheless, I state it as a possibility only, not seeing how any known operation of physical law could explain the for- mation of such molecules. This, however, is not the only difficulty. Whatever shape the water is thrown into, it seems at first improbable that it should lose its property of wetness. Minute division of rain, as in " Scotch mist," makes it capable of floating farther, or floating up and down a little, just as dust will float, though pebbles will not ; or gold-leaf, though a sovereign will not; but minutely divided rain wets as much as any other kind, whereas a cloud, partially always, sometimes entirely, loses its power of moistening. Some low clouds look, when you are in them, as if they were made of PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 85 spooks of dust, like short hairs ; and these clouds are entirely dry. And also many clouds will wet some substances, but not others. So that we must grant farther, if* we are to be ha])py in our theory, that the spherical molecules are held together by an attraction which prevents their adhering to any foreign body, or perhaps ceases only under some peculiar electric conditions. The question remains, even supposing their production accounted for, — What intermediate states of water may exist between these spherical hollow molecules and pure vapor ? Has the reader ever considered the relations of com- monest forms of volatile substance ? The invisible particles which cause the scent of a rose-leaf, how minute, how multi- tudinous, passing richly away into the air continually ! The visible cloud of frankincense — why visible ? Is it in conse- quence of the greater quantity, or larger size of the particles, and how does the heat act in throwing them off in this quantity, or of this size ? Ask the same questions respecting water. It dries, that is, becomes volatile, invisibly, at (any ?) temperature. Snow dries, as water does. Under increase of heat, it volatilizes faster, so as to become dimly visible in large mass, as a heat- haze. It reaches boiling point, then becomes entirely visi- ble. But compress it, so that no air shall get between the watery particles — it is invisible again. At the first issidng from the steam-pipe the steam is transparent ; but opaque, or visible, as it diffuses itself. The water is indeed closer, because cooler, in that diffusion ; but more air is between ita particles. Then this very question of visibility is an endless one, waverinoj between form of substance and action of lijxht. The clearest (or least visible) stream becomes brightly opaque by more minute division in its foam, and the clearest dew ic 86 . PRECIOUS. THOUGnTR. [joar-frost. Dust, unperceived in shade, becomes constantly visible in sunbeam ; and watery vapor in the atmosphere, which, is itself opaque, when there is promise of fine weather, becomes exquisitely transparent ; and (questionably) blue, when it is going to raih. Questionably blue : for besides knowing very little about water, we know what, except by courtesy, must, I think, be called Nothing — about air. Is it the watery vapor, or the air itself, which is blue ? Are neither blue, but only white, producing blue when seen over dark spaces ? If either blue, or white, why, when crimson is their commanded dress, are the most distant clouds crimsonest ? Clouds close to us may be blue, but far otT golden, — a strange result, if the air ia blue. And again, if blue, why are rays that come through large spaces of it red ; and that Alp, or anything else that catches faraway light, why colored red at dawn and sunset ? No one knows, I believe. It is true that many substances, as opal, are blue, or green, by reflected light, yellow by trans- mitted ; but air, if blue at all, is blue always by transmitted light. I hear of a wonderful solution of nettles, or other unlovely herb, which is green when shallow, — red when deep. Perhaps some day, as the motion of the heavenly bodies by help of an apple, their light by help of a nettle, may be explained to mankind. But farther : these questions of volatility, and visibility, and hue, are all complicated with those of shape. How is a cloud outlined ? Granted whatever you choose to ask, con- cerning ite material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminous- ness, — how of its limitation ? What hews it into a heap, or spins it into a web? Cold is usually shapeless, I suppose, ex- tending over large spaces equally, or with gradual diminution, you cannot have, in the open air, angles, and wedges, and riils, and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapor stops suddenly, shai-j) PBECIOUS THOUGHTS. Si and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar ; or braids itself in and out, and across and across, like a tissue of tapestry; or falls into rip- ples, like sand ; or into waving shreds and tongues, as fire. On what anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, ham- mered, whirled, as the potter's clay? By what hands is the incense of, the sea built up into domes of marble ? And, lastly, all these questions respecting substance, and aspect, and shape, and line, and division, are involved with others as inscrutable, concerning action. The curves in which clouds move are unknown;— nay, the very method of their motion, or apparent motion, how far it is by change of place, how far by appearance in one place and vanishing from another. And these questions about movement lead partly far aw^ay into high mathematics, where I cannot follow them, and partly into theories concerning electricity and infinite space, where I suppose at present no one can follow them. What, then, is the use of asking the questions ? For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I think he ought. He should not be less grate- ful for summer rain, or see less beauty in the clouds of morn- ing, because they come to prove him with hard questions; to which, perhaps, if we look close at the heavenly scroll,* we may find also a syllable or two of answer illuminated here and there. * There is a beautiful passage in Sartor Resartm concerning this oIq Hebrew scroll, in its deeper meanings, and the child's watching it, though long illegible for him, yet " with an eye to the gilding." It signifies m word ( )r two nearly all that is to be said about clouds. 88 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. FEAR OF DEATH. For, exactly in proportion as the pride of life became more insolent, the fear of death became more servile ; and the dif- ference in the manner in which the men of early and later days adorned the sepulchre, confesses a still greater difference in their manner of regarding death. To those he came as the comforter and the friend, rest in his right hand, hope in his left; to these as the humiliator, the spoiler, and the aven- ger. And, therefore, we find the early tombs at once simple and lovely in adornment, severe and solemn in their expres- sion ; confessing the power, and accepting the peace, of death, openly and joyfully; and in all their symbols marking that the hope of resurrection lay only in Christ's righteous- ness ; signed always with this simple utterance of the dead, " I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest ; for it is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in safety." But the tombs of the later ages are a ghastly struggle of mean pride and miserable terror : the one mustering the statues of the Virtues about the tomb, disguising the sarcophagus with delicate sculpture, polishing the false periods of the elaborate epitaph, and filling with strained animation the features of the portrait statue ; and the other summoning underneath, out of the niche or from behind the curtain, the frowning skull, or scythed skeleton, or some other more terrible image of the enemy in whose defiance the whiteness of the septil- chie had been set to shine above the whiteness of the ashes. PRECIOUS TnOITGlITS. 8ft RECREATION. It is one Uiing to indulge in playful rest, auvl another to b« devoted to the pursuit of pleasure: and gaiety of heart dur- ing the reaction after liard labour, and quickened by satisfac tion in the accomplished duty or perfected result, is altogetliei compatible with, nay, even in some sort arises naturally out of, a deep internal seriousness of disposition. TYPES. 1 trust that some day the language of Types will be more read and understood by us than it has been for centuries ; and when this language, a better one than either Greek or Latin, is again recognized amongst us, we shall find, or remember, that as the other visible elements of the universe — its air, its water, and its flame — set forth, in their pure energies, the life-giving, purifying, and sanctifying influences of the Deity upon His creatures, so the earth, in its purity, sets forth His eternity and His Truth. I have dwelt above on the historical language of stones ; let us not forget this, which is their theological language ; and, as we would not wantonly pollute the fresh waters when they issue forth in their clear glory fi-om the rock, nor stay the mountain winds into pestilential stagnancy, nor mock the sunbeams with arti- iicial and ineffective light ; so let us not by our own base and barren falsehoods, replace the crystalline strength and burn- ing colour of the earth from which we were born, and to which we must return ; the earth which, like our own bodies, though dust in its degradation, is full of splendour when God's hand no PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. gathers its atoms; and which was for ever sanctified by Ilim, AH the symbol no less of His love than of His truth, when He bade the high priest bear the names of the Children of Israel on the clear stones of the Breastplate of Judgment. EXPLAINING NATURE. The sea was meant to be irregular ! Yes, and were not also the leaves, and the blades of grass ; and, in a sort, as far as may be without mark of sin, even the countenance of man ? Or would it be pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and numbered on our foreheads, that we might be known one from the other ? Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art ? Have we only to copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the universe ? Not so. We have work to do upon it ; there is not any one of us so simple, nor so feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the work is not to improve, but to explain. This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable, in its whole ; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach ; then set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him ; extricating it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass ; one does not improve either violet or grass in gathei'ing it, but one makes the flower visible ; and then the human being has to make its power upon his own heart visible also, and to give it the honour of the good thoughts it has raised up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in strange lights, and display it i 1 a thousand ways before unknown : ways especially PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 9i directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which lie had to choose instruments out of the wide armoury of God. AIJ tliis he may do : and in this he is only doing what every Christian has to do with the written, as well as the created word, " rightly dividing the word of truth." Out of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather and set forth things new and old, to choose them for the season and the work that are before him, to explain and manifest them to others, with such illustration and enforcement as may be in his power, and to crown them with the history of what, by them, God has done for his soul. And, in doing this, is he improving the Word of God ? THE LOVE OF FLOWERS. Perhaps it may be thought, if we understood flowers bet- ter, we might love them less. We do not love them much, as it is. Few people care about flowers. Many, indeed, are fond of finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares about a kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in the greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are scientifically interested in them, though even these in the nomenclature rather than the flowers. And a few enjoy their gardens ; but I have never heard of a piece of land, which would let well on a building lease, remaining unlet because it was a flowery piece. I have never heard of parks being kept for wild hyacinths, though often of their being kept for wild beasts. And the blossoming time of the year being principally si.)ring, I perceive it to be the mind of most people, during that period, to stay in towns. 92 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, A year or two ago, a keen-sighted and eccentrically minded friend of mine, having taken it into his head to vio- late this national custom, and go to the Tyrol in spring, waa passing through a valley near Landech, with several similarly headstrong companions. A strange mountain appeared in the distance, belted about its breast with a zone of blue, like our English Queen. Was it a blue cloud ? A blue liorizontal bar of the air that Titian breathed in youth, seen now far away, which mortal might never breathe again ? Was it a mirage — a meteor? Would it stay to be approached? (ten miles of winding road yet between them and the foot of its mountain.) Such questioning had they concerning it. My keen-sighted friend alone maintained it to be substantial ; whatever it might be, it was not air, and would not vanish. The ten miles of road were overpassed, the carriage left, the mountain climbed. It stayed patiently, expanding still into richer breadth and heavenlier glow— a belt of gentians. Such things may verily be seen among the Alps in spring, and in spring only. Which being so, I observe most people prefer going in autumn. THE EARTH-VEIL. " To dress it and to keep it." That, then, was to be our work. Alas ! what work have we set ourselves upon instead ! How have we ravaged the garden instead of kept it — feeding our war-horses with its llowers, and splintering its trees into spear shafts ! " And at the East a flaming sword." Is its flame quenchless ? and are those gates that keep the PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 9S way indeed passable no more ? or is it not rntlier tliat we no more desire to enter ? For what can we conceive of tliat first Eden which we might not yet win back, if we chose ? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well : the flowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them; and the fair(3r, the closer. There may indeed have been a Fall of Flowers, as a Fall of Man ; but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy nothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow^ for us side by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the Eai'th was white and red with them, if we cared to 'aave it so. And Paradise was full of pleasant shades and fruitful avenues. Well : what hinders us from covering as much of the world as we like with pleasant shade and pure blossom, and goodly fruit ? Who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corn, till they laugh and sing ? Who pre- vents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing the hills wnth frail- floretted snow, far away to the half lighted horizon of April, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with glow of clustered food ? But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and all the animals were gentle servants to us. Well : the world w ould yet be a place of peace if we were all peace- makers, and gentle service should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so long as we make sport of slay-ng bird and beast, so long as we choose to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make battle- field of our meadows instead of pasture — so long, truly, the Flanung Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharp;?r flame of our own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I considered the service which the flowers and trees, whicb 94 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. man was at first appointed to keep, were intended tc rendei to him in return for his care ; and the services they still ren- der to him, as far as he allows their influence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what infinite wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it is, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man — his friend and his teacher ! In the conditions which we have traced in its rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence ; — the characters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it easily — in all these it has been inanimate and passive ; but vegetation is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. The earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of slow crystal- line change ; but at its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange intermediate being ; which breathes, but has no voice ; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place ; passes through life without consciousness, to death without bitter- ness ; wears the beauty of youth, without its passion ; and declines to the weakness of age, without its regret. And in this mysteiy of intermediate being, entirely subor- dinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the un suffering creature, most of the plea- sures which we need from the external world are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds of pre- cious grace and teaching being united in this link between the Earth and Man : wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, and discipline ; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful means of life. First a carpet to make it soft for him ; then, a colored fantasy of embroidery thereon ; then, tall spreadijig of foliage to shade him from sim-heat, and shade also the fallen rain, that it may not dry PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 95 quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage : easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instru- ments (lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his tem- per) ; useless it had been, if harder ; useless, if less fibrous ; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leaf age falls away, to let the sun warm the earth ; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his ser\ice; cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling chaim ; and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fi-agility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects ; unerring uprightness, as of temple pil- lars, or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground ; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the transience of the sand ; crests basking in sunshine of the deseit, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave ; foliage far tossing in entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean — clothing with variegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity. Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beauti- ful, and good for food, and for building, and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affec- tion and admiration from us, become, in proj)ortion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right tem- per of mind and w^ay of lite ; so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is assured 96 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. ly wrong in both, who does not love them, if his life lias brought thorn m his way. It is clearly possible to do without them, for tlie great companionship of the. sea and sky are all that sailors need ; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn between dark stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees at all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a sorrow^ful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country," in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been the Bource of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the wordp " countryman, rustic, clown, paysan, villager," still signify a rude and untaught person, as opposed to the words "towns- man," and "citizen." We accept this usage of words, or tho evil which it signifies, somewhat too quietly ; as if it were quite necessary and natural that country-people should be rude, and townspeople gentle. Whereas I believe that tht'i lesult of each mode of life mriy, in some stages of the world's progress, be the exact reverse ; and that another use of words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may find ourselves saying: "Such and such a person is very gentle and kind— he is quite rustic; and such and such ano- ther person is very i-ude and ill-taught — he is quite urbane." At all evetits, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their good report through our evil ways of going on in tho world generally; — chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with each other. No field, in the middle ages, being safe from devastation, and every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled themselves in, making as few crosscountry roads as possible : while the men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the servants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agri- cultural pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the PRECIOUS Til OUGHTS, 97 monks, kept educated Europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena could have no power ; body and intellect being lost in the practice of war without purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. Men learned the dex- terity with sword and syllogism, which they mistook for edu- cation, within cloister and tilt-yard ; and looked on all the broad space of the world of God mainly as a place for exer cise of horses, or for growth of food. There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio, in which the armies meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses ; the tender red flowers tossing above the hel- mets, and glowing between the lowered lances. For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone hitherto for man between the tossing of helmet-crests ; and sometimes I can- not but think of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves in the warm spring-time, in vain for men ; and all along the dells of England her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase ; and by the sweet French rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only to show the flames of burning cities, on the horizon, through the tracery of. their stems ; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery ; and on their valley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn were washed with crim- son at sunset. And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, to show what kind of evidence existed respecting the possible influ- ence of country life on men ; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader w^ould perceive this to be a 5 98 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. grave question, more than most which we contend about, political or social, and might care to follow it out with me earnestly. The day will assuredly come when men will see that it is a grave question ; at which period, also, I doubt not, there will trise persons able to investigate it. THE INFLUENCE OF CUSTOM. Custom has a twofold operation : the one to deaden the frequency and force of repeated impressions, the other to endear the familiar object to the aiFections. Commonly, where the mind is vigorous, and the power of sensation very perfect, it has rather the last operation than the first ; with meaner minds, the first takes place in the higher degree, so that they are commonly characterized by a desire of excite- ment, and the want of the loving, fixed, theoretic power. But both take place in some degree with all men, so that as life advances, impressions of all kinds become less rapturous owing to their repetition. It is however beneficently ordained that repulsiveness shall be diminished by custom in a far greater degree than the sensation of beauty, so that the ana- tomist in a little time loses all sense of horror in the torn flesh and carious bone, while the sculptor ceases not to feel to tho close of his life, the deliciousness of every line of the out- ward frame. So then as in that with which we are made iimiliar, the repulsiveness is constantly diminishing, and such claims as it may be able to put forth on the affections are daily becoming stronger, while in what is submitted to us of new or strange, that which may be repulsive is felt in its full force, while no hold is as yet laid on the affections, there is a PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 93 very strong preference induced in most minds for that to which they are accustomed over that they know not, and this is strongest in those which are least open to sensations of positive beauty. But however far this operation may be carried, its utmost effect is but the deadening and approxi- nmting the sensations of beauty and ugliness. It never mixes ror crosses, nor in any way alters them; it has not the slight- est connection with nor power over their nature. By tasting two wines alternately, we may deaden our perception of their flavour ; nay, we may even do more than can ever be done in the case of sight, we may confound the two flavours toge- ther. But it will hardly be argued therefore that custom is the cause of either flavour. And so, though by habit we may deaden the effect of ugliness or beauty, it is not for that reason to be affirmed that habit is the cause of either sensa- tion. We may keep a skull beside us as long as we please, we may overcome its repulsiveness, we may render ourselves capable of perceiving many qualities of beauty about its lines, we may contemplate it for years together if we will, it and nothing else, but Ave shall not get ourselves to think as well of it as of a child's fair face. DEVEI.0PMENT. I believe an immense gain in the bodily health and happi- ness of the upper classes would follow on their steadily endea- vouring, however clumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily take in amusements, definitely service- able. It would be far better, for instance, that a gentleman ghonld mow his own fields than ride over other people's. Again, respecting degrees of possible refinement, I cannot 100 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. i yet speak positively, because no effort has yet been made to teach refined habits to persons of simple life. The idea of such refinement has been made to appeaf absurd, partly by the foolish ambition of vulgar persons in low life, but more by the worse than foolish assumption, acted on so often by modern advocates of improvement, that "education" means teaching Latin, or algebra, or music, 01 drawing, instead of developing or " drawing out " the human soul. It may not be the least necessary that a peasant should know algebra, or Greek, or drawing. But it may, perhaps, be both possible and expedient that he should be able to arrange his thoughts clearly, to speak his own language intel- ligibly, to discern between right and wrong, to govern his passions, and to receive such pleasures of ear or sight as his life may render accessible to him. I would not have him taught the science of music; but most assuredly I would have him taught to ping. I would not teach him the science of drawing; but certainly I would teach him to see; without J learning a single term of botany, he should know accurately the habits and uses of every leaf and flower in his fields; , and unencumbered by any theories of moral or political phi- J losophy, he should help his neighbour, and disdain a bribe. THE REAL USE OF SCIENCE AND ART. All effort in social improvement is paralyzed, because no one has been bold or clear-sighted enough to put and pi-ess home this radical question : " What is indeed the noblest tone and reach of life for men ; and how can the possibility of it be extended to the greatest numbers?" It is answered PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 10 1 broadly and rashly, that wealth is good ; that knowledge ia good ; that art is good ; that luxury is good. Whereas none of them are good in the abstract, but good only if rightly received. Nor have any steps whatever been yet securely taken, — nor otherwise than in the resultless rhapsody of moralists, — to ascertain what luxuries and what learning it is either kind to bestow, or wise to desire. This, however, at least we know, shown clearly by the history of all time, that the arts and sciences, ministei-ing to the pride of nations, have invariably hastened their ruin ; and this, also, without venturing to say that I know, I nevertheless firmly believe, that the same arts and sciences will tend as distinctly to exalt the strength and quicken the soul of every nation which employs them to increase the comfort of lowly life, and grace with happy intelligence the unambitious courses of honour- able toil. THE SYMBOL OF FEAR. I might devote half a volume to a description of the fan- tastic and incomprehensible arrangement of the rocks and their veins; but all that is necessary for the general reader to know or remember, is this broad fact of the undulation of tlieir whole substance. For there is something, it seems to me inexpressibly marvellous in this phenomenon, largely looked at. They have nothing of the look of dried earth about them, nothing petty or limited in the display of their bulk. Where they are, they seem to form the world ; no mere bank of a river here, or of a lane there peeping out among the hedges or forests: but from the lowest valley to the highest clouds, all is theirs — one adamantine dominion and ligid 102 PKECIOIJS THOUGHTS. duthority of rock. We yield ourselves to the impression of their eternal, unconquerable stubbornness of strength ; theii mass seems the least yielding, least to be softened, or in any wise dealt with by external force, of all earthly substance. And, behold, as we look farther into it, it is all touched and troubled, like waves by a summer breeze ; rippled, far more delicately than seas or lakes are rippled ; they only undulate along their surfaces — this rock trembles through its every fibie, like the chords of an Eolian harp — like the stillest air of spring with the echoes of a child's voice. Into the heart of all those great mountains, through every tossing of their boundless crests, and deep beneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange quivering of their substance. Other and weaker things seem to express their subjection to an Intinite power only by momentary terrors : as the weeds bow down befoi-e the feverish wind, and the sound of the going in the tops of the taller trees passes on before the clouds, and the fitful opening of pale spaces on the dark water as if some invisible hand were casting dust abroad upon it, gives warning of the anger that is to come, we may well imagine that there is indeed a fear passing upon the gi-ass, and leaves, and waters, at the presence of some great spirit commissioned to let the tempest loose; but the terror passes, and their sweet rest is perpetually restored to the pastures and the weaves. Not so to the mountains. They, which at first seem strengthened beyond the dread of any violence or change, are yet also ordained to bear upon them the symbol of a perpetual Fear : the tremor which fades from the soft lake and gliding river is sealed, to all eternity, upon the rock ; and while things that pass visibly from birth to death may sometimes forget their feebleness, the mountains are made to f)ossess a perpetual memorial of their infancy,— that infancy which the prophet saw in his vision : *'I beheld the earth. PKECIOTJS THOiriJH^S.; , 103 and lo, it was without form and void, and tlie heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they trembled ; and all the hills moved lightly ^ GRADATIOIT. There is a marked likeness between tbe virtue of man and the enlightenment of the globe he inhabits — the same dimi- nishing gradation in vigor up to the limits of their domains, the same essential separation from their contraries — the same twilight at the meeting of the two : a something wider belt than the line where the world rolls into night, that strange twilight of the virtues ; that dusky debateable land, wherein zeal becomes impatience, and temperance becomes severity, and justice becomes cruelty, and faith superstition, and each and all vanish into gloom. ^Nevertheless, with the greater number of them, though their dimness increases gradually, we may mark the moment of their sunset ; and, happily, may turn the shadow back by the way by which it had gone down : but for one, the line of the horizon is irregular and undefined; and this, too, the very equator and girdle of them all — Truth; that only one of which there are no degrees, but breaks and rents continually ; that pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pillar ; that golden and narrow line, which the very powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy and prudence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage overshadows with his shield, imagination covers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears. How difficult must the maintenance of that authority be, which, while it has to restrain the hostility of all the worst principles of man, has also to restrain the di» 104 wPKSCIOIjS .THOUGHTS. orders of his best — which is continually assaulted by the one and betiayed by the other, and which regards with the same fieverity the lightest and the boldest violations of its law ! LOVE AND TRUST. My dear friend and teacher, Lowell, right as he is in almost everything, is for once wrong in these lines, though with a noble wTongness : — " Disappointment's dry and bitter root, Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind." They are not so ; love and trust are the only mother-milk of any man's soul. So far as he is hated and mistrusted, his powers are destroyed. Do not think that with impunity you can follow the eyeless fool, and shout with the shouting char- latan ; and that the men you thrust aside with gibe and blow, are thus sneered and crushed into the best service they can do you. I have told you they will not serve you for pay. They cannot serve you for scorn. Even from Balaam, money- lover though he be, no useful prophecy is to be had for silver or gold. From Elisha, savior of life though he be, no saving of life — even of children's, who " knew no better," — is to be got by the cry, Go up, thou bald-head. No man can serve you either for purse or curse ; neither kind of pay will answer. No pay is, indeed, receivable by any true man ; but power is receivable by him, in the love and faith you give him. So far Qnly as you give him these can he serve you; that is the meaning of the question which his Master asks always, PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. lOl. '^ Bclievesl thou that I am able?" And from every one of His servants — to the end of time— if you give them the Caper iiaum measurf of faith, you shall have from them Capernaum measure of works, and no more. Do not think that I am irreverently comparing great and small things. The system of the world is entirely one; small things and great are alike part of one mighty whole. As the flower is gnawed by frost, so exerj human heart is gnawed by faithlessness. And as surely, — as irrevocably, — as the fruit-bud falls before the east wind, so fails the power of the kindest human heart, if you meet it with poison. INFIDELITY IN ENGLAND. The form which the infidelity of England, especially, has taken, is one hitherto unheard of in human history. No nation ever before declared boldly, by print and word of mouth, that its religion was good for show, but " would not work," Over and over again it has happened that nations have denied their gods, but they denied them bravely. The Greeks in their decline jested at their religion, and frittered it away in flatteries and fine arts ; the French refused theirs fiercely, tore down their altars and brake their carven images. The question about God with both these nations was still, even in their decline, fairly put, though falsely answered. " Either there is or is not a Supreme Ruler ; we consider of it, declare there is not, and proceed accordingly." But we English have put the matter in an entirely new light : " There is a Supreme Ruler, no question of it, only He cannot rule. His orders won't work. He will be quite satisfied with euphonious ana respectful repetition of them. Execution would be too dart 5* 106 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. geroiis under existing circumstances, which He certain!) never contemplated." THE NOBLENESS OP COLOUR. The fact is, we none of us enough appreciate the nobleness and sacredness of colour. Nothing is more common than to hear it spoken of as a subordinate beauty, — nay, even as the Here source of a sensual pleasure ; and w^e might almost believe that we were daily among men who *' Could strip, for aught the prospect yields To them, their verdure from the fields ; And take the radiance from the clouds With which the sun his setting- shrouds." But it is not so. Such expressions are used for the most part in thoughtlessness ; and if tlie spcik'jrs would only take the pains to imagine what the w^orld and their own existence would become, if the blue were taken from the sky, and the gold from the sunshine, and the verdure from the leaves, and the crunson from the blood which is the life of man, the flush from the cheek, the darkness from the eye, the radiance from the hair, — if they could but see for an instant, white human creatui-es living in a white world, — they would soon feel what tiiey owe to colour. The tact is, that, of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay colour, and sad colour, for colour cannot at once be good and gay. All good colour is in some degree pensive, the loveliest is melan choly, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are thostf which love cohuir the most. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. lO'i THE KAINBOW. In that heavenly circle which binds the statutes of colour upon the front of the sky, when it became the sign of the covenant of peace, the pure hues of divided light were sanc- tified to the human heart for ever; nor this, it would seem, by mere arbitrary appointment, but in consequence of tlio fore-ordained and marvellous constitution of those hues into a sevenfold, or, more strictly still, a threefold order, typical of the Divine nature itself. Observe also, the name Shem, or Splendour, given to that son of ISToah in whom this covenant with mankind was to be fulfilled, and see how that name was justified by every one of the Asiatic races which descended from him. iNot without meaning was the love of Israel to his chosen son expressed by the coat " of many colours ;" not without deep sense of the sacredness of that symbol of purity, did the lost daughter of David tear it from her breast : — " With sucli robes were the king's daughters that were vir- gins apparelled."* We know it to have been by Divine com- mand that the Israelite, rescued from servitude, veiled the tabernacle with its rain of purple and scarlet, while the under sunshine flashed through the fall of the colour from its tenons of ffold. BROTHERHOOD. Whether, indeed, derived from the quarterings of thg knights' shields, or from what other source, I know not ; but there is one magnificent attribute of the colouring Oi'^thc? late twelfth, the whole thirteenth, and the early fourt^icnth * 2 Samuel xiil 18. 108 PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. century, which I do not find definitely in any previous work^ nor afterwards in general art, though constantly, and neces« sarily, in that of great colourists, namely, the union of one colour with another by reciprocal interference : that is to say if a mass of red is to be set beside a mass of blue, a piece of the red will be carried into the blue, and a piece of the blue carried into the red ; sometimes in nearly equal portions, as in a shield divided into four quarters, of which the upper- most on one side will be of the same colour as the lowermost on the other ; sometimes in smaller fragments, but, in the periods above named, always definitely and grandly, though in a thousand various ways. And I call it a magnificent prin- ciple, for it is an eternal and universal one, not in art only, but in human life. It is the great principle of Brotherhood, not by equality, nor by likeness, but by giving and receiving ; the souls that are unlike, and the nations that are unlike, and the natures, that are unlike, being bound into one noble whole by each receiving something from, and of, the others' gifts and the others' glory. I have not space to follow out this thought, — it is of infinite extent and application, — but I note it for the reader's pursuit, because I have long believed, and the whole second volume of " Modern Painters " was written to prove, that in whatever has been made by the Deity exter- nally delightful to the human sense of beauty, there is some type of God's nature or of God's laws ; nor are any of His laws, in one sense, greater than the appointment that the most lovely and perfect unity shall be obtained by the taking of one nature into another. I trespass upon too high ground ; and yet I cannot fully show the reader the extent of this law, but by leading him thus far. And it is just because it is so vast and so awful a law, that it has rule over the smallest things; and there is not a vein of colour on the lightest leaf \\'hich the spring winds are at this moment unfolding in the PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. ]0& fields around ns, but it is an illustration of an ordainment to which the earth and its creatures owe their continuance, auJ tlieir liedemption. THE HARVEST IS RIPE. "Put ye m the sickle, for the liarvest is ripe." The word is spoken in our ears continually to other reapers than the angels — to the busy skeletons that never tire for stooping. When the measure of iniquity is full, and it seems that ano- ther day might bring repentance and redemption, — " Put ye in the sickle." When the young life has been Avasted all away, and the eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin, and faint resolution lising in the heart for nobler things, — ■ " Put ye in the dckle." When the roughest blows of fortune have been borne long and bravely, and the hand is just stretched to grasp its goal, — " Put ye in the sickle." And when there are but a few in the midst of a nation, to save it, or to teach, or to cherish ; and all its life is bound up in those few golden ears, — " Put ye in the sickle, pale reapers, and pour hemlock for your feast of harvest home." MISSING THE MARK. Perhaps, some day, people will again begin to remember the force of the old Greek word for sin ; and to learn that all sin is in essence — " Missing the mark ;" losing sight or con- sciousness of heaven ; and that this loss may be various in its guilt : it cannot be judged by us. It is this of which the 110 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. words are spoken so sternly, " Judge not ;" whicli words people always quote, I observe, when they are called upon to " do judgment and justice." For it is truly a pleasant thing to condemn men for their wanderings ; but it is a bitter thing to acknowledge a truth, or to take any bold share in working out an equity. So that the habitual modern practi^ cal application of the precept, "Judge not," is to avoid the trouble of pronouncing verdict, by taking, of any matter, the pleasantest malicious view which first comes to hand ; and to obtain licence for our own convenient iniquities, by being indulgent to those of others. These two methods of obedience being just the two which are most directly opposite to the law of mercy and truth. " Bind them about thy neck." I said, but now, that of an evil tree men never gathered good fruit. LIFE ANT> LOVE. I must not enter here into the solemn and far-reaching fields of thought which it would be necessary to traverse, in order to detect the mystical connection between life and love set forth in that Hebrew system of sacrificial religion to which we may trace most of the received ideas respecting sanctity, consecration, and purification. This only I must hint to the reader — for his own following out — that if he earnestly exa- mines the original sources from which our heedless popular language respecting the washing away of sins has been bor- rowed, he will find that the fountain in which sins are indeed to be washed avvay, is that of love, not of agony. But, without approaching the presence of this deeper mean- mg of the sign, the reader may rest satisfied with the connec PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. Ill tion given him directly in written words, between the cloud and its bow. The cloud, or firmament, as we have seen, sig- nifies the ministration of the heavens to man. That nnnistra- tion may be in judgment or mercy — in the lightning, or the dew. But the bow, or colour, of the cloud, signifies always mercy, the sparing of life ; such ministry of the heaven, as shall feed and prolong life. And as the sunlight, undivided, is the type of the wisdom and righteousness of God, so divided, and softened into colour by means of the firmamental ministry, fitted to every need of man, as to every delight, and becoming one chief source of human beauty, by being made part of the flesh of man ; — thus divided, the sunlight is the type of the wisdom of God, becoming sanctification and redemption. Various in w^ork-^various in beauty — various in power. Colour is, therefore, in brief terms, the type of love. Henco it is especially connected with the blossoming of the earth ; and again, with its fruits ; also, with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with the morning and evening of the day, in order to show the waiting of love about the birth and death of man. SYMBOLS OF TJRUTH. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling 13 capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the othtr, raise what is feeble into impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it ; and the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by association and 112 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to it, The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual conception, the freedom from any strange or offen« sive particuUii'ity, and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration for a picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would otherwise fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of emotion ia joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed represent a fact ! It matters little whether the fact be well or ill told ; the moment we believe the picture to be true, we complain little of its being ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, whether the child, with its coloured print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the grouping of the three figures in Raphael's " Telling of the Dreams;" and whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not always this childish power- -I speak advisedly, this power — a noble one, and possessed more in youth than at any period of after life, but always, I think, restored in a measure by religion — of raising into sublimity and reality the rudest symbol which is given to it of accre« dited truth. STRIVING AFTER PERFECTION. The modern English mind ha*^ this much in common with that of the Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character in the abstract, but becomes ignoble PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. 113 wnoii it causes us to forget the relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness of the lower nature to the imperi'(»ction of the higher ; not considering that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be prefer- able to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind, and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man, those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those which are, in their nature, liable to more f^lults and shortcomings. For the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it; and it i§ a law of this universe, that the best things shall be seldomest seen m their best form. The wild grass grows well and strongly, one year with another ; but the wheat is, according to the greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And therefoi-e, while in all things that we see, or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are never- theless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplish- ment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress ; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty ; not to p-efer mean victory to honourable defeat ; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men, we are to take care how we check by severe requirement or narrow caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue ; and, still more, how we with- hold" our admiration from ^reat excellences, because they are mingled with rough faults. 114 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. THE PINES AND THE SWISS. Amidst the delicate delight of cottage and field, the young pines stajid delicatest of all, scented as with frankincense, their slender stems straight as arrows, and crystal white, look- ing as if they w^ould break with a touch, like needles ; and their arabesques of dark leaf pierced through and through, by the pale radiance of clear sky, opal blue, where they fol- low each other along the soft hill-ridges, up and down. I have watched them in such scenes with the deeper interest, because of all trees they have hitherto had most influence on human character. The effect of other vegetation, however great, has been divided by mingled species ; elm and oak in England, poplar in France, birch in Scotland, olive in Italy and Spain, share their power with inferior trees, and with all the changing charm of successive agriculture. But the tre- mendous unity of the pine absorbs and moulds the life of a race. The pine shadows rest upon a nation. The Northern peoples, century after century, lived under one or other of the two great powers of the Pine and the Sea, both infinite. They dvrelt amidst the forests, as they wandered on the waves, and saw no end, nor any other horizon ; — still the dark green trees, or the dark green waters, jagged the dawn with their fringe, or their foam. And whatever elements of imagi- nation, or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice, w^ere brought down by the Norwegian ^nd the Goth against the dissoluteness or degradation of the South of Europe, were taught them under the green roofs and wild penetralia of the pine. I do not attempt, delightful as the task would be, to trace this influence (mixed with superstition) in Scandinavia, or North Germany ; but let us at least note it in the instance which we speak of so frequently, yet so seldom take to heart. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 115 There has been much dispute respecting the character of the Swiss, arising out of the difficulty which other nations had to undei stand their simplicity. They were assumed to be either romantically virtuous, or basely mercenary, when in fact they were neither heroic nor base, but were true-hearted men, stub- born with more than any recorded stubbornness ; not much regarding their lives, yet not casting them causelessly away ; forming no high ideal of improvement, but never relaxing their grasp of a good they had once gained ; devoid of all romantic sentiment, yet loving with a practical and patient love that neither wearied nor forsook ; little given to enthu- siasm in religion, but maintaining their faith in a purity which no worldliness deadened and no hypocrisy soiled ; neither chivalrously generous nor pathetically humane, yet never pursuing their defeated enemies, nor suffering their poor to perish : proud, yet not allowing their pride to prick them into unwary or unworthy quarrel; avaricious, yet contentedly rendering to their neighbour his due ; dull, but clear-sighted to all the principles of justice ; and patient, without ever allowing delay to be prolonged by sloth, or forbearance by fear. This temper of Swiss mind, while it animated the whole confederacy, was rooted chiefly- in one small district which formed the heart of their country, yet lay not among its high- est mountains. Beneath the glaciers of Zermatt and Evolena, and on the scorching slopes of the Yalais, the peasants remained in an aimless torpor, unheard of but as the obedient vassals of the great Bishopric of Sion. But where the lower ledges of calcareous rock were broken by the inlets of tho Lake Lucerne, and bracing winds penetrating from the north forbade the growth of the vine, compelling the peasantry to adopt an entirely pastoral life, was reared another race of men. Their narrow domain should be marked by a small I ] 1 3 PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. green spot on every map of Europe. It is about forty miles from east to west ; as many from north to south : yet on that shred of rugged ground, while every kingdom of the world around it rose or fell in fatal change, and every multitudinous race mingled or wasted itself in various dispersion and decline, the simple shepherd dynasty remained changeless. There is no record of their origin. They are neither Goths, Burgun- dians, Romans, nor Germans. They have been for ever Ileb vetii, and for ever free. Voluntarily placing themselves under the protection of the House of Ilapsburg, they acknowledged its supremacy, but resisted its oppression ; and rose against the unjust governors it appointed over them, not to gain, l)ut to redeem their liberties. Victorious in the struggle by the Lake of Egeri, they stood the foremost standard-bearers among the nations of Europe in the cause of loyalty and life — loyalty in its highest sense, to the laws of God's helpful justice, and of man's faithful and brotherly forti* tude. PEECIPICES. Precipices are among the most impressive as well as the most really dangerous of mountain ranges ; in many sj^ots inaccessible with safety either from below or from above ; daik in colour, robed with everlasting mourning, for ever tottering like a great fortress shaken by war, fearful as much in their weakness as in their strength, and yet gathered after every fall into darker frowns and unhumiliated threatening; for ever incapable of comfort or of healing from herb or flower, nourishing no root in their crevices, touched by no liue of life on buttress or ledge, but, to the utmost, desolate ' PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 117 knowing no shaking of leaves in the wind, nor of grass beside the stream, — no motion but their own mortal shivering, the deathful crumbling of atom from atom in tlieir corrupting stones ; knowing no sound of living voice or living tread cheered neither by the kid's bleat nor the marmot's cry ; haunted only by uninterpreted echoes from far off, wandering hither and thither among their walls, unable to escape, and by the hiss of angry torrents, and sometimes the shriek of a bird that flits near the face of them, and sweeps frightened back from under their shadow into the gulf of air: and, some- times, when the echo has fainted, and the wind has carried fhe sound of the torrent awa}^ and the bird has vanished, and the mouldering stones are still for a little time, — a brown moth, opening and shutthig its wings upon a grain of dust, may be the only thing that moves, or feels, in all the waste of weary precipice, darkening five thousand feet of the blue depth of heaven. It will not be thought that there is nothing in a scene such as this deserving our contemplation, or capable of conveying useful lessons, if it were fitly rendered by art. THE USE OF PICTURES. We should use pictures not as authorities, but as comments on nature, just as we use divines, not as authorities, but as comments on the Bible. Constable, in his dread of saint-wor- ship, excommunicates himself from all benefit of the Church, and de[)rives himself of much instruction from the Scripture to which he holds, because he will not accept aid in the read- ing of it from the leai-ning of other men. Sir George Beau- mont, on the contrary, furnishes, in the anecdotes given o/ 118 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. him. in Constable's life, a melancholy mstance of the degi-ads tion into which the human mind may fall, when it suffer! human works to interfere between it and its Master. Tl recommendini^ the colour of an old Cremona fiddle for t] prevailing tone of everything, and the vapid inquiry of the conventionalist, "Where do you put your brown tree?" show a prostration of intellect so laughable and lamentable, that they are at once, on all, and to all, students of the gallery, a satire and a warning. Art so followed is the most servile indolence in which life can be wasted. There are then two dangerous extremes to be shunned, — forgetfulness of the Scripture, and scorn of the divine — slavery on the one hand, free-thinking on the other. The mean is nearly as difficult to determine or keep in art as in religion, but the great dan- ger is on the side of superstition. He who walks humbly v/ith Nature will seldom be in danger of losing sight of Art. He will commonly find in all that is truly great of man's works, something of their original, for which he will regard them with gratitude, and sometimes follow them with respect ; while he who takes Art for his authority may entirely lose sight of all that it interprets, and sink at once into the sin of an idolater, and the degradation of a slave. SANCTIFICATION". All the divisions of humanity are noble or brutal, immortal or mortal, according to the degree of their sanctification ; and there is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine when it is once given to God, and no part of him which is not mortal by the second death, and brutal before the first, when it is withdrawn from God For to what shall we trusli PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. ' K9 for our distinction from the beasts tliat perish ? To our higher intellect ? — yet are we not bidden to be wise as the serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant ? — or to our affections ? nay ; these are more shared by the lower animals than our intelligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave of his beloved, and leaves it, — a dog had stayed. Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love ; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it, — but in the dedica- tion of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day. HOW TO LIVE. It surely is a subject for serious thought, whether it might not be better for many of us, if, on attaining a certain posi- tion in life, we determined, with God's permission, to choose a home in which to live and die, — a home not to be increased by adding stone to stone and field to field, but which, being enough for all our wishes at that period, we should resolve to be satisfied with for ever^ Consider this ; and also, whether we ought not to be more in the habit of seeking honour from our descendants than our ancestors ; thinking it better to be nobly remembered than nobly born ; and striv- ing so to live, that our sons, and our sons' sons, for ages to come, might still lead their children reverently to the doors out of which we had been cariied to the grave, saying, " Look : This was his house : This was his chamber." 120 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. man's nature. Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, tlat lie lias no spiritual nature ; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual — coherently and irrevocably so ; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other. SELF- GOVERNMENT. There are more people who can forget themselves than govern themselves. CANDID SEEING. Some years ago, as I was talking of the curvilinear forms in a piece of rock to one of our academicians, he said to me, in a somewhat despondent accent, " If you look for curves, you will see curves ; if you look for angles, you will see angles." The saying appeared to me an infinitely sad one. It was the utterance of an experienced man ; and in many ways true, for one of the most singular gifts, or, if abused, most singular weaknesses, of the human mind is its power of per suading itself to see whatever it chooses ; — a great gift, if directed to the discernment of the things needful and perti- nent to its own work and being; a great weakness, if directed to the discovery of things profitless or discouraging. In all PEECIOTJS THOUGHTS. 121 things throughout the worldj the rren who look for the crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look for the straight will see the straight. But yet the saying was a nota- bly sad one ; for it came of the conviction in the speaker's mind that there was in reality no crooked and no straight ; that all so-called discernment was fancy, and that men might, with equal rectitude of judgment, and good-deserving of their fellow-men, perceive and paint whatever was convenient to them. Whereas things may always be seen truly by candid people, though never completely. No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing ; but we may see more and more of it the longer we look. Every individual temper will see some- thing different in it : but supposing the tempers honest, all the differences are there. Every advance in our acuteness of ])erception will show us something new ; but the old and first discerned thing will still be there, not falsified, only modified ^ and enriched by the new perceptions, becoming continually more beautiful in its harmony with them and more approved as a part of the Infinite truth. INTEMPERANCE. Men are held intemperate (axoXafTroj) only when their desires overcome or prevent the action of their reason, and they are indeed intemperate in the exact degree in which such prevention or interference takes place, and so are actu- ally axoXaCroi, in many instances, and with respect to many resolves, which lower not the world's estimation of their tem- perance. But when it is palpably evident that the reason cannot have erred, but that its voice has been deadened or 6 i22 PRECIOUS THOUGnTS. disobeyed, and that the reasonable creature has been dragged dead I'ound the w.-dls ui his own citadel by mere passion and impulse, — then, and tlien only, men are of all held intempe- rate. And this is evidently the case with respect to inordinate indulgence in pleasures of touch ami taste, for these, being destructive in their continuance not only of all other pleasures, but of the very sensibilities by which they themselves are received, and as this penalty is actually known and experi- enced by those indulging in them, so that the reason cannot but pronounce right respecting their perilousness, there is no palliation of the wrong choice ; and the man, as utterly inca- pable of will, is called intemperate, or dxoXaffros. It would be well if the reader would for himself follow out this subject, which it would be irrelevant here to pursue farther, observing how a certain degree of intemperance is suspected and attributed to men with respect to highei impulses ; as, for instance, in the case of anger^ or any other passion criminally indulged, and yet is not so attributed, as in the case of sensual pleasures ; because in anger the reason is supposed not to have had time to operate, and to be itself affected by the presence of the passion, which seizes the man involuntarily and before he is aware ; whereas, in the case of the sensual pleasures, the act is deliberate, and determined on beforehand, in direct defiance of reason. Nevertheless, if no precaution be taken against immoderate anger, and the passions gain upon the man, so as to be evidently wilful and unrestrained, and admitted contrary to all reason, we begm T.o look upon him as, in the real sense of the word, intempe- rate, or axoXatfTo^, and assign to -him, in consequence, his place among the beasts, as definitely as if he had yielded to the pleasurable temptations of touch or taste. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 123 THE 19th psalm. Take up the 1 9th Psalm and look at it verse by verse. Perhaps to my younger readers one word may be permitted respecting their Bible-reading in general. The Bible is, in- deed, a deep book, when depth is required ; that is to say, for deep people ! But it is not intended, particularly, for profound persons ; on the contrary, much more for shallow and simple persons. And therefore the first, and generally the main and leading idea of the Bible, is on its surface, written in plainest possible Greek, Hebrew, or English, need- ing no penetration, nor an ipliti cation, needing nothing but what we all might give — attention. But this, which is in every one's power, and is the only thing that God wants, is just the last thing any one will give Him. We are delighted to ramble away into day-dreams, to repeat pet verses from other places, suggested by chance words ; to snap at an expression which suits our own particu- lar views, or to dig up a meaning from under a verse, which we should be amiably grieved to think any human being had been so happy as to find before. But the plain, intended, immediate,* fruitful meaning, which every one ought to find always, and especially that which depends on our seeing the relation of the verse to those near it, and getting the force of the whole passage, in due relation — this sort of significance we do not look for ; — it being, truly, not to be discovered, unless we really attend to what is said, instead of to our own feelings. It is unfortunate also, but very certain, that in order to attend to what is said, we must go through the irksomeness of knowing the meaning of the words. And the first thing that children should be taught about their Bibles is, to distin- 1?4 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. guish clearly between words that they understand and words that they do not ; and to put aside the words they do not understand, and verses connected' with them, to be asked about, or for a future time ; and never to think they are reading the Bible when they are merely repeating phrases of an unknown tongue. Let us try, by way of example, this 19th Psalm, and see what plain meaning is uppermost in it. " The heavens declare the glory of God." What are the heavens ? The w^ord occurring in the Lord's Prayer, and the thing expressed being what a child may, with some advantage, be led to look at, it might be supposed among a schoolmaster's first duties to explain this word clearly. Now there can be no question that in the minds of the eacred writers, it stood naturally for the entire system of cloud, and of space beyond it, conceived by them as a vault set with stars. But there can, also, be no question, as we saw in previous inquiry, that the firmament, which is said to have been " called '' heaven, at the creation, expresses, in all definite use of the word, the system of clouds, as spi-eading the power of the water over the earth ; hence the constant expressions dew of heaven, rain of heaven, etc., wh^re heaven is used iji the singular ; while the " heavens," when used plu- rally, and especially when in distinction as here, from the word " firmament," remained expressive of the starry space beyond. But whatever different nations had called them, at least I would make it clear to the child's mind that in this 19th Psalm, their whole power being intended, the two words are used which express it : the Heavens, for the great vault or void, with all its planets, and stars, and ceaseless march of orbs innumerable ; and the Firmament, for the ordinance of the clouds. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 125 Those heavens, then, declare " the glory of God ;" that is, (he light of God, the eternal glory, stable and changeless. As their orbs fiul not, but pursue their course for ever to give light ui3on the earth — so God's glory surrounds man for ever — changeless, in its fulness insupportable — infinite. " And the firmament showeth his handiworhP The clouds, prepared by the hands of God for the help of man, varied in their ministration — veiling the inner splendour — show, not His eternal glory, but His daily handiwork. So He dealt with Moses. I will cover thee " with my hand " as I pass by. Compare Job xxxvi. 24. " Remember that thou magnify His work, which men be- hold. Every man may see it." Not so the glory — that only in part ; the courses of these stars are to be seen impei-fectly, and but by a few. But this firmament, every man may see it ; man may behold it " afar off." " Behold, God is great, and we know him not. For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof." "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. They have no speech nor language, y^ without these their voice is heard. Their rule is gone out throughout the earth, and their words to the end of the world." Note that. Their rule throughout the earth, whether inhabited or not — their law of right is thereon ; but their words, spoken to human souls, to the end of the inhabited world. " In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun," etc. Literally, a tabernacle, or curtained tent, with its veil and its hangings ; also of the colours of His desert tabernacle — blue, and purple, and scarlet. Thus far the Psalm describes the manner of this great hea« ven's message. 126 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. Thenceforward, it comes to the matter of it. Observe, you liave the two divisions of tlie dechiration The heavens (compare Psalm viii.) declare the eternal glory of God before men, and the firmjiment the daily mercy of God towards men. And the eternal glory is in this — that the law of the Lord is perfect, and His testimony sure, and His statutes right. And the daily mercy in tliis — that the commandment of the Lord is pure, and His fear is clean, and His judgments true and righteous. There aie three oppositions : — Between law and commandment. Between testimony and fear. Between statute and judgment. L Between law and commandment. The law is fixed and everlasting ; uttered once, abiding for ever, as the sun, it may not be moved. It is " perfect, converting the soul :" the whole question about the soul being, whether it has been turned from darkness to light, acknowledged this law or not, — whether it is godly or un- godly ? But the commandment is given momentarily to each man, according to the need. It does not convert : it guides. It does not concern the entire purpose of the soul ; but it enlightens the eyes, respecting a special act. The law is, "Do this always;" the commandment, "Do thou this now:'''' often mysterious enough, and through the cloud ; chilling, and with strange rain of tears; yet always pure (the law con- verting, but the commandment cleansing) : a rod not for guiding merely, but for strengthening, and tasting honey with. " Look how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey." II. Between testimony and fear. The testimony is everlasting: the true promise of salvation. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 12l Bright as the sun beyond all the earth-cloud, it makes wise the simple; all wisdom being assured in perceiving it and trusting it ; all wisdom brought to nothing which does not perceive it. But the fear of God is taught through special encourage ment and special withdrawal of it, according to each man' need — by the earth-cloud — smile and frown alternately : it also, as the commandment, is clean, purging and casting out all other fear, it only remaining for ever. III. Between statute and judgment. The statutes are the appointments of the Eternal justice : fixed and bright, and constant as the stars ; equal and balanced as their courses. They " are right, rejoicing the heart." But the judgments are special judgments of given acts of men. '* True," that is to say, fulfilling the warning or promise given to each man ; " righteous altogether," that is, done or executed in truth and righteousness. The statute is right, in appointment. The judgment righteous altogether, in appointment and fulfilment ; — yet not always rejoicing the heart. Then, respecting all these, comes the expression of pas- sionate desire, and of joy ; that also divided with respect to each. The glory of God, eternal in the Heavens, is future, " to be desired more than gold, than much fine gold " — trea- sure in the heavens that faileth not. But the present guid- ance and teaching of God are on earth ; they are now pos- sessed, sweeter than all earthly food — " sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them" (the law and the testimony) "is Thy servant warned" — warned of the ways of death and life. " And in keeping them " (the commandments and the judg- ments) " there is great reward ;" pain now and bitterness of tears, but reward unspeakable. 128 PRECIOUS THOUGflTS. Thus far the Psalm has been descriptive and interpreting It ends in prayer. " Who can understand his errors ?" (wanderings from the perfect law.) " Cleanse thou me from secret faults ; from all that I have done against Thy will, and far from Thy way in the darkness. Keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins " (sins against the commandment) " against Thy will when it is seen and direct, pleading with heart and con- science. So shall I be undefiled and innocent from the great transgression, — the transgression that crucifies afresh. "Let the words of my mouth (for I have set them to declare Thy law), and the meditation of my heart (for 1 have set it to keep Thy commandments), be acceptable in Thy sight, whose glory is my strength, and whose work my redemption ; my Strength and my Redeemer." SEEKING FOR FACTS. He who habituates himself, in his daily life, to seek for the stern facts in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts again brought before him by the involuntary imaginative power in their noblest associations; and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies, will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him in his dreams. Thus if, in reading history for the purpose of painting from it, the painter severely geeks for the accurate circumstances of every event ; as, for Instance, determining the exact spot of ground on which his hero fell, the way he must have been looking at the moment, the height the sun was at (by the hour of the day), and the way in which the light must have fallen upo.n his face, the actual number and individuality of the persons by him at the PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. 12fl moment, and such other veritable details, ascertaining and dVelling upon them without the slightest care for any desira bleness or poetic propriety in them, but for their own truth's sake ; then these truths will afterwards rise up and form the body of his imaginative vision, perfected and united as his inspiration may teach. But if, in reading the history, he does not regard these facts, but thinks only how it might all most prettily, and properly, and impressively have happened, then there is nothing but prettiness and propriety to form the body of his future imagination, and his whole ideal becomes false. So, in the higher or expressive part of the work, the whole virtue of it depends on his being able to quit his own person- ality, and enter successively into the hearts and thoughts of each person ; and in all this he is still passive : in gathering the truth he is passive, not determining what the truth to be gathered shall be ; and in the after vision he is passive, not determining, but as his dreams will have it, what the truth to be represented shall be ; only according to his own nobleness is his power of entering into the hearts of noble persons, and the general character of his dream of them. JUSTICE TO THE LIVING. It would be well for us if we could quit our habit of think- ing that what we say of tlie dead is of more weight than what we say of the living. The dead either know nothing, or know enough to despise both us and our insults, or adu- lation. " Well, but," it is answered, " there will always be this weakness in our human natui-e ; we shall for ever, in spite of reason, take pleasure in doing funereal honour to the corpse, 130 PRECIOUS TIIOUGnTS. and writing sacredness to memory upon marble.' Then, ii you are to do this, — if you are to put off your kindness until death, — why not, in God's name, put off also your enmity? and if you choose to write your lingering affections upon stones, wreak also your delayed anger upon clay. This would be just, and, in the last case, little as you think it, generous. The true baseness is in the bitter reverse — the strange iniquity of our folly. Is a man to be praised, honored, pleaded for? It might do harm to piaise or plead for him while he lived. Wait till he is dead. Is he to be maligned, dishonored, and discomforted ? See that you do it while he is alive. It would be too ungenerous to slander him when he could feel malice 110 more ; too contemptible to try to hurt him when he was past anguish. Make yourselves busy^ ye unjust, ye lying, ye hungry for pain ! Death is near. This is your hour, and the power of darkness. Wait, ye just, ye merciful, ye faithful in love I Wait but for a little while, for this is not your rest. THE defe:n^ders of the dead. " Is it not, indeed, ungenerous to speak ill of the dead, since they cannot defend themselves ? " Why should they ? If you speak ill of them falsely, it con. cerns you, not them. Those lies of thine will " hurt a man as thou art," assuredly they will hurt thyself; but that clay, or the delivered soul of it, in no wise. Ajacean shield, seven- folded, never stayed lance-thrust as that turf will, with daisies pied. What you say of those quiet ones is wholly and utterly the world's affair and yours. The lie will, indeed, cost its proper price, and work its appointed work; you may ruin living myriads by it, — you may stop the progress uf cen- PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 131 turiesbyit, — you may have to pay your own soul for it, — but as for ruffling one comer of the folded shroud by it, think it not. The dead have none to defend them! Nay, they have two defenders, strong enough for the need — God, and the worm. EIGHT GENERALIZATIOK. To see in all mountains nothing but similar heaps of eartu , in all rocks, nothing but similar concretions of solid niatter ; in all trees, nothing but similar accumulations of leaves, is no sign of high feeling or extended thought. The more we knovv^, and the more we feel, the more we sef)arate ; we sepa- rate to obtain a more perfect unity. Stones, in the thoughts of the peasant, lie as they do on his field, one is like another, and there is no connexion between any of them. The geolo- gist distinguishes, and in distinguishing connects them. Each becomes different from its fellow, but in difiering from, assumes a relation to its fellow ; they are no more each the repetition of the other, — they are parts of a system, and each implies and is connected with the existence of the rest. That generalization then is right, true, and noble, which is based on the knowledge of the distinctions and observance of the relations of individual kinds. That generalization is wrong, false, and contemptible, which is based on ignorance of the one, and disturbance of the other. It is indeed no general- ization, but confusion and chaos ; it is the generalization of a defeated army into indistinguishable impotence — the general- ization of the elements of a dead carcass into dust. 132 PEECiOUS THOtTGHTS. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD. The common plea that anything does to " exercist. the mind upon," is an utterly false one. The human soul, in youth, is not a machine of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or brickdust near at hand ; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, and oiled serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive at twenty-five years old or thirty, express from the Strait Gate, on the ]N'arrow Road. The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edifica- tion, instruction, I use the words with their weight in them ; iQtaking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes, and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with des- tinies, — not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the furnace, and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it ; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God's presence, and to bring the heavenly colours back to him — at least in this world. MAKING A RIGHT CHOICE. A single knot of ^quartz occurring in a flak6 of slate at the crest of the ridge may alter the entire destinies of the moun- tain form. It may turn the little rivulet of water to the right or left, and that little turn will be to the future direction of the gathering stream what the touch of a finger oa the barrel of a rifle would be to the direction of a bullet. Each succeeding year increases the importance of ever^ ^eter PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. J 33 mined form, and arranges in masses yet more and more bar- monious, the promontories shaped by the sweeping of the eternal waterfalls. The importance of the results thus obtained by the slights est change of direction in the infant streamlets, furnishes an interesting type of the formation of human characters by habit. Every one of those notable ravines and crags is the expression, not of any sudden violence done to the mountain, but of its little habits^ persisted in continually. It was created with one ruling instinct ; but its destiny depended nevertheless, for effective result, on the direction of the small and all but invisible tricklings of water, in which the first shower of rain found its way down its sides. The feeblest, most insensible oozings of the drops of dew among its dust were in reality arbiters of its eternal form; commissioned, with a touch more tender than that of a child's finger, — as silent and slight as the fall of a half-checked tear on a maiden's cheek, — to fix for ever the forms of peak and preci- pice, and hew those leagues of lifted granite into the shapes that were to divide the earth and its kingdoms. Once the little stone evaded, — once the dim furrow traced, — and the peak was for ever invested with its majesty, the ravine for ever doomed to its degradation. Thenceforward, day by day, the subtle habit gained in power ; the evaded stone was left with wider basement ; the chosen furrow deepened with swifter-sliding wave ; repentance and arrest were alike impos- sible, and^hour after hour saw written in larger and rockier characters upon the sky, the history of the choice that had been directed by a drop of rain, and of the balance that had been turned by a grain of sand. 184 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. GOOD TEACHING. If we have the power of teaching the right to anybody, we should teach them the right; if we have the power of showing them the best thing, we should show them the best thing ; there will always, I fear, be enough want of teaching and enough bad teaching, to bring out very curious erratical results if we want them. So, if we are to teach at all, let us teach the right thing, and ever the right thing. There are many attractive qualities inconsistent with rightness ; — do not let us teach them, — let us be content to waive them. There are attractive qualities in Burns, and atti-active qualities in Dickens, which neither of those writers would have possessed if the one had been educated, and the other had been study- ing higher nature than that of cockney London ; but those attractive qualities are not such as we should seek in a school of literature. If we want to teach young men a good man- ner of writing, we should teach it from Shakspeare, — not from Burns ; from Walter Scott, — and not from Dickens. j SERIOUSNESS AND LEVITY. There is no essential reason, because we live after the fatal seventeenth century, that we should never again be able to confess interest in sculpture, or see brightness in embroidery ; nor, because now we choose to make the night deadly with our pleasures, and the day with our labours, prolonging the dance till dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we should never again learn how rightly to employ the saci-ed trusts of strength, beauty, and time. Whatever external chaim attaches itsel/ to tie past, would then be seen in proper subordination to the PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 135 brightness of present life ; and the elements of romance would exist, in the earlier ages, only in the attraction which must generally belong to whatever is unfamiliar ; in the reve- rence which a noble nation always pays to its ancestors ; and in the enchanted light which races, like individuals, must perceive in looking back to the days of their childhood. Again : the peculiar levity with which natural scenery is regarded by a large number of modern minds cannot be con- sidered as entirely characteristic of the age, inasmuch as it never can belong to its greatest intellects. Men of any high mental power must be serious, whether in ancient or modern days : a certain degree of reverence for fair scenery is found in all our great writers without exception, — even the one who has made us laugh oftenest, taking us to the valley of Cha- mouni, and to the sea beach, there to give peace after sufter- ing, and change revenge into pity. It is only the dull, the uneducated, or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the hill sides ; and levity, as a ruling character, cannot be ascribed to the whole nation, but only to its holiday-making apprentices, and its House of Commons. THE ALPINE PEASANT. A slight incident which happened to myself, is singularly illustrative of the religious character of the Alpine peasant when under favourable circumstances of teaching. I was coming down one evening from the Rochers de Naye, above Montreux, having been at work among the limestone rocks, where I could get no water, and both weary and thirsty. Coming to a spring at a turn of the path, conducted, as usual, by the herdsmen into a hollowed pine-trunk, I stooped to it 136 PEECIOFS THOUGHTS. and drank deeply: as I raised my head, drawing breath heavily, some one behind me said, "Celui qui boira de cette eaii-ci, aura encore soif." I tm'ned, not understanding for the moment what was meant ; and saw one of the hill- peasants, probably returning to his chalet from the market, place at Yevay or Villeneuve. ^s I looked at him with an micomprehending expression, he went on with the verse : — " Mais celui qui boira de I'eau que je lui donnerai, n'aura jamais soif." I doubt if this would have been thought of, or said, by even the most intelligent lowland peasant. The thought might have occurred to him, but the frankness of address, and expectation of being at once understood without a word of preparative explanation, as if the language of the Bible were familiar to all men, mark, I think, the mountaineer. TOWEES OF EOCK. I can hardly conceive any one standing face to face with one of these tow^ers of central rock, and yet not also asking himself. Is this indeed the actual first work of the Divine Master on which I gaze ? Was the great precipice shaped by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust ? Were its clefts and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the letters were on the Tables of the Law, and was it thus left to bear its eternal testimony to His beneficence among these clouds of heaven ? Or is it the descendant of a long race of moun- tains, existing under appointed laws of birth and endurance, death and decrepitude? There can be no doubt as to the answer. The rock itself answers audibly by the murmur of some falling stone oi PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. Id) rending pinnacle. It is not as it was once. Those waste leagues around its feet are loaded with the wrecks of what it was. On these, perljaps, of all mountains, the characters of decay are written most clearly ; around these are spread most gloomily the memorials of their pride, and the signs of their humiliation. " What then were they once ?" The only answer is yet again, — " Behold the cloud." Their form, as far as human vision can trace it, is one of eternal decay, No retrospection can raise them out of their ruins, or withdraw them beyond the Liw of their perpetual fate. Existing science may be challenged to form, with the faintest colour of probability, any conception of the original aspect of a crystalline mountain : it cannot be followed in its elevation, nor traced in its connection with its fellows. No eyes ever "saw its substance, yet being imperfect;" its his- tory is a monotone of endurance and destruction : all that we can certainly know of it, is that it was once greater than it is now, and it only gathers vastness, and still gathers, as it fades into the abyss of the unknown. Yet this one piece of certain evidence ought not to be altogether unpursued ; and while with all humility we shrink from endeavouring to theorize respecting processes which are concealed, we ought not to refuse to follow, as far as it will lead us, the course of thought which seems marked out by conspicuous and consistent phenomena. LOVE OF CHANGE. In subjects of the intellect, the chief delight they convey is dependent upon their being newly and vividly comprehended i 138 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. and as tliey become subjects of contemplation they lose theii value, and become tasteless and unregarded, except as instru- ments for the reaching of others, only that though they sink down into the shadowy, effectless, heap of things indifferent, which we pack, and crush down, and stand upon, to reach things new, they sparkle afresh at intervals as we stir them by throwing a new stone into the heap, and letting the newly admitted lights play upon them. And both in subjects of the intellect and the senses it is to be remembered, that the love of change is a weakness and imperfection of our nature, and implies in it the state of probation, and that it is to teach ua that things about us here are not meant for our continual possession or satisfaction, that ever such passion of change was put in us as that " custom lies upon us with a weight, heavy as frost, and deep almost as life," and only such weak back and baby grasp given to our intellect as that " the best things we do are painful, and the exercise of them grievous, being continued without intermission, so as in those very actions whereby we are especially perfected in this life we are not able to persist." An4 so it will be found that they are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love variety and change, for the weakest-minded are those who both wonder most at things new, and digest worst things old, in so far that everything they have lies rusty, and loses lustre for want of use ; neither do they make any stir among their possessions, nor look over them to see what may be made of them, nor keep any great store, nor are householders with storehouses of things new and old, but they catch at the new-fashioned garments, and let the moth and thief look after the rest ; and the hardest-hearted men are those that least feel the endearing and binding power of custom, and hold on by no cords of affection to any shore, but drive witt the waves that cast up mire and dirt. PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. 139 IMAGINATION. We all have a general and sufficient idea of imagination, and of its work with our hands and in our hearts: we under- stand it, I suppose, as the imaging or picturing of new things in our thoughts; and we always show an involuntary respect for this power, wherever we can recognise it, acknowledging it to be a greater power than manipulation, or calculation, or observation, or any other human faculty. If we see an old woman spinning at the fireside, and distributing her thread dexterously from the distaff, we respect her for her manipula- tion—if we ask her how much she expects to make in a year, and she answers quickly, we respect her for her calculation — if she is watching at the same time that none of her grand- children fall into the fire, we respect her for her observation — yet for all this she may still be a commonplace old woman enough. But if she is all the time telling her grandchildren a fairy tale out of her head, we praise her for her imagination, and say, she must be a rather remarkable old woman. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. Do you recollect the evidence respecting the character of this man, — the two points of bright peculiar evidence given by the sayings of the two greatest literary men of his day, Johnson and Goldsmith ? Johnson, who, as you know, was always Reynolds' attached friend, had but one complaint to make against him, that he hated nobody: — "Reynolds," he said, " you hate no one living ; I like a good hater !" Stih more significant is the little touch in Goldsmith's " Retalia^ tion." You recollect how in that poem he describes the van. 140 PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. ous persons wlio met at one of their dinners at St. James's Coffee-house, each person being described under the name of some appropriate dish. You will often hear the concluding lines about Reynolds quoted — " He shifted his trumpet," &c ; — less often, or at least less attentively, the preceding ones, fai more important — " Still born to improve us in every part — His pencil our faces, hi> Tnanners our heart /' and never, the most characteristic touch of all, near the beginning : — " Our dean shall be venison, just fiesh from the plains ; Our Burke shnll be tongue, wit'i a garnish of brains; To make out the dinner, fuU certain I am, That Rich is anchovy, and Reynolds is Iamb" THE THINKER AND THE PERCEIVEK. He who, having journeyed all day beside the Leman Lake, asked of his companions, at evening, where it was,* probably was not wanting in sensibility; but he was generally a thinker, not a perceiver. And this instance is only an extreme one of the effect which, in all cases, knowledge, becoming a subject of reflection, produces upon the sensitive faculties. It must be but poor and lifeless knowledge, if it has no ten- dency to force itself forward, and become ground for refleo tion, in despite of the succession of external objects. It wih * St. Bernard. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 141 not obey their succession. The first tliat comes gives it food enough for its day's work; it is its habit, its duty, to cast the rest aside, and fasten upon that. The first thing that a thinking and knowing man sees in the course of the day, he will not easily quit. It is not his way to quit anything with out getting to the bottom of it, if possible. But the artist is bound to receive all things on the broad, white, hicid field of his soul, not to grasp at one. For instance, as the knowing and thinking man watches the sunrise, he sees something in the colour of a ray, or the change of a cloud, that is new to him ; and this he follows out forthwith into a labyrinth of optical and pneumatical laws, perceiving no more clouds nor rays all the morning. But the painter must catch all the rays, all the colours that come, and see them all truly, all in their real relations and succession ; therefore, everything that occupies room in his mind he must cast aside for the time, as completely as may be. The thoughtful man is gone far away to seek ; but the perceiving man must sit still, and open his heart to receive. The thoughtful man is knitting and sharp- ening himself into a two-edged sword, wherewith to pierce. The perceiving man is stretching himself into a four-cornered sheet wherewith to catch. And all the breadth to which he can expand himself, and all the white emptiness into which he can blanch himself, will not give him the intelligence God has to give him. A nation may produce a great effect, and take up a high place in the world's, history, by the temporary enthusiasm or fury if its multitudes, without being truly great ; or, on the ] i2 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. Other hand, the discipline of morality and common seise miiy extend its physical power or exalt its well-being, while yet its creative and imaginative powers are continually diminish- ing. And again : a people may take so definite a lead over all the rest of the world in one direction, as to obtain i\ respect which is not justly due to them if judged on universal grounds. Thus the Greeks perfected the sculpture of the human body; threw their literature into a disciplined form, which has given it a peculiar power over certain cciiditiona of modern mind ; and were the most carefully educated race that the world has seen ; but a few years hence, I believe, we shall no longer think them a greater people than either the Egyptians or Assyrians. TREES AND COMMUNITIES. There is a strange coincidence between trees and commu- nities of men. When the community is small, people fall more easily into their places, and take, each in his place, a firmer standing than can be obtained by the individuals of a great nation. The members of a vast community are sepa- rately weaker, as an aspen or elm leaf is thin, tremulous, and ■directionless, compared with the spear-like setting and firm substance of a rhododendron or laurel leaf. The laurel «nT3 rhododendron are like the Athenian or Florentine republics ; the aspen like England — strong-trunked enough when put to proof, and very good for making cartwheels of, bTit shaking pjrtETwith ejMGTtiie-^amc at every breeze. Nevertheless, the as[)en has the better of the great nation, in that if you take it bough by bough, you shall find the gentle Jaw of respect and room foi' each other truly observed by the leaves in such PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 1 3 broken way as they can manage it ; but in the nation you tind every one scrambling for his neighbour's place. THE PURIST AND THE SENSUALIST. In saying that nearly everything presented to us in nature has mingling in it of good and evil, I do not mean that nature is conceivably improvable, or that anything that God has made could be called evil, if we could see far enough into its uses, but that, with respect to immediate effects or appear- ances, it may be so, just as the hard rind or bitter kernel of a fruit may be an evil to the eater, though in the one is the protection of the fruit, and in the other its continuance. The Purist, therefore, does not mend nature, but receives from nature and from God that which is good for him ; while the Sensualist fills himself " with the husks that the swine did eat." The three classes may, therefore, be likened to men reap- ing wheat, of which the Purists take the fine flour, and the Sensualists the chaff and straw, but the Naturalists take all home, and make their cake of the one, and their couch of the other. For instance. We know more certainly every day that whatever appears to us harmful in the universe has some beneficent or necessary operation ; that the storm which destroys a harvest brightens the sunbeams for harvests yet unsown, and that the volcano which buries a city preserves a thousand from destruction. But the evil is not for the time less fearful, because we have learned it to be necessary ; and we easily understand the timidity or the tenderness of the spirit which would withdraw itself from the presence of 144 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. destruction, and create in its imagination a world of -wbicl- the peace should be unbroken, in which the sky should not dark(}n nor the sea rage, in which the leaf should not change nor the blossom wither. That man is greater, how^ever, who contemplates with an equal mind the alternations of terror and of beauty ; who, not rejoicing less beneath the sunny sky, can bear also to watch the bars of twilight narrowing od the horizon ; and, not less sensible to the blessing of the pence of nature, can rejoice in the magnificence of the ordi- nances by which that peace is protected and secured. But separated from both by an immeasurable distance w^ould be the man who delighted in convulsion and disease for their own sake : who found his daily food in the disorder of nature mingled with the suffering of humanity; and w^atched joy- fully at the right hand of the Angel whose appointed work is to destroy as well as to accuse, while the corners of the House of feasting were struck by the wind from the wilder- ness. And far more is this true, when the subject of contempla- A tion is humanity itself The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn ; but none without their use, none without nobleness when seen in balanced unity with the rest of the spirit which they are charged to defend. The passions of which the end is the continuance of the race ; the indignation which is to arm it against injustice, or strengthen it to resist wanton injury ; and the fear * which lies at the root of prudence, reverence, and awe, are all honourable and beautiful, so long as man is regarded in his relations to the existing world. The rr^ligious Purist, striving to conceive him withdrawn from those relations, effaces from the countenance the traces of all * Not selfish fear, caused by want of trust in God, or of resolution ui the scul. TRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 145 transitory passion, illumines it with holy hope and love, and seals it with the serenity of heavenly peace ; he conceals the forms of the body by the deep-folded garment, or else repre- sents them under severely chastened types, and would rather paint them emaciated by the fast, or pale from the torture than strengthened by exertion, or flushed by emotion. Bu the great Naturalist takes the human being in its wholeness, in its mortal as well as its spiritual strength. Capable of sounding and sympathizing with the whole range of its pas- sions, he brings one majestic harmony out of them all; he represents it fearlessly in all its acts and thoughts, in its haste, its anger, its sensuality, and its pride, as well as in its forti- tude or faith, but makes it noble in them all ; he casts aside the veil from the body, and beholds the mysteries of its form like an angel looking down on an inferior creature ; there is nothing which he is reluctant to behold, nothing that he is ashamed to confess ; w^ith all that lives, triumphing, falling, or suffering, he claims kindred, either in majesty or in mercy, yet standing, in a sort, afar off, unmoved even in the deep- ness of his sympathy ; for the spirit within him is too thought- ful to be grieved, too brave to be appalled, and too pure to be polluted. How far beneath these two ranks of men shall we place, in the scale of being, those whose pleasure is only in sin or in suffering ; who habitually contemplate humanity in poverty or decrepitude, fury or sensuality ; whose works are either temptations to its weakness, or tiiumphs over its ruin, and recognize no other subjects for thought or admiration than the subtlety of the robber, the rage of the soldier, or the joy of the Sybarite. It seems strange, when thus definitely stated, that such a school should exist. Yet consider a little what gaps and blanks would disfigure our gallery and cham- ber walls, in places that we have long approached with reve- 146 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. rence, if every picture, every statue, were removed from them, of which the subject was either the vice or the misery of mankind, portrayed without any moral purpose : consider the innumerable groups having reference merely to various forms of passion, low or high ; drunken revels and brawls among peasants, gambling or fighting scenes among soldiers, amours and intrigues among every class, brutal battle-pieces, banditti subjects, gluts of torture and death in famine, wreck, or slaughter, for the sake merely of the excitement, — that quickening and suppling of the dull spirit that cannot be gained for it but by bathing it in blood, afterward to wither back into stained and stifferied apathy ; and then that whole vast false heaven of sensual passion, full of nymphs, satyrs, graces, goddesses, and I know not what, from its high sev- enth circle in Correggio's Antiope, down to the Grecized ballet-dancers and smirking Cupids of the Parisian uphol- sterer. Sweep away all this, remorselessly, and see how much art we should have left. And yet these are only the grossest manifestations of the tendency of the school. There are subtler, yet not less cer- tain, signs of it in the works of men who stand high in the world's list of sacred painters. I doubt not that the reader was surprised when 1 named Murillo among the men of this third rank. Yet, go into the Dulwich Gallery, and meditate for a little over that much celebrated picture of the two beggar boys, one eating lying on the ground, the other stand- ing beside him. We have among our own painters one who rannot indeed be set beside Murillo as a painter of Madon- nas, for he is a pure Naturalist, and, never having seen a Madonna, does not paint any ; but who, as a painter of beggar or peasant boys, may be set beside Murillo, or any one else, — ^W. Hunt. He loves peasant boys, because he finds them more roughly and picturesquely dressed, and PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 \1 more liealthily coloured, than others. And he paints all that he sees in them fearlessly ; all the health and humour, and freshness, and vitality, together with such awkwardness and stupidity, and what else of negative or positive harm there may be in the creature ; but yet so that on the whole we love t, and find it perhaps even beautiful, or if not, at least we see that there is capability of good in it, rather than of evil; and all is lighted up by a sunshine and sweet colour that makes the smock frock as precious as cloth of gold. But look at those two ragged and vicious vagrants that Murillo has gathered out of the street. You smile at first, because they are eating so naturally, and their roguery is so complete. But is there anything else than roguery there, or was it well for the painter to give his time to the painting of those repul- sive and wicked children? Do you feel moved with any charity towards children as you look at them ? Are we the least more likely to take any interest in ragged schools, or to help the next pauper child that comes in our way, because the painter has shown us a cunning beggar feeding greedily. Mark the choice of the act. He might have shown hunger in other ways, and given interest to even this act of eating, by making the face wasted, or the eye wistful. But he did not care to do this. He delighted merely in the disgusting manner of eating, the food filling the cheek; the boy is not hungry, else he would not turn round to talk and grin as he eats. But observe another point in the lower figure. It lies so that the sole of the foot is turned towards the spectator ; not because it would have lain less easily in another attitude, but that the painter may draw, and exhibit, the grey dust engrained in the foot. Do not call this the painting of nature : it is mere delight in foulness. The lesson, if there be any, in the picture, is not one whit the stronger. We all know that 148 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. a beggar's bare foot cannot be clean ; tliere is no need tc thrust its degradation into the light, as if no human imagina' tion were vigorous enough for its conception. THE TYPE OF STRONG AND NOBLE LIFE. Great Art is nothing else than the type of strong and noble life ; for, as the ignoble person, in bis dealings with all that occurs in the world about him, first sees nothing clearly, — looks nothing fairly in the face, and then allows himself to be swept away by the trampling torrent, and unescapable force, of the things that he would not foresee, and could not under- stand : so the noble person, looking the facts of the world full in the face, and fathoming them with deep faculty, then deals with them in unalarmed intelligence and unhurried strength, and becomes, with his human intellect and will, no unconscious nor insignificant agent, in consummating thm* good, and restraining their evil. THE VISIBLE AND THE TANGIBLE. Of no other source than the tangible and the visible can we, by any effort in our present conditi(m of existence, con- ceive. For what revelations have been made to humanity inspired, or caught up to heaven of things to the heavenly region belonging, have been either by unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter, or else by their very nature incommunicable, except in types and shadows ; and ineffable by words belonging to earth, foi of things different PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 14£ trom the visible, woids appropriated to the visihle can convey DO image. How different from earthly gold that clear pave- ment of the city might have seemed to the eyes of St. John, Ave of unreceived sight cannot know ; neither of that strange jasper and sardine can we conceive the likeness which he assumed that sat on the throne above the crystal sea ; neithei what seeming that was of slaying that the Root of David bore in the midst of the elders ; neither what change it was upon the form of the fourth of them that walked in the fur- nace of Dura, that even the wrath of idolatry knew for the likeness of the Son of God. MODERN^ GREATNESS. The simple fact, that we are, in some strange way, different fi'orn all the great races that have existed before us, cannot at once be received as the proof of our own greatness ; nor can it be granted, without any question, that we have a legiti- mate subject of complacency in being under the influence of feelings, with which neitlier Miltiades nor the Black Prince, neither Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St. Francis, could for an instant have sympathized. Whether, however, this fact be one to excite our piide or not, it is assuredly one to excite our deepest interest. The fact itself is certain. For nearly six thousand years the ener- gies of man have pursued certain beaten paths, manifesting some constancy of feeling throughout all that period, antl involving some fellowship at heart, among the various nations who by turns succeeded or surpassed each other in the seve- ral aims of art or policy. So that, for these thousands of years, the whole human race might be to some extent ]50 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. described in general terms. Man was a creature separated from all others by his instinctive sense of an Existence supe- rior to his own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a God more strongly in proportion to his own perfectness of mind and body ; and making enormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity. SMOKE AND THE WHIRLWIND. Much of the love of mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our metaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by the great Greek, " speak- ing ingeniously concerning smoke." And much of the instinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now seen throughout every mode of exertion of mind, — the easily encouraged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and delight in the changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith, is again deeply defined in those few words, the '' dethron- ing of Jupiter," the " coronation of the whirlwind." MODERN ENTANGLEMENT. The vain and haughty projects of youth for future life ; the giddy reveries of insatiable self-exaltation ; the discontented dreama of what might have been or should be, instead of the thankful understanding of what is ; the casting about for sources of interest in senseless fiction, instead of the real PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. 15 J huraar. histories of the people round us ; the prolongation from age to age of romantic historical deceptions instead of sifted truth ; the pleasures taken in fanciful portraits of rural or romantic life in poetry and on the stage, without the small- est effort to rescue the living rural population of the world from its ignorance or misery ; the excitement of the feelings by laboured imagination of spirits, fairies, monsters, and demons, issuing in total blindness of heart and sight to the true presences of beneficent or destructive spiritual powera around us; in fine, the constant abandonment of all the straightforward paths of sense and duty, for fear of losing some of the enticement of ghostly joys, or trampling some- what " sopra lor vanita, che par persona ;" all these various forms of false idealism have so entangled the modern mind, often called, I suppose ironically, practical, that truly I believe there never yet was idolatry of stock or staff so utterly unholy as this our idolatry of shadows ; nor can I think that, of those who burnt incense under oaks, and pop- lars, and elms, because "the shadow thereof was good," it could in any wise be more justly or sternly declared than of us — " The wind hath bound them up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices."* THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. All human government is nothing else than the executive expression of Divine authority. The moment government ceases to be the practical enforcement of Divine law, it ia tyranny; and the meaning which I attach to the words, "paternal government," is in more extended terms, simply * Hosea, chap. iv. 12, 13, and 19. J 52 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. this — " The executive fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the will of the Father of mankind respecting His chil- dren." ■ THREE ORDERS OF HUMAN BEINGS. The apathy which cannot perceive beauty is very different from the stern energy which disdains it ; and the coldness of heart which receives no emotion from external nature, is not to be confounded with the wisdom of purpose which represses emotion in action. In the case of most men, it is neither acuteness of the reason, nor breadth of humanity, which shields them from the impressions of natural scenery, but rather low anxieties, vain discontents, and mean pleasures; and for one who is blinded to the works of God by profound abstraction or lofty purpose, tens of thousands have their eyes sealed by vulgar selfishness, and their intelligence crushed by impious care. Observe, then : we have, among mankind in general, the three orders of being ; — the lowest, sordid and selfish, which neither sees nor feels ; the second, noble and sympathetic, but which sees and feels without concluding or acting ; the third and highest, which loses sight in resolution, and feeling in work. NATURAL ADMIRATION. Examine well the channels of your admiration, and you will find that they are, in verity, as unchangeable as the chan PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 153 nels of your heart's blood ; that just as by the pressure of a bandage, or by unwholesome and perpetual action of some part of the body, that blood may be wasted or aiTested, and in its stagnancy cease to nourish the frame, or in its disturbed flow aifect it with incurable disease, so also admiration itself may, by the bandages of fashion, bound close over the eyes and the arteries of the soul, be arrested in its natural pulse and healthy flow ; but that wherever the artificial pressui-e is removed, it will return into that bed which has been traced for it by the finger of God. THE KEFORMATION. The strength of the Reformation lay entirely in its being a movement towards purity of practice. The Catholic priesthood was hostile to it in proportion to the degree in which they had been false to their own princi- ples of moral action, and had become corrupt or worldly in heart. The Reformers indeed cast out many absurdities, and demonstrated many fallacies, in the teaching of tiie Roman Catholic Church. But they themselves introduced errors, which rent the ranks, and finally arrested the march of the Reformation, and which paralyze the Protestant Church to this day. Errors of which the fatality was increased by the controversial bent which lost accuracy of meaning in force of declamation, and turned expressions, which ought to be used only in retired depth of thouglit, into phrases of custom, or watchwords of attack. Owing to which habitcj of hot, ingenious, and unguarded controversy, the Reformed chu'-eliL'S thesnselves soon fori>ot the meaning of the word 151 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. which, of all words, Avas oftenest in their mouths. Tiioy lor- got that 'n'ly nature, to preserve and exalt. Vulgarity, on the other land, v^ill signify qualities usually characteristic of ill-breed- Bng, which, according to his power, it becomes every person's luty to subdue. We have briefly to note what these are. A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of struc- ture in the body, which renders it capable of the most deli- jate sensation ; and of structure in the mind which renders it * We ought always in pure English to use the term " good breeding" idterally ; and to say " good nurture" for what we usually mean by good breeding. Given the race and make of the animal, you may turn it to good or bad account ; you may spoil your good dog or colt, and make him aa vicious as you choose, or break his back at once by ill-usage ; and you may, on the other hand, make something serviceable and respectable out of your poor cur or colt if you educate them carefully ; but, ill-bred they will both of them be to their hves''end ; and the best you will ever be able to say of them is, that they are useful, and decently behaved ill-bred creatures. An error, which is associated with the truth, and which makes it always look weak and disputable, is the confusion of race with name ; and the supposi- tion that the blood of a family must still be good, if its genealogy be unbroken and its name not lost, though sire and son have been indulging age after age in habits involving perpetual degeneracy of race. Of course it is equally an error to suppose that, because a man's name is common, hia blood must be base ; since his family may have been ennobling it by pure- ness of mora] habit for many generations, and yet may not have got any title, or other sign of nobleness attached to their names. Nevertheless, the pro- bability is always in favour of the race which has had acknowledged suprO' macy, and in which every motive leads to the endeavour to preserve theii true nobility. ]r>8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. capable of the most delicate sympathies — one may say, sim- ply, " fineness of nature." This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness ; in fact heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy. Elephan tine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel nc touch of the boughs ; but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have felt a bent rose-leaf, yet subdue its feelings in glow of battle, and behave itself like iron. I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal ; but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature ; not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot ; but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way ; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honour. And, though Tightness of moral conduct is ultimately the great purifier of race, the sign of nobleness is not in this Tightness of moral conduct, but in sensitiveness. When the make of the creature is fine, its temptations are strong, as well as its perceptions ; it is liable to all kinds of impressions from without in their most violent form ; liable therefore to be abused and hurt by all kinds of rough things which would do a coarser creature little harm, and thus to fall into frightful wrong if its fate will have it so. Thus David, coming of gen- tlest as well as royalest race, of Ruth as well as of Judah, is sensitiveness through all flesh and spirit ; not that his compas- sion will restrain him from murder when his terror urges him to it ; nay, he is driven to the murder all the more by his sen- sitiveness to the shame which otherwise threatens him. But when his own story is told him under a disguise, though only a lamb is now concerned, his passion about it leaves him no time for thonght. " The man shall die" — note the reason ■ — " because he had no pity." He is so eager and indignani PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 159 that it never occurs to him as strange that Xathan hidea the name. This is true gentleman. A vulgar man would assuredly have been cautious, and asked " who it was ? " Hence it will follow that one of the probable signs of high- breeding in men generally, will be their kindness and merci- fulness ; these always indicating more or less fineness of make in the mind ; and miserliness and cruelty the contrary ; hence that of Isaiah : " The vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful." But a thousand things may prevent this kindness from displaying or continu- ing itself ; the mind of the man may be warped so as to bear mainly on his own interests, and then all his sensibilities will take the form of pi'ide, or fastidiousness, or revengefulness ; and other wicked, but not ungentlemanly tempers ; or, far- ther, they may run into utter sensuality and covetousness, if he is bent on pleasure, accompanied with quite infinite cruelty when the pride is wounded or the passions thwarted; — until your gentleman becomes Ezzelin, and your lady, the deadly Lucrece ; yet still gentleman and lady, quite incapable of making anything else of themselves, being so born. A truer sign of breeding than mere kindness is therefore sympathy ; a vulgar man may often be kind in a hard way, on principle, and because he thinks he ought to be ; whereas, a highly-bred man, even when cruel, will be cruel in a softer way, understanding and feeling what he inflicts, and pitying liis victim. Only we must carefully remember that the quan- tity of sympathy a gentleman feels can never be judged of )>y its outward expression, for another of his chief chg,racter islics is apparent reserve. I say " apparent " reserve ; for the sympathy is real, but the reserve not : a perfect gentle* man is never reserved, but sweetly and entirely open, so fai as it is good for others, or possible, that he should be. In a great many respects it is impossible that he should be open 160 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. except to men of his own kind. To thenj, he can open him- self, by a word, or sylhible, or a glance ; but to men not of his kind he cannot open himself, though he tried it through i an eternity of clear grammatical speech. By the very acute* ' ness of his sympathy he knows how much of himself he can give to anybody ; and he gives that much frankly ; — would always be glad to give more if he could, but is obliged, never- theless, in his general intercourse with the world, to be a somewhat silent person ; silence is to most people, he finds, less reserve than speech. Whatever he said, a vulgar man would misinterpret : no words that he could use would bear the same sense to the vulgar man that they do to him ; if he used any, the vulgar man would go away saying, " He had said so and so, and meant so and so " (something assuredly he never meant) ; but he keeps silence, and the vulgar man goes away saying, " He didn't know what to make of him." Which is precisely the fact, and the only fact which he is any- wise able to announce to the vulgar man concerning himself. There is yet another quite as efficient cause of the apparent i reserve of a gentleman. His sensibility being constant and intelligent, it will be seldom that a feeling touches him, how- ever acutely, but it has touched him in the same way often before, and in some sort is touching him always. It is not that he feels little, but that he feels habitually ; a vulgar man having some heart at the bottom of him, if you can by talk or by sight fairly force the pathos of anything Jown to his heart, will be excited about it and demonstrative ; the sensation of pity being strange to him, and w^onderful. But your gentle man has walked in pity all day long ; the tears have never been out of his eyes ; you thought the eyes were bright only; but they were wet. You tell him a sorrowful story, and his countenance does not change ; the eyes can but be wet still ; he does not speak neither, there being, in fact, nothing to he PRECIOUS TIIOFGHTS. 161 snid, only something to be done ; some vulgar person, besicla yon both, goes away saying, " How hard he is !" Next day he liears that the hard person has put good end to the sor- row he said nothing about ; — and then he changes his wonder and exclaims, " How reserved he is !" Self-command is often thought a characteristic of high breeding : and to a ceitain extent it is so, at least it is one of the means of forming and strengthening character ; but it is rather a way of imitating a gentleman than a characteristic of him ; a true gentleman has no need of self-command ; he simply feels rightly on all occasions : and desiring to express only so much of his feeling as it is right to express, does noi need to command himself. Hence perfect ease is indeed characteristic of him ; but perfect ease is inconsistent with self-restraint. Nevertheless gentlemen, so far as they fail of their own ideal, need to command themselves, and do so ; while, on the contrary, to feel unwisely, and to be unable to restrain the expression of the unwise feeling, is vulgarity ; and yet even then, the vulgarity, at its root, is not in the mis- timed expression, but in the unseemly feeling ; and when we find fault with a vulgar person for ^' exposing himself," it is not his openness, but clumsiness ; and yet more the want of sensibility to his own failure, which we blame ; so that still the vulgarity resolves itself into want of sensibility. Also, it is to be noted that great powers of self-restraint may bo attained by very vulgar persons, when it suits their purposes. Closely, but stiangely, connected with this openness is that form of truthfulness which is opposed to cunning, yet not opposed to fal^^ity absolute. And herein is a distinction of great importance. Cunning signifies especially a habit or gift of over-reaching accompanied with enjoyment and a sense of superiority. Il IS associated with small and dull conceit, and with an absolute 162 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. want of sympathy or affection. Its essential connection with vulgarity may be at once exemplified by the expression of the butcher's dog in Landseer's "Low Life." Cruikshank's " Noah Claypole," in the illustrations to Oliver Twist, in the interview with the Jew, is, however, still more characteristic. It is the intensest rendering of vulgarity absolute and utter with which I am acquainted.* The truthfulness which is opposed to cunning ought, per- haps, rather to be called the desire of truthfulness ; it comes more in unwillingness to deceive than in not deceiving, — and unwillingness implying sympathy with and respect for the per- son deceived ; and a fond observance of truth up to the possi- ble point, as in a good soldier's mode of retaining his honour through a ruse-de-guerre, A cunning person seeks for oppor- tunities to deceive ; a gentleman shuns them* A cunning per- son triumphs in deceiving ; a gentleman is humiliated by the success, or at least by so much of the success as is dependent merely on the falsehood, and not on his intellectual supe- riority. The absolute disdain of all lying belongs rather to Chris- tian chivalry than to mere high breeding; as connected merely with this latter, and with general resolution and cou- rage, the exact relations of truthfulness may be best studied in the well -trained Greek mind. The Greeks believed that mercy and truth were co-relative virtues — cruelty and false- hood, co-relative vices. But they did not call necessary severity, cruelty ; nor necessary deception, falsehood. It waa * Among tho reckless losses of the right service of intellectual powei with which this century must be charged, very few are, to my mind, more to be regretted than that which is involved in its having turned to no higher purpose than the illustration of the career of Jack Sheppard, and of tho Irish Rebellion, the great, grave (I use the words deliberately and with largu Tieaniug), and singular genius of Cruikshank. r PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 163 utedful sometimes to slay men, and sometimes to deceive them. When this had to be done, it should be done well and thoroughly ; so that to direct a spear well to its mark, or a lie well to its end, was equally the accomplishment of a perfect gentleman. Hence, in the pretty diamond-cut-dia mond scene between Pallas and Ulysses, when she receivca him on the coast of Ith'.ica, the goddess laughs delightedly at her hero's good lying, and gives him her hand upon it ; she feels herself then in her woman's form, as just a little more than his mg,tch. '"• Subtle would he be, and stealthy, who should go beyond thee in deceit, even were he a god, ♦vhou many-witted ! What ! here in thine own land, too, wilt i-hou not cease from cheating ? Knowest thou not me, Pallas Athena, maid of Jove, who am with thee in all thy labours, and gave thee favour with the Phseacians, and keep thee, and have come now to weave cunning with thee ?" But how com- pletely this kind of cunning was looked upon as a part of a man's power, and not as a diminution of faithfulness, is per- haps best shown by the single line of praise in which the high qualities of his servant are summed up by Chremulus in the Plutus — '' Of all my house servants, I hold you to be the faithfullest, and t4ie greatest cheat (or thief)." Thus, the primal difference between honourable and base lying in the Greek mind lay in honourable purpose. A man who used his strength wantonly to hurt others was a mon- ster; so, also, a man who used his cunning wantonly to hurt others. Strength and cunning were to be used only in self- defence, or to save the weak, and then were alike admirable. This was their first idea. Then the second, and perhaf)S the more essential difference between noble and ignoble lying in the Greek mind, was that the honourable lie — or, if we may use the strange, yet just, expression, the true lie — knew and confessed itself for such — was ready to take the full responsi 164 PRECIOUS xnouGnxs. I).ility of wlint it did. As the sword answered for its l)low so the lie for its snare. But wliat the Greeks hated with all their heart was the false lie ; the lie that did not know itself, feared to confess itself, which slunk to its aim under a cloak of truth, and sought to do liars' work, and yet not take liars' pay, excusing itself to the conscience by quibble and quirk. Hence the great expression of Jesuit principle by Euripides, "The tongue has sworn, but not the heart," was a subject of execration throughout Greece, and the satirists exhausted their arrows on it — no audience was evej* tired hearing (ro Bvpiiridsiov sxs'vo) " that Euripidiim thing" brought to shame. And this is especially to be insisted on in the early educa- tion of young people. It should be pointed out to them with continual earnestness that the essence of lying is in decep- tion, not in words ; a lie may be told by silence, by equivoca- tion, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence ; and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a He plainly worded ; so that no form of blinded conscience is so far sunk as that which comforts itself for having deceived, because the deception was by gesture or silence, instead of utterance, and, finally, according to Tennyson's deep and trenchant line, " A lie which is half a truth is ever the worst of lies." Although, however, ungenerous cunning is usually so dis tinct an outward manifestation of vulgarity, that I name il separately from insensibility, it is in truth only an effect of insensibility, producing want of affection to others, and blind- ness to the beauty of truth. The degree in which political subtlety in men such as Richelieu, Machiavel, or Metternich, will efface the gentleman, depends on the selfishness of poli- tical purpose to which the cunning is directed, and on the base delight taken in its use. The command, " Be ye wise a? PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 165 serpents, harmless as doves," is the ultimate expression of this principle, misunderstood usually because the word " wise" is referred to the intellectual power instead of the subtlety of the serpent. The serpent has very little intellectual power but according to that which it has, it is yet, as of old, tha subtlest of the beasts of the field. Another great sign of vulgarity is also, when traced to its root, another ])hase of insensibility, namely, the undue regard to appearances and manners, as in the households of vulgar persons, of all stations, and the assumption of behaviour, language, or dress unsuited to them, by persons in inferior »^tations of life. I say " undue" regard to appearances, because in the undueness consists, of course, the vulgarity. It is due and wise in some sort to care for appearances, in another sort undue and unwise. Wherein lies the differ- ence? At first one is apt to answer quickly: the vulgarity is sim- ply in pretending to be what you are not. But that answer will not stand. A queen may dress like a waiting-maid, — perhaps succeed, if she chooses, in passing for one ; but she w^ill not, therefore, be vulgar ; nay, a waiting-maid may dress like a queen, and pretend to be one, and yet need not be vulgar, unless there is inherent vulgarity in her. In Scribe's very absurd but very amusing Heine d^un joiir^ a milliner's girl sustains the part ©f a queen for a day. She several times amazes and disgusts her courtiers by her straightforwardness, and once or twice very nearly betrays herself to her maids of honour by an unqueenly knowledge of sewing ; but she is not in the least vulgar, for she is sensitive, simple, and gene- rous, and a queen could be no more. Is the vulgarity, then, only in trying to play a part yon cannot play, so as to be continually detected ? No ; a bad amateur actor may be continually detected in his part, but 1G6 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. yet continually detected to be a gentleman •. a vulgar regard to appearances has nothing in it necessarily of hypocrisy. You shall know a man not to be a gentleman by the perfect and neat pronunciation of his words : but he does not pretend to pronounce accurately ; he does pronounce accurately, the vulgarity is in the real (not assumed) scrupulousness. It will be found on farther thought, that a vulgar regard for appearances is, primarily, a selfish one, resulting, not out of a wish to give pleasure (as a wife's wish to make herself beautiful for her husband), but out of an endeavour to mortify others, or attract for pride's sake; — the common "keeping up ap^Dearances" of society, being a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain. But the deepest stain of the vulga- rity depends on this being done, not selfishly only, but stu- pidly, without understanding the impression which is really produced, nor the relations of importance between oneself and others, so as to suppose that their attention is fixed upon us, when we are in reality cyphers in their eyes — ■ all which comes of insensibility. Hence pride simple is not vulgar (the looking down on others because of their true inferiority to us), nor vanity simple (the desire of praise), but concdt simple (the attribution to ourselves of qualities we have not), is always so. In cases of over-studied pronuncia tion, &c., there is insensibility, first, in the person's thinking more of himself than of what he is saying ; and, secondly, in his not having musical fineness of ear enough to feel that his talking is uneasy and strained. Finally, vulgarity is indicated by coarseness of language or iiianners, only so far as this coarseness has been contracted under circumstances not necessarily producing it. The illite- rateness of a Spanish or Calabrian peasant is not vulgar, because they had never an opportunity of acquiring letters • but the illiterateness of an English school-boy is. So again, PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 10^ proviiuiial dialect is not vulgar; but cockney cliale:t, the corruption, by blunted sense, of a finer language continually heard, is so in a deep degree; and again, of this corrupted dialect, that is the worst which consists, not in the direct or expressive alteration of the form of a word, but in an unmu- sical destruction of it by dead utterance and bad or swollen formation of lip. There is no vulgarity in — " Blythe, blythe, blythe was she, Blythe was she, but and ben, And weel she liked a Hawick gill, And leugh to see a tappit hen;". but much in Mrs. Gamp's inarticulate " bottle on the chum- ley-piece, and let me put ray lips to it when I am so dis- poged." So also of personal defects, those only are vulgar which imply insensibility or dissipation. There is no vulgarity in the emaciation of Don Quixote, the deformity of the Black Dwarf, or the corpulence of Fal- staff ; but much in the same personal characters as they are seen in Uriah Heep, Quilp, and Chadband. Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar ; in an antiquary's study, not ; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is. And lastly, courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is pecu- liarly the mark of a gentleman or a lady : but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of race or fineness of make. A fawn ia not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile "gentle " because 16 R PRECIOUS THOCTGHTS. VIRTUES SQUARED AND COUNTED. It was not possible to measure the waves of the water of life, but it was perfectly possible to measure the bricks of the Tower of Babel ; and gradually, as the thoughts of men were withdrawn from their Redeemer, and fixed upon them selves, the virtues began to be squared, and counted, and classified, and put into separate heaps of firsts and seconds ; some things being virtuous cardinally, and other things vir- tuous only north-north-west. It is very curious to put in close juxtaposition the words of the Apostles and of some of the writers of the fifteenth century touching sanctification. For instance, hear first St. Paul to the Thessalonians : *' The very God of peace sanctify you wholly : and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it." And then the following part of a prayer which I translate from a MS. of the fitieenth century : " May He (the Holy Spirit) govern the five Senses of my body; may He cause me to embrace the Seven Works of Mercy, and firmly to believe and observe the Twelve Articles of the Faith and the Ten Commandments of the Law, and defend me from the Seven Mortal Sins, even to the end." This tendency, as it affected Christian ethics, was confirmed by tlie Renaissance enthusiasm for the w^orks of Aristotle and Cicero, from whom the code of the fifteenth century virtues was borrowed, and whose authority was then infinitely more revered by all the Doctors of the Church than that either of St. Paul or St. Peter. Although, however, this change in the tone of the Chris- tian mind was most distinctly manifested when the revival of literature rendered the works of the heathen philosophers PRECIOUS IHOUGHTS. 169 tl\e leading study of all the greatest scholars of the period, it had been, as I said before, taking place gradually from the earliest ages. It is, as far as I know, that root of the Renaissance poison-tree, which, of all others, is deepest struck; showing itself in various measures through the writings of all the Fathers, of course exactly in proportion to the respect which they paid to classical authors, especially to Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. The mode in which the pesti- lent study of that literature affected them may be well illus- trated by the examination of a single passage from the works of one of the best of them, St. Ambrose, and of the mode in which that passage was then amplified and formulized by later writers. " Plato, indeed, studied alone, would have done no one any flarm. He is profoundly spiritual and capacious in all his views, and embraces the small systems of Aristotle and Cicero, as the solar system does the Earth. He seems to me especially remarkable for the sense of the gi-eat Christian virtue of Holiness, or sanctification ; and for the sense of the presence of the Deity in all things, great or small, which always runs in a solemn undercurrent beneath his exquisite playfulness and irony ; while all the merely moral virtues may be found in his writings defined in the most noble manner, as a great painter defines his figures, without outlines. But the imperfect scholarship ^f later ages seems to have gone to Plato, only to find in him the system of Cicero ; which indeed was very definitely expressed by him. For it having been quickly felt by all men who strove, unhelped by Christian faith, to enter at the strait gate into the paths of virtue, that there were four characters of mind which were protective or preservative of all that was best in man, namely, Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance,* these were afterwards This arrangement of the cardinal virtues is said to have been first mad« 8 170 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. with mofet illogical inaccuracy, called cardinal virtues^ Pru- dence being evidently no virtue, but an intellectual gift: but this inaccuracy arose partly from the ambiguous sense of the Latin word "virtutes," which sometimes, in mediaeval lan- guage, signifies virtues, sometimes powers (being occasionally used in the Vulgate for the woi'd '' hosts," as in Psalm ciii. 21, cxlviii. 2, etc., while " fortitudines" and " exercitus" are used for the same word in other places), so that Prudence might properly be styled a power, though not properly a virtue ; and partly from the confusion of Prudence with Heavenly Wisdom. The real rank of these four virtues, if so they are to be called, is however properly expressed by the term " car- dinal." They are virtues of the compass, those by which all others are directed and strengthened ; they are not the great- est virtues, but the restraining or modifying virtues, thug Prudence restrains zeal, Justice restrains mercy. Fortitude and Temperance guide the entire system of the passions ; and, thus understood, these virtues properly assumed their pecu- liar leading or guiding position in the system of Christian ethics. But in Pagan ethics, they were not only guiding, but comprehensive. They meant a great deal more on the lips of the ancients, than they now express to the Christian mind. Cicero's Justice includes charity, beneficence, and benignity, truth, and faith in the sense of trustworthiness. His Forti- tude includes courage, self-command, the scorn of fortune and of all temporary felicities. His Temperance includes courtesy and modesty. So also, in Plato, these four virtues constitute the sum of education. I do not remember any more simple or perfect expression ol the idea, than in the account given by Socrates, in the " Alcibiades I.," of the education of the by Archytas. See D'Ancarville's illustration of the three figures of Pru- dence, Fortitude, and Charity, in Selvatico's " Cappellina degli Scrovegp*." Padua, 1836. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 *? 1 Persian kings, for whom, in their youth, there are chosen, he says, four tutors from among the Persian nobles ; namely, the Wisest, the most Just, the most Temperate, and the most Brave of them. Then each has a distinct duty : " the Wisest teaches the young king the worship of the gods, and the duties of a king (something more here, observe, than our 'Prudence!'); the most Just teaches him to speak all truth, and to act out all truth, through the whole course of his life ; the most Temperate teaches him to allow no pleasure to have the mastery of him, so that he may be truly free, and indeed a king ; and the most Brave makes him fearless of all things, showing him that tlie moment he fears anything, he becomes a slave." All this is exceedingly beautiful, so far as it reaches ; but the Christian divines were grievously led astray by their endea- vours to reconcile this system with the nobler law of love. At first, as in the passage I am just going to quote from St. Ambrose, they tried to graft the Christian system on the four branches of the Pagan one ; but finding that the tree would not grow, they planted the Pagan and Christian branches side by side ; adding, to the four cardinal viitues, the three called by the schoolmen theological, namely. Faith, Hope, and Charity : the one series considered as attainable by the Heathen, but the other by the Christian only. Thus VirgiJ to Sordello : " Loco e laggiu, non tristo da martiri Ma di tenebre solo, ove i lamenti Non suonan come guai, ma son sospiri * f Quivi sto io, con quei che le tre sante Virtu non si vestiro, e senza vizio Conobler 1' altre, e seguir, tutte quante." ]72 PEECTOUS THOUGHTS. " There I with these abide "Who the Three Holy Virtues put not on, But understood the rest, and without blame Followed them all." Cart-. This arrangement of the virtues was, however, productive of infinite confusion and error : in the first place, because Faith is classed with its own fruits, — the gift of God, which is the root of the virtues, classed simply as one of them ; in the second, because the words used by the anx-ients to express the several virtues had always a different meaning from the same expressions in the Bible, sometimes a more extended, sometimes a more limited one. Imagine, for instance, the confusion which must have been introduced into the ideas of a student who read St. Paul and Aristotle alternately; con- sidering that the word which the Greek writer uses for Jus- tice, means, with St. Paul, Righteousness. And lastly, it is impossible to overrate the mischief produced in former days, as well as in our own, by the mere habH of reading Aristotle, whose system is so false, so forced, and so confused, that the study of it at our universities is quite enough to occasion the utter want of accurate habits of thought which so often dis- graces men otherwise well-educated. In a word, Aristotle mistalves tlie Prudence or Temperance which must regulate the operation of the virtues, for the essence of the virtues themselves ; and, striving to show that all virtues are means between two opposite vices, torments his wit to discover and distinguish as many pairs of vices as are necessary to the com- pletion of his system, not disdaining to employ sophistry where invention fails him. And, indeed, the study of classical literature, in general, not only fostered in the Christian writers the unfortunate love of systematizing, which gradually deo^enerated into every spe PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 173 cies of contemptible formulism, but it accustomed tliem to work out their systems by the help of any logical quibble, oi verbal subtlety, which could be made available for their pur- pose, and this not with any dishonest intention, but in a sin- cere desire to arrange their ideas in systematical groups, while yet their powers of thought were not accurate enough, nor their common sense stern enough, to detect the fallacy, or disdain the finesse, by which these arrangements were fre- quently accomplished. Thus St. Ambrose, in his commentary on Luke vi. 20, is resolved to transform the four Beatitudes there described into rewards of the four cardinal Virtues, and sets himself thus ingeniously to the task : " ' Blessed be ye poor.' Here you have Temperance. 'Blessed are ye that hunger now.' He who hungers, pities those who are an-hungered ; in pitying, he gives to them, and in giving he becomes just (hirgiendo fit Justus). ' Blessed are ye that Aveep now, for ye shall laugh.' Here you have Prudence, w^hose part it is to weep, so far as present things are concerned, and to seek things which are eternal. * Blessed are ye when men shall hate you.' Here you have Fortitude." As a preparation for this profitable exercise of wit, we have also a reconciliation of the Beatitudes as stated by St. Matthew, with those of St. Luke, on the ground that "in those eight are these four, and in these four are those eight ;" with sundry remarks on the mystical value of the number eight, with which I need not trouble the i-eader. With St. Ambrose, however, this puerile systematization is quite sub- ordinate to a very forcible and truthful exposition of the real nature of the Christian life. But the classification he employs furnishes ground for farther subtleties to future divines ; and in a MS. of the thirteenth century I find some expressions ir 174 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. this commentary on St. Luke, and in the treatise on the duties of bishops, amplified into a treatise on the " Steps of the Virtues : by which every one who perseveres may, by a straight path, attain to the heavenly country of the Angels." (" Liber de Gradibus Virtutum : quibus ad patriam angelo rum supernam itinere recto ascenditur ab omni perseveranie.") These Steps are thirty in number (one expressly for each day of the month), and the curious mode of their association ren. ders the Hst well worth quoting : — Primus gradus est Fides Recta. Unerring faith. Secundus )j Spes firma. Pirm hope. Tertius }i Caritas perfecta. Perfect charity. 4. V Patientia vera. True patience. 6. 17 Humilitas sancta. Holy humility. 6. V Mansuetudo. Meekness. 7. . J» IntOiligentia. Understanding. 8. » Compunctio cordis. Contrition of heart. 9. » ratio. Prayer. 10. }) Confessio pura. Pure confession. IL )> Penitentia digna. Fitting penance.* 12. » Abstinentia. Abstinence (fasting). 13. »> Timor Dei. Fear of God. 14 )l Virginitas. Virginity. 15. » Justicia. Justice. 16. » Misericordia. Mercy. 17. »> Elemosina. Almsgiving. 18. »> Hospitalitas. Hospitality. 19. » Honor parentum. ■ Honouring of parents. 20. }} Silencium. Silence. 2L » Consilium bonura. Good counsel. 22. » Judicium rectum. Right judgment. 23. )> Exemplum bonum. Good example. * Or Penitence : but I ratl.sr think this is understood only in Corapunc> tio cordis. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1/5 24. gradus est Visitatio infirmorura. Visitation of the sick. 25. „ Frequentatio sancto- Companying with rum. saints. 26. „ Oblatio justa. Just oblations. 27. „ Decimas Deo solvere. Paying tithes to God, 28. „ Sap ^ntia. Wisdom. 29. „ Voluntas bona. Goodwill 30. „ Perseverantia. Perseverance. The reader will note that the general idea of Christian virtue embodied in this list is true, exalted, and beautiful ; the points of weakness being the confusion of duties with virtues, and the vain endeavour to enumerate the various offices of charity as so many separate virtues ; more frequently arranged as seven distinct works of mercy. This general tendency to a morbid accuracy of classification was associated, in later times, with another very important element of the Renais- sance mind, the love of personification ; which appears to have reached its greatest vigour in the course of the sixteenth century, and is expressed to all future ages, in a consummate manner, in the poem of Spenser. It is to be noted that per- sonification is, in some sort, the reverse of symbolism, and is far less noble. Symbolism is the setting forth of a great truth by an imperfect and inferior sign (as, for instance, of the hope of the resurrection by the form of the phoenix) ; and it is almost always employed by men in their most serious moods of faith, rarely in recreation. Men who use symbolism forci- bly are almost always true believers in what they symbolize. But Personification is the bestowing of a human or living form upon an abstract idea : it is, in most cases, a mere recreation of the fancy, and is apt to disturb the belief in the reality of the thing personified. Thus symbolism constituted the entire system of the Mosaic dispensation : it occurs in every word of Christ's teaching; it attaches perpetual mys* I7i) PEECIOUS TIIOUGIJTS. tery to the last and most solemn act of His life. Buu I dc not recollect a single instance of personification in any of hia words. And as we watch, thenceforward, the history of the Church, we shall find the declension of its faith exactly marked by the abandonment of symbolism,* and the profuse employment of personification, — even to such an extent that the virtues came, at last, to be confused with the saints ; and we find in the later Litanies, St. Faith, St. Hope, St. Charity, and St. Chastity, invoked immediately after St. Clara and St. Bridget. Nevertheless, in the hands of its early and earnest masters, in whom fancy could not overthrow the foundations of faith, personification is often thoroughly noble and lovely; the earlier conditions of it being just as much more spiritual and vital than the later ones, as the still earlier symbolism was more spiritual than they. THE CHRISTIAN THEOEY OP BEAFTY. As it is necessary to the existence of an idea of beauty, that the sensual pleasure which may be its basis, should be accompanied first with joy, then with love of the object, then with the perception of kindness in a superior Intelligence, finally with thankfulness and veneration towards that Intelli- gence itself, and as no idea can be at all considered as in any way an idea of beauty, until it be made up of these emotions, any more than we can be said to have an idea of a letter of * The transformation of a symbol into a reality, observe, as in trausub- stantiation, is as much an abandonment of symbolism as the forgetfulnesa of symbolic meaning altogether. PBECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1Y7 ^vliich we perceive the perfume and the fair writing, without iniderstanding the contents of it, or intent of it; and as these emotions are in no way resultant from, nor obtainable by, any operation of the intellect, it is evident that the sensa- tion of beauty is not sensual on the one hand, nor is it intel- lectual on the other, but is dependent on a pure, right, and open state of the heart, both for its truth and for its intensity, insomuch that even the right after action of the intellect upon facts of beauty so apprehended, is dependent on the acute- ness of the heart feeling about them ; and thus the Apostolic words come true, in this minor respect as in all others, that men are alienated from the life of God, through the igno- rance that is in them, having the understanding darkened because of the hardness of their hearts, and so being past^ feeling, give themselves up to lasciviousness ; for we do indeed see constantly that men having naturally acute perceptions of the beautiful, yet not receiving it with a pure heart nor into their hearts at all, never comprehend it, nor receive good from it, but make it a mere minister to their desires, and accompaniment and seasoning of lower sensual pleasures, until all their emotions take the same earthly stamp, and the sense of beauty sinks into the servant of lust. Nor is what the world commonly understands by the cul- tivation of taste, anything more or better than this, at least in times of corrupt and over-pampered civilization, when men build palaces and plant groves and gather luxuries, that they and their devices may hang in the corners of the world like fine-spun cobwebs, with greedy, puffed-up, spider-like lusts in the middle. An^ this, which in Christian times is the abuse and corruption of the sense of beauty, was in that Pagan life of which St. Paul speaks, little less than the essence of it, and the best they had ; for I know not that of the expressions df affection towards external nature to be found among Heathen 8* 178 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. wi'iters, there are any of which the balance and leadnig thought cleaves not towards the sensual parts of her. Her beneficence they sought, and her power they shunned, her teaching through both, they understood never. The pleasant influences of soft winds and ringing streamlets ; and shady coverts; of the violet couch, and plane-tree shade,* they received, perhaps, in a more noble way than we, but they found not anything except fear, upon the bare mountain, or in the ghostly glen. The Hybla heather they loved more for its sweet hives than its purple hues. But the Christian the- oria seeks not, though it accepts, and touches with its own purity, w^hat the Epicurean sought, but finds its food and the objects of its love everywhere, in what is harsh and fearful, as well as what is kind, nay, even in all that seems coarse and commonplace; seizing that which is good, and delighting more sometimes at finding its table spread in strange places, and in the presence of its enemies, and its honey coming out of the rock, than if all were harmonized into a less wondrous pleasure; hating only what is self-sighted and insolent of men's work, despising all that is not of God, unless remind- ing it of God, yet able to find evidence of him still, where all seems forgetful of him, and to turn that into a witness of his "working which was meant to obscure it, and so with clear and unoifended sight beholding him for ever, according to the written promise, — Blessed are the pure in heart, for they ghall see God. * Plato, Phsedrus, § 9. PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 179 THE BEST KIND OF LIBERTY. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cat* tie, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and that the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to make the flesh and skin, which, after the worms work on it, is to see God, into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with — this is to be slave-masters indeed ; and there might be more freedom in England, though her feudal lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, and though the blood of the vexed husbandman dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there is while the animation of her multitudes is sent like fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them is given daily to be wasted in the fineness of a web, or racked in the exactness of a line. I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when men will see, that to obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverence to him or to his plnce, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty, — liberty from care. INFLUENCE OF ART ON RELIGION. Much attention has lately been directed to the subject of religious art, and we are now in possession of all kinds of interpretations and classifications of it, and of the leading facts of its history. But the greatest question of all con- nected with it remains entirely unanswered. What good did it do to real religion ? There is no subject into which I should so much rejoice to see a serious and conscientious inquiry instituted as this ; an inquiry, neither undertaken in artistical 180 PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. enthusiasm nor in monkish sympathy, but dogged, merciless, and fearless. I love the religious art of Italy as well as most men, but there is a wide difference between loving it as a manifestation of individual feeling, and looking to it as an instrument of popular benefit. I have not knowledge enough to form even the shadow of an opinion on this latter point, and I should be most grateful to any one who would put it in my power to do so. There are, as it seems to me, thiee distinct questions to be considered : the first. What has been the effect of external splendour on the genuineness and earnestness of Christian worship ? the second. What the use of pictorial or sculptural repiesentation in the communication of Christian historical knowledge, or excitement of affection- ate imagination ? the third. What the influence of the practice of religious art on the life of the artist ? In answering these inquiries, we should have to consider separately every collateral influence and circumstance ; and, by a most subtle analysis, to eliminate the real effect of art from the effects of the abuses with which it was associated. This could be done only by a Christian ; not a man who would fall in love with a sweet colour or sweet expression,- but who would look for true faith and consistent life as the object of all. It never has been done yet, and the question remains a subject of rain and endless contention between parties of opposite prejudices and temperaments. LOSS. There is no subject of thought more melancholy, more won derful, than the way in which God permits so often His best gifts to be trodden under foot of men, Ilis richest treasures PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 18] to be wasted by the moth, and the mightiest influences oi Hia Spirit, given but once in the world's history, to be quenched and shortened by miseries of chance and guilt. I do not wonder at what men Suffer, but I wonder often at what they Lose. We may see how good rises out of pain and evil ; but the dead, naked, eyeless loss, what good comes of that ? The fruit struck to the earth before its ripeness ; the glowing life and goodly purpose dissolved away in sudden death ; the words, half spoken, choked upon the lips with clay for ever ; or, stranger than all, the whole majesty of humanity raised to its fulness, and every gift and power necessary for a given purpose, at a given moment, centred in one man, and all this perfected blessing permitted to be refused, perverted, crushed, cast aside by those who need it most, — the city which is Not set on a hill, the candle that giveth light to None that are in the house : — these are the heaviest mysteries of this strange world, and, it seems to me, those which mark its curse the most. MRS. browning's APPEAL FOR ITALY. I have seen, when the thunderclouds came down on those Italian hills, and all their crags were dipped in the dark, ter- rible purple, as if the winepress of the wrath of God had stained their mountain-raiment — I have seen the hail fall in Italy till the forest branches stood stripped and bare as if blasted by the locust ; but the white hail never fell from those clouds of heaven as the black hail will fall from the clouds of hell, if ever one breath of Italian life stirs again in the streets of Verona. Sad as you will feel this to be, I do not say that you can 182 PBECIOUS THOUGHTS. directly prevent it ; you cannot drive the Austrians out of Italy, nor prevent them from building forts where they choose.* * The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Browning's beautiful appsa! for ItalT made on the occasion of the first great Exhibition of Art in Magi of the east and of the west, Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent I — What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest ? Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent In handwork only? Have you nothmg best, Which generous souls may perfect and present, And He shall thank the givers for ? no light Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor, Who sit in darkness when it is not night? No cure for wicked children? Christ, — no cure, No help for women, sobbing out of sight Because men made the laws ? — ^no brothel-lure Burnt out by popular lightnings ? Hast thou found No remedy, my England, for such woes ? No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound, No call back for the exiled ? no repose, Russia, for knouted Poles worked under ground, And gentle ladies bleached among the snows ? No mercy for the slave, America ? No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric Franco ? Alas, great nations have great shames, I say. No pity, world 1 no tender utterance Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way For poor Italia, baffled by mischance ? gracious nations, give some ear to me I You all go to your Fair, and I am one Who at the roadside of humanity Beseech your alms, — God's justice to bo doila^ So prosper I PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 183 DANTE AND SPENSEB. By tlie form or name of opposed vice, we may often ascer- tarn, with much greater accuracy than would otherwise be possible, the particular idea of the contrary virtue in the mind of the writer or painter. Thus, when opposed to Prudence, or Prudentia, on the one side, we find Folly, or Stultitia, on the other, it shows that the virtue understood by Prudence, is not the mere guiding or cardinal virtue, but the Heavenly Wisdom,* opposed to that folly which " hath said in its heart, there is no God ;" and of which it is said, " the thought of foolishness is sin ;" and again, " Such as be foolish shall not stand in thy sight." This folly is personified, in early paint- ing and illumination, by a half-naked man, greedily eating an apple or other fruit, and brandishing a club ; showing that sensuality and violence are the two principal characteristics of Foolishness, and lead into atheism. The figure, in early Psalters, always forms the letter D, which commences the fifty-third Psalm, " Dixit insipiens.'''' In reading Dante, this mode of reasoning from contraries is a great help, for his philosophy of the vices is the only one which admits of classification ; his descriptions of virtue, while they include the ordinary formal divisions, are far too profound and extended to be brought under definition. Every line of the " Paradise" is full of the most exquisite and spiritual expressions of Christian truth ; and that poem is only less read than the " Inferno" because it requires far greater attention, and, perhaps, for its full enjoyment, a holier heart. His system in the " Inferno" is briefly this. The whole nether world is divided into seven circles, deep within deep, in each of which, according to its depth, severer punishment * Uniting the three ideas expressed by the Greek philosophers under tho terms (ppovriiii aoijia, and tTtffrO/jr;; and part of the idea of awtppocrvfi,. 184 PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. is inflicted. These seven circles, reckoning them downwards are thus allotted : 1. To those who have lived virtuously, but knew not Christ 2. To Lust. 3. To Gluttony. • 4. To Avarice and Extravagance. 5. To Anger and Sorrow. 6. To Heresy. 7. To Violence and Fraud. This seventh circle is divided into two parts ; of which the first, reserved for those who have been guilty of Violence, ia again divided into three, apportioned severally to those who have committed, or desire to commit, violence against their neighbours, against themselves, or against God. The lowest hell, reserved for the punishment of Fraud, ia itself divided into ten circles, wherein are severally punished the sins of, — 1. Betraying women. 2. Flattery. 3. Simony. 4. False prophecy. 5. Peculation. 6. Hypocrisy. 1. Theft. 8. False counsel. 9. Schism and Imposture. 10. Treachery to those who repose entire trust in the traitor. There is, perhaps, nothing more notable in this most inter- esting system than the profound truth couched under the 5EECI0US THOUGHTS. IS." attachment of so terrible a penalty to sadness or sorrow. It is true that Idleness does not elsewhere appear in the scheme, and is evidently intended to be included in the guilt of sad- ness by the word " accidioso ;" but the main meaning of the ])oet is to mark the duty of rejoicing in God, according both to St. Paul's command, and Isaiah's promise, '' Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness."* I do not know words that might with more benefit be borne with us, and set in our hearts momentarily against the minor regreta and rebelliousnesses of life, than these simple ones : " Tristi fnmmo Nel aer dolce, che del sol s' allegra, Or ci attristiam, nella belletta negra." " We onc3 were sad, In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun, Now in these murky settlings are we sad."t Cart. The virtue usually opposed to this vice of sullenness is Alacritas, uniting the sense of activity and cheerfulness. Spenser has cheerfulness simply, in his description, never enough to be loved or praised, of the virtues of Womanhood, first, feminineness or womanhood in specialty ; then, — "Next to her sate goodly Shamefastnesse, Ne ever durst her eyes from ground upreare, Ne ever once did looke up from her desse,:^ * Isa. Ixiv. 5. f I hardly think it necessary to point out to the reader the association between sacred cheerfulness and solemn thought, or to explain any appear- ance of contradiction between passages in w^ich I have had to oppose sacred pensiveness to unholy mirth, and those in which 1 have to opposa sacred cheerfulness to unholy sorrow. X " Desse," seat. 186 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. As if some blame of evill she did feare That in her cheekes made roses oft appeare : And her against sweet Cherefulnesse was placed, "Whose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening cleare, Were deckt with smyles that all sad humours chace 1 " And next to her sate sober Modestie, Holding her hand upon her gentle hart ; And her against, sate comely Curtesie, That unto every person knew her part ; And her before was seated overthwart Soft Silence, and Subraisse Obedience, Both linckt together never to dispart." Another notable point in Dante's system is the intensity of uttermost punishment given to treason, the peculiar sin of Italy, and that to which, at this day, she attributes her own misery with her own lips. An Italian, questioned as to the causes of the failure of the campaign of 1848, always makes one answer, " We were betrayed ;" and the most melancholy feature of the present state of Italy is principally this, that she does not see that, of all causes to which failure might be attributed, this is at once the most disgraceful, and the most hopeless. In fact, Dante seems to me to have written almost prophetically, for the instruction of modern Italy, and chiefly so in the sixth canto of the " Purgatorio." The system of Spenser is unfinished, and exceedingly com- plicated, the same vices and virtues occurring under different forms in different places, in order to show their different rela- tions to each other. I shall not therefore give any general sketch of it, but only refer to the particular personitication of each virtue.* The peculiar superiority of his system is in * The " Faerie Queen," like Dante's " Paradise," is only half estimated, because few persons take the pains to think out its meaning. No time PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 18^ its exquisite setting forth of Chastity under the figure of Britomart ; not monkish chastity, but that of the purest Love. In completeness of personification no one can approach him ; not even in Dante do I remember anything quite so great as the description of the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh : " As pale and wan as ashes was his looke; His body lean and meagre as a rake ; And skin all withered like a dryed rooke ; Thereto as cold and drery as a snake ; That seemd to tremble evermore, and quake : All in a canvas thin he was hedight, And girded with a belt of twisted brake : Upon his head he wore an helmet light, Made of a dead mans skull." He rides upon a tiger, and in his hand is a bow, bent ; " And many arrows under his right side, Headed with flint, and fethers bloody dide." The horror and the truth of this are beyond everything that I know, out of the pages of Lispiration. Note the heading of the arrows with flint, because sharper and more subtle in the edge than steel, and because steel might consume away with rust, but flint not; and consider in the whole description how the wasting away of body and soul together, and the coldness of the heart, which unholy fire has consumed into ashes, and the loss of all power, and the kindling of all tenible impatience, and the implanting of thorny and inex- tricable griefs, are set forth by the various images, the belt of brake, the tiger steed, and the light helmet, girdhig the head with death. devoted to profane literature will be better rewarded than that spent ear neatly on Spenser. 188 rUECIOUS THOUGHTS. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia) is spiritual and noble : " She was araied all in lilly white, And in her right hand bore a cap of gold, With wine and water fild up to the hight, In which a serpent did himselfe enfold. That horrour made to all that did behold ; But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood : And in her other hand she fast did hold A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood; Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood.'* Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine : " His belly was upblowne with luxury, And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne, And like a crane his necke was long and fyue, Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast, For want whereof poore people oft did pyne." The Envy of Spenser is fine ; joining the idea of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that of corruption on hia <} lips, and of discoloration or distortion in the whole mind : " Malicious Envy rode Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw Between his cankred teeth a venomous tode, That all the poison ran about his jaw. All in a kirtle of discohurd say He clothed was ypaynted full of eies, And in his bosome secretly there lay An hateful! snake, the which his taile uptyes In many folds, and mortall sting implyes." Spenser has analysed this vice (Pride) with great care He first represents it as the Pride of life ; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep under current through all the thoughts and acts of men. As such, it is a feminine vice, PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 189 dii-ectly opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle called the House of Piyde, and her chariot is driven by Satan, with a team of beasts, ridden by the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her palace she is thus described : " So proud she shyned in her princely state, Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne ; And sitting high, for lowly she did hate ; Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne A dreadfull dragon with an hideous trayne ; And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright, Wherein her face she often vewed fayne." KNOWING AND DOING. Some years ago, in conversation with an artist whose works, perhaps, alone, in the present day, unite perfection of drawing with resplendence of colour, the writer made some inquiry respecting the general means by which this latter quality was most easily to be attained. The reply was as concise as it was comprehensive — "Know what you have to do, and do it" — comprehensive, not only as regarded the branch of art to which it temporarily applied, but as express- ing the great principle of success in every direction of human effort ; for I believe that failure is less frequently attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labour, than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done ; and therefore, while it is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, that men propose to themselves a per fection of any kind, which reason, temperately consulted, might have shown to be impossible with the means at their 190 PP.ECIOUS TIIOUGTTTS. command, it is a more dangerous error to permit the conside- ration of means to interfere with our conception, or, as is not impossible, even hinder onr acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in themselves. And this is the more cautiously to be remembered ; because, while a man's sense and con- science, aided by Revelation, are always enough, if earnestly directed, to enable him to discover what is right, neither his sense, nor conscience, nor feeling, are ever enough, because they are not intended, to determine for him what is possible. He knows neither his own strength, nor that of his fellows, neither the exact dependence to be placed on his allies nor resistance to be expected from his opponents. These are questions respecting which passion may warp his conclusions, and ignorance must limit them; but it is his own fault if either interfere with the apprehension of duty, or the acknow- ledgment of right. And, as far as I have taken cognizance of the causes of the many failures to which the efforts of intelligent men are liable, more especially in matters political, they seem to me more largely to spring from this single error than from all others, that the inquiry into the doubtful, and in some sort inexplicable, relations of capability, chance, resists ance, and inconvenience, invariably precedes, even if it do not altogether supersede, the determination of what is abso- lutely desirable and just. Nor is it any wonder that some- times the too cold calculation of our powers should reconcile us too easily to our shortcomings, and even lead us into the fatal error of supposing that our conjectural utmost is in itself well, or, in other words, that the necessity of offences renders them inoffensive. PEKCIOUS THOUGHTS. 3 PI THE POWER OP INTELLECT. Tlie temperament whicli admits the pathetic fallacy is that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before them or npon them ; borne away, or over, ^loaded, or over-dazzled by emotion ; and it is a more or le'ss noble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced it. For it is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them ; and it is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they choose. But it is still a grander condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of the passions ; and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating ; even if he melts, losing none of his weight. So, then, we have the three ranks : the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a prim- rose : a star, or a sun, or a faiiy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. VOLTTNTAEILY ADMITTED RESTEAINTS. The highest greatness and the highest wisdom ate shown, the first by a noble submission to, the second by a thoughtful providence for, certain voluntarily admitted restraints. No- 102 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. thing is more evident than this, in that supreme government which is the example, as it is the centre of all others. The Divine Wisdom is, and can be, shown to us only in its meet- ing and contending with the difficulties which are voluntarily, and for the sake of that contest^ admitted by the Divine Om- nipotence : and these difficulties, observe, occur in the forn of natural laws or ordinances which •might, at many times and in countless ways, be infringed with apparent advantage, but which are never infringed, whatever costly arrangements or adaptations thi'ir observance may necessitate for the accom- plishment of given purposes. The example most apposite to our present subject is the structure of the bones of animals. No reason can be given, I believe, why the system of the higher animals should not have been made capable, as that of the Infusoria is, of secreting flint, instead of phosphate of lime, or more naturally still, carbon ; so framing the bones of adamant at once. The elephant or rhinoceros, had the earthy part of their bones been made of diamond, might have been as agile and light as grasshoppers, and other animals might have been framed far more magnificently colossal than any that w^alk the earth. In other worlds we may, perhaps, see such creations ; a creation for every element, and elements infinite. But the architecture of animals Acre, is appointed by God to be a marble architecture, not a flint nor adamant architecture ; and all manner of expedients are adopted to attain the utmost degree of strength and size possible under that great limitation. The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and riveted, the leg of the megatherium is a foot thick, and the head of the myodon has a double skull ; we, in our wis- dom, should, doubtless, have given the lizard a steel jaw, and the myodon a cast-iron head-piece, and forgotten the great principle to which all creation bears witness, that order and system are nobler things than power. But God shows PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 193 US in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of Obedience — an obe- dience to His own laws : and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of His creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of upiightness in the human creature " that sweareth to his ovrn hurt and changeth not." PEOGRESS IN KNOWLEDGE. If we consider that, till within the last fifty years, the nature of the ground we tread on, of the air we breathe, and of the light by which we see, were not so much as conjec- turally conceived by us ; that the duration of the globe, and the races of animal life by which it was inhabited, are just beginning to be apprehended ; and that the scope of the magnificent science which has revealed them, is as yet so little received by the public mind, that presumption and igno- rance are still permitted to raise their voices against it unre- buked ; that perfect veracity in the representation of general nature by art lias never been attempted until the present day, and has in the i:)resent day been resisted with all the energy of the popular voice ; * that the simplest problems of social science are yet so little understood, as that doctrines of liberty and equality can be openly preached, and so success- fully as to afiect the whole body of the civilized world with apparently incurable disease ; that the first principles of com- merce were acknowledged by the English Parliament only a few months ago, in its free trade measures, and are still so * In the works of Turnor and the Pre-Raphaelitea. 9 194 PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. little understood by the million, that no nation dares to aho* lish its custom-houses ; * that the simplest principles of policy are stiUnot so much as stated, far less received, and that civil- ized nations persist in the belief that the subtlety and dis- honesty which they know to be ruinous in dealings between man and man, are serviceable in dealings between multitude and multitude ; finally, that the scope of the Christian reli- gion, which we have been taught for two thousand years, is still so little conceived by us, that we suppose the laws of charity and of self-sacrifice bear upon individuals in all their social relations, and yet do not bear upon nations in any of their political relations ; — when, I say, we thus review the deptli of simplicity in which the human race are still plunged with respect to all that it most profoundly concerns them to know, and which might, by them, with most ease haA^^e been ascertained, we can hardly determine how far back on the narrow path of human progress we ought to place the gene- ration to which we belong, how far the swaddling clothes are unwound from us, and childish things begimiing to be put away. On the other hand, a power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been * Observe, I speak of these various principles as self-evident, only unde' the present circumstances of the world, not as if they had always been so , and I call them now self-evident, not merely because they seem so to my- self, but because they are felt to be so likewise by all the men in whom I place most trust. But granting that they are not so, then their very dis- 'putability proves the state of infancy above alleged, as characteristic of the world. For I do not suppose that any Christian reader will doubt the first great truth, that whatever facts or laws are important to mankind, God has made ascertainable by mankind ; and that as the decision of all these ques- tions is of vital importance to the race, that decision must have been long ago arrived at, unless they were still in a state of childhood. PEECIOTJS THOUGHTS. 105 placed in the hands of all men,* almost without labour. Tha foundation of every natural science is now at last firmly laid, not a day passing without some addition of buttress and pin- nacle to their already magnificent fabric. Social theorems, if fiercely agitated, are therefore the more likely to be at last determined, so that they never can be matters of question more. Human life has been in some sense prolonged by the increased powers of locomotion, and an almost limitless power of converse. Finally, there is hardly any serious mind in Europe but is occupied, more or less, in th-e investigation of the questions which have so long paralyzed the strength of religious feeling, and shortened the dominion of religious faith. And we may therefore at least look upon ourselves as so far in a definite state of piogress, as to justify our caution in guarding against the dangers incident to every period of change, and especially to that from childhood into youth. Those dangers appear, in the main, to be twofold; consist- ing partly in the pride of vain knowledge, partly in the pur- suit of vain pleasure. IGNOBLE EMOTION". A Turk declares that " God is great," when he means only that he himself is lazy. The " heaven is bright " of many * I intended to have given a sketch in this place (above referred to) of the probable results of the daguerreotype and calotype within the next few years, in modifying the application of the engraver's art, but I have not had time to complete the experiments necessary to enable me to speak with certainty. Of one thing, however, I have httle doubt, that an infinite ser- vice will soon be done to a large body of our engravers ; namely, the mak- ing theni draughtsmen. 196 PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. vulgar painters, has precisely the same amount of signification •, it means that they know nothing — will do nothing — are with- out thought — without care — without passion. They will not walk the earth, nor watch the ways of it, nor gather the flowers of it. They will sit in the shade, and only assert that very perceptible, long-ascertained fact, "heaven is bright." And as it may be asserted basely, so it may be accepted basely. Many of our capacities for receiving noblest emotion are abused, in mere idleness, for pleasure's sake, and peoi)le take the excitement of a solemn sensation as they do that of a strong drink. Thus the abandoned court of Louis XIV. had on fast days its sacred concerts, doubtless entering in some degree into the religious expression of the music, and thus idle and frivolous women at the present day will weep at an oratorio. SACEED ASSOCIATIONS WITH OLIYE-TREES. I do not want painters to tell me any scientific facts about olive-trees. But it had been well for them to have felt and seen the olive-tree ; to have loved it for Christ's sake, partly also for the helmed Wisdom's sake which was to the heathen in some sort as that nobler Wisdom which stood at God's right hand, when Hie founded the earth and established the heavens. To have loved it, even to the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for ever ; and to have traced, line by line, the gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small, rosy- white stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads of sabl* TEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 191 truil scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs — the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and tht> widow, — and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silvet grey, and tender like the down on a bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulation of the mountains. SIMPLICITY. It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated ; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and cease exertion in the proper place, than t'o expend both, indiscriminately. We shall find, in the course of ow investigation, that beauty and difficulty go together; and that they are only mean and paltry difficulties which it is wiong or contemptible to wres- tle with. Be it remembered then — Power is never wasted. Whatever power has been employed, produces excellence in proportion to its own dignity and exertion ; and the faculty of perceiving this exertion, and appreciating this dignity, is the faculty of perceiving excellence. LOVE OF CHANGE. We must note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change ; for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in nature ; both having 198 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. tlieir use, like darkness and light, and the one incapable of being enjoyed without the other : change being most delight- ful after some prolongation of monotony, as liglit appears most brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed; I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may be most simply understood by observing them in music We may therein notice, first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony which there is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its monotony ; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery ; and espe- cially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and rise of an engine beam. So also *there is sublimity in darkness which there is not in light. Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree, becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is obliged to break it in one or twO ways : either while the air or passage is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful according to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of couise, uses both these kinds of variation perpetually. The sea- waves, resembling each other in genei'al mass, but none like its brother in minor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the first kind ; the great plain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of the second. Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, a certain degree of patience is required fi'om the hearei or observer. In the first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience the recurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek for entertainment in si careful watchfulness of the minor details. In the second case, he must bear PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 199 patiently the infliction of the monotony for some moments, in order to feel the full refreshment of the change. This is true even of the shortest musical passage in which the element of monotony is employed. In cases of more majestic mono- tony, the patience required is so considerable that it become a kind of pain, — a piice paid for the future pleasure. Again : the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but in the changes : he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in certain places or degrees ; that is to say, by his various employment of it ; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that his intellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it. Lastly : if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to be delightful, for then change itself becomes mono- tonous, and we are driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is the diseased love of change of which we have above spoken. From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought to be, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is ; that an architecture which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture ; and, of those who love it, it may be truly said, " they love darkness rather than light." But monotony in certain measure, used in order to give value to change, and, above all, that transparent monotony which, like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly suggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential in architectural as in all other composition ; and the endurance of monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the endurance of darkness has : that is to say, as a strong intellect will have pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and the storm : 200 • PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness oi fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or feli- city, while an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future pleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble nature loves ^monotony, any more than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear with it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world ; while those who will not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape. THE MAN OF GENIUS. His science is inexpressibly subtle, directly taught him by his Maker, not in anywise communicable or imitable. Neither can any written or definitely observable laws enable us to do any great thing. It is possible, by measuring and administer- ing quantities of colour, to paint a room wall so that it shall not hurt the eye ; but there are no laws by observing which we can become Titians. It is possible so to measure and admi- nister syllables, as to construct harmonious verse ; but there are no laws by which we can write Iliads. Out of the poem or the i:>icture, once produced, men may elicit laws by the volume, and study them with advantage, to the better under- Btanding of the existing poem or picture ; but no more write PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 201 or paint aiiotlier, than by discovering laws of vegetation tliey cnn make a tree to grow. And therefore, wheresoever we find the system and formality of rules much dwelt upon, and spoken of as anything else than a help for children, there we may be sure that noble art is not even understood, far less reached. And thus it was with all the common and public mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The greater men, indeed, broke through the thorn hedges ; and, though much time was lost by the learned among them in writing Latin verses and anagrams, and arranging the framework of quaint sonnets and dexterous syllogisms, still they tore their way through the sapless thicket by force of intellect or of piety ; for it was not possible that, either in literature or in painting, rules could be received by any strong mind, so as materially to interfere with its originality ; and the crabbed discipline and exact scholarship became an advantage to the men who could pass through and despise them ; so that in spite of the rules of the di-ama we had Shakspeare, and in spite of the rules of art we had Tintoret, — both of them, to this day, doing perpetual violence to the vulgar scholarship and dim-eyed proprieties of the multitude. THE Cr-ASSICAL. On the absence of belief in a good supreme Being, follows, necessarily, the habit of looking to ourselves for supreme judgment in all matters, and for supreme government. Hence, first, the irreverent habit of judgment instead of ad- miration. It is generally expressed under the justly degrad- ing term " good taste."* Hence, in the second place, the habit of restraint or self 9* 202 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. government (instead of impulsive and limitless obcditnce), based upon pride, and involving, for the most part, scorn of the helpless and weak, and respect only for the orders of men who have been trained to this habit of self-government. Whence the title classical, from the Latin classicus. The school is, therefore, generally to be characterized as that of taste and restraint. As the school of taste, every- thing is, in its estimation, beneath it, so as to be tasted or tested ; not above it, to be thankfully received. Nothing was to be fed upon as bread ; but only palated as a dainty. This -spirit has destroyed art since the close of the sixteenth cen- tury, and nearly destroyed French literature, our English literature being at the same time severely depressed, and our education (except in bodily strength) rendered nearly nuga- tory by it, so far as it affects common-place minds. It is not possible that the classical spirit should ever take possession of a mind of the liighest order. Pope is, as far as I know, the greatest man who ever fell strongly under its influence ; and though it spoiled half his work, he broke through it conti- nually into true enthusiasm and tender thought.* Again, as the school of reserve, it refuses to allow itself in any violent or " spasmodic" passion ; the Kschools of literature which have been in modern times called " spasmodic," being reactionary against it. The woi-d, though an ugly one, is quite accurate, the most spasmodic books in the world being Solomon's Song, Job, and Isaiah. * Cold-hearted, I have called him. He was so in writing the Pastorals, of which I then spoke , but in after hfe his error's were those of his time, his wisdom was his own : it would be well if we also made it ouib. PHECIOUS THOUGHTS. 203 THE MOTHER-XATION. I believe that no Christian nation has any business to see one of its members in distress without helping him, though, perhaps, at the same time punishing him : help, of course- in nine cases out of ten — meaning guidance, much more than gift, and, therefore, interference with liberty. When a pea- sant mother sees one of her careless children fall into a ditch, her first proceeding is to pull him out ; her second, to box his ears ; h^ third, ordinarily, to lead him carefully a little way by the hand, or send him home for the rest of the day. The child usually cries, and very often would clearly prefer remaining in the ditch ; and if he understood any of the terms of politics, would certainly express resentment at the interference with his individual liberty : but the mother has done her duty. Whereas the usual call of the mother-nation to any of her children, under such circumstances, has lately been nothing more than the foxhunter's, — " Stay still there ; I shall clear you." And if we always could clear them, their requests to be left in muddy independence might be some- times allowed by kind people, or their cries for help disdained by unkind ones. But we can't clear them. The whole nation is, in fact, bound together, as men are by ropes on a glacier — if one falls, the rest must either lift him or drag him along with them as dead weight, not without much increase of dan- ger to themselves. And tlie law of right being manifestly in this, as, whether manifestly or not, it is always, the law of prudence, the only question is, how this wholesome help and mterference are to be administered. 204 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. JUSTICE, MERCY, and TRUTH. Every person who tries to buy an article for l(;ss than its proper value, or who tries to sell it at more than its proper value — every consumer who keeps a tradesman waiting for his money, and every tradesman who bribes a consumer to extra- vagance by credit, is helping forward, according to his own measure of power, a system of baseless and dishonourable commerce, and forcing his country down into poverty and shame. And people of moderate means and a verage^ powers of mind would do far more real good by merely carrying out stern princii^Ies of justice and honesty in common matters of trade, than by the most ingenious schemes of extended phi- lanthropy, or vociferous declarations of theological doctrine. There are three weighty matters of the law — justice, mercy, and truth ; and of these the Teacher puts truth last, because that cannot be known but by a course of acts of justice and love. But men put, in all their efforts, truth first, because they mean by it their own opinions; and thus, while the world has many people who would suffer martyrdom in the cause of what they call truth, it has few who will suffer even a little inconvenience in that of justice and mercy. PROPHETIC DESIGNERS. The nations whose chief support was in the chase, w*hose chief interest was in the battle, whose chief pleasure was in the banquet, would take small care respecting the shapes of leaves and flowers; and notice little in the forms of the forest trees which sheltered them, except the signs indicative of the Avood \vhich would make the toughest lance, the closest roof, [ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 205 or the clearest fire. The affectionate observation of the grace and outward character of vegetation is the sure sign of a more tranquil and gentle existence, sustained by the gifts, and gladdened by the splendour, of the earth. In that care- ful distinction of species, and richness of delicate and undis- turbed organization, which characterize the Gothic design, there is the history of rural and thoughtful life, influenced by habitual tenderness, and devoted to subtle inquiry ; and every discriminating and delicate touch of the chisel, as it rounds the i^etal or guides the branch, is a prophecy of the develop- ment of the entire body of the natural sciences, beginning with that of medicine, of the recovery of literature, and the establishment of the most necessary principles of domestio wisdom and national peace. THE FOOD OF THE SOUL. That sentence of Genesis, "I have given thee every green herb for meat," like all the rest of the book, has a profound symbolical as well as a literal meaning. It is not merely the nourishment of the body, but the food of the soul, that is intended. The green herb is, of all nature, that which is most essential to the healthy spiritual life of man. Most of us do not need fine scenery ; the precipice and the mountain peak are not intended to be seen by all men, — perhaps their power is greatest over those who are unaccustomed to them. But trees, and fields, and flowers were made for all, and are necessary for all. God has connected the labour which is essen- tial to the bodily sustenance, with the pleasures which are healthiest for the heart ; and while He made the ground stub' born, He made its herbage fragrant, and its blossoms fair 206 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. The proudest architecture that man can buiid has no aighei honour than to bear the image and recall the memory of that grass of the field which is, at once, the type and the support of its existence ; the goodly building is then most glorious when it is sculptured into the likeness of the leaves of Para- dise ; and the great Gothic spirit, as we showed it to be noble in its disquietude, is also noble in its hold of nature ; it is, indeed, like the dove of Noah, in that she found no rest upon the face of the waters, — but like her in this also, " Lo, in her MOUTH VTAS AN OLIVE BEANCH, PLUCKED OFF." DIVISION OF LABOUR. Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destruc- tive struggling fOr a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, and have done much in all ages ; but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot endure their own ; for they feel that the kind of labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy with the lower, or charity for them, PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 207 as they have at this day, and yet never were they so mud hated by them : for, of old, the separation between the noble and the poor was merely a wall bnilt by law ; now it is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between tipper and lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there is pestilential air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of right freedom will be under- stood, and when men will see that to obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is nol slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty, — liberty from care. The man who says to one. Go, and he goeth, and to another. Come, and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be lightened ; but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at it. To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery ; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is servile, that is to say, irrational or selfish : but there is also noble reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him, — the Irish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with his musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge ; or that old moun- tain servant who, 200 yeai'S ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and the lives of his seven sons for his chief?* — and as each fell, calling forth his brother to the death, * Vide Preface to "Fair Maid of Perth." 208 PEECIOTTS THOUGHTS. " Anotlier for Hector!" And therefore, in all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the heart ennobled the men who gave, not less than the men who received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes ; — this nature bade not, — this God blesses not, — this humanity for no long time is able to endure. We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour ; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided ; but the men : — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life ; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day ; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is, — ^we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture every- thing there except men ; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery ; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one PEECIOUS THOUGHTS. 209 way : not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes. of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them and making them happy ; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman ; and by equally deter- mined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour. And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recog- nized, and this demand to be regulated ? Easily : by the observance of three broad and simple rules : 1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely necessary, in the production of which Invention has no share. 2. Never denfand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end. 3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake of preserving record of great works. The second of these principles is the only one which directly rises out of the consideration of our immediate sub- ject ; but I shall briefly explain the meaning and extent of the first also, reserving the enforcement of the third for another place. 1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not neces- sary, in the production of which invention has no share. For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by first drawing out the glass into rods ; these rods are chopped up into fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their work 210 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail. Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments, have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty ; and every young lady, there- fore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so long been endeavouring to put down. But glass cups and vessels may become the subject of exquisite invention ; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to say, for the beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and not for mere finish of execution, we are doing good to humanity. THE MODERN INFIDEL CREED. Co-relative with the assertion, "There is a foolish God," is the assertion, "There is a brutish man." "As no laws but those of the Devil are practicable in the world, so no impulses but those of the brute " (says the modern political economist) " are appealable to in the world. Faith, generosity, honesty, zeal, and self-sacrifice are poetical phrases. None of these things can, in reality, be counted upon ; there is no truth in man which can be used as a moving or productive power. All motive force in him is essentially brutish, covetous, or contentious. His power is only power of prey : otherwise than the spider, he cannot design ; otherwise than the tiger he cannot feed." This is the modern interpretation of that embarrassing article of the Creed, " the communion of saints." It has always seemed very strange to me, not indeed that this creed should have been adopted, it being the entirely PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 211 necessary consequence of the previons fundamental artide ; — ■ but that no one sliould ever seem to have any misgivings about it ; — that, practically, no one had seen how strong work was done by man ; how either for hire, or for hatred, it never had been done ; and that no amount of pay had ever made a good soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good workman. You pay your soldiers and sailors so many pence a day, at which rated sum, one will do good fighting for you ; another, bad fighting. Pay as you will, the entire goodness of the fighting depends, always, on its being done for nothing ; or rather, less than nothing, in the expectation of no pay but death. Examine the work of your spiritual teachers, and you will find the statistical law respecting them is, "The less pay, the better work." Examine also your writers and artists: for ten pounds you shall have a Paradise Lost, and for a plate of figs, a Durer drawing ; but for a million of money sterling, neither. Examine your men of science : paid by starvation, Kepler will discover the laws of the orbs of heaven for you ; ■ — and, driven out to die in the street, Swammerdam shall discover the laws of life for you — such hard terms do they make with you, these brutish men, who can only be had for hire. Neither is good work ever done for hatred, any more than liirc — but for love onlv. CONCESSION AND COMPANIONSHIP. The leaves, as we shall see immediately, are the feeders of the plant. Their own orderly habits of succession must not interfere with their main business of finding food. Where the sun and air are the leaf must go, whether it be out of 212 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. order or not. So, therefore, in any group, the first consirlerO' tion with the young leaves is much like that of young bees, how to keep out of each other's way, that every one may at once leave its neighbours as much free-air pasture as possible, and obtain a relative freedom for itself. This would be a quite simple matter, and produce other simply balanced forms, if each branch, with open air all round it, had nothing to think of but reconcilement of interests among its own leaves. But every branch has others to meet or to cross, sharing with them, in various advantage, what shade or sun or rain is to be had. Hence every single leaf-cluster presents the general aspect of a little family, entirely at unity among themselves, but obliged to get their living by various shifts, concessions, and infringements of the family rules, in order not to invade the privileges of other people in their neigh- bourhood. And in the arrangement of these concessions there is an exquisite sensibility among the leaves. They do not grow each to his own liking, till they run against one another, and then turn back sulkily ; but by a watchful instinct, far apart, they anticipate their companions' courses, as ships at sea, and in every new unfolding of their edged tissue, guide them- selves by the sense of each other's remote presence, and by a watchful penetration of leafy purpose in the far future. So that every shadow which one casts on the next, and every glint of sun which each reflects to the next, and every touch which in toss of storm each receives from the next, aid or arrest the development of their advancing form, and direct, as will be safest and best, the curve of every fold and the current of every vein. And this peculiar character exists in all the structures thus developed, that they are always visibly the result of a volition on the part of the leaf, meeting an external force oj PKECIOUS THOUGHTS. 213 fate, to which it is never passively subjected. Upoi it, as on a mineral in the course of formation, the great merciless influ* ences of the universe, and the oppressive powers of minor things immediately near it, act continually. Heat and cold gravity and the other attractions, windy pressure, or local and unhealthy restraint, must, in certain inevitable degrees, affect the whole of its life. But it is life which they affect ; — a life of progress and will, — not a merely passive accumula- tion of substance. This may be seen by a single glance. The mineral, — suppose an agate in the course of formation — shows in every line nothing but a dead submi.