SPECULATORS AMONG THE STARS.
PART I.[[13]]
Let us imagine one of our species, at an early period of its history, destitute of any artificial aid to the sense of sight, contemplating the aspect of things around him. He perceives that, somehow or other, he lives upon a Something—apparently a flat surface, of indefinite extent in all directions from the spot where he stands—consisting of land and water, alternately visited with light and darkness, heat and cold; with a regular succession of seasons, somehow or other connected with the growth of vegetables of various kinds, suitable and unsuitable for his purposes, with beautiful flowers and magnificent forests: while the air, water, and earth, teem with insects, birds, fishes, and animals, which seem almost altogether at his command. There are also winds, dews, showers, mists, frost, snow, hail, thunderstorms, volcanoes, and earthquakes. He himself, equally with the vegetables and animals, passes through divers gradations, from birth to decay—from life to death: but during life, alike alternately sleeping and waking, subject to vicissitudes of pain and pleasure, of health and disease.
If he look beyond the locality on which all this takes place, he beholds a blazing body alternately visible and invisible, at regular intervals, and to which he attributes both light and heat; another luminous body visible only at night, which it gently illuminates; and both these objects are occasionally subject to brief but portentous obscurations. During the night there also appear a great number of glittering white specks in the blue distance, which he calls stars; all he knows of them being, that they are beautiful objects in the dark; even contributing a little light, in the absence of the moon. Why all these things came to be as they are, he knows no more than the bird that is blithely singing on the branch above him, but for a certain Book, which tells him that God made him, and everything he sees about him; the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, with all the arrangements securing night and day, light and darkness, seasons, days, and years; forming him, in His Image; giving him the earth for a dwelling, and dominion over everything that lives and breathes in it; and commanding him to be obedient to the will of his Maker. That the first man and woman placed on the earth became, nevertheless, almost immediately disobedient; whereby they incurred the anger of God, and their position on earth became woefully changed for the worse. That God, nevertheless, loved man, formed in His own image, after His likeness, with such tenderness, that He devised means for his restoration, if he chose, to the favour which he had forfeited; and Himself visited the earth, in the form of man; submitted to mockery, suffering, and death, on his behalf; rose again, and returned to Heaven with the body which He had assumed on earth. That though man’s body must die and decay, equally with that of every animal, his shall rise again, and be rejoined by its spirit, to stand before the judgment-seat of God, to be judged in respect of the deeds done in the body, and be eternally miserable or happy, according to the righteous judgment then pronounced. Moreover, this Book tells him, with reference to the locality in which he exists, that all things shall not always remain as they are; but that the earth, and all that is in it, shall be burned up; that it, and the Heaven, shall pass away with a great noise; that the elements shall melt with fervent heat; and for those on whom a favourable doom shall have been pronounced in the day of judgment, there shall be a new heaven, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Believing all this, and his inner nature telling him that the law of action laid down in the Book is righteous, and conformable to that nature, he endeavours to regulate his conduct by it, and dies, as dies generation after generation, in calm and happy reliance on the Truth of that Book.
Ages pass away, and great discoveries appear to be made, by the exercise of man’s own thought and ingenuity, and quite independently of any revelations contained in his Great Book. Whereas he had thought the earth stationary, he finds it, the sun, and the moon, to be round bodies, each turning round on its own axis, the earth once in twenty-four hours; that the earth also goes round the sun once in every year, the moon accompanying it, and at the same time turning round it once in every month; and that these are the means by which are caused light and darkness, night and day, heat and cold, and the various changes of the seasons. The stars remain twinkling, the mere bright specks they ever appeared.
Let us now, however, suppose our thoughtful observer’s sight assisted by the aid of glass, in two ways—so as to place him on the one hand, nearer to distant objects, and on the other, reveal objects close to him, which he had never suspected. In the latter case, his microscope exhibits an astounding spectacle—almost every atom turned, as it were, into a world, peopled with exquisitely-organised animal forms, adapted perfectly to the elements in which they are seen disporting themselves. In the former case, his telescope makes equally astounding revelations in an opposite direction. The Heavens are swarming with splendid structures unseen to the naked eye: new planets are visible, with rings, belts, and moons, and the stars prove to be resplendent suns; the centres of so many systems peopling infinitude; and these, moreover, obeying laws of motion the same as those which exist in the system of which the earth forms part!
“Well,” says our overwhelmed observer, “it is certainly late in the day to make these sublime and awful discoveries; but here they are, unless my instruments play me false, so that I am the victim of mere optical delusion; the boundless, numberless realms of insect life being only imaginary; and the stars really no suns or worlds at all, but simply the glittering spots which alone mankind has hitherto believed them. But if my telescope tell me truly, the little speck on which I live is in fact but a grain of dark dust in the heavens, circling obscurely round a sun, itself a mere star, perhaps eclipsed in splendour by every other star in existence; each probably containing many more and greater planets circling about it than has our sun! And about these matters The Book is silent.”
Pondering these discoveries, and assuming them to be real, our observer echoes the inquiry of our greatest living astronomer—“Now, for what purpose are we to suppose such magnificent bodies scattered through the abyss of space?”[[14]] And at length the grander one occurs—Are there human beings, or beings similar to myself, anywhere else than on this earth? On the sun, moon, planets, and their satellites? Nay, on all the other inconceivably numerous suns, planets, and satellites in existence? He pauses, as though in a spasm of awe. But he may next, and very rationally, ask, If it be so, how does all this affect me? Has it any practical bearing on the condition of a denizen of this earth?
If our bewildered inquirer unfortunately had at his elbow Thomas Paine, he would hear this blasphemous whisper: “The system of a plurality of worlds renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind, like feathers in the air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks he believes both has thought but little of either.”[[15]] By this impious drivel is meant, that if this infinitude of systems be made by one God, who has peopled every orb as our own is peopled, with rational and moral beings, it is absurd to suppose that He has such a special regard for us, as the Scriptures assure us He has—that He was made flesh, and dwelt among us—lived with us, died for us, rose again for us; us, the insignificant occupants of this insignificant speck amidst the resplendent magnificence of the infinite universe. Now, that such a notion is equally irreligious and unphilosophical we trust no intelligent reader of ours requires to be persuaded; but that there are both friends and enemies of the Christian Faith, who fear or believe otherwise, may be assumed; and hence the unspeakable importance of viewing the matter soberly, by such light as we have,—as God has been pleased to vouchsafe to us. If we have little, we cannot help it, but must gratefully and reverently make the best use we can of it; assuring ourselves that there must be wise reasons for our omniscient Creator’s having given us just as much as we have, and no more. He might have endowed us with faculties nearly akin to His own; but He has thought proper to act otherwise.
The attention of scientific persons, and those of a speculative character in religion, physics, and morals, has recently been recalled to the question,—whether there are grounds for believing the heavenly bodies to be inhabited by rational beings,—by the publication, eleven months ago, of a thin octavo volume of 279 pages, bearing no author’s name, and entitled, Of the Plurality of Worlds, an Essay. Internal evidence seemed to point to a distinguished person at Cambridge as the author—a gentleman of great eminence as a mathematician, a logician, a divine, and a moralist—in short, to the Reverend Dr Whewell, the Master of Trinity College. The work was divided into numbered paragraphs, as is usual with that gentleman; peculiarities of spelling—e. g., “offense,” instead of “offence”—and of style and expression, are common to the Essay and the other works of the suspected author. We are not aware that up to the present time he has repudiated the work thus attributed to him. On the contrary, he has just published a Dialogue, by way of supplement to it, in which he and various classes of objectors are speakers; and on one of them telling him that one of his critics “repeatedly tries to connect his speculations with those of the author of Vestiges of Creation,” a wild work of an infidel character, he answers, “If he were to try to connect me with an answer to that work, which went through two editions, under the title of Indications of the Creator, he would be nearer the mark; at least, I adopt the sentiments of this latter book.” Now, this latter book was published, certainly not with Dr Whewell’s name on the title-page, but by the publisher of all his other works, and entitled Indications of the Creator; Theological Extracts from Dr Whewell’s History and Philosophy of Inductive Science. But whereas the Essay in question is written by the present highly-gifted Master of Trinity, with the design of showing that “the belief of the planets and stars being inhabited is ill-founded—a notion taken up on insufficient grounds, and that the most recent astronomical discoveries point the other way”—the author declaring that these “views have long been in his mind, the convictions which they involve growing gradually deeper, through the effect of various trains of speculation;” it will be found, on referring to Dr Whewell’s Bridgewater Treatise, published in 1833, that these views seem not then to have been entertained by him. In book iii. chap. 2, we find him speaking thus: “The earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only globe in the universe. There are circling about our own sun six others, so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature, besides our moon, and other bodies analogous to it. No one can resist the temptation to conjecture that these globes, some of them much larger than our own, are not dead and barren; that they are, like ours, occupied with life, organisation, intelligence. To conjecture is all that we can do; yet even by the perception of such a possibility, our view of the domain of nature is enlarged and elevated.” Speaking again of the stars, and supposing them suns, with planets revolving round them, he adds, “And these may, like our planet, be the seats of vegetable, animal, and rational life. We may thus have in the universe, worlds, no one knows how many, no one can guess how varied.” And, finally, in the ensuing chapter, “On man’s place in the Universe,” he says: “We thus find that a few of the shining spots which we see scattered on the face of the sky in such profusion, appear to be of the same nature as the earth; and may, perhaps, as analogy would suggest, be, like the earth, the habitations of organised beings.” Undoubtedly these remarks are penned in a cautious and philosophic spirit; and upwards of twenty years’ subsequent reflection, by the light of various splendid astronomical discoveries during that interval, is now announced to have so far shaken Dr Whewell’s faith in such “conjectures,” as to induce him, “in all sincerity and simplicity,” to submit “to the public the arguments, strong or weak,” which had occurred to him on the subject; “and which, when he proceeded to write the Essay, assumed, by being fully unfolded, greater strength than he had expected.” He is now disposed to regard a belief in the plurality of worlds “to have been really produced by a guess, lightly made at first, quite unsupported by subsequent discoveries, and discountenanced by the most recent observations, though too remote from knowledge to be either proved or disproved.” And further, he thus indicates the grand scope of the entire inquiry: “I do not attempt to disprove the plurality of worlds, by taking for granted the truths of Revealed Religion; but I say that the teaching of Religion may, to a candid inquirer, suggest the wisdom of not taking for granted the Plurality of Worlds. Religion seems, at first sight at least, to represent Man’s history and position as unique. Astronomy, some think, suggests the contrary. I examine the force of this latter suggestion, and it seems to me to amount to little or nothing.” In the tenth and eleventh chapters of the Essay, Dr Whewell thus speaks, in two passages (§§ 12, 20), which appear to us to indicate at once the spirit in which he offers his speculations, and his apprehension as to the reception with which they might meet. In the former, he owns that his “views are so different from those hitherto generally entertained, and considered as having a sort of religious dignity belonging to them, that we may fear, at first at least, they will appear to many rash and fanciful, and almost, as we have said, irreverent.” In the latter he speaks thus:—
“It is not to be denied that there may be a regret and disturbance naturally felt at having to give up our belief that the planets and the stars probably contain servants and worshippers of God. It must always be a matter of pain and trouble, to be urged with tenderness, and to be performed in time, to untwine our reverential religious sentiments from erroneous views of the constitution of the Universe with which they have been involved. But the change once made, it is found that religion is uninjured, and reverence undiminished. And therefore we trust that the reader will receive with candour and patience the argument which we have to offer with reference to this view, or, rather, this sentiment.”
In this tone of manly modesty is expressed the whole of this really remarkable work; but all competent readers will also be struck by the dignified consciousness of power associated with that modesty. These two characteristics have invested this book with a certain charm, in our eyes, which we cannot but thus avow, after having given his Essay, and the Dialogue, in which he deals with various objectors to his Essay, due consideration. A calm perusal of that Dialogue may suggest to shrewd opponents the necessity of approaching the writer of it with caution.
Here, then, we have a man of first-rate intellectual power, a practised and skilful dialectician, formidably familiar with almost every department of physical science, in its latest and highest development; an eminent moral writer and academical teacher, and an orthodox clergyman in the Church of England, coming forward deliberately to commit himself to opinions which he acknowledges he does not publish “without some fear of giving offense:”—opinions at variance with those not only popularly held, but maintained by perhaps three-fourths of even scientific persons who have bestowed attention on the subject. Who can doubt his right to do so, especially in a calm and temperate spirit, as contradistinguished to one of arrogance and dogmatism? None but a fool would rush angrily forward, to encounter such an author with harsh and heated language, or derogatory and uncharitable insinuations and imputations. A philosophical and duly qualified opponent would act differently. He would say, In this age of free inquiry, no matter how bold and serious the attack on preconceptions and long-established opinion and belief, if it be made in a grave and manly spirit of inquiry and argument, and especially by one whose eminent character, qualifications, and position, entitle his suggestions and speculations to deliberate consideration, that deliberate consideration they must have. “I have presented,” says the writer of the Essay, in the Dialogue, “gravely and calmly, the views and arguments which occurred to my mind, on a question which many persons think an interesting one; and if any one will introduce any other temper into the discussion of this question, with him I will hold no argument; if he write in a vehement and angry strain, I will have nothing to say to him.” The author is here alluding to Sir David Brewster, the author of the second of the three works placed at the head of this article. If, on the other hand, a man of great authority and reputation be unwise enough to run counter to opinions universally received, and that by persons of high scientific and literary reputation, merely as a sort of gladiatorial exercise, disturbing views rightly associated with religion and science, and with levity shaking the confidence of mankind in conclusions arrived at by the profoundest masters of science, he must take the consequences of being deemed presumptuous and trifling, and encounter the stern rebuke of those whom he is not entitled to treat with disrespect.
Now, a careful and unprejudiced perusal of this Essay has satisfied us concerning several things. It is written with uncommon ability. The author has an easy mastery of the English language, and these pages abound in vigorous and beautifully-exact expressions. From beginning to end, also, may be seen indications of a subtle and guarded logic; a felicitous and masterly disposition of his subject; a thorough familiarity with the heights and depths of physics, divinity, and morals; and, above and infinitely beyond all, a reverent regard for the truths of revealed religion, and an earnest desire to advance its interests, by removing what, in his opinion, many deem a serious stumblingblock in the way of the devout Christian. That stumblingblock may be seen indicated in the audacious language which we have quoted from Thomas Paine. If this be the object which Dr Whewell has had in view—and who will doubt it?—his title to respectful consideration is greatly enhanced. He must be given credit for having deliberately counted the cost of what he was about to do—the amount of censure, ridicule, and contempt which he might provoke. It seems that he has felt himself strong enough to make the experiment; and here he sees a distinguished contemporary, Sir David Brewster, quickly ascribing “his theories and speculations to no better feeling than a love of notoriety;”[[16]] who again stigmatises an argument of the Essayist as “the most ingenious though shallow piece of sophistry which we have ever encountered in modern dialectics.”[[17]]
That Dr Whewell offers us, in his Essay and Dialogue, his real views and opinions, and that they have been long and deeply considered, we implicitly believe, on his own statement that such is the case. It may nevertheless be, that he is the unconscious victim of an invincible love of paradox; and indeed Sir David Brewster unceremoniously characterises the Essayist’s conjectures concerning the fixed stars as “insulting to Astronomy,” and “ascribable only to some morbid condition of the mental powers, which feeds upon paradox, and delights in doing violence to sentiments deeply cherished, and to opinions universally believed;”[[18]] that having once conceived what he regards as a happy idea on a great question, he dwells upon it with such an eager fondness as warps his judgment; that having committed himself to what he has seen to be a false position, he defends it desperately, with consummate logical skill. Or he may believe himself entitled to the credit of having demolished bold and vast theories, and plucked up by the roots an enormous fallacy. It may be so, or it may not; but Dr Whewell’s is certainly a very bold attempt to swim against the splendid stream of modern astronomical speculation. He would say, however, Is it not as bold to people, as to depopulate the starry structures? It is on you that the burthen of proof rests: you cannot see, or hear, inhabitants in other spheres; the Bible tells us nothing about them; and where, therefore, is the EVIDENCE on which you found your assertion, and would coerce me into a concurrence in your conclusions? I long for the production of sufficient evidence of so awful a fact as that God has created all the starry bodies for the purpose of placing upon them beings in any degree like man—moral, intellectual, accountable beings, of equal, higher, or lower degree of intelligence—consisting of that wondrous combination of matter and mind, body and soul, which constitutes man, existing in similar relations to the external world. The mere suggestion startles me, both as a man of science and a Christian believer, on account of certain difficulties which appear to me greater than perhaps even you may have taken into account. But, however this may be, I call upon you for proofs of so vast a fact as you allege to exist, or the best kind and greatest degree of evidence which may justify me in assenting to the existence of such a fact. We are dealing with facts, probabilities, improbabilities; and I repudiate any intrusion of sentiment or fancy. If God has told me that the fact exists, I receive it with reverence; and wonder at finding myself a member of so immense a family, from all communication with which He has been pleased to cut me off in my present stage of existence. But if God has not told me the fact directly—and I feel no religious obligation to hold the fact to exist or not to exist—I will regard the question as one both curious and interesting, and weigh carefully the reasons which you offer me in support of your assertion. But will you, in return, weigh carefully the reasons I offer for asserting a fact which appears to me, however you may think erroneously, of incalculably greater personal moment to me as a member of the human family—namely, that “man’s history and position are unique;—that the earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system—its domestic hearth, and the only WORLD in the universe?” I am quite as much startled at having to receive your notion, as you may be to receive mine. My great engine of proof, says his opponent, is analogy: well, replies the other, there I will meet you; and the first grand point to settle is, whether there is an analogy;[[19]] when that shall have been settled in the affirmative, we will, as carefully as possible, weigh the amount of it.
This is the point at issue between Dr Whewell and Sir David Brewster; who resolutely undertakes to demonstrate “More Worlds than One” to be “the creed of the philosopher, and the hope of the Christian.” It is to be seen whether this eminent member of the scientific world, also a firm believer in the Christian religion, has undertaken a task to which he is equal. He must present such an amount of proof as will require the plurality of worlds to be accepted as his CREED, by a Philosopher; that is, by a Baconian—one accustomed to exact and patient investigation of facts, and inferences deducible from them; who rigorously rejects, as disturbing forces, all appeals to our hopes or wishes, our feelings or fancy.
There are two questions before us; to which we shall add, on our own account, a third. The first is that asked in 1686 by the gifted and sprightly Fontenelle (whom Voltaire pronounced the most universal genius which the age of Louis XIV. produced), and echoed in 1854 by Sir David Brewster: Pourquoi non? Why should there not be a plurality of worlds? The second is that asked by Dr Whewell: Why should there be? “I do not pretend to disprove a plurality of worlds; but I ask in vain for any argument that makes the doctrine probable.”[[20]] The third, is our own. And what if there be?—a question of a directly practical tendency. We shall take the second question first, because it will bring Dr Whewell first on the field, as it was he who has so suddenly mooted this singular question. But we would at the outset entreat our readers, at all events our younger ones, to remember that we are dealing with a purely speculative subject, respecting which zealous partisans are apt to draw on their imaginations—to assert or deny the existence of analogy, on insufficient grounds; to overstrain or underrate its force; and lend to bare probabilities, or even pure possibilities, somewhat of the air of facts, where facts there are absolutely none.
I. Why should there be more worlds than one? “Astronomy,” says Dr Whewell, “no more reveals to us extra-terrestrial moral agents, than religion reveals to us extra-terrestrial plans of Divine government;” and to remedy the assumption of moral agents in other worlds, by the assumption of some operation of the Divine plan in other worlds, is unauthorised and fanciful, and a violation of the humility, submission of mind, and spirit of reverence, which religion requires.[[21]] He considers Dr Chalmers’s allowance of astronomy’s offering strong analogies in favour of such opinions as “more than rash:” he regards such “analogies” as, “to say the least, greatly exaggerated; and by taking into account what astronomy really teaches us, and what we learn also from other sciences, I shall attempt to reduce such analogies to their true value.” We have seen Dr Whewell, in 1833, expressing an opinion very doubtfully, with a “perhaps, that, as analogy would suggest, a few of the heavenly bodies appearing to be of the same nature as the earth, may be, like it, the seats of organised beings.” He is now disposed to annihilate those analogies, so far as they are deemed sufficient to warrant such an immense conclusion. But that to which he is now disposed to come is equally immense. He says, “That the earth is inhabited, is not a reason for believing that the other planets are so, but for believing that they are not so.”[[22]] Her orbit “is the temperate zone of the solar system, where only is the play of hot and cold, moist and dry, possible.... The earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system; its domestic hearth; adjusted between the hot and fiery haze on one side, the cold and watery vapour on the other. This region only is fit to be a domestic hearth, a seat of habitation; in this region is placed the largest solid globe of our system; and on this globe, by a series of creative operations, entirely different from any of those which separated the solid from the vaporous, the cold from the hot, the moist from the dry, have been established, in succession, plants, and animals, and MAN. So that the habitations have been occupied; the domestic hearth has been surrounded by its family; the fitnesses so wonderfully combined have been employed; and the earth alone, of all the parts of the frame which revolve round the sun, has become a WORLD.”[[23]] Now, let us here cite two or three passages of Scripture, one of them very remarkable. “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s; but the earth hath he given to the children of men.”[[24]] “Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:[[25]] ... I have made the earth, and created man upon it; I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.... Thus saith the Lord, that created the heavens; God himself, that formed the earth, and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed IT to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.”[[26]] Here the Psalmist speaks of both the heaven and the earth, saying of the latter that he has given it to the children of men; while the inspired prophet repeatedly speaks of the heavens and the earth, saying that God had given breath to the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein; that he had created man upon it; that he had created the earth not in vain, but formed “it,” to be inhabited. It is not said that he formed the heavens to be inhabited, but the earth. This passage Sir David Brewster has quoted as “a distinct declaration from the inspired prophet, that the earth would have been created IN VAIN, if it had not been formed to be inhabited; and hence we draw the conclusion, that as the Creator cannot be supposed to have made the worlds of our system, and those in the sidereal universe, in vain, they must have been formed to be inhabited.”[[27]] Is not this a huge “conclusion” to draw from these premises? And do not the words tend rather the other way—to show that the earth, with its wondrous adaptations, would have been created in vain, if not to be inhabited; but that the heavens may be created for other purposes, of which man, in the present stage of existence, has not, nor can have, any conception?
We have spoken of Sir David Brewster’s drawing a huge conclusion from a passage of Scripture in support of his views of the question before us; but we have to present a still huger conclusion, drawn by him from another glorious passage: “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” “This,” says Sir David, “is a positive argument for a plurality of worlds! We cannot doubt that inspiration revealed to the Hebrew poet the magnitude, the distances, and the final cause of the glorious spheres which fixed his admiration.... He doubtless viewed these worlds as teeming with life, physical and intellectual; as globes which may have required millions of years for their preparation, exhibiting new forms of beings, new powers of mind, new conditions in the past, and new glories in the future!” In his Dialogue Dr Whewell thus drily dismisses this extraordinary flight of his opponent: “That the Hebrew poet knew, or thought about, the plurality of worlds, is a fact hitherto unnoticed by the historians of astronomy; to their consideration I leave it.”
Let us now, however, follow Dr Whewell in the development of his idea, bearing in mind his own impressive statement, in his preface, that, “while some of his philosophical conclusions appear to him to fall in very remarkably with certain points of religious doctrine, he is well aware that philosophy alone can do little in providing man with the consolations, hopes, supports, and convictions which religion offers; and he acknowledges it as a ground of deep gratitude to the Author of All Good, that man is not left to philosophy for those blessings, but has a fuller assurance of them by a more direct communication from Him.”
“The two doctrines which we have here to weigh against each other,” says Dr Whewell, “are the plurality of worlds, and the unity of the world;” and he “includes, as a necessary part of the conception of a ‘WORLD,’ a collection of intelligent creatures, where reside intelligence, perception of truth, recognition of moral law, and reverence for a Divine Creator and Governor.”[[28]] His Essay branches into three great divisions, in disposing of the conjectural plurality of worlds, and suggesting the reality of the unity of the world. First, he considers the constitution of man: secondly, that of the earth which he inhabits, its adaptation, structure, and position: lastly, its neighbours in the heavens—the solar system to which it belongs, the fixed stars, and the nebulæ; and as to these, he declares that “a closer inquiry, with increased means of observation, gives no confirmation to the conjecture which certain aspects of the universe at first sight suggested to man, that there may be other bodies, like the earth, tenanted by other creatures like man,—some characters of whose nature seem to remove or lessen the difficulties we may at first feel in regarding the earth as, in a unique and special manner, the field of God’s providence and government.”[[29]] This is not the order in which Dr Whewell proceeds, but it is that which we shall observe, in giving our readers such a brief and intelligible account as we can of this singularly bold Essay. He himself commences with a beautiful sketch of the state of “Astronomical Discoveries,” with which Dr Chalmers dealt in his celebrated Discourses; by no means understating the amount of them, with reference principally to the number of the heavenly bodies—“a countless host of worlds, arranged in planetary systems, having years and seasons, days and nights, as we have;” as to which, “it is at least a likely suggestion that they have also inhabitants—intelligent beings, who can reckon those days and years—who subsist on the fruits which the seasons bring forth, and have their daily and yearly occupations, according to their faculties.”[[30]] “If this world be merely one of innumerable other worlds, all, like it, the workmanship of God,—all the seats of life—like it, occupied by intelligent creatures, capable of will, law, obedience, disobedience, as man is,—to hold that it alone should have been the scene of God’s care and kindness, and still more, of His special interposition, communication, and personal dealings with its individual inhabitants, in the way which religion teaches, is, the objector is conceived to maintain, in the highest degree extravagant, incredible, and absurd.”[[31]] Such is, as we have seen, the assertion of Thomas Paine; and Dr Whewell proposes to discuss this vast speculative question, “not as an objection urged by an opponent, but rather as a difficulty felt by a friend of religion;”—“to examine rather how we can quiet the troubled and perplexed believer, than how we can triumph over the dogmatical and self-satisfied infidel.”[[32]] But let our reader note well, at starting, the above mighty “IF:” which he may regard as the comet’s nucleus, drawing after it an enormous and dismaying train of consequences, sweeping into annihilation man’s hopes equally with his fears.
Dr Whewell gives a lucid and terse account of the scope of Dr Chalmers’s eloquent declamation, his ingenious suggestions, and his astronomical or philosophical arguments, which he deems “of great weight; and, upon the whole, such as we may both assent to, as scientifically true, and accept as rationally persuasive. I think, however, that there are other arguments, also drawn from scientific discoveries, which bear in a very important and striking manner upon the opinions in question, and which Chalmers has not referred to; and I conceive that there are philosophical views of another kind, which, for those who desire and will venture to regard the universe and its Creator in the wider and deeper relations which appear to be open to human speculation, may be a source of satisfaction.”[[33]]
But “WHAT IS MAN?” is the pregnant question of the royal Psalmist; and Dr Whewell gives an account of man, at once ennobling and solemnising; in strict accordance, moreover, with revelation, and with those views of his moral and intellectual nature universally entertained by the believers in revealed religion. We know of no man living entitled to speak with more authority on such subjects than Dr Whewell; and we think it impossible for any thoughtful person to read the portions of his Essay relating to this subject, without feelings of awe and reverence towards our Maker. Not that any new conditions of human nature are suggested, or any peculiarly original views of it presented; but our knowledge on the subject is, as it were, condensed into a focus, and then brought to bear upon the question, What is man, that his Maker should be mindful of him, and visit him? and thereby render the earth, in a unique and special manner, the field of God’s providence and government. Lord Bolingbroke objected to the Mosaic account of the creation, and “that man is made by Moses as the final end, if not of the whole creation, yet at least of our system:” but let us remember, that Moses also tells us that God determined to “make man in Our image, after Our likeness;” that God did, accordingly, create man in His own image—with special significance twice asserting the fact that in the image of God created He him; and he tells us that, after the flood, God assigned this as a reason for visiting the crime of murder with death—Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man. The full import of that awful and mysterious expression, the image and likeness of God, man, in his fallen state, may never know. Adam possibly knew originally; and his descendants believe that it consists in their Intellectual and Moral nature. The former is, in some measure, of the same nature as the Divine mind of the Creator:[[34]] the laws which man discovers in the creation must be laws known to God; those which man sees to be true—those of geometry, for instance—God also must see to be true. That there were, from the beginning, in the Creator’s mind creative thoughts, is a doctrine involved in every intelligent view of creation—a doctrine which has recently received splendid illustration by a living “great discoverer in the field of natural knowledge.”[[35]] Law implies a lawgiver, even when we do not see the object of the law; even as design implies a designer, when we do not see the object of the design. The laws of nature are the indications of the operation of the Divine mind, and are revealed to us, as such, by the operations of our mind, by which we come to discover them. They are the utterances of the Creator, delivered in language which we can understand; and being thus Language, they are the utterances of an Intelligent Spirit.[[36]]
“If man, when he attains to a knowledge of such laws, is really admitted, in some degree, to the view with which the Creator himself beholds his creation; if we can gather, from the conditions of such knowledge, that his intellect partakes of the nature of the Divine intellect; if his mind, in its clearest and largest contemplation, harmonises with the Divine mind,—we have in this a reason which may well seem to us very powerful, why, even if the earth alone be the habitation of intelligent beings, still the great work of creation is not wasted. If God have placed on the earth a creature who can so far sympathise with Him (if we may venture upon the expression), who can raise his intellect into some accordance with the creative intellect; and that not once only, nor by few steps, but through an indefinite gradation of discoveries more and more comprehensive, more and more profound, each an advance, however slight, towards a Divine Insight; then, so far as intellect alone, of which alone we are here speaking, can make man a worthy object of all the vast magnificence of creative power, we can hardly shrink from believing that he is so.”[[37]]
Again: The earth is a scene of MORAL TRIAL. Man is subject to a moral law; and this moral law is a law of which God is the legislator—a law which man has the power of discovering, by the use of the faculties which God has given him. Now, the existence of a body of creatures, capable of such a law, of such a trial, and of such an elevation, as man is the subject and has the power of—that is, of rising from one stage of virtue to another, by a gradual and successive purification and elevation of the desires, affections, and habits, in a degree, so far as we know, without limit—is, according to all we can conceive, infinitely more worthy of the Divine Power and Wisdom, in the creation of the universe, than any number of planets occupied by creatures having no such lot, no such law, no such capacities, and no such responsibilities. However imperfectly the moral law may be obeyed; however ill the greater part of mankind may respond to the appointment which places them here in a state of moral probation; however few there may be who use the capacities and means of their moral purification and elevation; still that there is such a plan in the creation, and that any respond to its appointments, is really a view of the universe which we can conceive to be suitable to the nature of God, because we can approve it, in virtue of the moral nature which He has given us. One school of moral discipline, one theatre of moral action, one arena of moral contests for the highest prizes, is a sufficient centre for innumerable hosts of stars and planets, globes of fire and earth, water and air, whether or not tenanted by corals and madrepores, fishes and creeping things. So great and majestic are those names of RIGHT and GOOD, DUTY and VIRTUE, that all mere material or animal existence is worthless in the comparison.... Man’s moral progress is a progress towards a likeness with God; and such a progress, even more than a progress towards an intellectual likeness with God, may be conceived as making the soul of man fit to endure for ever with God, and therefore, as making this earth a preparatory stage of human souls, to fit them for eternity—a nursery of plants which are to be fully unfolded in a celestial garden. And if this moral life be really only the commencement of an infinite Divine plan beginning upon earth, and destined to endure for endless ages after our earthly life, we need no array of other worlds in the universe, to give sufficient dignity and majesty to the scheme of the Creator.
The author of the Essay then ascends to an infinitely greater and grander altitude:—
“If by any act of the Divine government the number of those men should be much increased, who raise themselves towards the moral standard which God has appointed, and thus towards a likeness to God, and a prospect of a future eternal union with him; such an act of Divine government would do far more towards making the universe a scene in which God’s goodness and greatness were largely displayed, than could be done by any amount of peopling of planets with creatures who were incapable of moral agency, or with creatures whose capacity for the development of their moral faculties was small, and would continue to be small, till such an act of Divine government was performed. The interposition of God, in the history of man, to remedy man’s feebleness in moral and spiritual tasks, and to enable those who profit by the interposition to ascend towards a union with God, is an event entirely out of the range of those natural courses of events which belong to our subject: and to such an interposition, therefore, we must refer with great reserve; using great caution that we do not mix up speculations and conjectures of our own with what has been revealed to man concerning such an interposition. But this, it would seem, we may say, that such a Divine interposition for the moral and spiritual elevation of the human race, and for the encouragement and aid of those who seek the purification and elevation of their nature, and an eternal union with God, is far more suitable to the idea of a God of infinite goodness, purity, and greatness, than any supposed multiplication of a population, on our own planet, or on any other, not provided with such means of moral and spiritual progress. And if we were, instead of such a supposition, to imagine to ourselves, in other regions of the universe, a moral population purified and elevated without the aid, or need, of any such Divine interposition, the supposed possibility of such a moral race would make the sin and misery, which deform and sadden the aspect of our earth, appear more dark and dismal still. We should, therefore, it would seem, find no theological congruity, and no religious consolation, in the assumption of a plurality of worlds of moral beings; while, to place the seats of those worlds in the stars and the planets would be, as we have already shown, a step discountenanced by physical reasons; and discountenanced the more, the more the light of science is thrown upon it.”[[38]]
Should it be urged, that if the creation of one world of such creatures as man exalts so highly our views of the dignity and importance of the plan of creation, the belief in many such worlds must elevate still more our sentiments of admiration and reverence of the greatness and goodness of the Creator; and must be a belief, on that account, to be accepted and cherished by pious minds, Dr Whewell replies in the following weighty passage:—
“We cannot think ourselves authorised to assert cosmological doctrines, selected arbitrarily by ourselves, on the ground of their exalting our sentiments of admiration and reverence for the Deity, when the weight of all the evidence which we can obtain respecting the constitution of the universe, is against them. It appears to me, that to discover one great scheme of moral and religious government, which is the spiritual centre of the universe, may well suffice for the religious sentiments of men in the present age; as in former ages, such a view of creation was sufficient to overwhelm men with feelings of awe, and gratitude, and love, and to make them confess, in the most emphatic language, that all such feelings were an inadequate response to the view of the scheme of Divine Providence which was revealed to them. The thousands of millions of inhabitants of the earth, to whom the effects of the Divine love extend, will not seem, to the greater part of religious persons, to need the addition of more, in order to fill our minds with vast and affecting contemplations, so far as we are capable of pursuing such contemplations. The possible extension of God’s spiritual kingdom upon the earth will probably appear to them a far more interesting field of devout meditation than the possible addition to it of the inhabitants of distant stars, connected, in some inscrutable manner, with the Divine Plan.”[[39]]
“In this state of our knowledge,” Dr Whewell subsequently adds, after recapitulating the whole course of the argument indicated by the lines above placed in italics, “and with such grounds of belief, to dwell upon the plurality of worlds of intellectual and moral creatures as a highly probable doctrine, must, we think, be held to be eminently rash and unphilosophical. On such a subject, where the evidences are so imperfect, and our power of estimating analogies so small, far be it from us to speak positively and dogmatically. And if any one holds the opinion, on whatever evidence, that there are other spheres of the Divine government than this earth, other spheres in which God has subjects and servants, other beings who do his will, and who, it may be, are connected with the moral and religious interests of man, we do not breathe a syllable against such a belief, but, on the contrary, regard it with a ready and respectful sympathy: it is a belief which finds an echo in pious and benevolent hearts, and is of itself an evidence of that religious and spiritual character in man, which is one of the points of our argument.... But it would be very rash, and unadvised—a proceeding unwarranted, we think, by religion, and certainly at variance with all that science teaches—to place those other extra-human spheres of Divine government in the planets and in the stars. With regard to these bodies, if we reason at all, we must reason on physical grounds; we must suppose, as to a great extent we can prove, that the law and properties of terrestrial matter and motion apply to them also. On such grounds it is as improbable that visitants from Jupiter, or from Sirius, can come to the earth, as that men can pass to those stars—as unlikely that inhabitants of those stars know and take an interest in human affairs, as that we can learn what they are doing. A belief in the Divine government of other races of spiritual creatures, besides the human race, and in Divine ministrations committed to such beings, cannot be connected with our physical and astronomical views of the nature of the stars and planets, without making a mixture altogether incongruous and incoherent—a mixture of what is material, and what is spiritual, adverse alike to sound religion and to sound philosophy.”[[40]]
Those possessing a competent acquaintance with the doctrines of theology, and ethical and metaphysical discussions, cannot, we think, read this necessarily faint and imperfect outline of what Dr Whewell has thus far advanced on the subject, without appreciating the caution and discretion with which he handles the subject which he here discusses—one of a critical character—in all its aspects and bearings. It is deeply suggestive to reflecting minds, who may be disposed to note with satisfaction how closely his doctrine, as thus far developed, quadrates with those of the Christian system. He has well reminded us, in the Dialogue, of a saying of Kant—that two things impressed him with awe: the starry heaven without him, and the Moral Principle within; and the current of his reflections tends towards that awful passage in the New Testament,—words which fell from the lips of the Saviour of mankind: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his works.”[[41]] These two questions (to say nothing of the significance of the expression with reference to the subject now under discussion, “the whole world”), and the reason which is proposed to those who would answer the question, as that which should govern the choice between their own soul and the whole world, justify our attaching the highest conceivable value and importance to man, as a rational, a moral, an accountable being.
In the Dialogue, an objector suggests, “But in your inclination to make man the centre of creation, and the object of all the rest of the universe, are you not forgetting the admonitions of those who warn us against this tendency of self-glorification? You will recollect how much of this warning there is in the Essay on Man:—
‘Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine?
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, ’Tis for mine.’
To imagine ourselves of so much consequence in the eyes of the Creator is natural to us, self-occupied as we are, till philosophy rebukes such conceit.” To which it is justly answered—“It is quite right to attend to such warnings. But warnings may also be useful on the other side: warnings against self-disparagement; against the belief that man is not an important object in the eyes of the Creator. I do not know what philosophy represents man as insignificant in the eyes of the Deity; and still less does religious philosophy favour the belief of man’s insignificance in the eyes of God. What great things, according to the views which religion teaches, has He done for mankind, and for each man!”[[42]]
But man’s intellectual and moral nature being of such dignity and value in the estimation of God, other circumstances connected with him tend in the same direction, says Dr Whewell, and point him out as a special and unique existence, in every way worthy of his transcendent position. He is created by a direct and special act of the Deity, and placed and continued, under circumstances of a most remarkable character, upon the locality prepared for him. We need hardly say that Dr Whewell repudiates the irreligious, idle, and unphilosophical notion that man is merely the result of material development out of a long series of animal existences. This figment Dr Whewell easily demolishes, on philosophical grounds, in common with all the great scientific men of the age; and having vindicated for man the dignity of his origin, as the result of a direct act of creation, and differing not only in his kind, but in his order, from all other creations, proceeds to consider his relations to his earthly abode. This brings us to the second stage of his Argument, to which we now proceed; premising that it necessarily involves considerations relating to the constitution of man, physically, intellectually, and morally; and especially as a being of progressive development. This stage is to be found in two chapters of the Essay, the fifth and sixth, respectively entitled, “Geology;” and “the Argument from Geology,”—both written with uncommon ability, and exhibiting proofs of the great importance attached to them by the author. Even those who may altogether dissent from his main conclusions, will appreciate the interesting and instructive, the masterly and suggestive outline which he gives of this noble twin sister of Astronomy, Geology. We are disposed to hazard a conjecture, that the governing idea developed in these chapters, was the origin of the whole speculation to which the Essay is devoted.
MRS STOWE’S SUNNY MEMORIES.[[43]]
It is, we think, to be regretted that those who intend to lay before the public their impressions of foreign travel, should so often have recourse to the form of letters purporting to be addressed to friends or relatives at home. We admit that, for purposes of fiction, the epistolary style is convenient. Testy Mathew Bramble, his tyrannical sister Tabitha, and the lovelorn Winifred Jenkins, may, by their several lucubrations, unite to form the most amusing of family chronicles; but Smollett, when he compiled Humphrey Clinker, took care that the expression of each character should be perfectly natural. So with Lever’s Dodd Family, and the immortal letters of Mrs Ramsbottom. But the case of a party deliberately penning letters, in his or her own name, not for the private gratification of a select circle, or the information of those to whom they are addressed, but directly for the press and the public, is very different. In the first place, every one knows and feels that the letters are not genuine. The most gifted of our race, in addressing a mother, a sister, or a child, do not think it necessary to indulge in fine writing, or in long elaborate descriptions, or in statistical details. They write simply—generally shortly; and a good deal of their matter would, if submitted to the eye of a stranger, appear to be unmeaning gossip, not improbably approaching to twaddle. We doubt not that, in the real letters which Mrs Stowe despatched across the Atlantic, there were many household inquiries, suggestions, and remembrances—domestic precepts and home-thoughts—kind, motherly, or friendly words, such as render letters doubly delightful to the recipients. But these formal epistles which she has now given to the world under the collective title of Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, bear falsity in their very face, and, in all human probability, the printer’s devil was the first person that perused them. They are all pitched in one key. Her despatches to the home nursery are as elaborate efforts of composition, as those which are nominally addressed to her father, or to “Dear Aunt E.”;—and, as a necessary consequence, they are frigid in the extreme. This is an artistic blunder, which cannot fail to detract very much from the interest of what Mrs Stowe had written. It was not perhaps to be expected, nor indeed desired, that she should have printed her genuine letters; but surely there was no occasion for recasting her diary or memoranda in a purely fictitious form.
We have, however, no reason to doubt that these volumes contain a faithful record of Mrs Beecher Stowe’s impressions of such parts of Europe as she has visited; and we so receive them. In her preface she requests “the English reader to bear in mind that the book has not been prepared in reference to an English, but an American public, and to make due allowance for that fact.”—We do not think that any explanation of the kind was required. Mrs Stowe says plainly enough, that “the object of publishing these letters is to give to those who are true-hearted and honest the same agreeable picture of life and manners which met the writer’s own eyes.”—In short, she was delighted with her tour and reception, and generally pleased with the people whom she met; and she wishes to communicate her own agreeable impressions to her countrymen. No one, on this side of the water at least, is likely to object to so kindly and benevolent a design. And we are bound to say, that had she prepared this book with the sole object of gratifying the people of Great Britain by indiscriminate praise of everything which met her eye, she could hardly have been more eulogistic than she is. Nor is this at all surprising, when we remember under what circumstances her journey to this country was made.
No work published within our memory made so rapid an impression on the public mind as Mrs Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It became famous among us almost as soon as it was imported from America. The theme was of surpassing interest, the characters were powerfully drawn; there was enthusiasm and pathos enough to thrill the heart, to call up tears, and to awaken the general sympathies of the free for the wrongs of the persecuted negro. It brought home to the minds of all of us the horrors of slavery in its worst and most unendurable form. The separation of husband and wife—the sale of children—the exposure in the public market of men and women, whose education was often superior to that of the brutes who bought and sold them: all these things, so revolting to humanity, were described with an energy and power greater, perhaps, than have been exhibited by any recent writer. Add to this that the tone of the novel was eminently religious, and calculated to make it find its way into circles from which other works of fiction were studiously banished; and it is easy to account for its immense and sudden popularity. Thousands of persons who would have thought it a positive sin to indulge in the perusal of a romance by Scott or Lytton, devoured the pages of Mrs Stowe with an avidity the more intense from their habits of previous abstinence. It was a book much patronised by the Quakers, and greatly in favour among the Methodists. It was multiplied by countless editions; it was to be seen in the drawing-room of the noble, and in the humble home of the mechanic; and from men of all classes throughout Great Britain it met with a cordial acceptance.
Unfortunately, however, it entered into the heads of certain wiseacres, that they might produce a great moral sensation, and promote other causes besides that of emancipation, by inducing Mrs Beecher Stowe to visit this country, and by parading her as an object of interest. Far be it from us to attempt to dictate to the gentlemen and ladies who are the principal promoters of the Peace Society, and the most active in the distribution of Olive-leaves, or to those who make total abstinence a leading article of their faith. But we may be allowed, with all deference, to hint our opinion that, in inviting Mrs Stowe to undergo the ordeal of a public ovation, they were not acting altogether fairly by the lady whom they professed to honour. We trust that we have said enough, both now and previously, to testify the sincere admiration in which we regard her talents as exhibited in her famous novel, and our sympathy for the cause in which that genius was displayed. Our tribute of praise, however humble in its kind, has not been niggardly bestowed; but we demur altogether to the propriety of making a public show and spectacle of the authoress of the most popular work, upon even the best or the holiest subject. We should demur to the propriety of such an exhibition, were it even demanded by the general voice—we condemn it when it is notoriously got up for sectarian glorification. Yet such undoubtedly was the case with Mrs Stowe. At Liverpool, at Glasgow, and at Edinburgh, her self-constituted friends determined that she should be received with demonstrations which were, in the eyes of the unexcited, purely ridiculous. There were to be anti-slavery meetings, working-men’s soirées, presentation of addresses and offerings, and an immense deal of the same kind of thing which was utterly unsuited to the occasion; and the result was, that Mrs Stowe, in so far as the north of Britain was concerned, saw little of that society which gives the intellectual stamp to the country, and derived her impressions almost entirely from the conversation of a limited coterie. How could it be otherwise? Mrs Stowe was undoubtedly a very clever woman—she had written an admirable novel upon a most interesting subject—and every one was delighted both with its matter and its success. But was that any reason why town-councils should receive her at railways—why people should be urged to present addresses to her as though she had been a Boadicea, or a Joan d’Arc—or why her presence should be made an excuse for indulging in unmeasured speeches, or in violent objurgations against the legislature of America, for continuing a system which we have nationally decreed to be vile in our own dominions, and have taken every means in our power to discountenance elsewhere? Opinion in this country, in so far as it can be expressed—and it has been expressed in thousands of ways—is unanimous for the emancipation of the negro. One and all of us consider the continuance of slavery, as it exists in America, a foul blot upon the nation, which proclaims itself as peculiarly free; and we have said so in anything but undecisive terms. Still, what we have said, is the expression of an opinion only. We may object to slavery in America, as we may object to the same institution in Turkey, or to serfage in Russia, or to anything else beyond our cognisance and jurisdiction; but we are not entitled to usurp the right, which every separate nation possesses, of regulating its own laws according to its peculiar position. We say this, because, of late years, the tendency towards popular demonstrations and sympathising meetings in England, has increased to such a degree as even to embarrass our relations with foreign powers. Well-meaning, but supremely ignorant vestry-men, bustling civic magistrates, and conceited members of town-councils, consider themselves entitled to sit in judgment and give sentence upon all questions of European politics. The moment a political exile of any note arrives in this country, he is fêted, and cheered, and made a hero of by municipal dignitaries, who seize the occasion as a capital opportunity for making ungrammatical professions of their ardent adoration of liberty. Their sympathy in favour of insurgents is perfectly unbounded. They have sympathised with the Hungarians—they have sympathised with the Italians—and, until very lately, they showed great sympathy for those gentlemen who were compelled to leave France for their conspiracies against the existing government. It is not a little amusing to contrast the tone which is now assumed by the liberal press and by the municipalities of England towards Louis Napoleon, with that which was prevalent some eighteen months ago! We should like to see an ovation attempted now in honour of the French republicans. And yet what change has taken place? Ledru Rollin is as good a patriot now as ever; the title of the Emperor to the throne of France is not one whit better than it was before. We are now engaged in war; and the utmost efforts of our statesmen have been used to induce Austria to join with the Western Powers. And yet, in the face of these negotiations, we find that, in the large towns of England, Kossuth is declaring to immense and sympathising audiences that the accession of Austria to our side would be the means of riveting the chains on the oppressed nationality of Hungary! This conduct on the part of the English public, or rather that portion of it which has an inveterate itch for meddling with what it does not and cannot understand, is not only silly, but positively dangerous. If the people of every State were to act in this way, war would not be the exception, but a perpetually existing calamity; and nation would rise against nation, not on account of acts of positive aggression, but because each objected to the mode in which the other administered its own affairs. We have no scruple in expressing our conviction that, since this sympathising mania commenced, Great Britain has lost much of her influence as a first-rate European power. It has the effect of placing, apparently at least, the Government and the people in antagonism—of detracting from the power of the one, and unduly adding to that of the other. And—what we regret most deeply to see—it has raised and fostered the impression that we are collectively a nation of braggarts. It is most natural that it should be so, for we are perpetually vaunting about the force of public opinion in this country, and declaring that nothing can stand against it. On the Continent the voice of the towns is considered as the sure index of public opinion; and if that voice had been taken, not very long ago, we should ere now have been engaged in liberating crusades in behalf of Hungary and Italy. The Government, of course, and the vast bulk of the educated and thinking classes throughout Great Britain, estimate these ridiculous exhibitions at their proper value, and treat them with silent contempt;—not so foreigners; who, being assured that in the principal towns of England immense meetings have been held and resolutions passed in favour of insurgency, conclude, naturally enough, that these are demonstrations of that public opinion of which they have heard so much, and that the British Government cannot do otherwise than yield to the pressure from without. Perhaps the most absurd commentary upon this exceedingly reprehensible system of sympathising may be found in the fact, that while our mayors, provosts, aldermen, bailies, and other civic small-deer, are sympathising with the oppressed nationalities of Europe, various of their Transatlantic brethren are doing the same in behalf of Ireland and the Irish, and holding up the people of England to the scorn and detestation of the universe, as the cold-blooded, fiendish, and systematic torturers of the oppressed Celtic nationality!
But we must not diverge too much from our immediate subject. It seems to us that there really was no occasion for holding public meetings to show that the sympathy of this country was decidedly in favour of the cause of emancipation, or to irritate the Americans by a vain-glorious comparison of our own conduct contrasted with theirs. We ought, in common decency, to remember that no very great tract of time has elapsed since slavery was abolished in the British colonies; and as, in matters of this kind, interest is always a ruling motive, we should also bear in mind that the prosperity of those colonies has not been increased by the substitution of free for forced labour. Very few of us, on this side of the Atlantic, are able to give a competent opinion as to what effect immediate and unconditional emancipation might produce upon the slave-holding States of America; and therefore we are hardly entitled to do more than to assert the general principle, which condemns the absolute property of man in man. How entire emancipation, which we trust, before long, every State in America will adopt, can be carried out, must be left to the wisdom and discretion of the local legislatures. No change so great as this can be wrought suddenly. Christianity itself must be inculcated, not coerced, for violence never yet made converts; nor was the blood-red baptism of Valverde, who held the cross in the one hand and the sword in the other, equal in efficacy to the calm expositions of Xavier. Now, it is very plain to us that, in her own way, Mrs Beecher Stowe is a zealot. She has been writing and working at this subject of emancipation, until she has ceased to see any practical difficulty between her vision and its realisation, and wants to persuade all others that no practical difficulty exists. We agree with her so far, that we contemplate not only as desirable, but as necessary for the political existence of the United States of America, a measure for the ultimate and entire emancipation of the negro; but we cannot take upon ourselves the responsibility of urging an immediate change, which might have the effect, in many important respects, of deteriorating instead of bettering the condition of the black population. What more, by any possible effort, can the people of Great Britain do than they have done? Every man in America knows that we detest the system of slavery. We have shown that by a long series of legislative measures, and by national grants to purchase the freedom of our slaves in the colonies; and very few names, indeed, are held in greater honour in this country than those of Clarkson and Wilberforce. But most assuredly we have no right to dictate to other nations, or to insist that they shall adopt our views in the regulation of their internal policy. We might just as well attempt to coerce them in matters of religion, and, founding upon our belief in the purity of Protestantism, insist that the Catholic states shall renounce the authority of Rome. Certainly we shall not improve the cause of the American negro by indulging in bitter terms and unlimited objurgation against the States which do not, as yet, see their way to immediate emancipation. All the great reforms of the world have been progressive. To hasten them unduly, and until men are fit to receive them, is the mere work of anarchy; and the world-history of the last sixty years, whilst it conveys a terrible warning against the neglect of a despised population, shows us that, in order to be permanent, all social ameliorations must be carefully and cautiously introduced.
But we feel that we owe an apology to Mrs Stowe for this digression. It was no fault of hers that she had to run the gauntlet through so many soirées, or to appear perpetually in the disagreeable character of a lionne. The whole programme was arranged before she set foot in this country; and she had nothing else for it than to go through her allotted part with patience and equanimity. We must admit that she was sorely tried during her sojourn in the north. She seems to have been under the custody of a special dissenting body-guard, with about as little liberty of action as the unfortunate Lady Grange. No wonder that Scotland appeared to her a very different country from the land of her imagination. Not one of those by whom she was surrounded possessed a spark of romantic enthusiasm, or cared about the associations which have shed the light of poetry over the land. “One thing,” says Mrs Stowe, “has surprised, and rather disappointed us. Our enthusiasm for Walter Scott does not apparently meet a response in the popular breast.” Very little indeed does the lady know of the beating of the national heart of Scotland, or the veneration in which the memory of our greatest poet is held by his countrymen. But it is not at soirées, or meetings such as she witnessed or attended, that the national feeling finds a voice; nor have the writings of Sir Walter Scott been ever favourably regarded by the rigid sectarians among whom she moved. His thoughts were not as their thoughts are, nor would it be possible that any sympathy should exist between minds so differently constituted. We cannot expect Mr Sturge to take much delight in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” or a sleek member of the Peace Society to feel his spirit moved by the chaunt of the “Field of Flodden.” What has amused us most in the perusal of this book is, the evident influence which the dislike of her friends to the martial strains of Scott produced at length upon herself. She seems to have entered Scotland in a sort of fever of enthusiasm, as is testified by the perpetual quotations from Sir Walter’s poetry—rather common, by the way, for they are to be found in all the guide-books—in which she indulges. By-and-by she begins to find that her raptures are coldly listened to by the society in which she moves; and ultimately she seems to have adopted the view that in some respects her friends were right. The following is a very pretty morçeau of criticism: “The most objectionable thing, perhaps, about his influence is its sympathy with the war spirit. A person Christianly educated can hardly read some of his descriptions in the Lady of the Lake and Marmion without an emotion of disgust, like what is excited by the same things in Homer: and as the world comes more and more under the influence of Christ, it will recede more and more from this kind of literature.” We marvel that Mrs Stowe, who is a clever woman, does not perceive that the people of a country in which the spirit which she pleases to reprehend becomes extinct, must necessarily be in time succeeded by a race of unresisting slaves. The remark, too, comes with a peculiarly bad grace from a lady who is not only proud of the independence of her country, but affects intense enthusiasm for the struggles of the Puritans and Covenanters in Great Britain. However, we suppose she thought it polite to the members of the Peace Society, among whom she was moving, to give this little jog to their principles; and it may be that, after all, her intimacy with the writings of Scott is considerably less than one would conclude from the quantity of quotation. Certainly we were surprised to find it stated by a lady of so much literary pretension and apparent acquaintance with the personal history of Sir Walter, that Abbotsford “is at present the property of Scott’s only surviving daughter;” and we must also confess that some of her quotations unsettle our ancient ideas as to the limits of the Border. For example, she says with reference to a visit paid at the Earl of Carlisle’s—“I was also interested in a portrait of an ancestor of the family, the identical “Belted Will” who figures in Scott’s “Lay.””
“‘Belted Will Howard shall come with speed,
And William of Deloraine, good at need.’”
Possibly Lord Carlisle was not previously aware that his ancestor was a Scotsman, and a retainer of the house of Buccleuch. With equal propriety might Omer Pasha be described as a hetman of the Cossacks, rushing to the rescue of Gortschakoff.
On the whole, we are inclined to think that the American public will not derive much enlightenment on the subject of Scotland and the Scots from the revelations of Mrs Stowe. We can assure them that the general aspect, tone, and sentiments of society here do not at all correspond with what is represented in her pages. It is not the fact that the greater part of our time is occupied by delivering or listening to wish-washy platform speeches, or even to such as have “the promising fault of too much elaboration or ornament,” on the subjects of tee-totalism, olive-leavery, or any of the other mild absurdities of the day. It is not the fact that we have lost all grateful memory for the warlike deeds of our ancestors, or for the poets who have worthily recorded them. And, above all, it is not the fact that Mrs Stowe had a fair opportunity of forming a judgment, on almost any point, of the views entertained by the bulk of the more educated classes of society. We do not say this at all in disparagement of the parties among whom she moved, and by whom she was so hospitably entertained. We have every respect for their worth, position, and acquirements; and we are well aware that among the ministers of various denominations to whom she was introduced, and of whom she speaks affectionately, there are many whose talent, learning, and devotion have made their names known beyond the waters of the Atlantic. It must have been peculiarly gratifying to her to receive the congratulations of the late venerable Dr Wardlaw of Glasgow, of Dr John Brown of Edinburgh, whom she rightly calls “one of the best exegetical scholars in Europe,” and other lights of the United Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches. In Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen she received much civic kindness and attention; but we are at a loss, after reading her book, to discover much trace of her intercourse with general society beyond a very limited coterie. True, she refers to some persons “from ancient families, distinguished in Scottish history both for rank and piety,”—and especially to a “Lady Carstairs,” of whose corporeal existence we can find no trace in any Book of Dignity within our reach. All that, however, is of little moment; and we never should have thought of alluding to such circumstances, were it not that, so very much having been said in America on the subject of Mrs Stowe’s reception in Scotland, her account of what she saw may naturally be received as an accurate picture of the country. We have no doubt whatever of her general accuracy in describing what she saw. We are very proud to think that she was received with much enthusiasm and cordiality; and nothing could be more genuine than the expression of feeling on the part of the working-classes. Her book undoubtedly struck most deeply in the popular mind; producing a sensation which we have never seen equalled, inasmuch as it extended through every grade of society. And we can very well understand the intensity of the feeling which must have thrilled Mrs Stowe, when she found that even in sequestered villages in Scotland her work had been moistened with tears, and that the people, on the announcement of her approach, thronged to welcome the woman who had exercised so mighty a spell over their intellect and their passions. There was, really, no delusion in the matter, in so far as admiration of her talent and respect for her intrepidity were concerned; but we may, at the same time, be allowed to regret that she was made part of a premeditated pageant. The utter want of delicacy which marked the whole arrangements was most extraordinary. We are sure that Mrs Stowe must have been surprised, if not disgusted, at finding herself announced as ready to receive deputations and addresses at certain stated hours, and at the invitation of crowds to attend in order to cheer her at railway stations. There is something elevating in spontaneous enthusiasm, even when it is carried beyond the limits of strict propriety; but demonstrations such as those to which we have alluded, are not only unfair to the party paraded, but border closely on the ludicrous. No quackery of the kind was required to insure Mrs Stowe a cordial reception in Scotland; and we fear that in some respects it operated rather to her disadvantage than otherwise.
We confess to have been greatly disappointed in the perusal of her northern tour. We had expected to derive some amusement, if not edification, from the remarks of a lady whose previous publications had manifested considerable power in the depiction of character, not unmixed with occasional glimpses of humour; the more especially as there is much in the northern idiosyncrasy which must appear peculiar in the eyes of a stranger. Nothing of the sort, however, is to be found in the pages of Mrs Stowe. Read her work, omitting the familiar names of places, and one would be utterly at a loss to suppose that she is describing Scotland and its inhabitants either outwardly or inwardly. Saunders, as she depicts him, is a sort of sentimental Treddles, minding every body’s business more than his own, intoning peace speeches on a platform with a strong nasal twang, and refreshing himself, after his labours, with oceans of the weakest and the worst of tea. It is ten thousand pities that Mrs Stowe should not have witnessed either a Lowland kirn or a regular Highland meeting. Possibly the sounds either of fiddle or of bagpipe might have grated harshly on her ear; and the “twasome” reel or that of Houlakin been regarded as forbidden vanities; still she would have been infinitely the better of some more diversified experience, which might at least have caused her to avoid the error of depicting us as a nation of Mucklewraths, Hammeryaws, and Kettledrummles. As for her outward sketches, we must say that we greatly prefer the ordinary guide-books. They have at least the merit of being concise, and do not usually confound localities and historical events, as Mrs Stowe certainly does when she indicates Glammis Castle as the scene of the tragedy in Macbeth.
Moving southwards, Mrs Stowe seems to have been surrendered, in the Midland Counties, almost entirely into the hands of the Quakers. They appear to have acted towards her with considerable indulgence; for her host, albeit one of the most eminent of his sect, consented to join a party to Stratford-on-Avon. Mrs Stowe’s Shakespearian remarks do not appear to us either so novel or profound as to justify any lengthy extract—indeed, they are chiefly confined to speculations as to what Shakespeare might have done or said had he been born under different circumstances and in a different age. Disquisitions of this sort appear to us very nearly as sensible and profitable as the question, once gravely argued in the German schools, whether Adam, if born in the fifteenth century, would instinctively have betaken himself to the occupation of a gardener. Mrs Stowe, upon the whole, inclines to the opinion that Shakespeare would have ranked with the Tories. She says—“That he did have thoughts whose roots ran far beyond the depth of the age in which he lived, is plain enough from numberless indications in his plays; but whether he would have taken any practical interest in the world’s movements, is a fair question. The poetic mind is not always the progressive one; it has, like moss and ivy, a need for something old to cling to and germinate upon. The artistic temperament, too, is soft and sensitive; so there are all these reasons for thinking that perhaps he would have been for keeping out of the way of the heat and dust of modern progress.” Certainly, understanding progress in the sense which Mrs Stowe attaches to it, we cordially agree with her that Shakespeare would have kept out of its way; but it does seem to us a most monstrous assumption that he would have taken no practical interest in the world’s movements. Of all the poets that ever lived, Shakespeare was decidedly the most practical and comprehensive in his views. So far from being addicted to clinging to old things, from mere want of moral stamina, he has created a new world of his own; and no man ever possessed so keen a power of analysis of human character, and perception of the springs of action. But possibly we do her wrong. The word “practical” nowadays has divers significations; and if Mrs Stowe simply means to express her belief that Shakespeare, had he existed in our time, would neither have been a habitual spouter upon platforms, a vegetarian, a tee-totaller, a member of the Peace Congress, nor a unit of the Manchester phalanx, we beg leave to record our entire acquiescence in her estimate. Also we think that, as an eminent vice-president of the Fogie Club lately phrased it, she has hit the nail on the point, when she adds—“One thing is quite certain, that he would have said very shrewd things about all the matters that move the world now, as he certainly did about all matters that he was cognisant of in his own day.” We have not the least doubt of it.
The Stratford pilgrimage, however, seems to have given little gratification to any of the party except Mrs Stowe, who considered it in the light of a duty. Her brother, the Rev. C. Beecher, who was of the party, doing a little independent platform business whenever he could with propriety, and whose journal materially swells the bulk of the second volume, seems to be quite the sort of man whom Prynne would have delighted to have honoured. Relic-hunting after professors of the lewd art of play-making, was by no means to his taste; and accordingly we find the following commentary delivered over the tea and crumpets on the questionable amusements of the day:—“As we sat, in the drizzly evening, over our comfortable tea-table, C—— ventured to intimate pretty decidedly that he considered the whole thing a bore; whereat I thought I saw a sly twinkle round the eyes and mouth of our most Christian and patient friend, Joseph Sturge. Mr S. laughingly told him that he thought it the greatest exercise of Christian tolerance, that he should have trailed round in the mud with us all day in our sight-seeing, bearing with our unreasonable raptures. He smiled, and said quietly—‘I must confess that I was a little pleased that our friend Harriet was so zealous to see Shakespeare’s house, when it wasn’t his house, and so earnest to get sprigs from his mulberry, when it wasn’t his mulberry.’ We were quite ready to allow the foolishness of the thing, and join the laugh at our own expense.”
Warwick Castle, where Mrs Stowe grows critical upon art, after a very peculiar fashion—and Kenilworth, at which she indulges in the somewhat singular remark that “it was a beautiful conception, this making of birds”!—need not detain us. The pleasure trip was succeeded by a penance, in the shape of a lecture “against the temptations of too much flattery and applause, and against the worldliness which might beset me in London,” delivered by a celebrated female preacher, belonging to the Society of Quakers, of the name of Sibyl Jones, who had “a concern upon her mind for me.” That Sibyl possessed somewhat of the prophetic spirit, appears plain from the commentary of Mrs Stowe, who was sensibly touched by the hints which she received, and very likely began to feel that she had been somewhat over-elevated by the inflation of the northern Puffendorffs. In all seriousness, we believe that the lesson was both well meant and well timed; but the commentary appended is but one of the many proofs contained in these volumes, that Mrs Stowe is something more than a passive spectator of the Transatlantic movement for establishing what are called the “Rights of Woman”—in more vulgar language, the superiority of the grey mare, and the supremacy of the petticoat over the breeches. Now, as to the supremacy of women, we never had any doubt about it—few men, who have been married for a year, can be sceptical upon that point—and the utmost that men can demand from their wives as to the respective ranking of the garments, is, in the ancient and significant language of the Highlanders, to be allowed “to cast their clothes together.” Moreover, to the wife is invariably committed that highest symbol of authority known as “the power of the keys;” so that she has it in her power at all times to coerce her husband by the simplest and the readiest means. In fact, she has him at a dead lock, and possesses the entire command of the press. Young Hampden may talk as much as he pleases, at his Club, about the liberty of the press, and its being as essential as the air he breathes; but, when he returns home, about one in the morning, he is very fain to take his candle, and move up-stairs as quietly as possible, without attempting to enfranchise any incarcerated spirits. We do not hesitate to declare ourselves in favour of the supremacy of the wife in her own household, believing that it is, in almost every case, an unavoidable consummation, and, upon the whole, the very best arrangement that human ingenuity could devise. But the American notion goes far beyond this. The advocates of the “Rights of Woman” admit of no such paltry compromise as the surrender of domestic authority. What you as a man can do, of that your wife is equally capable, and may lawfully exert herself accordingly. Are you a barrister—why should not your wife, who has studied as a juris-consult, and been admitted to the honours of the forensic gown more legitimately than Portia, take a fee from the opposite party, and, by an influence only known to herself, cause you to quail before you have proceeded half-way in the exposition of the cause of your client? Or are you a doctor—Harriet Hunt, M.D., forgive us for this supposition; for your image, albeit we never saw you and never may, often haunts us in our dreams, and from your imaginary hand have we received multitudes of indescribable but seemingly celestial pills—how would you like your wife to be called in as an adviser on the homœopathic principle, after you had staked your existence on the superiority of the drastic method, and see her recover a patient in less than a week, whereas you had calculated upon a month’s legitimate fees under the ordinary curatory process? Or let us suppose that one of the fairest dreams of the strong-minded women of our generation should be realised, and that all political disabilities were removed from the fair sex, so that they might be admitted to sit and vote in Parliament. We scorn to take up the objection which might occur to a common mind of the impossibility of the Speaker maintaining order—we shall suppose a far worse case; and that is the possible disagreement between man and wife in political principle and conduct. How could you possibly endure the spectacle of your spouse accompanying the smiling Mr Gladstone to a division in one lobby, whilst your stern sense of duty compelled you to retire into another? How could you possibly remain at bed and board with a woman who was in the habit of attending those meetings at Chesham Place, which Lord John Russell is so fond of calling whenever he requires a friendly castigation, as Henry II. bared his brawny shoulders to the monks? And how, as a gentleman and a man of honour, could you reconcile it with your conscience to lay your head on the same pillow with a woman who can support the Coalition Ministry, and even go the length of declaring that she has confidence in the Earl of Aberdeen? Or we shall come to preaching, which is perhaps the more germain to the matter. The Rev. Asahel Groanings, of some undefined shadow of dissent, marries Miss Naomi Starcher of corresponding principles, with a fortune of some few hundred pounds, which are speedily sunk, beyond hope of extrication, in the erection of an Ebenezer. Both are licensed to the ministry, Asahel officiating in the morning and his helpmate in the afternoon. But somehow or other, Asahel is not popular with his congregation. His style of oratory reminds one unpleasantly of the exercitations of a seasick passenger in a steamboat, and his visage is ghastly to look upon, being distorted as if he laboured under a permanent attack of colic. Whereas, the voice of Naomi is soft as that of a dove cooing in a thicket of pomegranates, her countenance is fair and comely, and the thoughts of the elders, as they gaze upon her, revert to the apocryphal history of Susannah. The result is, that Asahel utters his ululations to empty benches, whilst Naomi attracts hundreds of the rising youth of dissenting Christendom. How can their union possibly be a happy one; or how can they continue to fructify in the same theatre of usefulness? Yet Mrs Beecher Stowe absolutely goes the length of recommending, or at least sanctioning, the view that ladies should be allowed to preach. She says, “The calling of women to distinct religious vocations, it appears to me, was a part of primitive Christianity; has been one of the most efficient elements of power in the Romish church; obtained among the Methodists in England; and has in all these cases been productive of great good. The deaconesses whom the apostle mentions with honour in his epistle, Madame Guyon in the Romish church, Mrs Fletcher, Elizabeth Fry, are instances which show how much may be done for mankind by women who feel themselves impelled to a special religious vocation.” Then she goes on to cite the case of the prophetesses, and tells us that “the example of the Quakers is a sufficient proof, that acting upon this idea does not produce discord and domestic disorder.” We are afraid that Mrs Stowe’s platform experiences have tended somewhat to warp her better judgment upon this point; and we beg to submit that, according to her own showing, the ladies of America have quite as much to do, in the interior of their households, as they can possibly manage to accomplish, without entering into any of the learned professions, or attempting to eclipse their husbands. The following extract is certainly a curious one. We, of course, are not answerable for the correctness or colouring of the picture, these being matters for which Mrs Stowe is amenable to the consciences of her countrywomen.
“There is one thing more which goes a long way towards the continued health of these English ladies, and therefore towards their beauty; and that is, the quietude and perpetuity of their domestic institutions. They do not, like us, fade their cheeks lying awake nights ruminating the awful question who shall do the washing next week, or who shall take the chamber-maid’s place, who is going to be married, or that of the cook who has signified her intention of parting with her mistress. Their hospitality is never embarrassed by the consideration that their whole kitchen cabinet may desert at the moment that their guests arrive. They are not obliged to choose between washing their own dishes, or having their cutglass, silver, and china, left at the mercy of a foreigner, who has never done anything but field-work. And last, not least, they are not possessed of that ambition to do the impossible in all branches, which, I believe, is the death of a third of the women in America. What is there ever read of in books or described in foreign travel, as attained by people in possession of every means and appliance, which our women will not undertake, single-handed, in spite of every providential indication to the contrary? Who is not cognisant of dinner-parties invited, in which the lady of the house has figured successively as confectioner, cook, dining-room girl, and, lastly, rushed up-stairs to bathe her glowing cheeks, smooth her hair, draw on satin dress and kid gloves, and appear in the drawing-room as if nothing were the matter? Certainly the undaunted bravery of our American females can never enough be admired. Other women can play gracefully the head of the establishment; but who, like them, could be head, hand, and foot, all at once?”
This passage is very suggestive in two ways. In the first place, we humbly venture to think that it contains many excellent reasons why the ladies of America should mitigate their inordinate desire for sharing in what hitherto have been considered the appropriate employments of men. It appears, by Mrs Stowe’s evidence, that they have already so much domestic work to perform, that they are compelled to sacrifice both their health and beauty, which certainly are the two last things that a woman would be inclined to part with. Therefore it seems to us unwise, and even preposterous, that any portion of them should be clamorous in demanding a further increase of duty, unless, like the gude-wife of Auchtermuchty in the old Scots ballad, they are prepared to make an entire interchange of occupation with their husbands, and can persuade the latter to whip cream, concoct soup, wash the dishes, and arrange the table, whilst they are pleading at the bar, prescribing for half the young fellows in the neighbourhood, gesticulating at public meetings, or receiving the incense of deputations. In the second place, these particulars of American society may, in reality, have more to do with the evident dislike to emancipation of the slaves which evidently prevails in many parts of the United States, than Mrs Stowe was aware of when she penned the passage. If it is true that the ladies of America—using the term in the same sense as Mrs Stowe does, for she is comparing the personal appearance of women of the richer and more independent class in the two countries—if it is the fact that the American ladies in the free States have to undergo the drudgery which she describes, and that not from choice, but from absolute inability to obtain proper assistance; then we have a distinct and intelligible motive assigned to us why many excellent and humane people in the slave States hesitate to join the movement in behalf of emancipation. We have often suspected that some strong social reasons, unknown to us and to the British public, must exist, to account for the continuance of the slave system; and we think that Mrs Stowe has, albeit unwittingly, disclosed one of them. For what does her sentiment amount to, but an acknowledgment that, in the great enlightened republic of America, it is impossible to procure decent or permanent service—that, as there is no acknowledgment of anything like rank or gradation, the servants consider themselves in all respects as good as their master or mistress, will not obey them unless it suits their humour, and are always ready to decamp? That must be the case, unless we are to suppose that the American ladies, answering to the aristocracy here, have a diseased appetite for performing the offices of scullion, cook, and table-maid. Now, it may be thought a very strong statement on our part, but we venture to say, that were slavery existing at the present time in Great Britain, and were the kind of free service procurable on any terms, no better than that which Mrs Stowe and all other writers have described as existing in America, emancipation would be a decidedly unpopular proposal in these Islands. Is it possible to doubt that? Look at the history of the Factories Bill, opposed, defeated, and evaded in every possible way, by the very same men who proclaim themselves as the warmest friends of the negro. They thought it as nothing that the bodies and souls of the young children within their factories should be distorted and uncared for, whilst at the same time they were ready to expend their gratuitous sympathy on the American slave. But we shall not refer solely to them. Our remark applies to every class; and we put the question to the ladies of this country, from the Duchess of Sutherland downwards, whether, if they had been born slave-owners, they would at once have relinquished their control over those whom they could treat kindly, and whose affections they could secure, to pass to a system which would have sent them down from the drawing-room to slave themselves in the pantry or the kitchen? Is that an argument for slavery? Heaven forbid! We intend nothing of the kind, and should be very sorry to see our meaning so twisted and distorted. But it is an argument of the very strongest description against republicanism and republican institutions, and against those absurd notions of equality which, under philosophical cover, are making such rapid progress in this country. Slavery, we are convinced, has in all times existed rather as a social necessity, than from any abstract wish in man to own property in man. The idea is of itself repugnant. Not much more than a hundred years ago, the Earls of Sutherland were, in effect, considerable serf-owners. The patriarchal rule of the chief was more despotic than is the sway of the proprietor of slaves in America; for if the Mhor-ar-chat, which we apprehend to be the most ancient designation of the family, had desired Dugald or Donald to pitch his recusant brother into the loch, with some hundred-weight of granite attached to his neck by a plaid, “nae doubt the laird’s pleasure suld be obeyed.” Fortunately we are past that phase of existence. The feudal system has decayed and died, which we are not by any means sorry for; but, on the other hand, we have not yet arrived at the point when the descendants of Dugald and Donald consider themselves as ranking in the same degree of the social scale with the great Lady of Dunrobin. Feudal service has given way to a better-ordered, more convenient, and more profitable system. But still, among us, the gradations of rank are recognised and acted on; and it is because the feelings and institutions of the country are essentially aristocratic, that our domestic arrangements and social intercourse are so decidedly superior to those of America, or indeed of any other country in the world. We have equal laws, to which noble and yeoman are alike amenable; but we do not insist upon the recognition of what has absurdly and mischievously been termed, the law of universal equality. Admirably has Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, in one of his earlier writings, exposed the fallacy of those who confound equal rights with absolute parity in society. “If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood, they could not make it law. Level all conditions to-day, and you only smoothe away all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to equality is unfit for freedom.” How is an army led? By subordination only. Remove that principle, and the army resolves itself into a mob. So is it with all society. Let men talk of the absurdities of chivalry as they please, it is the influence of the chivalrous institutions still remaining among us which leavens the whole mass of British society. Pothouse philosophers may sneer at this assertion, and, in their usual elegant style of language, talk of “flunkeyism,” a phrase which, of late, has been very frequently in their mouths. Let us see what they understand by it. Do they mean to object to service altogether? Do they consider the waiter at the Thistlewood Arms, who supplies them with their nocturnal allowances of gin, degraded by the act of fetching? Doubtless they would infinitely prefer to help themselves, and to be the sole supervisors of the score; but as that is a degree of liberty which no law could possibly allow, or landlord tolerate, they are very fain to avail themselves of the spirituous ministry of Trinculo. But do they consider him on a level with themselves? Not at all. They bully him for his blunders in the transmission of half-and-half and kidneys, with a ferocity truly unfraternal; and if he were to propose to take a place at the table of their democratic worships, he would be taught a due reverence to the rules of society and breeding by the application of a pint-pot to his cranium. We have very little doubt that the wretched kind of domestic economy which prevails in the free States of America has had a strong influence in preventing the spread of emancipation principles; and we believe that to the very same cause may be traced the continuance of slavery in ancient Rome as part of their social system. The Roman plebeian was quite as surly a republican as the descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers. He would not stoop to act in the capacity of a servant—hardly in that of a help, which we believe to be the recognised American term; and consequently the Cornelias, Livias, and Tullias of Rome, had either to avail themselves of the ministry of slaves who formed part of the household, or to submit to the personal drudgery of cleaning the lampreys and opening the oysters for the suppers of their luxurious lords Titius or Mœvius, or any other of the fellows of the common sort who had a tribune of their own, would not have consented to brush the toga or clean the sandals even of a senator. At the bare mention of such a thing they would have been ready to rush to the Mons Sacer, for it is a curious fact that in all ages the disaffected have manifested a propensity for taking to the hills. Chivalry put an end to this; and by establishing gradation of orders and of rank, laid the foundation for the freedom which now prevails throughout the states of Europe. It was no disgrace for the squire to obey the orders of the knight, or for the yeoman to serve the squire. The lady in her bower had the attendance of damsel and of page; and the great model of a well-regulated household was then framed and introduced. But not one atom of chivalrous feeling was conveyed by the Mayflower to New England. The spirit of the sourest republicanism pervaded that whole cargo of human verjuice; and instead of bearing with them to the west the seeds of civilisation, they carried those of intolerance and slavery. Very wise, in more senses than one, is the old proverb, which, in all matters of reformation, desires us to look primarily to home, and to set our houses in order. There are many social reforms, besides emancipation, required in America; and some which we almost venture to think must necessarily precede it. For at present, according to Mrs Stowe’s own showing and testimony, there is a vast gap in society occasioned by the republican abhorrence of anything like menial service, and the jealous and almost defiant spirit with which the semblance of authority is resisted. In a word, we believe that until civilisation in America has proceeded so far as to assimilate its social condition to that of the older states of Europe, very material obstacles will impede the triumph of that cause which Mrs Stowe has so enthusiastically advocated.
Mrs Stowe, like many others of her ardent countrywomen, has a decided turn for crotchets. She next falls in with Elihu Burritt, and begins an eulogistic commentary on the “movement which many, in our half-Christianised times, regard with as much incredulity as the grim, old, warlike barons did the suspicious imbecilities of reading and writing. The sword now, as then, seems so much more direct a way to terminate controversies, that many Christian men, even, cannot conceive how the world is to get along without it.” We suspect that, by this time, exceeding grave doubts as to the practicability of his views, and the termination of all disputes by arbitration, must have penetrated even the jolter-pate of the pragmatic Elihu, and that he must be mourning over the enormous waste of olive-leaves for so little good purpose. We sincerely hope, for his sake, that he has been allowed a liberal commission or per-centage on the circulation. As Mrs Stowe seems to have been admitted to his secrets, we may as well insert her account of the operations of the Peace Society.
“Burritt’s mode of operation has been by the silent organisation of circles of ladies in all the different towns of the United Kingdom, who raise a certain sum for the diffusion of the principles of peace on earth and good-will to men. Articles, setting forth the evils of war, moral, political, and social, being prepared, these circles pay for their insertion in all the principal newspapers of the Continent. They have secured to themselves in this way a continual utterance in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany; so that from week to week, and month to month, they can insert articles upon these subjects. Many times the editors insert the articles as editorial, which still further favours their design. In addition to this, the ladies of these circles in England correspond with the ladies of similar circles existing in other countries; and in this way there is a mutual kindliness of feeling established through these countries.”
We have already recorded in the Magazine our opinion of the character of these olive-leaves, as well as of the articles avowedly emanating from the pen of the inspired Elihu; and therefore we need not trouble ourselves by again disturbing the rubbish. If there are any sincere but weak people who were inclined to view favourably the movements of the Peace Society, the transactions in Europe during the last twelve months must have convinced them of the utter impossibility of creating any general court of arbitration, by means of which international disputes may be adjusted. At the present moment, Russia stands condemned for her aggression by every state in Europe. Even Prussia does not venture to defend the forcible occupation of the Danubian principalities; and every species of persuasion and representation was employed to induce the Czar to abandon his purpose, or at all events to retrace his steps. So unwilling were the western powers to draw the sword, that they allowed a great deal of valuable time to be expended in negotiation, before they took any decided step; and the general opinion in England is, that the British Government was rather too tardy in its movements. And yet, without a single declared ally, and with the unanimous voice of Europe against him, Nicholas has thrown down the gauntlet, and the fleets of Britain and France are in the Black and the Baltic Seas. After this, it is inconceivable that there should be found any people besotted enough to talk about arbitration. We should not, however, omit to notice the last dying speech and final confession of the Peace Society, as delivered by a leash of Quakers before his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, and reported on their return with so much unction by the highly-gifted and exulting Pease. There is no tragedy so deep and solemn as to be entirely without a farcical element; and we can remember nothing, in the shape of burlesque, to compete with the apparition of those diffident Quakers at St Petersburg. But the fact is, that the leading members of the Peace Society, amongst whom rank conspicuously the chiefs of the Manchester school, were perfectly well aware that the notion of arbitration was a mere chimera. Their real object was to promote the spread of democratic principles; and, if possible, to weaken the power of every existing government by strewing dissatisfaction among their subjects. This is not our allegation only—it is in perfect consonance with what Mrs Stowe records in repeating her conversations with the leading apostles of peace; and we really think that the following revelation as to ultimate views, is by no means the least valuable or interesting part of her work. She says—
“When we ask these reformers how people are to be freed from the yoke of despotism without war, they answer, ‘By the diffusion of ideas among the masses—by teaching the bayonets to think.’ They say, ‘If we convince every individual soldier of a despot’s army that war is ruinous, immoral, and unchristian, we take the instrument out of the tyrant’s hand. If each individual man would refuse to rob and murder for the Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of Russia, where would be their power to hold Hungary? What gave power to the masses in the French Revolution, but that the army, pervaded by new ideas, refused any longer to keep the people down?’
“These views are daily gaining strength in England. They are supported by the whole body of the Quakers, who maintain them with that degree of inflexible perseverance and never-dying activity which have rendered the benevolent actions of that body so efficient.”
Very good, Mrs Stowe! But are no soldiers to be allowed to think, except those belonging to a despot’s army? And is every individual soldier to be permitted to act exclusively upon his own impressions of the abstract propriety or justice of the service in which he is engaged? Passages such as these—and they are not unfrequent in her work—go far indeed to unsettle our faith in the sense, judgment, and discretion of Mrs Stowe—qualities without which even the highest talent fails in attaining at its aims.
But we must now follow Mrs Stowe to London, where her reception was of a most marked and gratifying kind. Our readers cannot have forgotten the remonstrance or expostulation which was addressed by the ladies of Great Britain, under the generalship of the Duchess of Sutherland, to the ladies of America, on the subject of the emancipation of the slaves. That document was freely commented upon at the time; and, if we recollect aright, some rather pungent strictures were made upon it, even by writers in this country, as if, by taking this step, the fair remonstrants had somewhat transgressed the reserve which is expected from their sex. In that view we cannot join. We have intimated, perhaps broadly enough, our objections to the American notion of the “Rights of Woman;” but we trust to stand acquitted of entertaining any such discourteous view as might preclude the ladies from a fair expression of their opinion. In a question such as this, embracing all the domestic considerations and feelings to which women are more alive than men, it was not only well and commendable, but noble and Christian, that women should take a decided part, and attempt, at least, by an appeal to the common sympathies of the sex, to awaken commiseration for the degraded condition of thousands of their human sisters, and to urge an effort in their behalf. We really think that one such representation, addressed by women to women, is more likely to have a lasting and salutary effect, than five hundred public meetings, such as Mrs Stowe witnessed at Glasgow and elsewhere, where bull-throated ministers and blethering bailies assemble to make trial of their powers of oratory. Notwithstanding the reply of Juliana Tyler, who came forward as the champion on the other side, we believe that the appeal, on the part of the ladies of Great Britain, must have made a deep impression on the minds of many in America. We do not feel ourselves called upon to discuss the arguments which Mrs Tyler employed; for in a ladies’ controversy, no male has a right to interfere. Mrs Stowe tells us that the origin of the address was this: “Fearful of the jealousy of political interference, Lord Shaftesbury published an address to the ladies of England, in which he told them that he felt himself moved by an irresistible impulse to entreat them to raise their voice, in the name of their common Christianity and womanhood, to their American sisters.” We shall add, what Mrs Stowe is too modest to say, or perhaps what she does not know, that, but for the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the interest excited thereby, Lord Shaftesbury might have worn his pen to the stump before he could have succeeded in eliciting any such remonstrance.
Most graceful indeed, and becoming, was the attention which was lavished, on the part of the Duchess of Sutherland and her kindred, upon Mrs Stowe; and to us by far the most pleasing portion of the book is that in which she records her impressions of London society. In the very highest circles of the metropolis, and while moving for a time in a sphere which might very well dazzle and perplex one to whom such scenes must have appeared like a fairy dream, she really appears to have kept her equilibrium, and preserved her coolness of judgment much better than when she was greeted by civic demonstrations in the North, or by gatherings of the peaceful but somewhat prosy and dogmatic brotherhood of the Quakers in the Midland Counties. To our great astonishment we have observed that poor Mrs Stowe has been accused by various liberal journals in England, of “flunkeyism,” for conveying to her friends an accurate account of what she saw at Stafford House, and one or two other mansions to which she was invited. Anything more unfair and even monstrous than this style of criticism it is impossible to conceive. Mrs Stowe is writing her impressions of British society for the information of her friends in America. In London it was her good fortune to be received cordially and hospitably by several of the most distinguished and estimable of the nobility and public characters; and because she gives a fair, and by no means too minute relation of what she saw and heard, she is scoffed at, by a certain section of the liberal gentry of the London press, as a kind of parasite. This is really very shabby and disgusting; for we do think that her modest, unaffected, and sometimes naïve observations upon what she saw passing around her, might have saved her from any such reflection. She enjoyed in England particular advantages such as very few Americans could boast of. Had N. P. Willis ever been able to compass an admission to Stafford House, his literary fortune would have been made. We should have heard no more of Count Spiridion Ballardos, or any such small-deer; but the intrepid Penciller would have fixed at once upon the Duke of Argyll as his victim, and have magnified himself in some inconceivable way, by introducing Philip Slingsby as the triumphant rival and competitor of the MacCallum-Mhor. Mrs Stowe does not try by any means to exalt herself—indeed her figure does not appear at all prominently in the picture. She has endeavoured to give as accurate a sketch as she could of London society, and in some respects has succeeded pretty well. Blunders there are of course, but that was unavoidable, and a good deal of what appears to us to be gossip, but which possibly may have a higher value in the eyes of her Transatlantic readers. She very fairly admits in her preface, that her narrative may be tinged couleur de rose; and we are only surprised, considering the temptations in her way, that she has used the Claude Lorraine glass with so much discretion. Society is quite as intoxicating as champagne; and it is impossible to write a book of this kind, without recalling, to a considerable extent, the feeling of the bygone excitement. We have no doubt that the printed narrative would seem peculiarly sober, could we be favoured with a perusal of the actual letters which Mrs Stowe despatched to America from the bewildering whirl of London.
One thing, however, we have remarked with pain; and that is the introduction by Mrs Stowe of an elaborate defence or explanation of what were called the “Sutherland Clearings.” Her motive for doing so is quite apparent; but we cannot help thinking that she has placed both herself, and the noble family for whom she appears as an advocate, in a false and disagreeable position, by putting forth statements of the accuracy of which she had no means of judging. The transactions to which she refers are of an old date; and they occurred in a district of which she has absolutely no personal knowledge. She never was in Sutherland, or indeed any other part of the Highlands, and therefore she was not entitled in any way to deal with such a subject. That she was furnished with materials for the purposes of publication seems more than probable: if so, we cannot commend the prudence of those who took so singular a method of refuting what may very possibly be calumny or misrepresentation. With the merits of the case we have nothing to do, nor shall we express any opinion upon them; but it does seem to us a most extraordinary circumstance that Mrs Stowe should have been induced to put forth a long, elaborate, and statistical argument upon a subject of which she is wholly ignorant. A defence of this kind—supposing that any defence was required—is positively hurtful to the parties whose conduct has been called in question; and anything but creditable to their discretion if they consented to its issue.
Interspersed with the actual narrative, are commentaries, or rather criticisms, upon art and literature, which, for the sake of the authoress, we could wish omitted. Her taste, upon all subjects of the kind, is either wholly uncultivated or radically bad—indeed it would be absolutely cruel to quote her observations on the works of the old masters. In literature she prefers Dr Watts, as a poet, to Dryden, and has the calm temerity to proceed to quotation. She says, “For instance, take these lines:—
“‘Wide as his vast dominion lies
Let the Creator’s name be known;
Loud as his thunder shout his praise,
And sound it lofty as his throne.
Speak of the wonders of that love
Which Gabriel plays on every chord,
From all below and all above
Loud hallelujahs to the Lord.’
“Simply as a specimen of harmonious versification, I would place this paraphrase by Dr Watts above everything in the English language, not even excepting Pope’s Messiah”!!! Whereas, to any one possessing a common ear, the lines must rank as absolute doggrel, and the ideas which they convey are commonplace and wretchedly expressed. Elsewhere she says:—“I certainly do not worship the old English poets. With the exception of Milton and Shakespeare, there is more poetry in the works of the writers of the last fifty years than in all the rest together.” We wonder if she ever read a line of Chaucer or of Spenser, not to speak of Pope and Dryden. But she objects even to Milton. Here is a piece of criticism which we defy the world to match: “There is a coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind that blows from the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is the only one who weeps
“‘For millions of spirits for his faults amerced,
And from eternal splendours flung—’
“God does not care, nor his angels.” Our readers, we hope, will understand why we leave this passage without comment. But it may be worth while to show them the sort of poetry (beyond Watts) which Mrs Stowe does admire, and she favours us with the following as a “beautiful aspiration” from an American poet of the name of Lowell:—
“Surely the wiser time shall come
When this fine overplus of might,
No longer sullen, slow or dumb,
Shall leap to music and to light.
In that new childhood of the world,
Life of itself shall dance and play,
Fresh blood through Time’s shrunk veins be hurled,
And labour meet delight half way.”
Beautiful aspirations—lovely lines! Why—they are absolute nonsense; and the mere silent reading of them has set our teeth on edge. Try to recite them, and you are inevitably booked for a catarrh! In like manner she refers to some rubbish of Mr Whittier, an American rhymer, as a “beautiful ballad, called ‘Barclay of Ury.’” We have a distinct recollection of having read that ballad some years ago, and of our impression that it was incomparably the worst which we ever encountered; though, if a naked sword were at this moment to be presented to our throat, we could depone nothing further, than that “rising in a fury,” rhymed to “Barclay of Ury;” and also, that “frowning very darkly,” chimed in to the name of “Barclay.” But it was woeful stuff; and it lingers in our memory solely by reason of its absurdity. However, as Mrs Stowe prefers this sort of thing to Spenser, we have nothing for it except to make our bow, regretting that our æsthetical notions are so far apart, that, under no circumstances whatever, can we foresee the possibility of a coalition.
Beyond the Channel we shall not follow her; the more especially as the greater part of the Continental tour is described in the journal of the Rev. Charles Beecher, an individual with whose proceedings, thoughts, and raptures, we have not been able to conjure up the slightest sympathy. In fact, taking Mr Beecher at his own estimate and valuation, and making every allowance for playfulness of manner, we should by no means covet his company in any part of Europe; and we are only surprised that, in one or two places (as for instance Cologne), he did not receive an emphatic check to his outrageous hilarity. But as he seems to have been impressed with the idea that he exhibited himself rather in a humorous and attractive light, we have no intention of dispelling the dream—we are only sorry that Mrs Stowe should have thought it worth while to increase the bulk of her book by admitting her relative’s inflated, ill-written, and singularly silly lucubrations, as part of a work which, considering her literary celebrity, and the interest of the theme, will in all probability have an extensive circulation.
After making every allowance for the difficulty attendant upon the task of portraying with fidelity and spirit the customs of a foreign country, we cannot, with truth, express an opinion that Mrs Stowe has been successful in her effort. Far more interesting and agreeable volumes have been written by women of less natural ability; and we are constrained to dismiss, with a feeling of decided disappointment, a book which we opened with the anticipation of a very different result.
THE CRYSTAL PALACE.[[44]]
It is the common practice of innovators to set up a loud cry against long-received opinions which favour them not, and the word prejudice is the denunciation of “mad-dog.” But prejudices, like human beings who hold them, are not always “so bad as they seem.” They are often the action of good, natural instincts, and often the results of ratiocinations whose processes are forgotten. Let us have no “Apology” for a long-established prejudice; ten to one but it can stand upon its own legs, and needs no officious supporter, who simply apologises for it.
We have had philosophers who have told us there is really no such thing as beauty, consequently there can be no such thing as taste; that it is a mere idea, an unaccountable prejudice somehow or other engendered in the brain. And though there exists not a head in the universe without a portion of this disorder-breeding brain, the philosopher persists that the product is a worthless nonentity, and altogether out of the nature of things. We maintain, however, in favour of prejudices and tastes—that there are real grounds for both; and, presuming not to be so wise as to deny the evidences of our senses, and conclusions of our minds, think it scarcely worth while to unravel the threads of our convictions. In matters of science we marvel and can believe almost anything; but in our tastes and feelings we naturally, and by an undoubting instinct, shrink from the touch of an innovator, as we would shun the heel of a donkey.
Whenever an innovator of this kind sets up “An Apology” for his intended folly, we invariably feel that he means a very audacious insult upon our best perceptions. The worst of it is, he is not one easily put aside—he will labour to get a commission into your house, ransack it to its sewers, and turn it out of windows. He is the man that must ever be doing. He will think himself entitled to perambulate the world with his pot of polychrome in his hand, and bedaub every man’s door-post; and if multitudes—the whole offended neighbourhood—rush out to upset his pot and brush, he will laugh in their faces, defend his plastering instruments, and throw to them with an air his circular, “An Apology;” and perhaps afterwards knock the doors down for an authorised payment. Such a one shall get no “Apology”-pence out of us.
We are prejudiced—we delight in being prejudiced—will continue prejudiced as long as we live, and will entertain none but prejudiced friends. There are things we will believe, and give no reasons for, ever; and things we never will believe, whatever reasons are to be given in their favour. We think the man who said, “Of course, I believe it, if you say you saw it; but I would not believe it if I saw it myself,” used an irresistible argument of good sound prejudice, mixed with discretion. It is better, safer, and honester, to bristle up like a hedgehog, and let him touch who dares, than to sit and be smoothed and smoothed over with oily handling of sophisticated arguments, till every decent palpable roughness of reason is taken from you.
Reader, do you like white marble? What a question! you will ask,—do you suppose me to have no eyes? Do not all people covet it—import it from Carrara? Do not sculptors, as sculptors have done in all ages, make statues from it—monuments, ornaments, and costly floors? Of course, everybody loves white marble. Then, reader, if such is your taste, you are a prejudiced ignoramus; you belong to that age “devoid of the capacity to appreciate and the power to execute works of art”—that age which certain persons profess to illuminate. You are now, under the new dictators of taste, to know that you had no business to admire white marble,[[45]]—that you are so steeped in this old prejudice that it will require a long time before you can eradicate this stain of a vile admiration, although your teachers have acquired a true knowledge in an incredible time. You must put yourself under the great colourman of the great Crystal Palace, Mr Owen Jones, who, if he does not put out your eyes in the experiments he will set before you, will at least endeavour to convince you that you are a fool of the first water. But beware how you don his livery of motley. Hear him: “Under this influence (the admiration of white marble), however, we have been born and bred, and it requires time to shake off the trammels which such early education leaves.” You have sillily believed that the Athenians built with marble because of its beauty,—that the Egyptians thought there was beauty in granite. You thought in your historical dream that he who found the city of brick, and left it of marble, had done something whereof he might reasonably boast. You have been egregiously mistaken. If you ever read that the Greeks and Romans, and other people since their times civilised, sent great distances for marble for their palaces and statues, you must put it down in your note-book of new “historic doubts.” You learn a fact you never dreamed of, from Mr Owen Jones. They merely used it (marble) because it lay accidentally at their feet. He puts the richest colouring of his contempt on “the artificial value which white marble has in our eyes.” Learn the real cause of its use: “The Athenians built with marble, because they found it almost beneath their feet, and also from the same cause which led the Egyptians to employ granite, which was afterwards painted—viz. because it was the most enduring, and capable of receiving a higher finish of workmanship.” He maintains that so utterly regardless were these Greeks of any supposed beauty in marble—especially white marble—that they took pains to hide every appearance of its texture; that they not only painted it all over, but covered it with a coating of stucco. Listen to an oracle that, we will answer for it, never came from Delphi, that no Pythia in her madness ever conceived, and that, if uttered in the recesses, would have made Apollo shake his temple to pieces.
“To what extent were white marble temples painted and ornamented? I would maintain that they were entirely so; that neither the colour of the marble, nor even its surface, was preserved; and that preparatory to the ornamenting and colouring of the surface, the whole was covered with a thin coating of stucco, something in the nature of a gilder’s ground, to stop the absorption of the colours by the marble.”
“A thin coat of stucco!” and no exception with respect to statues—to be applied wherever the offensive white marble showed its unblushing nakedness and beauty!! Let us imagine it tested on a new statue—thus stucco over, however thin, Mr Bayley’s Eve, or Mr Power’s Greek Slave—the thought is enough to make the sculptor go mad, and commit a murder on himself or the plasterer—to see all his fine, his delicate chisellings obliterated! all the nice markings, the scarcely perceptible dimplings gone!—for let the coat of stucco be thin as a wafer, it must, according to that thickness, enlarge every rising and diminish the spaces between them: thus, all true proportion must be lost; between two risings the space must be less. “What fine chisel,” says our immortal Shakespeare, “could ever yet cut breath?” How did he imagine, in these few words, the living motion of the “breath of life” in the statue! and who doubts either the attempt or the success so to represent perfect humanity, when he looks at the finest antique statues? Let an audacious innovator dare to daub one of them with his coat of stucco, and all the chiselling of the life, breath, and motion is annihilated. It must be so, whatever be the thickness of the coat; though it be but a nail-paring it must diminish risings and hollows, and all nicer touches must disappear. We should heartily desire to see the innovator suffocated in his plaster and paint-pot, that in his suffering he may know it is a serious thing to knock the life-breath out of the body even of a statue.
“Nec lex est justior ulla
Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ.”
There is one slight objection to our getting rid of this prejudice in favour of white marble which we suggest to Mr Owen Jones, and all the “Stainers’” Company—the unseemly blots we shall have to make in the fairest pages of poetry, old and new. Albums will of course be ruined, and a general smear, bad as a “coat of stucco,” be passed over the whole books of beauties who have “dreamed they dwelt in marble halls.” The new professors, polychromatists, must bring out, if they are able, new editions of all our classics. How must this passage from Horace provoke their bile:
“Urit me Glycone nitor
Splendentis Pario marmore puriùs.”
And when, after being enchanted by the “grata protervitas,” he adds the untranslateable line,
“Et Vultus nimium lubricus aspici,”
we can almost believe, with that bad taste which Mr Owen Jones will condemn, that he had in the full eye of his admiration the polished, delicately defined charm of the Parian marble.
It was a clown’s taste to daub the purity; and first he daubed his own face, and the faces of his drunken rabble. He would have his gods made as vulgar as himself; and then, doubtless, there was many a wooden, worthless, and obscene idol, the half joke and veneration of the senseless clowns, painted as fine as vermilion could make them.
“Agricola et minio suffusus, Bacche, rubente,
Primus inexpertâ duxit ab arte choros.”
Tib.
But to suppose that Praxiteles and Phidias could endure to submit their loveliest works to be stuccoed and solidly painted over with vermilion, seems to us to suppose a perfect impossibility. That they could not have willingly allowed the defilement we have shown by the nature of their work, all the nicety of touch and real proportion of parts lying under the necessity of alteration, and consequently damage thereby. Whatever apparent proof might be adduced that such statues were painted—and we doubt the proof, as we will endeavour to show—we do not hesitate to say that the daubings and plasterings must have been the doing of a subsequent less cultivated people, and possibly at the demand of a vulgarised mobocracy. The clown at our pantomimes is the successor to the clown who smeared his face with wine-lees, and passed his jokes while he gave orders to have his idol painted with vermilion. Yet though it must be impossible that Phidias or Praxiteles would have allowed solid coats of paint or stucco, or both, to have ruined the works of their love and genius, under the presuming title “historical evidence” an anecdote is culled from the amusing gossip Pliny, to show what Praxiteles thought of it. “There is a passage in Pliny which is decisive, as soon as we understand the allusion.” Speaking of Nicias (lib. xxxv. cap. 11), he says that Praxiteles, when asked which of his marble works best satisfied him, replied, “Those which Nicias has had under his hands.” “So much,” adds Pliny, “did he prize the finishing of Nicias”—(tantum circumlitioni ejus tribuebat). This “finishing of Nicias,” by its location, professes to be a translation from Pliny, which it is not. Had the writer adopted the exact wording of the old English translation, from which he seems to have taken the former portion of the sentence, it would not have suited his purpose, but it would have been more fair: it is thus, “So much did he attribute unto his vernish and polishing”—which contradicts the solid painting. Pliny is rather ambiguous with regard to this Nicias—whether he was the celebrated one or no. But it should be noticed that the anecdote, as told in Mr Owen Jones’ “Apology,” is intended to show that the painter’s skill, as a painter, was added—substantially added—to the work of Praxiteles, whereas this Nicias may have been one who was nice in the making and careful in the use of his varnish; and we readily grant that some kind of varnishing or polishing may have been used over the statues, both for lustre and protection. Certainly at one time, though we would not say there is proof as to the time of Phidias, such varnishes, or rather waxings, were in use. But even if it were the celebrated Nicias to whom the anecdote refers, we cannot for a moment believe he would have touched substantially, as a painter, any work of Praxiteles. But as genius is ever attached to genius, he may have supplied to Praxiteles the means of giving that polish which he gave to his own works, and probably aided him in the operation, not “had under his hands,” as translated—“quibus manum admovisset.” Pliny had in his eye the very modus operandi of the encaustic process, the holding heated iron within a certain distance of the object. But what was the operation? Does the text authorise anything like the painting the statue? Certainly not. And however triumphantly it is brought forward, there is a hitch in the argument which must be confessed.
In making this confession, it would have been as well to have referred to Pliny himself for the meaning. Pliny uses the verb illinebat, in grammatical relation to circumlitio, in the sense of varnishing, in that well-known passage in which he speaks of the varnish used by Apelles—“Unum imitari nemo potuit, quod absoluta opera illinebat atramento ita tenui,” &c.
The meaning of this passage hangs on the word circumlitio. Winckelmann follows the mass of commentators in understanding this as referring to some mode of polishing the statues. But Quatremère de Quincey, in his magnificent work Le Jupiter Olympien, satisfactorily shows this to be untenable, not only “because no sculptor could think of preferring such of his statues as had been better polished, but also because Nicias being a painter, not a sculptor, his services must have been those of a painter.” If these are the only “becauses” of Quatremère de Quincey, they are anything but satisfactory; for a sculptor may esteem all his works as equal, and then prefer such as had the advantage of Nicias’s circumlitio. Nor does the because of Nicias being a painter at all define the circumlitio to be a plastering with stucco, or a thick daubing with vermilion; for, be it borne in mind, this vermilion painting is always spoken of as a solid coating. As to Nicias’s services, “What were they?” asks the author of the Historical Evidence in Mr Jones’s Apology. “Nicias was an encaustic painter, and hence it is clear that his circumlitio, his mode of finishing the statues, so highly prized by Praxiteles, must have been the application of encaustic painting to those parts which the sculptor wished to have ornamented. For it is quite idle to suppose a sculptor like Praxiteles would allow another sculptor to finish his works. The rough work may be done by other hands, but the finishing is always left to the artist. The statue completed, there still remained the painter’s art to be employed, and for that Nicias is renowned.”—Indeed! This is exceedingly childish: first the truism that one sculptor would not have another to finish his work—of course, not; and then that the work was not finished until the painter had regularly, according to his best skill and art—which art and skill were required—been employed in the painting it as he would paint a picture, “for which he was renowned;”—that is, variously colour all the parts—till he had variously coloured hair and eyes, and put in varieties of flesh tones, show the blue veins beneath, and all that a painter renowned for these things was in the habit of doing in his pictures. If this be not the meaning of this author, and the object of Mr Owen Jones in making such a parade of it, he or the writer writes without any fixed ideas, and all this assumption, all this absurd theory, is after all built upon a word which these people are determined to misunderstand, and yet upon which they cannot help but express the doubt. But why should there be any doubt at all? As far as we can see, the word is a plain word, and explains itself very well, and even expresses its modus operandi. A writer acquainted with such a schoolboy book as Ainsworth’s Dictionary might have relieved his mind as to any doubts or forced construction of circumlitio; he might have found there, that the word comes from Lino, to smear, from Leo, the same—and that Circum in the composition shows the action, the mode of smearing. Nay, he is referred to two passages in Pliny, the very one from which the quotation in the Historical Evidence is taken, and to another in the same author, Pliny—and authors generally explain themselves—where the word is used in reference to the application of medicinal unguents. We can readily grant that the ancient sculptors did employ recipes of the most skilful persons in making unctuous varnishes, which they rubbed into the marble as a preservative, and also to bring out more perfectly the beauty of the marble texture—not altogether to hide it. It may be, without the least concession towards Mr Owen Jones’s painting theory, as readily granted that they gave this unctuous composition a warm tone, with a little vermilion, as many still do to their varnishes. Pliny himself, in his 33d book, chap. vii., gives such a recipe: White Punic wax, melted with oil, and laid on hot; the work afterwards to be well rubbed over with cere-cloths. To return to the “Circumlitio,” we have the word, only with super instead of circum, used in the application of a varnish by the Monk Theophilus, of the tenth century, who, if he did not take the word from Pliny, and therefore in Pliny’s sense, may be taken for quite as good Latin authority. After describing the method of making a varnish of oil and a gum—“gummi quod vocatur fornis”—he adds, “Hoc glutine omnis pictura superlinita, fit et decora ac omnino durabilis.” The two words Superlitio and Circumlitio,[[46]]—the first applicable to such a surface as a picture; the last to statues, which present quite another surface. But if it could be proved—and it cannot—that the works of Praxiteles were in Mr Owen Jones’s sense painted over, would that justify the colouring the frieze of the Parthenon, the work of Phidias, who preceded Praxiteles more than a century, during which many abominations in taste may have been introduced? We are quite aware that, at a barbarous period, images of gods, probably mostly those of wood, were painted over with vermilion, as a sacred colour and one of triumph. We extract from the old translation of Pliny this passage:—“There is found also in silver mines a mineral called minium, i. e. vermilion, which is a colour at this day of great price and estimation, like as it was in old time; for the ancient Romans made exceeding great account of it, not only for pictures, but also for divers sacred and holy uses. And verily Verrius allegeth and rehearseth many authors whose credit ought not to be disproved, who affirm that the manner was in times past to paint the very face of Jupiter’s image on high and festival daies with vermilion: as also that the valiant captains who rode in triumphant manner into Rome had in former times their bodies covered all over therewith; after which manner, they say, noble Camillus entered the city in triumph. And even to this day, according to that ancient and religious custom, ordinary it is to colour all the unguents that are used in a festival supper, at a solemne triumph, with vermilion. And no one thing do the Censors give charge and order for to be done, at their entrance into office, before the painting of Jupiter’s image with minium.” Yet Pliny does not say much in favour of the practice; for he adds—“The cause and motive that induced our ancestors to this ceremony I marvel much at, and cannot imagine what it should be.” The Censors did but follow a vulgar taste to please the vulgar, for whom no finery can be too fine, no colours too gaudy. However refined the Athenian taste, we know from their comedies they had their vulgar ingredient: there could be no security among them even for the continuance in purity of the genius which gave them the works of Phidias and Praxiteles; nor were even these great artists perhaps allowed the exercise of their own noble minds. The Greeks had no permanent virtues—no continuance of high perceptions: as these deteriorated, their great simplicity would naturally yield to petty ornament. They of Elis, who appointed the descendants of Phidias to the office of preserving from injury his statue of Jupiter Olympius, did little if they neglected to secure their education also in the principles of the taste of Phidias. The conservators would in time be the destroyers; and simply because they must do, and know not what to do. When images—their innumerable idols—were carried in processions, they were of course dressed up, not for veneration, but show. We know that in very early times their gods were carried about in shrines, and, without doubt, tricked up with dress and daubings, pretty much as are, at this day, the Greek Madonnas. Venus and Cupid have descended down to our times in the painted Madonna and Bambino. Whatever people under the sun have ever had paint and finery, temples, gods, and idols have had their share of them. We need no proofs, and it is surprising we have so few with respect to the great works of the ancients, that these corruptions would take place. It is in human nature: barbarism never actually dies; it is an ill weed, hard entirely to eradicate, and is ready to spring up in the most cultivated soils. The vulgar mind will make its own Loretto: imagination and credulity want no angels but themselves to convey anywhere a “santa casa;” nor will there be wanting brocade and jewels, the crown and the peplos, for the admiration of the ignorant. Are a few examples, if found and proved, and of the best times—which is not clear—to establish the theory as good in taste, or in any way part of the intention of the great sculptors? If authorities adduced, and to be adduced, are worth anything, they must go a great deal farther. Take, for instance, a passage from Pausanias, lib. ii. c. 11: Καὶ Ὑγείας δ’ ἐσι κατα ταυτον αγαλμα οὺκ αν οὐδὲ τοῦτο ἴδοις ῤᾳδίως, οὕτω, περιεχουσιν ἀυτὸ κόμαι τε γυναικὼν άὓ κειρονται τῇ θεῶ, καὶ ἐσθῆτός Βαβυλωνίας τελαμῶνες.—“And after the same manner is a statue of Hygeia, which you may not easily see, it is so completely covered with hair of the women who have shorn themselves in honour of the goddess, and also with the fringes of the Babylonish vest.” Here, surely, is quite sufficient authority for Mr Jones to procure ample and variously coloured wigs for the Venus de Medicis, and other statues, and to order a committee of milliners to devise suitable vesture. Images of this kind were mostly made of wood, easy to be carried about; and were often, doubtless, made likest life, for the deception as of the real presence of a deity. The view of art was lost when imposture commenced. Mr Jones admits that the Greek sculptors did not intend exact imitation, but his theory goes so close to it, it would be difficult to say where it stops short. Indeed, he had better at once go the whole way, or we may better say, “the whole hog,” with bristle brushes, for when he has got rid of the “prejudice” in favour of white marble, his spectators will be satisfied with nothing less than wax-work.
We remember hearing, in a remote village, the consolation one poor woman gave another—“Look up to them pretty angels, with their lovely black eyes, and take comfort from ’em.” These were angels’ heads in plaster, round the cornice, which the church-wardens, year after year, with the official taste and importance of the Roman Censors, had caused to be so painted when, as they announced on a tablet, they “beautified” the church. Of late years we have been removing the whitewash from our cathedrals, thicker, by repetition, than Mr Owen Jones’s prescribed coats of stucco. Should his theory prevail, we shall be again ashamed of stone; white-lime will be restored until funds shall be found for stucco, inside and out, as preparation for Mr Jones’s bright blue and unmitigated vermilion and gold. It is frightful to imagine Mr Owen Jones and his paint-pot over every inch of Westminster Abbey, inside and out.
Let us take a nearer view of the historical evidence. We are told, “Ancient literature abounds with references and allusions to the practice of painting and dressing statues. Space prevents their being copiously cited here.” We venture to affirm, that the lack of existence is greater than the lack of space, if by ancient literature is meant the best literature—the literature contemporary with the works of the great sculptors. There were poets and historians—can any quotation be given at all admissible as evidence? It is extraordinary that the advocates for the theory, if it were true, can find no passages in the poets. Is there nothing nearer than what Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates? “Let it be remembered that Socrates was the son of a sculptor, and that Plato lived in Athens, acquainted with the great sculptors and their works; then read this passage, wherein Socrates employs by way of simile the practice of painting statues—‘Just as if, when painting statues, a person should blame us for not placing the most beautiful colours on the most beautiful parts of the figure—inasmuch as the eyes, the most beautiful parts, were not painted purple but black,—we should answer him by saying, Clever fellow, do not suppose we are to paint eyes so beautifully that they should not appear to be eye.’—Plato, De Repub., lib. iv. This passage would long ago have settled the question, had not the moderns been preoccupied with the belief that the Greeks did not paint their statues; they therefore read the passage in another sense. Many translators read ‘pictures’ for ‘statues.’ But the Greek word Ανδριας signifies ‘statue,’ and is never used to signify ‘picture.’ It means statue, and a statuary is called the maker of such statues—Ανδριαντοποιος. (Mr Davis, in Bohn’s English edition of Plato, avoids the difficulty by translating it ‘human figures’).”—Mr Lloyd, in his remarks upon this passage, confesses that it does not touch the question concerning the painting the flesh, but refers to the eyes, lips, and ornaments. We object not to admit more than this, and, as we have before observed, that certain images, mostly of wood, were painted entirely, excepting where clothed; and, for argument’s sake, admitting that Socrates alluded to these common images, if we may so speak, the ancestors of our common dolls, should we be justified in building a theory subversive of all good taste upon such an ambiguity? For nothing is here said of marble statues; and there is nothing to show that marble statues are meant. The writer in the “Apology” says, with an air of triumph, that Ανδριας always means statue, and never picture; but these were figures, that he would call statues, of wood and of clay, and of little value—a kind of marketable goods for the vulgar, as we have already shown. But if the writer is determined to make them marble statues, and of the best, he might certainly have made his case the stronger; for when he says, and truly, that Socrates was the son of a sculptor, he forgets that Socrates was himself a sculptor,—and some have supposed him to have been a painter also, but Pliny is of another opinion. The three Graces in the court before the Acropolis of Athens were his work; and it is probably to the demands these Graces made upon his thoughts the philosopher alluded in his dialogue with Theodote the courtesan. She had invited him to her home; he excused himself that he had no leisure from his private and public affairs,—“and besides,” he adds playfully, “I have φἴλαι—female friends—at home who will not suffer me to absent myself from them day or night, learning, as they do from me, charms and powers of enticement.”[[47]] So that we may suppose him to have been no mean statuary. Yet, considering that his mother followed the humble occupation of a midwife, and that consequently his father was not very rich, it may not be an out-of-the-way conjecture to suppose that the family trade may have had its humbler employments, of which the painting images may have borne a part. Ships had their images as well as temples, and we know that the ship’s head was “Μιλτοπάρἤος.” The custom has descended to our times. But we are not to take the word put by Plato into the mouth of Socrates—ανδριαντας—necessarily in the highest sense, and imagine he speaks of such works as those of Phidias or Praxiteles. Although the Greeks did distinguish the several words by which statues were understood, they were not very nice in the observance of the several uses. Ανδριαντας may have been applied to any representation of the human figure.[[48]] Ανδριαντοποιος, says the Apologist, was a statuary—so may have been said to be Ανδριαντοπλάσης the modellist in clay or wax; but neither word is used by Socrates—simply Ανδριαντας, (images). There is not a hint as to how, or with what materials, they were made. The scholiast on the passage in Aristophanes respecting the work of Socrates (the Graces), makes a distinction between ανδριαντας and αγαλματα—noticing that Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, λιθοξόou, with whom he took his share in the polishing art, adding that he polished ανδριαντας λιθινouς ἐλαξεύε, and that he made the “αγαλματα” of the three Graces. Now, let ανδριας be a statue, or human figure, of whatever material, and grant that some such figures had painted eyes, and probably partially coloured drapery, possibly the whole body painted—what then? they might have been low and inferior works. Who would think, from such data, of inferring a habit in the Greek sculptors of painting and plastering all their marble statues—asserting too, so audaciously, that we the moderns have, and not they, a prejudice in favour of white marble? But Mr Lloyd, in his note on this passage, with respect to Socrates (vide “Apology”), admits that it is no evidence of the colouring the flesh. “The passage is decisive, as far as it goes, but it does not touch the question of colouring the flesh. It proves that as late as Plato’s time it was usual to apply colour to the eyes of statues; and assuming, what is not stated, that marble statues are in question, we are brought to the same point as by the Æginetan marbles, of which the eyes, lips, portions of the armour and draperies, were found coloured. I forget whether the hair was found to be coloured, but the absence of traces of colour on the flesh, while they were abundant elsewhere, indicates that, if coloured at all, it must have been by a different and more perishable process—by a tint, or stain, or varnish. The Æginetan statues, being archaic, do not give an absolute rule for those of Phidias. The archaic Athenian bas-relief of a warrior, in excellent preservation, shows vivid colours on drapery and ornaments of armour, and the eyeballs were also coloured: here again there is no trace of colour on the flesh.” But notwithstanding that no statue has been found with any trace of colour in the flesh, and not satisfied with Mr Lloyd’s commentary, Mr Owen Jones seeks proof and confirmation of the sense of the quotation from Plato, in a caution given by Plutarch, thus mistranslated: “It is necessary to be very careful of statues, otherwise the vermilion with which the ancient statues were coloured will quickly disappear.” What kind of care is necessary? Plutarch uses the word γάνωσις, which means more than care—that a polishing or varnishing is necessary (if, as we may presume, they would preserve the old colouring of an archaic statue), because, not perhaps of the quick fading of the vermilion, as translated by Mr Lloyd, but the vermilion εξανθεῖ—effloresces; or, as we should say, comes up dry to the surface, leaving the vehicle with which it was put on. However, let the passage have all the meaning Mr Owen Jones can desire, it relates only to certain sacred figures at Rome, not in Greece, and which may have been, for anything that is known to the contrary, figures of sacred geese. How do these quotations show the practice of Phidias? In the first place, Plato, who narrates what Socrates said, was nearly a century after Phidias, and Plutarch nearly six hundred years after Phidias. On every account the authority of Plato would be preferable to that of Plutarch, who kept his school at Rome, and was far more fond of raising questions than of affording accurate information.[[49]] Mr Owen Jones, however, in the impetuosity of his imaginary triumph, outruns all his given authorities to authorities not given. He says: “There are abundant notices extant which illustrate it (the painting of statues). One will suffice. The celebrated marble statue of a Bacchante by Scopas is described as holding, in lieu of the Thyrsus, a dead roebuck, which is cut open, and the marble represents living flesh.” We willingly excuse the blunder of the living flesh of a dead roebuck, ascribing it solely to the impetuosity of the genius of Mr Owen Jones, which, plunging into colouring matter, would vermilionise the palest face of Death. If paint could “create a soul under the ribs of death,” he would do it. He must greatly admire the old lady’s dying request to—
“Put on this cheek a little red,
One surely would not look a fright when dead.”
We know not where to lay our hand upon the original account of this statue of the Bacchante of Scopas; but if it says no more than the Apologist says for it—that the marble represented “living flesh”—it does not necessarily imply colour. Here is a contradiction: if it be meant that by “living flesh” the colour of living flesh was represented—for that must be the argument—there must have been an attempt towards the exact imitation of nature. “In the first place,” says Mr Owen Jones, arguing against the suggestion of coloured and veined marble having been used, “veins do not so run in marble as to represent flesh. In the second, unless statues were usually coloured, such veins, if they existed, would be regarded as terrible blemishes, and the very things the Greeks are supposed to have avoided—viz., colour as representing reality—would be shown.” Does Mr Owen Jones here admit that this exact imitation by colour was not usual? If so, as the words imply, what becomes of his quotation of the words of Socrates with regard to colouring the eyes? And further, upon what new plea will he justify his colouring the Parthenon frieze—not only the men and their cloaks, but the horses—so that the latter exactly resemble those on the roundabouts on which children ride at fairs? We suppose he meant the men to have a natural colour, and the horses also—a taste so vile, that we are quite sure such a perpetration would have shocked Phidias out of all patience. And if not meant for the exact colour, what can he suppose they were painted for?—as, to avoid this semblance of reality, the Greeks, according to him, should have painted men and horses vermilion or blue, or any colour the farthest from reality, the contrary to the practice of Mr Owen Jones—and that he should have painted them vermilion he immediately shows, by quoting Pausanias, where he describes a statue of Bacchus “as having all those portions not hidden by draperies painted vermilion, the body being of gilded wood.” What has this to do with marble statues? But he seems not to understand the hint given by his commentator, Mr Lloyd, “that the statue was apparently ithyphallic, and probably archaic”—a well-known peculiarity in statues of Bacchus. Not having, however, such a specimen in marble, he is particularly glad to find one of gypsum, “ornamented with paint:” nothing more probable, and for the same reason that the wooden one was painted vermilion.
“But colour was used, as we know,” says Mr Owen Jones; “and Pausanias (Arcad., lib. viii. cap. 39) describes a statue of Bacchus as having all those portions not hidden by draperies painted vermilion, the body being of gilded wood. He also distinctly says that statues made of gypsum were painted, describing a statue of Bacchus γυψου πεποιημενον, which was—the language is explicit—ornamented with paint, (επικεκοσμημενον γραφῃ.)” These are statues of Bacchus, and, as the Apologist is reminded by his commentator, Mr Lloyd, “apparently ithyphallic,” and therefore painted red. The draperies are the assumption of the writer; he should have said ivy and laurel. Mr Owen Jones, to render his examples “abundant,” writes statues in the latter part of the quotation, whereas the word in his authority, Pausanias, is singular. We stay not to inquire if γραφη here means paint, though, speaking of another statue, Pausanias uses the verb and its congenial noun in another sense—“ἐπίγραμμα ἐπἄυτῆ γραφῆναι.” We the more readily grant it was painted vermilion, because it was a Bacchic statue; and grant that it was seen by Pausanias. We daresay it was ancient enough; but for any proof we must not look to Pausanias, who lived at Rome 170th year of the Christian era;—and here it must be borne in mind, that of the innumerable statues spoken of by that writer, of marble and other materials, the supposed painted are a very few exceptions. Not only does he speak of marble, without any mention of colouring, but of its whiteness. In this matter, indeed, the exceptions prove the rule of the contrary. Before we proceed to the examples taken from Virgil—weak enough—let us see if there may not be found something nearer the time of Phidias than any authorities given. Well, then, we have an eyewitness, one who must not only have seen the statues of Phidias, but probably conversed with Phidias himself—Æschylus. If such statues as he speaks of were painted generally, and as a necessary part of their completion, could he have brought into poetic use and sentiment their vacancy of eyes? It is a remarkable passage. He is describing Menelaus in his gallery full of the large statues of Helen. It is in the “Agamemnon:”
Εὐμόρφων γὰρ κολοσσῶν
Ἔχθεται χάρις ἀνδρί.
Ὀμμάτων δ’ ἐν ἀχηνίαις
Ἔῤῥει πᾶσ’ Ἀφροδίτα.
There was “no speculation in those eyes.” The eyes were not painted certainly; as the poet saw the statues in his mind’s eye, so had he seen them with his visible organs. The charm of love was not in them, because the outward form of the eye was only represented in the marble. The love-charm was not in those “vacancies of eyes.” Schütz has this note upon the passage: “Quamvis nimirum eleganter fabricatæ sint statuæ, carent tamen oculis, adeoque admirationem quidem excitare possunt amorem non item.”
These lines of the poet Æschylus, repeated before an acute and critical Athenian audience, would have been unintelligible, and marked as an egregious blunder, if the practice of painting statues, or even their eyes alone, had been so universal as it is represented in this “Apology.” Can there be a more decisive authority, than this of the contemporary Æschylus? It is certainly a descent from Æschylus to Virgil; but we follow the apologist.
“Marmoreusque tibi, Dea, versicoloribus alis
In morem pictâ stabit Amor pharetrâ.”
The writer, by his italics, is, we think, a little out in grammar, connecting “in morem” (because it was customary) with “versicoloribus alis,”—and in his translated sense of the passage, with “pictâ pharetrâ” also. This is certainly making nothing of it, by endeavouring to make the most of it. “In morem” may more properly attach itself to “stabit;” if not, to the wings or painted quiver,—not, in construction, to both; at any rate, Virgil, though Heyne reproves him for his bad taste, had here a prejudice in favour of marble, for “Amor” shall be marble—that is the first word, and first consideration. In the next quotation Virgil, as provokingly, sets his heart upon marble—nay, smooth polished marble—and the whole figure is to be entirely of this smooth marble; but he gratifies Mr Jones by “scarlet”—the colour of colours, vermilion—and thus so reconciles the Polychromatist to the marble, as to induce him to quote the really worthless passage:—
“Si proprium hoc fuerit, levi de marmore tota
Puniceo stabis suras evincta cothurno.”
It is not of much moment to the main question what statue one clown should offer to Diana, in return for a day’s hunting, or the other to a very different and far less respectable deity, whom he has already made in vulgar marble, pro temp. only, and whom he promises to set up in gold, though simply the “custos pauperis horti.”
“Nunc te marmoreum pro tempore fecimus; at tu
Si fœtura gregem suppleverit, aureus esto.”
The poetical promises exceeded the clown’s means; neither Diana, nor the deity, odious to her, saw the promises fulfilled. The Apologist is merely taking advantage of a poetical license, a plenary indulgence in nonperformance. It is quite ridiculous to attempt to prove what Phidias and Praxiteles must have done, by what Virgil imagined. But as Mr Owen Jones delights in such quasi modern authorities, we venture to remind him of the bad taste of Horace, who loved the Parian marble; and to recommend him to consider in what manner white marble is spoken of by as good authority, Juvenal, who introduces it as most valued in his time—white statues.
“Et jam accurrit, qui marmora donet
Conferat impersas. Hic nuda et candida signa,
Hic aliquid præclarum Euphranoris et Polycleti.”
It may be as well to quote also what he says in reference to waxing statues:—
“Propter quæ fas est genua incerare Deorum.”
Upon which we find in a note—“Consueverant Deorum simulacra cera illinire (the old word of dispute) ibidemque affert illud Prudentii, lib. i., contra Symonachum,—
——‘Saxa illita ceris
Viderat, unguentoque Lares humescere nigros.’”
And in Sat. XII., “Simulacra intentia cerâ.”
We have already treated of this custom of waxing the statues, and given the recipe of Pliny, to which we revert for a moment, because the advocates for the colouring theory insist that illitia, linita, illinere, linire, all of one origin, are words applicable to painting. Pliny says,—we quote from Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,—after showing how the wax should be melted and laid on, “It was then rubbed with a clean linen cloth, in the way that naked marble statues were done.” The Latin is—“Sicut et marmora nitescunt.” The writer in the Dictionary speaks as to the various application of the encaustic process, to paint and to polish: “Wax thus purified was mixed with all species of colours, and prepared for painting; but it was applied also to many other uses, as polishing statues, walls, &c.”
Lucian, who died ninety years of age, 180th of the Christian era, although he relinquished the employment of a statuary, and followed that of literature, had certainly an excellent taste in art. His descriptions of statues and pictures prove his fondness and his knowledge. What he says of the famous Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles is very remarkable. After admiring the whiteness of the marble and its polish, he praises the ingenuity of the artificer, in so contriving the statue as to bring least in sight a blemish in the marble, (a very common thing, he adds). It would not have required this ingenuity in the design, if Praxiteles had intended his statue to be painted, for the paint would have covered the stain in the marble wherever placed. We may learn something more from Lucian. In his “Images,” wishing to describe a perfect woman, he will first represent her by the finest statues in the world, selecting the beauties of each. It is in a dialogue with Lycinus and Polystratus. “Is there anything wanting?” asks Polystratus, after mention of these perfect statues. Lycinus replies that the colouring is wanting. He therefore brings to his description the most beautiful works of the best painters. Enough is not done yet; there is the mind to be added. He therefore calls in the poets. Here, then, we have statuary, painter, and poet, each by their separate art to portray this perfect woman. He does not describe by painted statues, but by pictures. Had painting statues been universal, as pretended, Lucian must have seen examples, and his reference to pictures would have been unnecessary. If it be argued that the paint had worn off, that argument will tell against the Polychromatists, for it at least will show that, in an age when statues were esteemed, the barbarity of colouring was not renewed.
In his “Description of a House,” he says, “Over against the door, upon the wall, there is the Temple of Minerva in relief, where you may see the goddess in white marble, without her accoutrements of war.” The painter, it may be fairly conjectured, painted inside on the wall of the house, the common aspect, and the white marble statue.
In his “Baths of Hippias,” he mentions “two noble pieces of antiquity in marble of Health and Æsculapius.” Nor does he omit noticing paint, and that vermilion—but where is it? “Then you come to a hot passage of Numidian stone, that brings you to the last apartment, glittering with a bright vermilion, bordering on purple.”
According to Mr Owen Jones’s theory, all these exquisite works in white marble are to be considered as unfinished; if they have not been handed over to the painter, they should be now. Why did Phidias and Praxiteles so elaborate to the mark of truth their performances? The reader will be astonished to learn the reason from Mr Owen Jones. It was from the necessity of the subsequent finish by paints!
“People are apt to argue that Phidias never could have taken such pains to study the light and shade of this bas-relief, if the fineness of his workmanship had had to be stopped up when bedaubed with paint.” It is astonishing that not a glimmering of common sense was here let in upon the work of Phidias, while the whole light of his understanding showed the effect of his own handiwork on the plaster; for he, in that case, says, “But when the plaster has further to be painted with four coats of oil-paint to stop the suction, it may readily be imagined how much the more delicate modulations of the surface will suffer.” Does he suppose that the eyes of Phidias, and of people in that age, were blind to the suffering of these nice modulations from the stucco, or over-coats of paint? But why did Phidias so finish his works?—hear the polychromatic oracle “Now, people who argue thus have never understood what colour does when applied to form. The very fact that colour has to be applied, demands the highest finish in the form beneath. By more visibly bringing out the form, it makes all defects more prominent. Let any one compare the muscles of the figures in white with the muscles of those coloured, and he will not hesitate an instant to admit this truth. The labours of Phidias, had they never received colour, would have been thrown away; it was because he designed them to receive colour, that such an elaboration of the surface was required.” This is the most considerable inconsiderate nonsense imaginable. Common sense says, that one even colour, or absence of colour, gives equal shadows, according to the sculptor’s design; but if you colour portions of the same work differently, the unity of shadows will be destroyed, for shadows will assimilate themselves to the various colourings, be they light or dark. This necessity of colouring would impose such a task upon the sculptor, so complicate his work and design, and so bring his whole mind into subservience to, or certainly co-operation and consultation with, the painter, that no man of genius could submit to it; for it is the characteristic of genius to have its exercise in its own independent art. The assertion of this effect of colour, by Mr Jones, is untrue in fact, and if he could make it true, would so complicate, and at the same time degrade, the statuary’s art, that in the disgust of its operation it would be both out of the power, and out of the inclination, of men to pursue it. Will the people of England take Mr Owen Jones’s reproof? To them the labours of Phidias have hitherto been thrown away, for they have only as yet seen his works in white marble—in fact, unfinished. In this state Mr Jones thinks they have been very silly to admire them at all—and how they came to admire them who can comprehend? they have no colourable pretext for their admiration. Not only have the labours of Phidias been “thrown away,”—but, what is more galling to this age of economists, some forty thousand pounds of our good people’s money have been thrown away too. What is left to be done? Simply what we have often done before—throw some “good money after the bad,” and constitute Mr Owen Jones Grand Polychromatist-plenipotentiary, with competence of salary and paint-pots, and establish him for life, and his school for ever, in the British Museum. It is well for him and for them the innocent marbles have no motion, or the very stones would cry out against him, and uplift their quiescent arms to smash more than his paint-pots.
And here let us be allowed to remark of Mr Owen Jones’s colouring, having been thoroughly disgusted at the Crystal Palace, that he is as yet but in the very elements of the grammar of colour. He has gone but a very little way in its alphabet. He has practised little more than the A B C—that is, the bright blue, the bright red, the bright yellow. But the alphabet is much beyond this. What of their combinations? These are so innumerable that, as if in despair of their acquirement, he puts his whole trust in the blue, red, and yellow, so that the very object of colour, variety, is missed, and the eye is wearied and irritated in this Crystal Palace with what may be called, in defiance of the contradiction of the word, a polychromatic monotony. His theory of colour stops short at the beginning—it is without its learning. The sentiments of colours are in their mixtures, their relative combinations, and appropriate applications, and we venture to suggest to other Polychromatists, besides Mr Owen Jones, that the grammar of colouring, if learned properly, will lead to a mystery which the blue, red, and yellow, of themselves the A, B, C of the art, are quite insufficient to teach. The study is by none more required than our painters in glass; nor are some of our picture-makers, as our Academy exhibitions show, without the need of a little learning. We scarcely ever see a modern window that does not exhibit a total ignorance of colour. The first thing that strikes the eye is a quantity of blue, for it is the most active colour, and it is given in large portions, not dissipated as it should be—then reds, and as vivid as may be—and yellows. Attempt at proper effect, such as the genius loci requires, there is none. With the unsparing use of these three unmitigated colours only, we do not see why decorators should be called Polychromatists at all; they should style themselves Trichromatists. But of Mr Owen Jones’s polychromatic theory and practice, do not let him so slander the tasks of the ancients as to pretend that he has it from them, if by the ancients he means those artists of good time. They delighted in white marble, “nuda et candida signa,”—the naked and the white. The pretence that he had it from them, is as the
“Painted vest Prince Vortigern had on,
Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won.”
The grandsire never took it; the naked Pict never had it. And yet the directors of this Crystal Palace have taken Mr Owen Jones’s word for it. They have inconsiderately, and with the worst taste, delivered up the Palace into Mr Jones’s hands. We dread his being put into any other palace, for he evidently longs to be stuccoing and daubing the real marbles. “The experiment cannot be fairly tried, till tried on marble”—and he looks to a wide area, ample verge, and room enough, “and in conditions of space, atmosphere, &c., similar to those under which the originals were placed.” We however owe it to Mr Owen Jones’s candour in admitting a note by Mr Penrose, which vindicates the character of this odious marble. Thus speaks Mr Penrose: “An extensive and careful examination of the Pentelic Quarries, by the orders of King Otho, has shown that large blocks, such as were used at Athens, are very rare indeed. The distance, also, from the city is considerable: whereas there are quarries on Mount Hymettus at little more than one-third the distance (and most convenient for carriage), which furnish immense masses of dove-coloured marble, much prized, it would seem, by the Romans (Hor., ii. 18), and inferior in no respect but that of colour to the Pentelic. It could, therefore, only have been the intrinsic beauty of the latter material that led to its employment by so practical a people as the Athenians.” It will occur to the reader to ask if there is not here something like a proof that they did not intend this Pentelic marble to be painted; for it is manifest, under the stucco-and-painting theory, the dove-coloured of Hymettus would have answered all purposes. But Mr Owen Jones triumphs over his own candour. He sees nothing in the admission of this note of Mr Penrose; he takes it up, he exhibits it, merely for the purpose of throwing it down and trampling upon it. He gives it a scornful reply.—Reply in large letters. It is a curious one, for, like the boomerang, it flies back upon himself, and gives his own arguments a palpable hit. The reader may remember how he had asserted that “the Athenians built with marble because they found it almost beneath their feet.” In his oblivious reply, he discovers that the Athenians used it because it was a great way off from their feet; nay, that the worst part of the matter was, that it was no farther off from their feet. He uprises in reverential dignity, to reprove “our present ideas of economy.” “I do not think that, with our present ideas of economy, we are able to appreciate the motives of the Athenians in choosing their marble from the Pentelic quarries, in preference to those of Mount Hymettus. We must remember that the Greeks built for their gods; and the Pentelic marble, by presenting greater difficulties in its acquisition, may have been a more precious offering.” Mr Jones thus offers two contradictory motives on behalf of the Athenians—one must be given up. It would be strange in so few pages that a writer should so contradict himself, if we did not bear in mind with what ingenuity a theory will invest its own pertinacity. Surely no man on earth will believe that the Athenians, either by any extraordinary devotion[[50]] they showed towards their gods in the time of Pericles, or by an unheard of folly (for they were a practical people), chose the one quarry in preference to the other, for no other reason than its greater cost and difficulty.
We are referred to the evidence of Mr Bracebridge, produced before the committee of the Institute, which Mr Jones says settles the point “as far as regards monumental sculpture.” The evidence is, that in the winter 1835–6, an excavation, to the depth of twenty-five feet, was made at the south-east angle of the Parthenon. “Here were found many pieces of marble, and among these fragments parts of triglyphs, of fluted columns, and of statues, particularly a female head, which was painted (the hair is nearly the costume of the present day).” It is quite an assumption that the spot of this excavation was the place where “the workmen of the Parthenon had thrown their refuse marble.” There is no proof whatever that these fragments were even of the age of the Parthenon; even if they may be supposed so to be, we presume that, as works of art, they are worthless, for they are called refuse, and most likely had nothing to do with the work of the Parthenon. We believe at the same time was found the very beautiful fragment in relief, the Winged Victory, of which but very few casts were taken. One of these we have just now seen, and doubt not its being of the age of Phidias. This is white marble, and we have never heard that it has any indication of having been painted. If Mr Owen Jones could prove to us that the whole Parthenon, with all its statues, showed certain indications of paint, we still have not advanced to any ground of fair conclusion; for, in the want of contemporary evidence—(we cannot call anything yet adduced evidence)—we are left to conjecture that the daubing and plastering were the work of a subsequent age, or ages, when ornament encroached upon and deteriorated every art in Greece, whether dramatic, painting, or sculpture. “Pliny and Vitruvius both repeatedly deplore the corrupt taste of their own times. Vitruvius (vii. 5), observes, that the decorations of the ancients were tastelessly laid aside, and that strong and gaudy colouring and prodigal expense were substituted for the beautiful effects produced by the skill of the ancient artists.”—(Smith’s Antiquities.)
We pay little attention to what has been said by the writers quoted regarding Acrolithic or Chryselephantine statues, whether of the best or lowest character. Whatever they were, they have perished, and there is nothing left for modern barbarism to restore. We have looked chiefly to undoubtedly good genuine marble—white marble statues, and reliefs of the best times, of such as are to be seen and admired, unadorned, in our British Museum. “It is the custom of all barbarous nations to colour their idols,” says the writer of the historical evidence. We perfectly assent to this, and believe we shall ourselves be a very barbarous nation whenever the statues in that Museum shall be plastered with stucco, or painted over with four coats of vermilion or any other colour. Barbarous nations have painted, and do so still, not only their idols but themselves. Our Picts, with their woad colouring, may have emulated the peculiar beauty of blue-faced baboons. We dispute not the point that Greece, as well as every other country, at some period of its history was addicted to the common barbarous taste of colouring to the utmost of their means. The question is not whether they did it, but when they left it off. It is said in the “Apology,” that if they had ever left off the practice, it would have been so remarkable an event that it would have been noted in history. We know not where any one will be able to put his hand upon any passage in history, showing the exact or probable period at which our neighbours the Picts left off the fashion, which we learn prevailed. We think Mr Owen Jones himself would be very much astonished if, even though in pursuit and pursuance of his own argument, he should turn the corner of Pall Mall, and come face to face with half-a-dozen naked Picts in the ancient blue and vermilion costume. Quite satisfied that the fashion has been superseded, we care not about the when. Nor do we care to know, in our practical age, what finery they put upon their idols; and although a commission under Polychromatic direction may bring back, from no very distant travel, accounts of multitudes of idols still draped and painted, we are sure this English nation will not resume the practice. We have something else to do, which the “Wisdom of Solomon” tells us they had not, who fabricated such monstrosities. “The carpenter carved it diligently, when he had nothing else to do, and formed it by the skill of his understanding, and fashioned it to the image of a man, or made it like some vile beast, laying it over with vermilion, and with paint colouring it red, and covering every spot therein.”
Much is made of the notices of Pausanias, who, in the 177th year of the Christian era, travelled over Greece. Mr (afterwards Sir Uvedale) Price, in 1780 published “an accurate bill of fare of so sumptuous an entertainment,” in relation to the temples, statues, and paintings remaining in Greece in the time of Pausanias. We have thought it worth while to look over this bill of fare, and to extract all that is said about painted statues. Page 45: “In the great square, where there are several temples, there are the statues of the Ephesian Diana, and of Bacchus in wood—all the parts of which are gilt with gold, except the faces, which are coloured with vermilion.” Immediately follows—“There is a Temple of Fortune with her statue, which is an upright figure of Parian marble”—Nothing about painting this! Page 177–78: “In Ægina there is a Temple of Jupiter, in which there is his statue of Pentelican marble, in a sitting posture, and one of Minerva in wood, which is gilt with gold, and adorned with various colours; but the head, hands, and feet are of ivory.” “At Philoe there are the temples of Bacchus and Diana: the statue of the goddess is in brass, and she is taking an arrow out of her quiver; but that of Bacchus is of wood, and is painted of a ruddy colour.” It is only the wooden are painted! Page 199: “In Phigalia there is a Temple of Diana Sospita, with her statue in marble; and in Gymnasium there is a statue of Mercury, and likewise a Temple of Bacchus Acratophorus with his statue—the upper part of which is painted with vermilion, but the lower part is covered by the ivy and laurel that grows over it.” This is the statue mentioned in the historical evidence, where it says “the body being of gilded wood.” There is no doubt it was so—but in fairness we must say, that, having examined the original passage in Pausanias (Arcad., lib. viii. cap. 89), we find no mention of the material of which it was made. Here it will be observed that in no instance does Pausanias speak of a marble statue painted.
We have been reading an account of the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii—without doubt, both these places contained Greek sculpture of a good period. There have been a vast number of marble statues and fragments of statues found. The marble of which they are made is mentioned. They are mostly white marble, and there is no notice of any having been painted. If one should be, or should have been found coloured, it would be an exception, the not unlikely experiment of individual bad taste. We should bear in mind, also, that the discovered works must have been found with regard to substance and colour in the state in which they were overwhelmed in the sudden destruction of the towns. Yet do we read of a single painted marble statue? The paintings are, however, minutely described, and their coloured wall decorations. We have yet to learn that there has been any paint discovered upon those exquisitely beautiful statues belonging to the Lycian Temple Tomb, in the British Museum, discovered and brought to this country by Sir Charles Fellowes. Could we be brought to believe that marble statues were stuccoed or painted—and we utterly repudiate any such attempts as Mr Jones’s to make it credible—we should bless the memories, had they left us any notices of their names, of those worthies of a better taste who had the good sense to obliterate, to the utmost of their power, the bedaubers’ doings. With them we venerate white marble; and while we think of the Polychromatists, we entertain greater respect for the taste and sense of the so-called simpletons of the fable who endeavoured to wash the blackamoor white, than for the fatuous who would make the white black, or even vermilion.
It is surprising that in the history of the arts the Homeric period is made of so little account. We are inclined to believe that the arts had reached a high state, at least of workmanship; that they were subsequently lost, and revived. If Homer and Hesiod, the eldest of heathen authors, introduced into their poems elaborate descriptions of the shields of Hercules and Achilles, and in some degree spoke of the actual workmanship, can we believe that either of them treated of things totally unknown at the times they wrote? If so, they were inventors—or at least one of them—of the arts they describe. It is all very well to ascribe all that we read of as mere poetry; but poetry, however it invents, or partakes of invention, builds invention on fact. It would not invent an art, and offer it to the world as a thing already known. The shields exhibit extraordinary workmanship, which is thought worthy to be attributed to the skill of a deity. That of Hercules in Hesiod implies the use of hidden springs, for Perseus is described as hovering over and not touching the shield, and the Gorgons pursuing him as making a noise with the shield’s motion. The gold and silver dogs keeping watch at the gates of Alcinous could scarcely be the unauthorised invention of the poet. Much might be said upon the Nineveh discoveries; references might be made to the time of Moses—and instances more than that of the brazen serpent; the subsequent building of the Temple might supply most curious detail—all these proving the existence of sculptural arts, more or less refined, long antecedent to what we would fain call the revival of art in Greece. But we cannot be allowed space for a discussion not immediately bearing upon the subject of this paper.
It may be fairly conceded, that we are not to look to the earliest periods of art for its greatest simplicity. In all countries monstrosities and ornament were more eagerly sought, soon after the first attempts at representation, than accuracy and beauty. The time of the
“Fictilis et nullo violatus Jupiter auro,”
if not the poets’ fiction, was of short duration.
In this paper we treat not of the barbarities of art. Barbarous ages may be of all or of any times. Art having once reached perfection, and having mastered, over the falsities of bad taste, its own independence and emancipation from every other art, we deprecate the return of a barbarism which shall unite it with a gaudy presumption of another and a lower art, subjugating the genius of mind to the meaningless handling of the decorator.
Indeed, we should be content very much to narrow the question—to care little whether the ancient statues and relievi were painted or not. We are quite sure, from the very nature of things, the materials and the objects in the use of them, that they never ought to have been painted; and if there ever was such a practice, and it were a common one as pretended, the world has shown its good sense in obliterating the marks of the degradation of art so widely, as that any satisfactory discovery of such a practice is not to be met with. Ages have passed in a contrary belief, and much more than the meagre evidence adduced must be required, in any degree to damage the long-established opinion that statues should not be painted, and that white marble has undeniable, and, for the purpose of the statuary, perfect beauty. The audacious attempt in the Crystal Palace, and the assumptions of the “Apology,” might lead to the worst taste, to retard and not to advance art. And while we see simultaneously set up a foolish and dangerous principle to govern our national collections in painting, and probably sculpture, assumed with too much apparent authority, we fear the introduction of monstrosity in preference to beauty, and the consequence in oblivion of what is good in art, and the encouragement of a practice of all that is bad.
If the reader, unsatisfied with the damage inflicted in these pages upon the facts assumed by Mr Owen Jones in his “Apology,” and his conclusions upon them, would desire to see further arguments adduced from the necessities which originated the various styles of basso, alto, and mezzo relievo,—showing that they all presupposed one even colourless, or at least unvariegated plane, as the surface upon which they were to be executed, and how and why these three—the basso, alto, and mezzo—have each their own proper principles, in which they differ from each other—how they were invented for the very purpose of doing that which, if painting the marble had been contemplated, would have been unnecessary—how, in fact, they are in their own nature independent of colour, regulated by principles of light and shade, with which colour would detrimentally interfere—we would recommend to his attentive reading the short yet complete treatise on the subject, by Sir Charles Eastlake, being No. 7, in his admirable volume, The Literature of the Fine Arts. He proves by the characters of the three styles, and by the wants they were invented to supply, and the diversity of design which they require, that “the Greeks, as a general principle, considered the ground of figures in relief to be the real wall, or whatever the solid plane might be, and not to represent air as if it was a picture.” As Mr Jones’s experiments are made on relievi, a little study of their nature and distinctions is at this moment very desirable.
If Mr Jones colours the horses brown and grey, the faces of the riders flesh colour, and marks their eyes, and reddens their lips, and draperies their bodies after patterns out of a tailor’s book—it is quite absurd to say that the Greeks never intended exact imitation. In what he has done every one will recognise the attempt to portray exact nature in colour. Upon this principle, and establishing a contempt of white marble, there is but one more step to take, to set up offensive wax-work above the art of the statuary in marble. Sculpture is an appeal to the imagination, not to the senses. That which attempts to deceive disgusts by the early discovery of the fraud. Indeed, it is a maxim in sculpture that a certain unnaturalness in subordinate accompanying objects is to be adopted, to show that a comparison with real nature is not intended. “If imitation is to be preferred,” says Aristotle, “which is least adapted to the vulgar and most calculated to please the politest spectators, that which imitates everything is clearly most adapted to the vulgar, as not being intelligible without the addition of much movement and action, as bad players on the flute turn round, if they would imitate the motion of a discus.” Paint to the statuary is what all this motion is to the flute-player. Whoever mutilates what is great and good in art, and would persist in so doing, after reproof, ought to pay the penalty of his folly. We would not be too severe in the punishment of offenders in taste, but should rejoice to see one of a congenial kind put in practice, one very mild for such an offence as this of statue painting—the tarring and feathering the perpetrators, plasterers and bedaubers, principals and coadjutors. Upon Mr Owen Jones’s principle, the “ex uno omnes,” and his making a confirmed summer of one swallow, though we entirely deny the existence of this one rara avis, a white marble statue painted, he and his company ought not to object to the punishing process, for more culprits have been known to have been tarred and feathered than are even the pretended specimens of painted marbles on record. We would, out of consideration for the peculiar taste of the decorators, mitigate the punishment, by allowing the received proportion of Mr Jones’s blue and vermilion to be mixed with the tar.
Besides, as fine feathers make fine birds, and choice may be made of the brightest colours, it would be a fine sight, and one that would very much take the fancy of the public, to see the Polychromatists stand materially and bodily plastered, stuccoed, coloured, tarred and feathered, in the Crystal Palace, in their own glory or shame, as they may be pleased to take it, as living specimens of colouring interferences, to the infinite amusement of all beholders, and a caution to modern decorators. They would be pleased in one respect, for, beyond a question, the white statues would be quite neglected, the “prejudice” in favour of white marble would quite give way, and even the city wonders, Gog and Magog, would be no longer visited.
The reader will think it time to draw to a conclusion; it will be most satisfactory if he deems the case too clear to have required so much discussion, and that
“Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.”
But before we lay down the pen, we would not have it supposed that we are not sensible both of the merits and advantages of the Crystal Palace. It ought to be, and doubtless will be, the means of improving the people, and affording them rational amusement. There has been a little too much bombast about it, as a great college for the education of the mind of the people—too much eulogistic verbiage, which sickens the true source of rational admiration. It will improve, because it will amuse; for good amusement is education both for head and heart. The best praise it can receive is, that it is a place of permanent amusement, than which nothing could be devised more beautiful and appropriate for those who mainly want such relief from the toils and cares which eat into life. We could wish the Archbishop of Canterbury had not consented to let the Church of England be dragged in triumph behind the car of a commercial speculation. It was in bad taste at its opening—and Mr Owen Jones’s colouring is another specimen of bad taste—but “non paucis maculis.” We sincerely hope it will succeed in all respects, though we ventured not to join the Archbishop in his prayer. In fact, it is too great in itself for unnecessary display at the ushering in, which was worse than ridiculous—it made that which should be most serious in that place an offence and a falsity. The reader may be amused by an inauguration of quite another kind—one of poetry by anticipation. We summon, then, our oldest poet, to celebrate as afar off, for coming time, our newest Crystal Palace and its wonders, in
CHAUCER’S DREAM
OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
“As I slept, I dreamt I was
Within a temple made of glass,
In which there were more images
Of gold standing in sundry stages,
In more rich tabernacles,
And with jewels more pinnacles;
And more curious portraitures
And quaint maniere of figures
Of gold work than I saw ever.
There saw I on either side,
Straight down to the door wide,
From the dais many a pillar
Of metal that shone out full clear.
· · · · ·
Then gan I look about I see
That there came entering in the hall,
A right great company withal,
And that of sundry regions,
Of all kinds of conditions,
That dwell on earth beneath the moon,
Poor and rich.
Such a great congregation
Of folks as I saw roam about,
Some within, and some without,
Was never seen, nor shall be no more.”