CHAPTER X.

THE NEREID’S GUARD.

§ 1. The work of Turner, in its first period, is said in my account of his drawings at the National Gallery to be distinguished by “boldness of handling, generally gloomy tendency of mind, subdued color, and perpetual reference to precedent in composition.” I must refer the reader to those two catalogues1 for a more special account of his early modes of technical study. Here we are concerned only with the expression of that gloomy tendency of mind, whose causes we are now better able to understand.

§ 2. It was prevented from overpowering him by his labor. This, continual, and as tranquil in its course as a ploughman’s in the field, by demanding an admirable humility and patience, averted the tragic passion of youth. Full of stern sorrow and fixed purpose, the boy set himself to his labor silently and meekly, like a workman’s child on its first day at the cotton-mill. Without haste, but without relaxation,—accepting all modes and means of progress, however painful or humiliating, he took the burden on his shoulder and began his march. There was nothing so little, but that he noticed it; nothing so great but he began preparations to cope with it. For some time his work is, apparently, feelingless, so patient and mechanical are the first essays. It gains gradually in power and grasp; there is no perceptible aim at freedom, or at fineness, but the force insensibly becomes swifter, and the touch finer. The color is always dark or subdued.

§ 3. Of the first forty subjects which he exhibited at the Royal Academy, thirty-one are architectural, and of these twenty-one are of elaborate Gothic architecture (Peterborough cathedral, Lincoln cathedral, Malmesbury abbey, Tintern abbey, &c.). I look upon the discipline given to his hand by these formal drawings as of the highest importance. His mind was also gradually led by them into a calmer pensiveness.2 Education amidst country possessing architectural remains of some noble kind, I believe to be wholly essential to the progress of a landscape artist. The first verses he ever attached to a picture were in 1798. They are from Paradise Lost, and refer to a picture of Morning, on the Coniston Fells:—

By glancing over the verses, which in following years3 he quotes from Milton, Thompson, and Mallet, it may be seen at once how his mind was set, so far as natural scenes were concerned, on rendering atmospheric effect;—and so far as emotion was to be expressed, how consistently it was melancholy.

He paints, first of heroic or meditative subjects, the Fifth Plague of Egypt; next, the Tenth Plague of Egypt. His first tribute to the memory of Nelson is the “Battle of the Nile,” 1799. I presume an unimportant picture, as his power was not then availably developed. His first classical subject is Narcissus and Echo, in 1805:—

The year following he summons his whole strength, and paints what we might suppose would be a happier subject, the Garden of the Hesperides. This being the most important picture of the first period, I will analyze it completely.

§ 4. The fable of the Hesperides had, it seems to me, in the Greek mind two distinct meanings; the first referring to natural phenomena, and the second to moral. The natural meaning of it I believe to have been this:—

The Garden of the Hesperides was supposed to exist in the westernmost part of the Cyrenaica; it was generally the expression for the beauty and luxuriant vegetation of the coast of Africa in that district. The centre of the Cyrenaica “is occupied by a moderately elevated table-land, whose edge runs parallel to the coast, to which it sinks down in a succession of terraces, clothed with verdure, intersected by mountain streams running through ravines filled with the richest vegetation; well watered by frequent rains, exposed to the cool sea breeze from the north, and sheltered by the mass of the mountain from the sands and hot winds of the Sahara.”4

The Greek colony of Cyrene itself was founded ten miles from the sea-shore, “in a spot backed by the mountains on the south, and thus sheltered from the fiery blasts of the desert; while at the height of about 1800 feet an inexhaustible spring bursts forth amidst luxuriant vegetation, and pours its waters down to the Mediterranean through a most beautiful ravine.”

The nymphs of the west, or Hesperides, are therefore, I believe, as natural types, the representatives of the soft western winds and sunshine, which were in this district most favorable to vegetation. In this sense they are called daughters of Atlas and Hesperis, the western winds being cooled by the snow of Atlas. The dragon, on the contrary, is the representative of the Sahara wind, or Simoom, which blew over the garden from among the hills on the south, and forbade all advance of cultivation beyond their ridge. Whether this was the physical meaning of the tradition in the Greek mind or not, there can be no doubt of its being Turner’s first interpretation of it. A glance at the picture may determine this: a clear fountain being made the principal object in the foreground,—a bright and strong torrent in the distance,—while the dragon, wrapped in flame and whirlwind, watches from the top of the cliff.

§ 5. But, both in the Greek mind and Turner’s, this natural meaning of the legend was a completely subordinate one. The moral significance of it lay far deeper. In the second, but principal sense, the Hesperides were not daughters of Atlas, nor connected with the winds of the west, but with its splendor. They are properly the nymphs of the sunset, and are the daughters of night, having many brothers and sisters, of whom I shall take Hesiod’s account.

§ 6. “And the Night begat Doom, and short-withering Fate, and Death.

“And begat Sleep, and the company of Dreams, and Censure, and Sorrow.

“And the Hesperides, who keep the golden fruit beyond the mighty Sea.

“And the Destinies, and the Spirits of merciless punishment.

“And Jealousy, and Deceit, and Wanton Love; and Old Age, that fades away; and Strife, whose will endures.”

§ 7. We have not, I think, hitherto quite understood the Greek feeling about those nymphs and their golden apples, coming as a light in the midst of cloud; between Censure, and Sorrow,—and the Destinies. We must look to the precise meaning of Hesiod’s words, in order to get the force of the passage.

“The Night begat Doom;” that is to say, the doom of unforeseen accident—doom essentially of darkness.

“And short-withering Fate.” Ill translated. I cannot do it better. It means especially the sudden fate which brings untimely end to all purpose, and cuts off youth and its promise; called, therefore (the epithet hardly ever leaving it), “black Fate.”

“And Death.” This is the universal, inevitable death, opposed to the interfering, untimely death. These three are named as the elder children. Hesiod pauses, and repeats the word “begat” before going on to number the others.

“And begat Sleep, and the company of Dreams.”

“And Censure.” “Momus,” the Spirit of Blame—the spirit which desires to blame rather than to praise; false, base, unhelpful, unholy judgment;—ignorant and blind, child of the Night.

“And Sorrow.” Accurately, sorrow of mourning; the sorrow of the night, when no man can work; of the night that falls when what was the light of the eyes is taken from us; lamenting, sightless sorrow, without hope,—child of Night.

“And the Hesperides.” We will come back to these.

“And the Destinies, and the Spirits of Merciless Punishment.” These are the great Fates which have rule over conduct; the first fate spoken of (short-withering) is that which has rule over occurrence. These great Fates are Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Their three powers are—Clotho’s over the clue, the thread, or connecting energy,—that is, the conduct of life; Lachesis’ over the lot—that is to say, the chance which warps, entangles, or bends the course of life. Atropos, inflexible, cuts the thread for ever.

“And Jealousy,” especially the jealousy of Fortune, in balancing all good by evil. The Greeks had a peculiar dread of this form of fate.

“And Deceit, and sensual Love. And Old Age that fades, and Strife that endures;” that is to say, old age, which, growing not in wisdom, is marked only by its failing power—by the gradual gaining of darkness on the faculties, and helplessness on the frame, such age is the forerunner of true death—the child of Night. “And Strife,” the last and the mightiest, the nearest to man of the Night-children—blind leader of the blind.

§ 8. Understanding thus whose sisters they are, let us consider of the Hesperides themselves—spoken of commonly as the “Singing Nymphs.” They are four.

Their names are ÆglÉ,—Brightness; Erytheia,—Blushing; Hestia,—the (spirit of the) Hearth; Arethusa,—the Ministering.

O English reader! hast thou ever heard of these fair and true daughters of Sunset, beyond the mighty sea?

And was it not well to trust to such keepers the guarding of the golden fruit which the earth gave to Juno at her marriage? Not fruit only: fruit on the tree, given by the earth, the great mother, to Juno (female power), at her marriage with Jupiter, or ruling manly power (distinguished from the tried and agonizing strength of Hercules). I call Juno, briefly, female power. She is, especially, the goddess presiding over marriage, regarding the woman as the mistress of a household. Vesta (the goddess of the hearth5), with Ceres, and Venus, are variously dominant over marriage, as the fulfilment of love; but Juno is pre-eminently the housewives’ goddess. She, therefore, represents, in her character, whatever good or evil may result from female ambition, or desire of power: and, as to a housewife, the earth presents its golden fruit to her, which she gives to two kinds of guardians. The wealth of the earth, as the source of household peace and plenty, is watched by the singing nymphs—the Hesperides. But, as the source of household sorrow and desolation, it is watched by the Dragon.

We must, therefore, see who the Dragon was, and what kind of dragon.

§ 9. The reader will, perhaps, remember that we traced, in an earlier chapter, the birth of the Gorgons, through Phorcys and Ceto, from Nereus. The youngest child of Phorcys and Ceto is the Dragon of the Hesperides; but this latest descent is not, as in Northern traditions, a sign of fortunateness: on the contrary, the children of Nereus receive gradually more and more terror and power, as they are later born, till this last of the Nereids unites horror and power at their utmost. Observe the gradual change. Nereus himself is said to have been perfectly true and gentle.

This is Hesiod’s account of him:—

“And Pontus begat Nereus, simple and true, the oldest of children; but they call him the aged man, in that he is errorless and kind; neither forgets he what is right; but knows all just and gentle counsel.”

§ 10. Now the children of Nereus, like the Hesperides themselves, bear a twofold typical character; one physical, the other moral. In his physical symbolism, Nereus himself is the calm and gentle sea, from which rise, in gradual increase of terror, the clouds and storms. In his moral character, Nereus is the type of the deep, pure, rightly-tempered human mind, from which, in gradual degeneracy, spring the troubling passions.

Keeping this double meaning in view, observe the whole line of descent to the Hesperides’ Dragon. Nereus, by the earth, begets (1) Thaumas (the wonderful), physically, the father of the Rainbow; morally, the type of the enchantments and dangers of imagination. His grandchildren, besides the Rainbow, are the Harpies. 2. Phorcys (Orcus?), physically, the treachery or devouring spirit of the sea; morally, covetousness or malignity of heart. 3. Ceto, physically, the deep places of the sea; morally, secretness of heart, called “fair-cheeked,” because tranquil in outward aspect. 4. Eurybia (wide strength), physically, the flowing, especially the tidal power of the sea (she, by one of the sons of Heaven, becomes the mother of three great Titans, one of whom, AstrÆus, and the Dawn, are the parents of the four Winds); morally, the healthy passion of the heart. Thus far the children of Nereus.

§ 11. Next, Phorcys and Ceto, in their physical characters (the grasping or devouring of the sea, reaching out over the land and its depth), beget the Clouds and Storms—namely, first, the GraiÆ, or soft rain-clouds; then the Gorgons, or storm-clouds; and youngest and last, the Hesperides’ Dragon—Volcanic or earth-storm, associated, in conception, with the Simoom and fiery African winds.

But, in its moral significance, the descent is this. Covetousness, or malignity (Phorcys), and Secretness (Ceto), beget, first, the darkening passions, whose hair is always gray; then the stormy and merciless passions, brazen-winged (the Gorgons), of whom the dominant, Medusa, is ice-cold, turning all who look on her to stone. And, lastly, the consuming (poisonous and volcanic) passions—the “flame-backed dragon,” uniting the powers of poison, and instant destruction. Now, the reader may have heard, perhaps, in other books of Genesis than Hesiod’s, of a dragon being busy about a tree which bore apples, and of crushing the head of that dragon; but seeing how, in the Greek mind, this serpent was descended from the sea, he may, perhaps, be surprised to remember another verse, bearing also on the matter:—“Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters;” and yet more surprised, going on with the Septuagint version, to find where he is being led: “Thou brakest the head of the dragon, and gavest him to be meat to the Ethiopian people. Thou didst tear asunder the strong fountains and the storm-torrents; thou didst dry up the rivers of Etham, πηγὰς καὶ χειμάῤῥους, the Pegasus fountains—Etham on the edge of the wilderness.”

§ 12. Returning then to Hesiod, we find he tells us of the Dragon himself:—“He, in the secret places of the desert land, kept the all-golden apples in his great knots” (coils of rope, or extremities of anything). With which compare Euripides’ report of him:—“And Hercules came to the Hesperian dome, to the singing maidens, plucking the apple fruit from the golden petals; slaying the flame-backed dragon, who twined round and round, kept guard in unapproachable spires” (spirals or whirls, as of a whirlwind-vortex).

Farther, we hear from other scattered syllables of tradition, that this dragon was sleepless, and that he was able to take various tones of human voice.

And we find a later tradition than Hesiod’s calling him a child of Typhon and Echidna. Now Typhon is volcanic storm, generally the evil spirit of tumult.

Echidna (the adder) is a descendant of Medusa. She is a daughter of Chrysaor (the lightning), by CallirÖe (the fair flowing), a daughter of Ocean;—that is to say, she joins the intense fatality of the lightning with perfect gentleness. In form she is half-maiden, half-serpent; therefore she is the spirit of all the fatalest evil, veiled in gentleness: or, in one word, treachery;—having dominion over many gentle things;—and chiefly over a kiss, given, indeed, in another garden than that of the Hesperides, yet in relation to keeping of treasure also.

§ 13. Having got this farther clue, let us look who it is whom Dante makes the typical Spirit of Treachery. The eighth or lowest pit of hell is given to its keeping; at the edge of which pit, Virgil casts a rope down for a signal; instantly there rises, as from the sea, “as one returns who hath been down to loose some anchor,” “the fell monster with the deadly sting, who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls, and firm embattled spears; and with his filth taints all the world.”

Think for an instant of another place:—“Sharp stones are under him, he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.” We must yet keep to Dante, however. Echidna, remember, is half-maiden, half-serpent;—hear what Dante’s Fraud is like:—

§ 14. You observe throughout this description the leaning on the character of the Sea Dragon; a little farther on, his way of flying is told us:—

And lastly, his name is told us: Geryon. Whereupon, looking back at Hesiod, we find that Geryon is Echidna’s brother. Man-serpent, therefore, in Dante, as Echidna is woman-serpent.

We find next that Geryon lived in the island of Erytheia, (blushing), only another kind of blushing than that of the Hesperid Erytheia. But it is on, also, a western island, and Geryon kept red oxen on it (said to be near the red setting sun); and Hercules kills him, as he does the Hesperian dragon: but in order to be able to reach him, a golden boat is given to Hercules by the Sun, to cross the sea in.

§ 15. We will return to this part of the legend presently, having enough of it now collected to get at the complete idea of the Hesperian dragon, who is, in fine, the “Pluto il gran nemico” of Dante; the demon of all evil passions connected with covetousness; that is to say, essentially of fraud, rage, and gloom. Regarded as the demon of Fraud, he is said to be descended from the viper Echidna, full of deadly cunning, in whirl on whirl; as the demon of consuming Rage, from Phorcys; as the demon of Gloom, from Ceto;—in his watching and melancholy, he is sleepless (compare the Micyllus dialogue of Lucian); breathing whirlwind and fire, he is the destroyer, descended from Typhon as well as Phorcys; having, moreover, with all these, the irresistible strength of his ancestral sea.

§ 16. Now, look at him, as Turner has drawn him (p. 298). I cannot reduce the creature to this scale without losing half his power; his length, especially, seems to diminish more than it should in proportion to his bulk. In the picture he is far in the distance, cresting the mountain; and may be, perhaps, three-quarters of a mile long. The actual length on the canvas is a foot and eight inches; so that it may be judged how much he loses by the reduction, not to speak of my imperfect etching,6 and of the loss which, however well he might have been engraved, he would still have sustained, in the impossibility of expressing the lurid color of his armor, alternate bronze and blue.

§ 17. Still, the main points of him are discernible enough; and among all the wonderful things that Turner did in his day, I think this nearly the most wonderful. How far he had really found out for himself the collateral bearings of the Hesperid tradition I know not; but that he had got the main clue of it, and knew who the Dragon was, there can be no doubt; the strange thing is, that his conception of it throughout, down to the minutest detail, fits every one of the circumstances of the Greek traditions. There is, first, the Dragon’s descent from Medusa and Typhon, indicated in the serpent-clouds floating from his head (compare my sketch of the Medusa-cloud, Plate 71); then note the grovelling and ponderous body, ending in a serpent, of which we do not see the end. He drags the weight of it forward by his claws, not being able to lift himself from the ground (“Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell”); then the grip of the claws themselves as if they would clutch (rather than tear) the rock itself into pieces; but chiefly, the designing of the body. Remember, one of the essential characters of the creature, as descended from Medusa, is its coldness and petrifying power; this, in the demon of covetousness, must exist to the utmost; breathing fire, he is yet himself of ice. Now, if I were merely to draw this dragon as white, instead of dark, and take his claws away, his body would become a representation of a greater glacier, so nearly perfect, that I know no published engraving of glacier breaking over a rocky brow so like the truth as this dragon’s shoulders would be, if they were thrown out in light; there being only this difference, that they have the form, but not the fragility of the ice; they are at once ice and iron. “His bones are like solid pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron; by his neesings a light doth shine.”

§ 18. The strange unity of vertebrated action, and of a true bony contour, infinitely varied in every vertebra, with this glacial outline;—together with the adoption of the head of the Ganges crocodile, the fish-eater, to show his sea descent (and this in the year 1806, when hardly a single fossil saurian skeleton existed within Turner’s reach), renders the whole conception one of the most curious exertions of the imaginative intellect with which I am acquainted in the arts.

§ 19. Thus far, then, of the dragon; next, we have to examine the conception of the Goddess of Discord. We must return for a moment to the tradition about Geryon. I cannot yet decipher the meaning of his oxen, said to be fed together with those of Hades; nor of the journey of Hercules, in which, after slaying Geryon, he returns through Europe like a border forager, driving these herds, and led into farther battle in protection or recovery of them. But it seems to me the main drift of the legend cannot be mistaken; viz., that Geryon is the evil spirit of wealth, as arising from commerce; hence, placed as a guardian of isles in the most distant sea, and reached in a golden boat; while the Hesperian dragon is the evil spirit of wealth, as possessed in households; and associated, therefore, with the true household guardians, or singing nymphs. Hercules (manly labor), slaying both Geryon and Ladon, presents oxen and apples to Juno, who is their proper mistress; but the Goddess of Discord, contriving that one portion of this household wealth shall be ill bestowed by Paris, he, according to Coleridge’s interpretation, choosing pleasure instead of wisdom or power;—there issue from this evil choice the catastrophe of the Trojan war, and the wanderings of Ulysses, which are essentially, both in the Iliad and Odyssey, the troubling of household peace; terminating with the restoration of this peace by repentance and patience; Helen and Penelope seen at last sitting upon their household thrones, in the Hesperian light of age.

§ 20. We have, therefore, to regard Discord, in the Hesperides garden, eminently as the disturber of households, assuming a different aspect from Homer’s wild and fierce discord of war. They are, nevertheless, one and the same power; for she changes her aspect at will. I cannot get at the root of her name, Eris. It seems to me as if it ought to have one in common with Erinnys (Fury); but it means always contention, emulation, or competition, either in mind or in words;—the final work of Eris is essentially “division,” and she is herself always double-minded; shouts two ways at once (in Iliad, xi. 6), and wears a mantle rent in half (Æneid, viii. 702). Homer makes her loud-voiced, and insatiably covetous. This last attribute is, with him, the source of her usual title. She is little when she first is seen, then rises till her head touches heaven. By Virgil she is called mad; and her hair is of serpents, bound with bloody garlands.

§ 21. This is the conception first adopted by Turner, but combined with another which he found in Spenser; only note that there is some confusion in the minds of English poets between Eris (Discord) and AtÉ (Error), who is a daughter of Discord, according to Hesiod. She is properly—mischievous error, tender-footed; for she does not walk on the earth, but on heads of men (Iliad, xix. 92); i.e. not on the solid ground, but on human vain thoughts; therefore, her hair is glittering (Iliad, xix. 126). I think she is mainly the confusion of mind coming of pride, as Eris comes of covetousness; therefore, Homer makes her a daughter of Jove. Spenser, under the name of AtÉ, describes Eris. I have referred to his account of her in my notice of the Discord on the Ducal palace of Venice (remember the inscription there, Discordia sum, discordans). But the stanzas from which Turner derived his conception of her are these—

All these circumstances of decrepitude and distortion Turner has followed, through hand and limb, with patient care: he has added one final touch of his own. The nymph who brings the apples to the goddess, offers her one in each hand; and Eris, of the divided mind, cannot choose.

§ 22. One farther circumstance must be noted, in order to complete our understanding of the picture,—the gloom extending, not to the dragon only, but also to the fountain and the tree of golden fruit. The reason of this gloom may be found in two other passages of the authors from which Turner had taken his conception of Eris—Virgil and Spenser. For though the Hesperides in their own character, as the nymphs of domestic joy, are entirely bright (and the garden always bright around them), yet seen or remembered in sorrow, or in the presence of discord, they deepen distress. Their entirely happy character is given by Euripides:—“The fruit-planted shore of the Hesperides,—songstresses,—where the ruler of the purple lake allows not any more to the sailor his way, assigning the boundary of Heaven, which Atlas holds; where the ambrosial fountains flow, and the fruitful and divine land increases the happiness of the gods.”

But to the thoughts of Dido, in her despair, they recur under another aspect; she remembers their priestess as a great enchantress; who feeds the dragon and preserves the boughs of the tree; sprinkling moist honey and drowsy poppy; who also has power over ghosts; “and the earth shakes and the forests stoop from the hills at her bidding.”

§ 23. This passage Turner must have known well, from his continual interest in Carthage: but his diminution of the splendor of the old Greek garden was certainly caused chiefly by Spenser’s describing the Hesperides fruit as growing first in the garden of Mammon:—

There are two collateral evidences in the picture of Turner’s mind having been partly influenced by this passage. The excessive darkness of the stream,—though one of the Cyrene fountains—to remind us of Cocytus; and the breaking of the bough of the tree by the weight of its apples—not healthily, but as a diseased tree would break.

§ 24. Such then is our English painter’s first great religious picture; and exponent of our English faith. A sad-colored work, not executed in Angelico’s white and gold; nor in Perugino’s crimson and azure; but in a sulphurous hue, as relating to a paradise of smoke. That power, it appears, on the hill-top, is our British Madonna; whom, reverently, the English devotional painter must paint, thus enthroned, with nimbus about the gracious head. Our Madonna,—or our Jupiter on Olympus,—or, perhaps more accurately still, our unknown god, sea-born, with the cliffs, not of Cyrene, but of England, for his altar; and no chance of any Mars’ Hill proclamation concerning him, “whom therefore ye ignorantly worship.”

§ 25. This is no irony. The fact is verily so. The greatest man of our England, in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the strength and hope of his youth, perceives this to be the thing he has to tell us of utmost moment, connected with the spiritual world. In each city and country of past time, the master-minds had to declare the chief worship which lay at the nation’s heart; to define it; adorn it; show the range and authority of it. Thus in Athens, we have the triumph of Pallas; and in Venice the assumption of the Virgin; here, in England, is our great spiritual fact for ever interpreted to us—the Assumption of the Dragon. No St. George any more to be heard of; no more dragon-slaying possible: this child, born on St. George’s Day, can only make manifest the Dragon, not slay him, sea-serpent as he is; whom the English Andromeda, not fearing, takes for her lord. The fairy English Queen once thought to command the waves, but it is the sea-dragon now who commands her valleys; of old the Angel of the Sea ministered to them, but now the Serpent of the Sea; where once flowed their clear springs now spreads the black Cocytus pool; and the fair blooming of the Hesperid meadows fades into ashes beneath the Nereid’s Guard.

Yes, Albert of Nuremberg; the time has at last come. Another nation has arisen in the strength of its Black anger; and another hand has portrayed the spirit of its toil. Crowned with fire, and with the wings of the bat.

1 Notes on the Turner Collection at Marlborough House. 1857. Catalogue of the Sketches of J. M. V. Turner exhibited at Marlborough House. 1858.

2 The regret I expressed in the third volume at Turner’s not having been educated under the influence of Gothic art was, therefore, mistaken; I had not then had access to his earlier studies. He was educated under the influence of Gothic architecture; but, in more advanced life, his mind was warped and weakened by classical architecture. Why he left the one for the other, or how far good influences were mingled with evil in the result of the change, I have not yet been able to determine.

3 They may be referred to with ease in Boone’s Catalogue of Turner’s Pictures, 1857.

4 Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Art. “Cyrenaica.”

5 Her name is also that of the Hesperid nymph; but I give the Hesperid her Greek form of name, to distinguish her from the goddess. The Hesperid Arethusa has the same subordinate relation to Ceres; and Erytheia, to Venus. ÆglÉ signifies especially the spirit of brightness or cheerfulness including even the subordinate idea of household neatness or cleanliness.

6 It is merely a sketch on the steel, like the illustrations before given of composition; but it marks the points needing note. Perhaps some day I may be able to engrave it of the full size.

CHAPTER XI.

THE HESPERID ÆGLÉ.

§ 1. Five years after the Hesperides were painted, another great mythological subject appeared by Turner’s hand. Another dragon—this time not triumphant, but in death-pang; the Python, slain by Apollo.

Not in a garden, this slaying, but in a hollow, among wildest rocks, beside a stagnant pool. Yet, instead of the sombre coloring of the Hesperid hills, strange gleams of blue and gold flit around the mountain peaks, and color the clouds above them.

The picture is at once the type, and the first expression of a great change which was passing in Turner’s mind. A change, which was not clearly manifested in all its results until much later in his life; but in the coloring of this picture are the first signs of it; and in the subject of this picture, its symbol.

§ 2. Had Turner died early, the reputation he would have left, though great and enduring, would have been strangely different from that which ultimately must now attach to his name. He would have been remembered as one of the severest of painters; his iron touch and positive form would have been continually opposed to the delicacy of Claude and richness of Titian; he would have been spoken of, popularly, as a man who had no eye for color. Perhaps here and there a watchful critic might have shown this popular idea to be false; but no conception could have been formed by any one of the man’s real disposition or capacity.

It was only after the year 1820 that these were determinable, and his peculiar work discerned.

§ 3. He had begun by faithful declaration of the sorrow there was in the world. It is now permitted him to see also its beauty. He becomes, separately and without rival, the painter of the loveliness and light of the creation.

Of its loveliness: that which may be beloved in it, the tenderest, kindest, most feminine of its aspects. Of its light: light not merely diffused, but interpreted; light seen pre-eminently in color.

Claude and Cuyp had painted the sunshine, Turner alone the sun color.

Observe this accurately. Those easily understood effects of afternoon light, gracious and sweet so far as they reach, are produced by the softly warm or yellow rays of the sun falling through mist. They are low in tone, even in nature, and disguise the colors of objects. They are imitable even by persons who have little or no gift of color, if the tones of the picture are kept low and in true harmony, and the reflected lights warm. But they never could be painted by great colorists. The fact of blue and crimson being effaced by yellow and gray, puts such effect at once out of the notice or thought of a colorist, unless he has some special interest in the motive of it. You might as well ask a musician to compose with only three notes, as Titian to paint without crimson and blue. Accordingly the colorists in general, feeling that no other than this yellow sunshine was imitable, refused it, and painted in twilight, when the color was full. Therefore, from the imperfect colorists,—from Cuyp, Claude, Both, Wilson, we get deceptive effect of sunshine; never from the Venetians, from Rubens, Reynolds or Velasquez. From these we get only conventional substitutions for it, Rubens being especially daring1 in frankness of symbol.

§ 4. Turner, however, as a landscape painter, had to represent sunshine of one kind or another. He went steadily through the subdued golden chord, and painted Cuyp’s favorite effect, “sun rising through vapor,” for many a weary year. But this was not enough for him. He must paint the sun in his strength, the sun rising not through vapor. If you glance at that Apollo slaying the Python, you will see there is rose color and blue on the clouds, as well as gold; and if then you turn to the Apollo in the Ulysses and Polyphemus—his horses are rising beyond the horizon,—you see he is not “rising through vapor,” but above it; gaining somewhat of a victory over vapor, it appears.

The old Dutch brewer, with his yellow mist, was a great man and a good guide, but he was not Apollo. He and his dray-horses led the way through the flats, cheerily, for a little time; we have other horses now flaming out “beyond the mighty sea.”

A victory over vapor of many kinds; Python-slaying in general. Look how the Python’s jaws smoke as he falls back between the rocks:—a vaporous serpent! We will see who he was, presently.

The public remonstrated loudly in the cause of Python: “He had been so yellow, quiet, and pleasant a creature; what meant these azure-shafted arrows, this sudden glare into darkness, this Iris message; Thaumantian;—miracle-working; scattering our slumber down in Cocytus?” It meant much, but that was not what they should have first asked about it. They should have asked simply, was it a true message? Were these Thaumantian things so, in the real universe?

It might have been known easily they were. One fair dawn or sunset, obediently beheld, would have set them right; and shown that Turner was indeed the only true speaker concerning such things that ever yet had appeared in the world. They would neither look nor hear;—only shouted continuously, “Perish Apollo. Bring us back Python.”

§ 5. We must understand the real meaning of this cry, for herein rests not merely the question of the great right or wrong in Turner’s life, but the question of the right or wrong of all painting. Nay, on this issue hangs the nobleness of painting as an art altogether, for it is distinctively the art of coloring, not of shaping or relating. Sculptors and poets can do these, the painter’s own work is color.

Thus, then, for the last time, rises the question, what is the true dignity of color? We left that doubt a little while ago among the clouds, wondering what they had been made so scarlet for. Now Turner brings the doubt back to us, unescapable any more. No man, hitherto, had painted the clouds scarlet. Hesperid ÆglÉ, and Erytheia, throned there in the west, fade into the twilights of four thousand years, unconfessed. Here is at last one who confesses them, but is it well? Men say these Hesperids are sensual goddesses,—traitresses,—that the GraiÆ are the only true ones. Nature made the western and the eastern clouds splendid in fallacy. Crimson is impure and vile; let us paint in black if we would be virtuous.

§ 6. Note, with respect to this matter, that the peculiar innovation of Turner was the perfection of the color chord by means of scarlet. Other painters had rendered the golden tones, and the blue tones, of sky; Titian especially the last, in perfectness. But none had dared to paint, none seem to have seen, the scarlet and purple.

Nor was it only in seeing this color in vividness when it occurred in full light, that Turner differed from preceding painters. His most distinctive innovation as a colorist was his discovery of the scarlet shadow. “True, there is a sunshine whose light is golden, and its shadow gray; but there is another sunshine, and that the purest, whose light is white, and its shadow scarlet.” This was the essentially offensive, inconceivable thing, which he could not be believed in. There was some ground for the incredulity, because no color is vivid enough to express the pitch of light of pure white sunshine, so that the color given without the true intensity of light looks false. Nevertheless, Turner could not but report of the color truly. “I must indeed be lower in the key, but that is no reason why I should be false in the note. Here is sunshine which glows even when subdued; it has not cool shade, but fiery shade.”2 This is the glory of sunshine.

§ 7. Now, this scarlet color,—or pure red, intensified by expression of light,—is, of all the three primitive colors, that which is most distinctive. Yellow is of the nature of simple light; blue, connected with simple shade; but red is an entirely abstract color. It is red to which the color-blind are blind, as if to show us that it was not necessary merely for the service or comfort of man, but that there was a special gift or teaching in this color. Observe, farther, that it is this color which the sunbeams take in passing through the earth’s atmosphere. The rose of dawn and sunset is the hue of the rays passing close over the earth. It is also concentrated in the blood of man.

§ 8. Unforeseen requirements have compelled me to disperse through various works, undertaken between the first and last portions of this essay, the examination of many points respecting color, which I had intended to reserve for this place. I can now only refer the reader to these several passages,3 and sum their import: which is briefly, that color generally, but chiefly the scarlet, used with the hyssop, in the Levitical law, is the great sanctifying element of visible beauty inseparably connected with purity and life.

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 examines the original sources from which our heedless popular language respecting the washing away of sins has been borrowed, he will find that the fountain in which sins are indeed to be washed away, is that of love, not of agony.

§ 9. But, without approaching the presence of this deeper meaning of the sign, the reader may rest satisfied with the connection given him directly in written words, between the cloud and its bow. The cloud, or firmament, as we have seen, signifies the ministration of the heavens to man. That ministration may be in judgment or mercy—in the lightning, or the dew. But the bow, or color, 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 color by means of the fundamental 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 work—various in beauty—various in power.

Color is, therefore, in brief terms, the type of love. Hence 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.

§ 10. And now, I think, we may understand, even far away in the Greek mind, the meaning of that contest of Apollo with the Python. It was a far greater contest than that of Hercules with Ladon. Fraud and avarice might be overcome by frankness and force; but this Python was a darker enemy, and could not be subdued but by a greater god. Nor was the conquest slightly esteemed by the victor deity. He took his great name from it thenceforth—his prophetic and sacred name—the Pythian.

It could, therefore, be no merely devouring dragon—no mere wild beast with scales and claws. It must possess some more terrible character to make conquest over it so glorious. Consider the meaning of its name, “THE CORRUPTER.” That Hesperid dragon was a treasure-guardian. This is the treasure-destroyer,—where moth and rust doth corrupt—the worm of eternal decay.

Apollo’s contest with him is the strife of purity with pollution; of life, with forgetfulness; of love, with the grave.

§ 11. I believe this great battle stood, in the Greek mind, for the type of the struggle of youth and manhood with deadly sin—venomous, infectious, irrecoverable sin. In virtue of his victory over this corruption, Apollo becomes thenceforward the guide; the witness; the purifying and helpful God. The other gods help waywardly, whom they choose. But Apollo helps always: he is by name, not only Pythian, the conqueror of death; but PÆan—the healer of the people.

Well did Turner know the meaning of that battle: he has told its tale with fearful distinctness. The Mammon dragon was armed with adamant; but this dragon of decay is a mere colossal worm: wounded, he bursts asunder in the midst,4 and melts to pieces, rather than dies, vomiting smoke—a smaller serpent-worm rising out of his blood.

§ 12. Alas, for Turner! This smaller serpent-worm, it seemed, he could not conceive to be slain. In the midst of all the power and beauty of nature, he still saw this death-worm writhing among the weeds. A little thing now, yet enough; you may see it in the foreground of the Bay of BaiÆ, which has also in it the story of Apollo and the Sibyl; Apollo giving love; but not youth, nor immortality: you may see it again in the foreground of the Lake Avernus—the Hades lake—which Turner surrounds with delicatest beauty, the Fates dancing in circle; but in front, is the serpent beneath the thistle and the wild thorn. The same Sibyl, Deiphobe, holding the golden bough. I cannot get at the meaning of this legend of the bough; but it was, assuredly, still connected, in Turner’s mind, with that help from Apollo. He indicated the strength of his feeling at the time when he painted the Python contest, by the drawing exhibited the same year, of the Prayer of Chryses. There the priest is on the beach alone, the sun setting. He prays to it as it descends;—flakes of its sheeted light are borne to him by the melancholy waves, and cast away with sighs upon the sand.

How this sadness came to be persistent over Turner, and to conquer him, we shall see in a little while. It is enough for us to know at present that our most wise and Christian England, with all her appurtenances of school-porch and church-spire, had so disposed her teaching as to leave this somewhat notable child of hers without even cruel Pandora’s gift.

He was without hope.

True daughter of Night, Hesperid ÆglÉ was to him; coming between Censure, and Sorrow,—and the Destinies.

§ 13. What, for us, his work yet may be, I know not. But let not the real nature of it be misunderstood any more.

He is distinctively, as he rises into his own peculiar strength, separating himself from all men who had painted forms of the physical world before,—the painter of the loveliness of nature, with the worm at its root: Rose and cankerworm,—both with his utmost strength; the one never separate from the other.

In which his work was the true image of his own mind.

I would fain have looked last at the rose; but that is not the way Atropos will have it, and there is no pleading with her.

So, therefore, first of the rose.

§ 14. That is to say, of this vision of the loveliness and kindness of Nature, as distinguished from all visions of her ever received by other men. By the Greek, she had been distrusted. She was to him Calypso, the Concealer, Circe, the Sorceress. By the Venetian, she had been dreaded. Her wildernesses were desolate; her shadows stern. By the Fleming, she had been despised; what mattered the heavenly colors to him? But at last, the time comes for her loveliness and kindness to be declared to men. Had they helped Turner, listened to him, believed in him, he had done it wholly for them. But they cried out for Python, and Python came;—came literally as well as spiritually;—all the perfectest beauty and conquest which Turner wrought is already withered. The cankerworm stood at his right hand, and of all his richest, most precious work, there remains only the shadow. Yet that shadow is more than other men’s sunlight; it is the scarlet shade, shade of the Rose. Wrecked, and faded, and defiled, his work still, in what remains of it, or may remain, is the loveliest ever yet done by man, in imagery of the physical world. Whatsoever is there of fairest, you will find recorded by Turner, and by him alone.

§ 15. I say you will find, not knowing to how few I speak; for in order to find what is fairest, you must delight in what is fair; and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such delight. Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking to be understood;—now I cannot any more; for it seems to me that no one regards them. Wherever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem to have no other desire or hope but to have large houses and to be able to move fast. Every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they defile.5

§ 16. Nevertheless, though not joyfully, or with any hope of being at present heard, I would have tried to enter here into some examination of the right and worthy effect of beauty in Art upon human mind, if I had been myself able to come to demonstrable conclusions. But the question is so complicated with that of the enervating influence of all luxury, that I cannot get it put into any tractable compass. Nay, I have many inquiries to make, many difficult passages of history to examine, before I can determine the just limits of the hope in which I may permit myself to continue to labor in any cause of Art.

Nor is the subject connected with the purpose of this book. I have written it to show that Turner is the greatest landscape painter who ever lived; and this it has sufficiently accomplished. What the final use may be to men, of landscape painting, or of any painting, or of natural beauty, I do not yet know. Thus far, however, I do know.

§ 17. Three principal forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake (as supposed) of religion; seen chiefly in the middle ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester.

“We do not come here to look at the mountains,” said the Carthusian to me at the Grande Chartreuse. “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” the Austrian generals would say, encamping by the shores of Garda. “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” so the thriving manufacturers tell me, between Rochdale and Halifax.

§ 18. All these asceticisms have their bright, and their dark sides. I myself like the military asceticism best, because it is not so necessarily a refusal of general knowledge as the two others, but leads to acute and marvellous use of mind, and perfect use of body. Nevertheless, none of the three are a healthy or central state of man. There is much to be respected in each, but they are not what we should wish large numbers of men to become. A monk of La Trappe, a French soldier of the Imperial Guard, and a thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and no more than a type, of his class, are all interesting specimens of humanity, but narrow ones,—so narrow that even all the three together would not make a perfect man. Nor does it appear in any way desirable that either of the three classes should extend itself so as to include a majority of the persons in the world, and turn large cities into mere groups of monastery, barracks, or factory. I do not say that it may not be desirable that one city, or one country, sacrificed for the good of the rest, should become a mass of barracks or factories. Perhaps, it may be well that this England should become the furnace of the world; so that the smoke of the island, rising out of the sea, should be seen from a hundred leagues away, as if it were a field of fierce volcanoes; and every kind of sordid, foul, or venomous work which in other countries men dreaded or disdained, it should become England’s duty to do,—becoming thus the off-scourer of the earth, and taking the hyena instead of the lion upon her shield. I do not, for a moment, deny this; but, looking broadly, not at the destiny of England, nor of any country in particular, but of the world, this is certain—that men exclusively occupied either in spiritual reverie, mechanical destruction, or mechanical productiveness, fall below the proper standard of their race, and enter into a lower form of being; and that the true perfection of the race, and, therefore, its power and happiness, are only to be attained by a life which is neither speculative nor productive; but essentially contemplative and protective, which (A) does not lose itself in the monk’s vision or hope, but delights in seeing present and real things as they truly are; which (B) does not mortify itself for the sake of obtaining powers of destruction, but seeks the more easily attainable powers of affection, observance, and protection; which (C), finally, does not mortify itself with a view to productive accumulation, but delights itself in peace, with its appointed portion. So that the 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.

§ 19. 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 indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall “inherit the earth.” Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can inherit anything;6 they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.

§ 20. 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 better 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 justice or righteousness; 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.

§ 21. And, in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life,—this, at present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life—that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance; not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days: so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or provision,7 but wholly of accumulation;—the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure;—therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world.

§ 22. What length and severity of labor may be ultimately found necessary for the procuring of the due 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 I 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.

I say, first, that due economy of labor will assign to each man the share which is right. Let no technical labor be wasted on things useless or unpleasurable;8 and let all physical exertion, so far as possible, be utilized, and it will be found no man need ever work more than is good for him. I believe an immense gain in the bodily health and happiness of the upper classes would follow on their steadily endeavoring, however clumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily take in amusements, definitely serviceable. It would be far better, for instance, that a gentleman should mow his own fields, than ride over other people’s.

§ 23. Again, respecting degrees of possible refinement, I cannot 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 appear 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, or 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 intelligibly, 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 sing. I would not teach him the science of drawing; but certainly I would teach him to see; without 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 philosophy, he should help his neighbor, and disdain a bribe.

§ 24. Many most valuable conclusions respecting the degree of nobleness and refinement which may be attained in servile or in rural life may be arrived at by a careful study of the noble writings of Blitzius (Jeremias Gotthelf), which contain a record of Swiss character not less valuable in its fine truth than that which Scott has left of the Scottish. I know no ideal characters of women, whatever their station, more majestic than that of Freneli (in Ulric le Valet de Ferme, and Ulric le Fermier); or of Elise, in the Tour de Jacob; nor any more exquisitely tender and refined than that of Aenneli in the Fromagerie and Aenneli in the Miroir des Paysans.9

§ 25. How far this simple and useful pride, this delicate innocence, might be adorned, or how far destroyed, by higher intellectual education in letters or the arts, cannot be known without other experience than the charity of men has hitherto enabled us to acquire.

All effort in social improvement is paralyzed, because no one has been bold or clear-sighted enough to put and press 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, broadly and rashly, that wealth is good; that knowledge is 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, ministering 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 honorable toil.

Thus far, then, of the Rose.

§ 26. Last, of the Worm.

I said that Turner painted the labor of men, their sorrow, and their death. This he did nearly in the same tones of mind which prompted Byron’s poem of Childe Harold, and the loveliest result of his art, in the central period of it, was an effort to express on a single canvas the meaning of that poem. It may be now seen, by strange coincidence, associated with two others—Caligula’s Bridge and the Apollo and Sibyl; the one illustrative of the vanity of human labor, the other of the vanity of human life.10 He painted these, as I said, in the same tone of mind which formed the Childe Harold poem, but with different capacity: Turner’s sense of beauty was perfect; deeper, therefore, far than Byron’s; only that of Keats and Tennyson being comparable with it. And Turner’s love of truth was as stern and patient as Dante’s; so that when over these great capacities come the shadows of despair, the wreck is infinitely sterner and more sorrowful. With no sweet home for his childhood,—friendless in youth,—loveless in manhood,—and hopeless in death, Turner was what Dante might have been, without the “bello ovile,” without Casella, without Beatrice, and without Him who gave them all, and took them all away.

§ 27. I will trace this state of his mind farther, in a little while. Meantime, I want you to note only the result upon his work;—how, through all the remainder of his life, wherever he looked, he saw ruin.

Ruin, and twilight. What was the distinctive effect of light which he introduced, such as no man had painted before? Brightness, indeed, he gave, as we have seen, because it was true and right; but in this he only perfected what others had attempted. His own favorite light is not ÆglÉ, but Hesperid ÆglÉ. Fading of the last rays of sunset. Faint breathing of the sorrow of night.

§ 28. And fading of sunset, note also, on ruin. I cannot but wonder that this difference between Turner’s work and previous art-conception has not been more observed. None of the great early painters draw ruins, except compulsorily. The shattered buildings introduced by them are shattered artificially, like models. There is no real sense of decay; whereas Turner only momentarily dwells on anything else than ruin. Take up the Liber Studiorum, and observe how this feeling of decay and humiliation gives solemnity to all its simplest subjects; even to his view of daily labor. I have marked its tendency in examining the design of the Mill and Lock, but observe its continuance through the book. There is no exultation in thriving city, or mart, or in happy rural toil, or harvest gathering. Only the grinding at the mill, and patient striving with hard conditions of life. Observe the two disordered and poor farm-yards, cart, and ploughshare, and harrow rotting away; note the pastoral by the brook side, with its neglected stream, and haggard trees, and bridge with the broken rail, and decrepit children—fever-struck—one sitting stupidly by the stagnant stream; the other in rags, and with an old man’s hat on, and lame, leaning on a stick. Then the “Hedging and ditching,” with its bleak sky and blighted trees—hacked, and bitten, and starved by the clay soil into something between trees and firewood; its meanly-faced, sickly laborers—pollard laborers, like the willow trunk they hew; and the slatternly peasant-woman, with worn cloak and battered bonnet—an English Dryad. Then the Water-mill, beyond the fallen steps overgrown with the thistle: itself a ruin, mud-built at first, now propped on both sides;—the planks torn from its cattle-shed; a feeble beam, splintered at the end, set against the dwelling-house from the ruined pier of the watercourse; the old millstone—useless for many a day—half buried in slime, at the bottom of the wall; the listless children, listless dog, and the poor gleaner bringing her single sheaf to be ground. Then the “Peat bog,” with its cold, dark rain, and dangerous labor. And last and chief, the mill in the valley of the Chartreuse. Another than Turner would have painted the convent; but he had no sympathy with the hope, no mercy for the indolence of the monk. He painted the mill in the valley. Precipice overhanging it, and wildness of dark forest round; blind rage and strength of mountain torrent rolled beneath it,—calm sunset above, but fading from the glen, leaving it to its roar of passionate waters and sighing of pine-branches in the night.

§ 29. Such is his view of human labor. Of human pride, see what records. Morpeth tower, roofless and black; gate of old Winchelsea wall, the flock of sheep driven round it, not through it; and Rievaulx choir, and Kirkstall crypt; and Dunstanborough, wan above the sea; and Chepstow, with arrowy light through traceried windows; and Lindisfarne, with failing height of wasted shaft and wall; and last and sweetest, Raglan, in utter solitude, amidst the wild wood of its own pleasance; the towers rounded with ivy, and the forest roots choked with undergrowth, and the brook languid amidst lilies and sedges. Legends of gray knights and enchanted ladies keeping the woodman’s children away at the sunset.

These are his types of human pride. Of human love: Procris, dying by the arrow; Hesperie, by the viper’s fang; and Rizpah, more than dead, beside her children.

§ 30. Such are the lessons of the Liber Studiorum. Silent always with a bitter silence, disdaining to tell his meaning, when he saw there was no ear to receive it, Turner only indicated this purpose by slight words of contemptuous anger, when he heard of any one’s trying to obtain this or the other separate subject as more beautiful than the rest. “What is the use of them,” he said, “but together?”11 The meaning of the entire book was symbolized in the frontispiece, which he engraved with his own hand: Tyre at sunset, with the Rape of Europa, indicating the symbolism of the decay of Europe by that of Tyre, its beauty passing away into terror and judgment (Europa being the mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus).12

§ 31. I need not trace the dark clue farther, the reader may follow it unbroken through all his work and life, this thread of Atropos.13 I will only point, in conclusion, to the intensity with which his imagination dwelt always on the three great cities of Carthage, Rome, and Venice—Carthage in connection especially with the thoughts and study which led to the painting of the Hesperides’ Garden, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of wealth; Rome, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of power; Venice, the death which attends the vain pursuit of beauty.

How strangely significative, thus understood, those last Venetian dreams of his become, themselves so beautiful and so frail; wrecks of all that they were once—twilights of twilight!

§ 32. Vain beauty; yet not all in vain. Unlike in birth, how like in their labor, and their power over the future, these masters of England and Venice—Turner and Giorgione. But ten years ago, I saw the last traces of the greatest works of Giorgione yet glowing, like a scarlet cloud, on the Fondaco de Tedeschi.14 And though that scarlet cloud (sanguigna e fiammeggiante, per cui le pitture cominciarono con dolce violenza a rapire il cuore delle genti) may, indeed, melt away into paleness of night, and Venice herself waste from her islands as a wreath of wind-driven foam fades from their weedy beach;—that which she won of faithful light and truth shall never pass away. Deiphobe of the sea,—the Sun God measures her immortality to her by its sand. Flushed, above the Avernus of the Adrian lake, her spirit is still seen holding the golden bough; from the lips of the Sea Sibyl men shall learn for ages yet to come what is most noble and most fair; and, far away, as the whisper in the coils of the shell, withdrawn through the deep hearts of nations, shall sound for ever the enchanted voice of Venice.

CHAPTER XII.

PEACE.

§ 1. Looking back over what I have written, I find that I have only now the power of ending this work; it being time that it should end, but not of “concluding” it; for it has led me into fields of infinite inquiry, where it is only possible to break off with such imperfect result as may, at any given moment, have been attained.

Full of far deeper reverence for Turner’s art than I felt when this task of his defence was undertaken (which may, perhaps, be evidenced by my having associated no other names with his—but of the dead,—in my speaking of him throughout this volume),1 I am more in doubt respecting the real use to mankind of that, or any other transcendent art; incomprehensible as it must always be to the mass of men. Full of far deeper love for what I remember of Turner himself, as I become better capable of understanding it, I find myself more and more helpless to explain his errors and his sins.

§ 2. His errors, I might say, simply. 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 consciousness of heaven; and that this loss may be various in its guilt: it cannot be judged by us. It is this of which the words are spoken so sternly, “Judge not;” which 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 practical 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.

§ 3. “Bind them about thy neck.” I said, but now, that of an evil tree men never gathered good fruit. And the lesson we have finally to learn from Turner’s life is broadly this, that all the power of it came of its mercy and sincerity; all the failure of it, from its want of faith. It has been asked of me, by several of his friends, that I should endeavor to do some justice to his character, mistaken wholly by the world. If my life is spared, I will. But that character is still, in many respects, inexplicable to me; the materials within my reach are imperfect; and my experience in the world not yet large enough to enable me to use them justly. His life is to be written by a biographer, who will, I believe, spare no pains in collecting the few scattered records which exist of a career so uneventful and secluded. I will not anticipate the conclusions of this writer; but if they appear to me just, will endeavor afterwards, so far as may be in my power, to confirm and illustrate them; and, if unjust, to show in what degree.

§ 4. Which, lest death or illness should forbid me, this only I declare now of what I know respecting Turner’s character. Much of his mind and heart I do not know;—perhaps, never shall know. But this much I do; and if there is anything in the previous course of this work to warrant trust in me of any kind, let me be trusted when I tell you, that Turner had a heart as intensely kind, and as nobly true, as ever God gave to one of his creatures. I offer, as yet, no evidence in this matter. When I do give it, it shall be sifted and clear. Only this one fact I now record joyfully and solemnly, that, having known Turner for ten years, and that during the period of his life when the brightest qualities of his mind were, in many respects, diminished, and when he was suffering most from the evil-speaking of the world, I never heard him say one depreciating word of living man, or man’s work; I never saw him look an unkind or blameful look; I never knew him let pass, without some sorrowful remonstrance, or endeavor at mitigation, a blameful word spoken by another.

Of no man but Turner, whom I have ever known, could I say this. And of this kindness and truth2 came, I repeat, all his highest power. And all his failure and error, deep and strange, came of his faithlessness.

Faithlessness, or despair, the despair which has been shown already (Vol. III., chap. xvi.) to be characteristic of this present century, and most sorrowfully manifested in its greatest men; but existing in an infinitely more fatal form in the lower and general mind, reacting upon those who ought to be its teachers.

§ 5. 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 and respectful repetition of them. Execution would be too dangerous under existing circumstances, which He certainly never contemplated.”

I had no conception of the absolute darkness which has covered the national mind in this respect, until I began to come into collision with persons engaged in the study of economical and political questions. The entire naÏvetÉ and undisturbed imbecility with which I found them declare that the laws of the Devil were the only practicable ones, and that the laws of God were merely a form of poetical language, passed all that I had ever before heard or read of mortal infidelity. I knew the fool had often said in his heart, there was no God; but to hear him say clearly out with his lips, “There is a foolish God,” was something which my art studies had not prepared me for. The French had indeed, for a considerable time, hinted much of the meaning in the delicate and compassionate blasphemy of their phrase “le bon Dieu,” but had never ventured to put it into more precise terms.

6. Now this form of unbelief in God is connected with, and necessarily productive of, a precisely equal unbelief in man.

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.”

7. It has always seemed very strange to me, not indeed that this creed should have been adopted, it being the entirely necessary consequence of the previous fundamental article;—but that no one should 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.

§ 8. Neither is good work ever done for hatred, any more than hire—but for love only. For love of their country, or their leader, or their duty, men fight steadily; but for massacre and plunder, feebly. Your signal, “England expects every man to do his duty,” they will answer; your signal of black flag and death’s head, they will not answer. And verily they will answer it no more in commerce than in battle. The cross bones will not make a good shop-sign, you will find ultimately, any more than a good battle-standard. Not the cross bones, but the cross.

§ 9. Now the practical result of this infidelity in man, is the utter ignorance of all the ways of getting his right work out of him. From a given quantity of human power and intellect, to produce the least possible result, is a problem solved, nearly with mathematical precision, by the present methods of the nation’s economical procedure. The power and intellect are enormous. With the best soldiers, at present existing, we survive in battle, and but survive, because, by help of Providence, a man whom we have kept all his life in command of a company forces his way at the age of seventy so far up as to obtain permission to save us, and die, unthanked. With the shrewdest thinkers in the world, we have not yet succeeded in arriving at any national conviction respecting the uses of life. And with the best artistical material in the world, we spend millions of money in raising a building for our Houses of Talk, of the delightfulness and utility of which (perhaps roughly classing the Talk and its tabernacle together), posterity will, I believe, form no very grateful estimate;—while for sheer want of bread, we brought the question to the balance of a hair, whether the most earnest of our young painters should give up his art altogether, and go to Australia,—or fight his way through all neglect and obloquy to the painting of the Christ in the Temple.

§ 10. The marketing was indeed done in this case, as in all others, on the usual terms. For the millions of money, we got a mouldering toy: for the starvation, five years’work of the prime of a noble life. Yet neither that picture, great as it is, nor any other of Hunt’s, are the best he could have done. They are the least he could have done. By no expedient could we have repressed him more than he has been repressed; by no abnegation received from him less than we have received.

My dear friend and teacher, Lowell, right as he is in almost everything, is for once wrong in these lines, though with a noble wrongness:—

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 charlatan; 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 only as you give him these can he serve you; that is the meaning of the question which his Master asks always, “Believest thou that I am able?” And from every one of His servants—to the end of time—if you give them the Capernaum measure 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 every human heart is gnawed by faithlessness. And as surely,—as irrevocably,—as the fruit-bud falls before the east wind, so fails the power of the kindest human heart, if you meet it with poison.

§ 11. Now the condition of mind in which Turner did all his great work was simply this: “What I do must be done rightly; but I know also that no man now living in Europe cares to understand it; and the better I do it, the less he will see the meaning of it.” There never was yet, so far as I can hear or read, isolation of a great spirit so utterly desolate. Columbus had succeeded in making other hearts share his hope, before he was put to hardest trial; and knew that, by help of Heaven, he could finally show that he was right. Kepler and Galileo could demonstrate their conclusions up to a certain point; so far as they felt they were right, they were sure that after death their work would be acknowledged. But Turner could demonstrate nothing of what he had done—saw no security that after death he would be understood more than he had been in life. Only another Turner could apprehend Turner. Such praise as he received was poor and superficial; he regarded it far less than censure. My own admiration of him was wild in enthusiasm, but it gave him no ray of pleasure; he could not make me at that time understand his main meanings; he loved me, but cared nothing for what I said, and was always trying to hinder me from writing, because it gave pain to his fellow artists. To the praise of other persons he gave not even the acknowledgment of this sad affection; it passed by him as murmur of the wind; and most justly, for not one of his own special powers was ever perceived by the world. I have said in another place that all great modern artists will own their obligation to him as a guide. They will; but they are in error in this gratitude, as I was, when I quoted it as a sign of their respect. Close analysis of the portions of modern art founded on Turner has since shown me that in every case his imitators misunderstood him:—that they caught merely at superficial brilliancies, and never saw the real character of his mind or his work.

And at this day, while I write, the catalogue allowed to be sold at the gates of the National Gallery for the instruction of the common people, describes Calcott and Claude as the greater artists.

§ 12. To censure, on the other hand, Turner was acutely sensitive, owing to his own natural kindness; he felt it, for himself, or for others, not as criticism, but as cruelty. He knew that however little his higher powers could be seen, he had at least done as much as ought to have saved him from wanton insult; and the attacks upon him in his later years were to him not merely contemptible in their ignorance, but amazing in their ingratitude. “A man may be weak in his age,” he said to me once, at the time when he felt he was dying; “but you should not tell him so.”

§ 13. What Turner might have done for us, had he received help and love, instead of disdain, I can hardly trust myself to imagine. Increasing calmly in power and loveliness, his work would have formed one mighty series of poems, each great as that which I have interpreted,—the Hesperides; but becoming brighter and kinder as he advanced to happy age. Soft as Correggio’s, solemn as Titian’s, the enchanted color would have glowed, imperishable and pure; and the subtle thoughts risen into loftiest teaching, helpful for centuries to come.

What we have asked from him, instead of this, and what received, we know. But few of us yet know how true an image those darkening wrecks of radiance give of the shadow which gained sway over his once pure and noble soul.

§ 14. Not unresisted, nor touching the heart’s core, nor any of the old kindness and truth: yet festering work of the worm—inexplicable and terrible, such as England, by her goodly gardening, leaves to infect her earth-flowers.

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.

§ 15. 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 making bread out of stones at their bidding, and then died, torn and famished; careful England, in her pure, priestly dress, passing by on the other side. So far as we are concerned, that is the account we have to give of them.3

§ 16. So far as they are concerned, I do not fear for them;—there being one Priest 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 baseness, 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. Blind 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.

§ 17. 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 scheme 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 only 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?”

§ 18. Another kind of peace I look for than this, though I hear 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. I 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 the souls of men, and with her left the gifts of God.

In the prayers which she dictates to her children, she tells them to fight 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 “fight with,” and how does it differ from the world which they are to “get on in”? The explanation 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 fighting 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.

§ 19. What the much-used words, therefore, mean, I cannot tell. But this, I believe, they should mean. That there is, indeed, one world which is full of care, and desire, and hatred: a 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 world; 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 world; only something of another government coming into this; or rather, not another, but the only government,—that government which will constitute it a world indeed. New heavens and new earth. Earth, no more without 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!4—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.

20. “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.

When the time comes for us to wake out of the world’s sleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the night? Singing of birds, first, broken and low, as, not to dying eyes, but eyes that wake to life, “the casement slowly grows a glimmering square;” and then the gray, and then the rose of dawn; and last the light, whose going forth is to the ends of heaven.

This kingdom it is not in our power to bring; but it is, to receive. Nay, it has come already, in part; but not received, because men love chaos best; and the Night, with her daughters. 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 shutting it out must grow greater and greater:—harder, every day, that struggle of man with man in the abyss, and shorter wages 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.5 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 labor, as Christ to your rest;—labor 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 hope before you is for supremacy instead of love; and your desire is to be greatest, instead of least;—first, 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 worm 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 labor, and the bequeathed peace; this wages, and the gift of the Morning Star; this obedience, and the doing of the will which shall enable you to claim another kindred than of the earth, and to hear another voice than that of the grave, saying, “My brother, and sister, and mother.”

THE END.

Joy, a noble emotion, ii. 16, iii. 10; necessity of, to ideas of beauty, ii. 17, 29; of youth, how typified in bud-structure and flowers, iii. 206, 227; of humble life, v. 328.

Judgment, culture and regulation of, i. 49-56, ii. 22-25; distinguished from taste, i. 25, ii. 34; right moral, necessary to sense of beauty, ii. 96, 99; right technical knowledge necessary to formation of, ii. 4; equity of, illustrated by Shakspere, iv. 332; substitution of, for admiration, the result of unbelief, v. 244.

Keats, subdued by the feeling under which he writes, iii. 160; description of waves by, iii. 168; description of pine, v. 82; coloring of, iii. 257; no real sympathy with, but a dreamy love of nature, iii. 270, 285; death of, v. 349; his sense of beauty, v. 332.

Knowledge, connection of, with sight, i. 54; connection of, with thought, i. 47; pleasure in, iv. 69; communication of, railways and telegraphs, iii. 302; what worth teaching, iii. 298, v. 330; influence of, on art, i. 45, 47, 238; necessary to right judgment of art, i. 121, 411, 418; feeling necessary to fulness of, v. 107; highest form of, is Trust, v. 161; coldness of, v. 140; how to be employed, v. 330; refusal of, a form of asceticism, v. 326.

Labor, healthful and harmful, v. 329, 331.

Lands, classed by their produce and corresponding kinds of art, v. 133-135.

Landscape, Greek, iii. 178-187, v. 211-213; effect of on Greek mind, iv. 351; of fifteenth century, iii. 201; mediÆval, iii. 201, 209, 219, iv. 77-79; choice of, influenced by national feeling, i. 125; novelty of, iii. 143-151; love of, iii. 280, 294; Scott’s view of, iii. 257; of Switzerland, iv. 132, 290 (see Mountains, Alps, &c.); of Southern Italy, v. 235; Swiss moral influences of, contrasted with those of Italy, iv. 135-136; colors of, iv. 40, 345; lowland and mountain, iv. 363; gradation in, i. 182; natural, how modified by choice of inventive artists, iv. 24, 26 (note); dependent for interest on relation to man, v. 193, 196; how to manufacture one, iv. 291.

Landscape Painters, aims of great, i. 44, iv. 23; choice of truths by, i. 74-76; in seventeenth century, their vicious and false style, i. 5, 185, 328, 387; German and Flemish, i. 90; characteristics of Dutch, v. 253, 259; vulgarity of Dutch, v. 277; English, i. 83, 92-95.

Landscape Painting, modern, i. 424; four true and two spurious forms of, v. 194, 195; true, dependent for its interest on sympathy with humanity (the “dark mirror”), v. 195-201, iii. 248, 250, 259, 325, iv. 56; early Italian school of, i. 81-85, 165, ii. 217; emancipation of, from formalism, iii. 312; Venetian school of, expired 1594, iii. 317, v. 214, 219; supernatural, ii. 219-222; Purist ideal of, iii. 70-76; delight in quaint, iii. 313; preservation of symmetry in, by greatest men, ii. 74; northern school of, iii. 323; doubt as to the usefulness of, iii. 144, v. 193; symbolic, iii. 203; topographical, iv. 16; Dutch school of, i. 92; modern love of darkness and dark color, the “service of clouds,” iii. 248-251.

Landscape Painting, Classical, v. 242-248; absence of faith in, v. 242; taste and restraint of, v. 242; ideal of, v. 244.

Landscape Painting, Dutch, v. 277-281.

Landscape Painting, Heroic, v. 194-198.

Landscape Painting, Pastoral, v. 253-260.

Language of early Italian Pictures, i. 10; of Dutch pictures, i. 10; distinction between ornamental and expressive, i. 10; painting a, i. 8; accuracy of, liable to misinterpretation, iii. 5.

Law, David’s delight in the, v. 146; helpfulness or consistence the highest, v. 156.

Laws of leaf-grouping, v. 25, 26, 32; of ramification, v. 49-62; of vegetation, how expressed in early Italian sculpture, v. 46.

Leaf, Leaves, how treated by mediÆval ornamental artists, iii. 204; of American plane, iii. 205; of Alisma plantago, iii. 205; of horse-chestnut, iii. 205; growth of, iv. 193, v. 31; laws of Deflection, Radiation, and Succession, v. 25, 26; ribs of, law of subordination in, iii. 206, v. 24; lessons from, v. 32, 74, 75; of the pine, v. 78; of earth-plants, shapes of, v. 92-95; life of, v. 31, 32, 40, 41, 63; structure of, 21-25; variety and symmetry of, i. 394, ii. 72, 92; drawing of, by Venetians, iii. 316; drawing of, by Dutch and by Durer, v. 37, 90; curvature in, iv. 271-273; mystery in, i. 191, 396; strength and hope received from, ii. 140.

Leaflets, v. 33.

Liberty, self-restrained, ii. 84; love of, in modern landscapes, iii. 250; Scott’s love of, iii. 271; religious, of Venetians, v. 215; individual helplessness (J. S. Mill), v. 174.

Lichens. See Moss.

Life, intensity of, proportionate to intensity of helpfulness, v. 155; connection of color with, iv. 53, 123, v. 322; man’s, see Man, MediÆval.

Light, power, gradation, and preciousness of, iv. 34, 37, 53, 69, 71-73; mediÆval love of, iii. 200; value of, on what dependent, ii. 48; how affected by color, i. 68, 70; influence of, in architecture, i. 106; table of gradation of different painters, iv. 42; law of evanescence (Turner), iv. 70; expression of, by color, i. 98, 171; with reference to tone, i. 147, 149; a characteristic of the thirteenth century, iv. 49; love of, ii. 75, 76, iii. 244; a type of God, ii. 78; purity of, i. 147, ii. 75; how related to shadows, i. 140, 173; hues of, i. 149, 157, 161; high, how obtained, i. 173, 182, ii. 48; high, use of gold in, i. 106; white of idealists to be distinguished from golden of Titian’s school, ii. 221; Dutch, love of, v. 254, 278; effects of, as given by Turner, iv, 71.

Limestone, of what composed, i. 309; color of, iii. 231-233; tables, iv. 127-129.

Lines of fall, iv. 276; of projection, iv. 279; of escape, iv. 279; of rest, iv. 309; nature of governing, iv. 187; in faces, ii. 114; undulating, expressive of action, horizontal, of rest and strength, v. 164; horizontal and angular, v. 164; grandeur of, consists in simplicity with variation, iv. 247; curved, iv. 263; apparent proportion in, ii. 61; all doubtful, rejected in armorial bearings, iii. 200.

Literature, greatest not produced by religious temper, v. 205; classical, the school of taste or restraint, v. 242; spasmodic, v. 242; world of, divided into thinkers and seers, iii. 262; modern temper of, iii. 252, 261-263; reputation of, on what dependent (error transitory) i. 1, 2.

Locke, quoted (hard to see well), i. 51, 67.

Love, a noble emotion, iii. 10; color a type of, v. 320 (note); source of unity, ii. 50; as connected with vital beauty, ii. 89; perception quickened by, i. 52; want of, in some of the old landscape painters, i. 77; finish proceeding from, i. 84; nothing drawn rightly with out, iv. 33; of brightness in English cottages, iv. 320; of horror, iv. 328; characteristic of all great men, ii. 90; higher than reason, ii. 114; ideal form, only to be reached by, ii. 121; loveliest things wrought through, ii. 131, v. 348; good work only done for, v. 346-348; and trust the nourishment of man’s soul, v. 348.

Lowell, quotation from, v. 347.

Lowlander, proud of his lowlands (farmer in “Alton Locke”), iii. 182.

Magnitude, relation of, to minuteness, v. 175-177; love of mere size, v. 176; influence of, on different minds, v. 177.

Man, his use and function, ii. 4; his business in the world, iii. 44, v. 1; three orders of, iii. 286; characteristics of a great, iii. 260; perfection of threefold, v. 326; vital beauty in, ii. 111-131; present and former character of, iii. 149-151; intelligibility necessary to a great, iv. 74; adaptation of plants to needs of, v. 2, 3; influence of scenery on, v. 133-135; lessons learnt by, from natural beauty, v. 146; result of unbelief in, v. 345; how to get noblest work out of, v. 346-348; love and trust necessary to development of, v. 347; divided into five classes, v. 159-162; how to perceive a noble spirit in, iv. 18; when intemperate, ii. 13; pursuits of, how divided, ii. 8, v. 159-162; life of, the rose and cankerworm, v. 324, 332; not intended to be satisfied by earthly beauty, i. 204, iv. 131; his happiness, how constituted, iii. 303, v. 327-330; his idea of finish, iii. 113; society necessary to the development of, ii. 116; noblest tone and reach of life of, v. 331.

Marble, domestic use of, iv. 370; fitted for sculpture, iv. 127; colors of, iv. 140.

MediÆval, ages compared with modern, iii. 250; not “dark,” iii. 252; mind, how opposed to Greek, iii. 193; faith, life the expression of man’s delight in God’s work, iii. 217; admiration of human beauty, iii. 197; knights, iii. 192-195; feeling respecting mountains, iii. 192, 196, 229, iv. 377; want of gratitude, iii. 193; sentimental enjoyment of nature, iii. 192; dread of thick foliage, iii. 213; love for color, iii. 219, 220; dislike of rugged stone, iv. 301; love of cities, v. 4; love of gardens, iii. 191; love of symmetry, iii. 199; neglect of earth’s beauty, v. 5, iii. 146; love of definition, iii. 209; idea of education, v. 5; landscape, the fields, iii. 191-228; the rocks, iii. 229-247.

Mica, characteristics of, iv. 105; connected with chlorite, iv. 113; use of the word, iv. 114; flake of, typical of strength in weakness, iv. 239.

Michelet, “L’Insecte,” quoted on magnitude, v. 176.

Middle Ages, spirit of the, iii. 151; deficiency in Shakspere’s conception of, iv. 364-368; baronial life in the, iii. 192, 195; neglect of agriculture in, iii. 192; made earth a great battlefield, v. 5. See MediÆval.

Mill, J. S., “On Liberty,” v. 174.

Milton, characteristics of, ii. 144, iii. 285, 296; his use of the term “expanse,” iv. 83; and Dante’s descriptions, comparison between, ii. 163, iii. 209; misuse of the term “enamelled” by, iii. 223; instances of “imagination,” ii. 144.

Mind, independence of, ii. 191; visibleoperation of, on the body, ii. 113.

Minuteness, value of, v. 175-177; influence of, on different minds, v. 177. See Magnitude.

Mist, of what typical, iv. 70; Copley Fielding’s love of, iv. 75.

Mistakes, great, chiefly due to pride, iv. 50.

Moderation, value of, ii. 84.

Modern age, characteristics of, iii. 251, 254, 264, 276; costume, ugliness of, iii. 255, v. 273 (note); romance of the past, iii. 255; criticism, iv. 389; landscape, i. 424, ii. 159, iii. 248; mind, pathetic fallacy characteristic of, iii. 168.

Moisture, expressed by fulness of color, iv. 245.

Moss, colors of, iv. 130, v. 99; beauty and endurance of, v. 100.

Mountaineer, false theatrical idea of, iv. 321; regarded as a term of reproach by Dante, iii. 241; same by Shakspere, iv. 371; his dislike of his country, iii. 182; hardship of, iv. 335; his life of, “gloom,” iv. 320.

Mountains (see also Banks, Crests, DÉbris, &c.), uses and functions of, iv. 91; influences of, on artistic power, iv. 356; influence on purity of religion, doctrine, and practice, iv. 351; monkish view of, iv. 377, iii. 196; structure of, i. 300, iv. 157; materials of, i. 271, iv. 90; principal laws of, i. 270, 302; spirit of, i. 271; false color of (Salvator and Titian), i. 158; multiplicity of feature, i. 299; fulness of vegetation, iv. 291; contours of, i. 298, iv. 141, 157, 182, 276, 309; curvature of, i. 296, iv. 186, 192, 282, 287; appearances of, i. 281, 283; foreground, beauty of, i. 99, iv. 99; two regions in, iv. 172; superior beauty of, iv. 91, 346, 348; false ideal of life in, iv. 319; decomposition, iv. 103, 137, 169, 309; sanctity of, iii. 196; lessons from decay of, iv. 315; regularity and parallelism of beds in, iv. 207; exaggeration in drawing of, ii. 208, iv. 175, 190; love of, iii. 250, 259, 288, iv. 376; mentions of, in Scripture, iii. 196, iv. 377; Moses on Sinai, iv. 378; Transfiguration, iv. 381; construction of Northern Alpine, iv. 286, iv. 324; glory, iv. 344, 345; lift the lowlands on their sides, iv. 92; mystery of, unfathomable, iv. 155, 174; material of Alpine, a type of strength in weakness, iv. 239; Dante’s conception of, iii. 229, 230, 239; Dante’s repugnance to, iii. 240; influence of the Apennines on Dante, iii. 231; mediÆval feeling respecting, iii. 191, 229; symbolism of, in Dante, iii. 240; not represented by the Greeks, iii. 145; scenery not attempted by old masters, i. 278; influence of, iv. 344, 356; the beginning and end of natural scenery, iv. 344.

Mountains, central, their formation and aspect, i. 275-287.

Mountain gloom, iv. 317-343; life in Alpine valleys, iv. 320; love of horror, iv. 328-332; Romanism, iv. 333; disease, iv. 335; instance, Sion in the Valais, iv. 339.

Mountains, inferior, how distinguished from central, i. 290; individual truth in drawing of, i. 304.

Mystery, of nature, i. 37, iv. 67, 80; never absent in nature, iv. 58; noble and ignoble, iv. 70, 73, 74; of execution, necessary to the highest excellence, i. 37, iv. 62; in Pre-Raphaelitism, iv. 61; sense of delight in, iv. 69; Turnerian, essential, iv. 56-67; wilful, iv. 68-81.

Mythology, Renaissance paintings of, iii. 62; Apollo and the Python, v. 322; Calypso, the concealer, v. 211; Ceto, deep places of the sea, v. 138, 304; Chrysaor, angel of lightning, v. 140; Danae’s golden rain, v. 140; DanaÏdes, sieves of, v. 140; Dragon of Hesperides, v. 302, 308, 309; Eurybia, tidal force of the sea, v. 138, 304; Fates, v. 301; Garden of Hesperides, v. 300-316; Goddess of Discord, Eris, v. 305-310; Gorgons, storm-clouds, v. 138, 304; GraiÆ, soft rain-clouds, 138, 304; Hesperides, v. 303, 310; Nereus, god of the sea, v. 138, 303; Minerva’s shield, Gorgon’s head on, v. 140; Muses, v. 163; Pegasus, lower rain-clouds, v. 140; Phorcys, malignant angel of the sea, v. 138, 303; Thaumas, beneficent angel of the sea, v. 138, 304.

Nature, infinity of, i. 64, 66, 164-168, 198, 219, 224, iii. 121 (drawing of leafage), iv. 29, 267, 303, i. 77; variety of, i. 55, 169, 291, v. 2-5; gradation in, ii. 47, iv. 122, 287; curvature in, ii. 46, 60, iv. 271, 272; colors of, i. 70, 169, 352, iii. 35; finish of, iii. 112, 121, 122; fineness of, iv. 304; redundancy of, iii. 122, v. 99; balance of, v. 64; inequality of, v. 22; pathetic treatment of, v. 177; always imaginative, ii. 158; never distinct, never vacant, i. 193; love of, intense or subordinate, classification of writers, iii. 285; love of, an indication of sensibility, iii. 285; love of (moral of landscape), iii. 285-307; want of love of in old masters, i. 77, iii. 325; lights and shadows in, i. 180, 311, iv. 34; organic and inorganic beauty of, i. 286, ii. 96; highest beauty rare in, i. 65, iv. 131; sympathy with, iii. 194, 306, ii. 91, 93, iv. 16-67; not to be painted, i. 64; imagination dependent on, ii. 191; how modified by inventive painters, v. 181; as represented by old masters, i. 77, 176; treatment of, by old landscape painters, i. 75; feeling respecting, of mediÆval and Greek knight, iii. 177, 192, 193, 197, v. 5; drawing from (EncyclopÆdia Britannica), iv. 295. See Beauty, Deity, Greek, MediÆval, Mystery, also Clouds, Mountains, etc.

Neatness, modern love of, iii. 109, iv. 3-6; vulgarity of excessive, v. 271.

Nereid’s guard, the, v. 298-313.

Niggling, ugly misused term, v. 36; means disorganized and mechanical work, v. 37.

Obedience, equivalent of, “faith,” and root of all human deed, v. 161; highest form of, v. 161, 163; law of, v. 161.

Obscurity, law of, iv. 61; of intelligible and unintelligible painters, iv. 74. See Mystery.

Ornament, abstract, as used by Angelico, ii. 220; realized, as used by Filippino Lippi, etc., ii. 220; language of, distinct from language of expression, i. 10; use of animal form in, ii. 204; architectural, i. 105, 107, ii. 205; symbolic, ii. 204-205; vulgar, iv. 273; in dress, iv. 364; curvature in, iv. 273, 274; typical, iii. 206; symmetrical, iii. 207; in backgrounds, iii. 203; floral, iii. 207-208.

Outline exists only conventionally in nature, iii. 114.

Painters, classed by their objects, 1st, exhibition of truth, 2nd, deception of senses, i. 74; classed as colorists and chiaroscurists, iv. 47; functions of, iii. 25; great, characteristics of, i. 8, 124, 326, ii. 42, iii. 26-43, iv. 38, v. 189, 190, 332; great, treatment of pictures by, v. 189; valgar, characteristics of, i. 327, ii. 82, 128, 137, iii. 32, 63, 175, 257, 318; religious, ii. 174, 175, 181, 217, iii. 48, 59, iv. 355; complete use of space by, i. 235; duty of, with regard to choice of subject, ii. 219, iv. 18 (note); interpreters of nature, iii. 139; modern philosophical, error respecting color of, iii. 30; imaginative and unimaginative, ii. 154-157; should be guides of the imagination, iii. 132; sketches of, v. 180; early Italian, i. 247, iii. 244; Dutch, i. xxxii. preface, iii. 182; v. 35, 37, 278; Venetian, i. 80, 346, v. 214, 229, 258; value of personification to, iii. 96; contrast between northern and Italian, in drawing of clouds, v. 133; effect of the Reformation on, v. 250. See Art, Artists.

Painting, a language, i. 8; opposed to speaking and writing, not to poetry, iii. 13; classification of, iii. 12; sacred, iii. 46; historical, iii. 39, 90; allegorical, delight of greatest men, iii. 95; of stone, iv. 301; kind of conception necessary to, v. 187; success, how found in, v. 179; of the body, v. 228; differs from illumination in representing shadow, iii. 29; mode of, subordinate to purpose, v. 187; distinctively the art of coloring, v. 316; perfect, indistinctness necessary to, iv. 64; great, expressive of nobleness of mind, v. 178, 191. See Landscape Painting, Animal Painting, Art, Artist, Truth, MediÆval, Renaissance.

Past and present, sadly sundered, iv. 4.

Peace, v. 339-353; of monasticism, v. 282; choice between the labor of death and the peace of obedience, v. 353.

Perfectness, law of, v. 180-192.

Perspective, aËrial, iii. 248; aËrial, and tone, difference between, i. 141; despised in thirteenth century art, iii. 18; of clouds, v. 114, 118; of Turner’s diagrams, v. 341 (note).

Pharisaism, artistic, iii. 60.

Photographs give Turnerian form, and Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro, iv. 63.

Pictures, use of, to give a precious, non-deceptive resemblance of Nature, iii. 126-140; noblest, characteristic of, iii. 141; value of estimate by their completeness, i. 11, 421; Venetian, choice of religious subjects in, v. 221; Dutch, description of, v. 277, advantages of unreality in, iii. 139, 140; as treated by uninventive artists, iii. 20; finish of, iii. 113; of Venice at early morn, i. 343; of mountaineer life, iv. 320-322. See Realization, Finish.

Picturesque, nobleness of, dependent on sympathy, iv. 13; Turnerian, iv. 1-15; dependent on absence of trimness, iv. 5; and on actual variety of form and color, iv. 6; lower, heartless delight in decay, iv. 11; treatment of stones, iv. 302; Calais spire an instance of noble, iv. 7.

Plagiarism, greatest men oftenest borrowers, iii. 339.

Plains, structure of, i. 272; scenery of compared with mountains, iv. 344, 345; spirit of repose in, i. 271; effect of distance on, i. 273. See Lowlander.

Plants, ideal of, ii. 105-107; sense of beauty in, ii. 92, 99; typical of virtues, iii. 227; influence of constructive proportion on, ii. 63; sympathy with, ii. 91; uses of, v. 2, 3; “tented” and “building,” earth-plants and pillar-plants, v. 8; law of succession in, v. 26; seed of, v. 96; roots of, v. 41; life of, law of help, v. 155; strawberry, v. 96; Sisymbrium Irio, v. 95; Oxalis acetosella, i. 82 (note); Soldanella and ranunculus, ii. 89, 108; black hollyhock, v. 234.

Pleasure of overcoming difficulties, i. 16; sources of, in execution, i. 36; in landscape and architecture, iv. 345. See Pictures.

Pleasures, higher and lower, ii. 15-18; of sense, ii. 12; of taste, how to be cultivated, ii. 23.

Poetry, the suggestion by the imagination of noble ground for noble emotion, iii. 10, v. 163; use of details in, iii. 8; contrasted with history, iii. 7-9; modern, pathetic fallacy characteristic of, iii. 168.

Poets, too many second-rate, iii. 156; described, v. 163; two orders of (creative and reflective), iii. 156 (note), 160; great, have acuteness of, and command of, feeling, iii. 163; love of flowers by, v. 91; why not good judges of painting, iii. 133.

Poplar grove, gracefulness of, Homer’s love of, iii. 91, 182, 185.

Popularity, i. 2.

Porphyry, characteristics of, iv. 108-112.

Portraits, recognition, no proof of real resemblance, i. 55.

Portraiture, use of, by painters, ii. 119, iii. 78, 89, 91, iv. 358; necessary to ideal art, ii. 119; modern foolishness, and insolence of, ii. 122; modern, compared with Vandyke’s, v. 273 (note); Venetians painted praying, v. 220.

Power, ideas of, i. 13, 14; ideas of, how received, i. 32; imaginative, iii. 39; never wasted, i. 13; sensations of, not to be sought in imperfect art, i. 33; importance technical, its relation to expressional, iii. 29.

Precipices, how ordinarily produced, i. 290, iv. 148; general form of, iv. 246; overhanging, in Inferior Alps, iv. 241; steepness of, iv. 230; their awfulness and beauty, iv. 241, 260; action of years upon, iv. 147; rarity of high, among secondary hills, i. 301.

Pre-Raphaelites, aim of, i. 425; unwise in choice of subject, iv. 18; studies of, iii. 58, 71 (note); rank of, in art, iii. 141, iv. 57; mystery of, iv. 61, iii. 29, 127-129; apparent variance between Turner and, iii. 129; love of flowers, v. 91; flower and leaf-painting of, i. 397, v. 35.

Pride, cause of mistakes, iv. 50; destructive of ideal character, ii. 122; in idleness, of mediÆval knights, iii. 192; in Venetian landscape, v. 218.

Proportion, apparent and constructive, ii. 57-63; of curvature, ii. 60, iv. 266, 267; how differing from symmetry, ii. 73; of architecture, ii. 59; Burke’s error, ii. 60-62.

Prosperity, evil consequences of long-continued, ii. 4-5.

Psalm 19th, meaning of, v. 147-149.

Purchase, wise, the root of all benevolence, v. 328 (note).

Puritans and Romanists, iii. 252.

Purity, the expression of divine energy, ii. 75; type of sinlessness, ii. 78; how connected with ideas of life, ii. 79; of color, ii. 79; conquest of, over pollution, typified in Apollo’s contest, v. 323; of flesh painting, on what dependent, ii. 124; Venetian painting of the nude, v. 227. See Sensuality.

Python, the corrupter, v. 323.

Rays, no perception of, by old masters, i. 213; how far to be represented, i. 213.

Realization, in art, iii. 16; gradually hardened feeling, iv. 47-51; not the deception of the senses, iii. 16; Dante’s, iii. 18. See Pictures.

Refinement, meaning of term, ii. 81; of spiritual and practical minds, v. 282-284; unconnected with toil undesirable, v. 328.

Reflection, on distant water, i. 355 et seq.; effect of water upon, i. 329-331; to what extent visible from above, i. 336.

Reformation, strength of, v. 249; arrest of, v. 250; effect of, on art, iii. 55, v. 251.

Relation, ideas of, i. 13, 29, 31.

Religion, of the Greeks, v. 208-213; of Venetian painters, v. 220; of London and Venice, v. 291; English, v. 343.

Renaissance, painting of mythology, iii. 62; art, its sin and its Nemesis, iii. 254; sensuality, iii. 63; builders, v. 176; spirit of, quotation from Browning, iv. 368.

Repose, a test of greatness in art, ii. 65-68, 108, 222; characteristic of the eternal mind, ii. 65; want of, in the Laocoon, ii. 69; in scenery, i. 272; Turner’s “Rietz” (plate), v. 164, 168; instance of, in Michael Angelo’s “Plague of Serpents,” ii. 69 (note); how consistent with ideal organic form, ii. 108.

Reserve, of a gentleman (sensibility habitual), v. 269.

Resilience, law of, v. 30, 71.

Rest, lines of, in mountains, iv. 276, 310, 312.

Revelation, v. 199.

Reverence, for fair scenery, iii. 258; false ideas of (Sunday religion), iii. 142; for mountains, iii. 230; inculcated by science, iii. 256; Venetian, the Madonna in the house, v. 224.

Reynolds, on the grand style of painting, iii. 23; on the influence of beauty, iii. 23.

Rocks, iv. 99-134; formation of, iv. 113; division of, iv. 99, 102, 157; curvature of, iv. 150, 154, 213, i. 295; color of, iv. 107, 121, 136, 123, 125, 129, i. 169; cleavages of, iv. 391; great truths taught by, iv. 102; aspect of, i. 295, 309, iv. 101, 108, 120, 128; compound crystalline, iv. 101, 105; compact crystalline, characteristics of, iv. 107, 102, 114, 159, 205; slaty coherent, characteristics of, iv. 122, 205, 251; compact coherent, iv. 128, 159; junction of slaty and compact crystalline, iv. 114, 173, 202; undulation of, iv. 116, 118, 150; material uses of, iv. 119, 127; effect of weather upon, iv. 104; effect of water on, iv. 213; power of, in supporting vegetation, iv. 125, 130; varied vegetation and color of, i. 169; contortion of, iv. 116, 150, 152, 157; dÉbris of, iv. 119; lamination of, iv. 113, 127, i. 291; limestone, iv. 130, 144, 209, 250, 258; sandstone, iv. 132; light and shade of, i. 311; overhanging of, iv. 120, 254, 257; mediÆval landscape, iii. 229-247; early painters’ drawing of, iii. 239; Dante’s dislike of, iii. 230; Dante’s description of, iii. 231, 236; Homer’s description of, iii. 232, 239; classical ideal of, iii. 186; Scott’s love of, iii. 242, 275. See Stones.

Romanism, modern, effect of on national temper, iv. 333, and Puritanism, iii. 252, 253.

Saussure, De, description of curved cleavage by, iv. 395; quotation from, iv. 294; on structure of mountain ranges, iv. 172; love of Alps, iv. 393.

Scenery, interest of, rooted in human emotion, v. 194; associations connected with, iii. 290, 292; classical, Claude and Poussin, v. 244; Highland, v. 206; two aspects of, bright and dark, v. 206; of Venice, effects of, v. 216; of Nuremberg, effect of, v. 233; of Yorkshire hills, effect of, i. 126, v. 293; Swiss influence of, iv. 337-376, v. 84-87; of the Loire, v. 165; effect of mountains on, iv. 343-346. See Nature, Pictures.

Scent, artificial, opposed to natural, ii. 15; different in the same flower, i. 67-68.

Science, subservient to life, ii. 8; natural, relation to painting, iii. 305; interest in, iii. 256; inculcates reverence, iii. 256; every step in, adds to its practical applicabilities, ii. 9; use and danger of in relation to enjoyment of nature, iii. 306; gives the essence, art the aspects, of things, iii. 306; may mislead as to aspects, iv. 391.

Scott, representative of the mind of the age in literature, iii. 259, 263, 277; quotations from, showing his habit of looking at nature, iii. 268, 269; Scott’s love of color, iii. 273-276; enjoyment of nature associated with his weakness, iii. 269-287; love of liberty, iii. 271; habit of drawing slight morals from every scene, iii. 276, 277; love of natural history, iii. 276; education of, compared with Turner’s, iii. 308, 309; description of Edinburgh, iii. 273; death without hope, v. 349.

Scripture, sanctity of color stated in, iv. 52, v. 319; reference to mountains in, iv. 98, 119, 377; Sermon on the Mount, iii. 305, 338; reference to firmament, iv. 80, 86 (note), 87; attention to meaning of words necessary to the understanding of, v. 147-151; Psalms, v. 145, 147.

Sculpture, imagination, how manifested in, ii. 184, 185; suitability of rocks for, iv. 111, 112, 119; instances of gilding and coloring of (middle ages), ii. 201; statues in Medici Chapel referred to, ii. 208; at the close of 16th century devoted to luxury and indolence, iii. 63; of 13th century, fidelity to nature in, iii. 203-208, v. 46-48.

Sea, painting of, i. 373-382; has never been painted, i. 328; Stanfield’s truthful rendering of, i. 353; Turner’s heavy rolling, i. 376; seldom painted by the Venetians, i. 346; misrepresented by the old masters, i. 344; after a storm, effect of, i. 380, 381; Dutch painting of, i. 343; shore breakers inexpressible, i. 374; Homer’s feeling about the, iii. 169; Angel of the, v. 133-151. See Foam, Water.

Seer, greater than thinker, iii. 134, 262.

Sensibility, knowledge of the beautiful dependent on, i. 52; an attribute of all noble minds, i. 52; the essence of a gentleman, v. 263; want of, is vulgarity, v. 273; necessary to the perception of facts, i. 52; to color and to form, difference between, i. 416; want of, in undue regard to appearance, v. 269; want of, in Dutch painters, v. 277.

Sensitiveness, criterion of the gentleman, v. 262, 266; absence of, sign of vulgarity, v. 273; want of, in Dutch painters, v. 277, 278.

Sensuality, destructive of ideal character, ii. 123; how connected with impurity of color, ii. 124; various degrees of, in modern art, ii. 126, iii. 66; impressions of beauty, not connected with, ii. 12. See Purity.

Seriousness of men of mental power, iii. 258; want of, in the present age, ii. 169.

Shade, gradation of, necessary, ii. 47; want of, in early works of nations and men, i. 54; more important than color in expressing character of bodies, i. 70; distinctness of, in nature’s rocks, i. 311; and color, sketch of a great master conceived in, i. 405; beautiful only when showing beautiful form, ii. 82 (note).

Shadow, cast, importance of, i. 331-333; strangeness of cast, iv. 77; importance of, in bright light, i. 174-175; variety of, in nature, i. 168; none on clear water, i. 331; on water, falls clear and dark, in proportion to the quantity of surface-matter, i. 332; as given by various masters, iv. 47; of colorists right, of chiaroscurists untrue, iv. 49; exaggeration of, in photography, iv. 63; rejection of, by mediÆvals, iii. 200.

Shakspere, creative order of poets, iii. 156 (note); his entire sympathy with all creatures, iv. 362-363; tragedy of, compared with Greek, v. 210; universality of, iii. 90, 91; painted human nature of the sixteenth century, iii. 90, iv. 367; repose of, ii. 68; his religion occult behind his equity, v. 226; complete portraiture in, iii. 78, 91, iv. 364; penetrative imagination of, ii. 165; love of pine trees, iv. 371, v. 82; no reverence for mountains, iv. 363, 370; corrupted by the Renaissance, iv. 367; power of, shown by his self-annihilation, i. xxv. (preface).

Shelley, contemplative imagination a characteristic of, ii. 199; death without hope, v. 349.

Sight, greater than thought, iii. 282; better than scientific knowledge, i. 54; impressions of, dependent on mental observations, i. 50, 53; elevated pleasure of, duty of cultivating, ii. 26; of the whole truth, v. 206; partial, of Dutch painters, v. 278; not valued in the present age, ii. 4; keenness of, how to be tested, ii. 37; importance of, in education, iv. 401, v. 330.

Simplicity, second quality of execution, i. 36; of great men, iii. 87.

Sin, Greek view of, v. 210; Venetian view of, v. 217; “missing the mark,” v. 339; washing away of (the fountain of love), v. 321.

Sincerity, a characteristic of great style, iii. 35.

Singing, should be taught to everybody, v. 329 (note), 330.

Size. See Magnitude.

Sketches, experimental, v. 181; determinant, v. 182; commemorative, v. 182.

Sky, truth of, i. 204, 264; three regions of, i. 217, cannot be painted i. 161, iv. 38; pure blue, when visible, i. 256; ideas of, often conventional, i. 206; gradation of color in, i. 210; treated of by the old masters as distinct from clouds, i. 208; prominence of, in modern landscape, iii. 250; open, of modern masters, i. 214; lessons to be taught by, i. 204, 205; pure and clear noble painting of, by earlier Italian and Dutch school, very valuable, ii. 43, i. 84, 210; appearance of, during sunset, i. 161; effect of vapor upon, i. 211; variety of color in, i. 225; reflection of, in water, i. 327; supreme brightness of, iv. 38; transparency of, i. 207; perspective of, v. 114; engraving of, v. 108, 112 (note).

Snow, form of, on Alps, i. 286, 287; waves of, unexpressible, when forming the principal element in mountain form, iv. 240; wreaths of, never properly drawn, i. 286.

Space, truth of, i. 191-203; deficiency of, in ancient landscape, i. 256; child-instinct respecting, ii. 39; mystery throughout all, iv. 58.

Spiritual beings, their introduction into the several forms of landscape art, v. 194; rejected by modern art, v. 236.

Spenser, example of the grotesque from description of envy, iii. 94, 95; description of Eris, v. 309; description of Hesperides fruit, v. 311.

Spring, our time for staying in town, v. 89.

Stones, how treated by mediÆval artists, iv. 302; carefully realized in ancient art, iv. 301; false modern ideal, iv. 308; true drawing of, iv. 308. See Rock.

Style, greatness of, iii. 23-43; choice of noble subject, iii. 26; love of beauty, iii. 31; sincerity, iii. 35; invention, iii. 38; quotation from Reynolds on, iii. 13; false use of the term, i. 95; the “grand,” received opinions touching, iii. 1-15.

Sublimity, the effect on the mind of anything above it, i. 41; Burke’s treatise on, quoted, i. 17; when accidental and outward, picturesque, iv. 2, 6, 7.

Sun, first painted by Claude, iii. 320; early conventional symbol for, iii. 320; color of, painted by Turner only, v. 315.

Sunbeams, nature and cause of, i. 211; representation of, by old masters, i. 211.

Sunsets, splendor of, unapproachable by art, i. 161; painted faithfully by Turner only, i. 162; why, when painted, seem unreal, i. 162.

Superhuman, the, four modes of manifestation, always in the form of a creature, ii. 212, 213.

Superiority, distinction between kind and degrees of, i. 417.

Surface, examples of greatest beauty of, ii. 77; of water, imperfectly reflective, i. 329; of water, impossible to paint, i. 355.

Swiss, character, iv. 135, 338, 374; the forest cantons (“Under the Woods”), v. 86, 87.

Symbolism, passionate expression of, in Lombardic griffin, iii. 206; delight of great artists in, iii. 97; in Calais Tower, iv. 3.

Symmetry, type of divine justice, ii. 72-74; value of, ii. 222; use of, in religious art, ii. 73, iv. 75; love of, in mediÆval art, iii. 199; appearance of, in mountain form, i. 297; of curvature in trees, i. 400, v. 34; of tree-stems, v. 58, 60; of clouds, i. 219.

Sympathy, characteristics of, ii. 93, 169; condition of noble picturesque, iv. 10, 12, 14; the foundation of true criticism, iii, 22; cunning associated with absence of, v. 266; necessary to detect passing expression, iii. 67; with nature, ii. 91, 93, iii. 179, 193, iv. 14, 15; with humanity, ii. 169, iv. 11; absence of, is vulgarity, iii. 83, v. 264; mark of a gentleman, v. 263, 264.

System, establishment of, often useless, iii. 2; of chiaroscuro, of various artists, iv. 42.

Taste, definition of, i. 26; right, characteristics of, ii. 25; a low term, indicating a base feeling for art, iii. 64, 65; how developed, ii. 21; injustice and changefulness of public, i. 418; purity of, how tested, ii. 25; classical, its essence, v. 243; present fondness for unfinished works, i. 420, ii. 82.

Temperate, right use of the word, ii. 13.

Tennyson, rich coloring of, iii. 257; subdued by the feelings under which he writes, iii. 160; instances of the pathetic fallacy in, iii. 167, 267; sense of beauty in, v. 332; his faith doubtful, iii. 253.

Theoretic Faculty, first perfection of, is Charity, ii. 90; second perfection of, is justice of moral judgment, ii. 96; three operations of, ii. 101; how connected with vital beauty, ii. 91; how related to the imagination, ii. 157; should not be called Æsthetic, ii. 12; as concerned with moral functions of animals, ii. 97, 98.

Theoria, meaning of, ii. 12, 18; derivation of, ii. 23; the service of Heaven, ii. 140; what sought by Christian, ii. 18.

Thought, definition of, i. 29; value of, in pictures, i. 10; representation of the second end of art, i. 45-47; how connected with knowledge, i. 47; art, in expression of individual, i. 44; choice of incident, expressive of, i. 29; appreciation of, in art, not universal, i. 46.

Thoughts, highest, depend least on language, i. 9; various, suggested in different minds by same object, iii. 283, 284.

Tone, meaning of, right relation of shadows to principal light, i. 140; truth of, i. 140-154; a secondary truth, i. 72; attention paid to, by old masters, i. 75, 141; gradation more important than, i. 149; cause of want of, in pictures, i. 141.

Topography, Turnerian, iv. 16-33; pure, preciousness of, iv. 10, 17; slight exaggeration sometimes allowed in, iv. 32; sketch of Lausanne, v. 185.

Torrents, beneficent power of, iv. 285; power of, in forcing their way, iv. 258, 259, 318; sculpture of earth by, iv. 262; mountains furrowed by descent of, i. 297, iv. 312; curved lines of, i. 370, iv. 312.

Transparency, incompatible with highest beauty, ii. 77; appearance of, in mountain chains, i. 281; wanting in ancient landscape, not in modern, i. 215, 234; of the sky, i. 207; of bodies, why admired, ii. 77; ravelling, best kind of, iii. 293.

Tree, aspen, iv. 77, 78; willow, v. 68; black spruce, v. 78.

Tree boughs, falsely drawn by Claude and Poussin, i. 389, 391, v. 65; rightly drawn by Veronese and Durer, v. 66, 67; complexity of, i. 389; angles of, i. 392; not easily distinguished, i. 70; diminution and multiplication of, i. 388-389; appearance of tapering in, how caused, i. 385; loveliness of, how produced, v. 64; subtlety of balance in, v. 64; growth of, v. 61; nourishment of, by leaves, v. 41; three conditions of branch-aspect—spring, caprice, and fellowship, v. 63-71.

Trees, outlines of, iii. 114; ramifications of, i. 386, v. 58, 60, 62; the most important truth respecting (symmetrical terminal curve), i. 400; laws common to forest, i. 385; poplar, an element in lovely landscape, i. 129, iii. 186; superiority of, on mountain sides, iv. 348, v. 78-79; multiplicity of, in Swiss scenery, iv. 289, 290; change of color in leafage of, iv. 261; classical delight in, iv. 76, iii. 184; examples of good and bad finish in (plates), iii. 116, 117; examples of Turner’s drawing of, i. 394; classed as “builders with the shield” and “with the sword,” v. 8; laws of growth of, v. 17, 49, 72; mechanical aspect of, v. 40; classed by leaf-structure—trefoil, quatrefoil, and cinqfoil, v. 19; trunks of, v. 40, 56; questions concerning, v. 51; how strengthened, v. 41; history of, v. 52; love of, v. 4; Dutch drawing of, bad, v. 68, 71; as drawn by Titian and Turner, i. 392, 394; as rendered by Italian school, i. 384.

Trees, pine, v. 8-30, 79, 92; Shakspere’s feeling respecting, iv. 371, v. 83; error of painters in representing, iv. 346 (note); perfection of, v. 80-83; influence on Swiss and northern nations, v. 84.

Truth, in art, i. 21, 46, 47, 74, iii. 35; Greek idea of, v. 267; blindness to beauty of, in vulgar minds, v. 268; half, the worst falsehood, v. 268; standard of all excellence, i. 417; not easily discerned, i. 50, 51, 53; first quality of execution, i. 37; many-sided, the author’s seeming contradiction of himself, v. 271 (note); essential to real imagination, ii. 161, 188; essential to invention, v. 191; highest difficulty of illustrating the, i. 410; laws of, in painting, iii. vii. (preface); ideas of, i. 23, 24; infinity essential to, i. 239; sometimes spoken through evil men, ii. 137; imaginative preciousness of, iv. 30; individual, in mountain drawing, i. 305; wisely conveyed by grotesque idealism, iii. 96; no vulgarity in, iii. 82; dominion of, universal, iii. 167; error of confounding beauty with, ii. 30, iii. 32 (note); pictures should present the greatest possible amount of, iii. 139; sacrifice of, to decision and velocity, i. 39; difference between imitation and, i. 21, 22; absolute, generally attained by “colorists,” never by “chiaroscurists,” iv. 42, 48; instance of imaginative (the Two Griffins), iii. 100.