CHAPTER CVIII.
Some weeks now have passed since my return to the Tower: the Castletons are gone, and all Trevanion's gay guests. And since these departures, visits between the two houses have been interchanged often, and the bonds of intimacy are growing close. Twice has my father held long conversations apart with Lady Ulverstone, (my mother is not foolish enough to feel a pang now at such confidences,) and the result has become apparent. Lady Ulverstone has ceased all talk against the world and the public—ceased to fret the galled pride of her husband with irritating sympathy. She has made herself the true partner of his present occupations, as she was of those in the past; she takes interest in farming, and gardens, and flowers, and those philosophical peaches which come from trees academical that Sir William Temple reared in his graceful retirement. She does more—she sits by her husband's side in the library, reads the books he reads, or, if in Latin, coaxes him, into construing them. Insensibly she leads him into studies farther and farther remote from Blue Books and Hansard; and, taking my father's hint,
"Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way."
They are inseparable. Darby-and-Joan-like, you see them together in the library, the garden, or the homely little pony-phaeton, for which Lord Ulverstone has resigned the fast-trotting cob, once identified with the eager looks of the busy Trevanion. It is most touching, most beautiful! And to think what a victory over herself the proud woman must have obtained!—never a thought that seems to murmur, never a word to recall the ambitious man back from the philosophy into which his active mind flies for refuge. And with the effort her brow has become so serene! That careworn expression, which her fine features once wore, is fast vanishing. And what affects me most, is to think that this change (which is already settling into happiness) has been wrought by Austin's counsels and appeals to her sense and affection. "It is to you," he said, "that Trevanion must look for more than comfort—for cheerfulness and satisfaction. Your child is gone from you—the world ebbs away—you two should be all in all to each other. Be so." Thus, after paths so devious, meet those who had parted in youth, now on the verge of age. There, in the same scenes where Austin and Ellinor had first formed acquaintance, he aiding her to soothe the wounds inflicted by the ambition that had separated their lots, and both taking counsel to insure the happiness of the rival she had preferred.
After all this vexed public life of toil, and care, and ambition,—to see Trevanion and Ellinor drawing closer and closer to each other, knowing private life and its charms for the first time,—verily it would have been a theme for an elegiast like Tibullus.
But all this while a younger love, with no blurred leaves to erase from the chronicle, has been keeping sweet account of the summer time. "Very near are two hearts that have no guile between them," saith a proverb, traced back to Confucius. O ye days of still sunshine, reflected back from ourselves—O ye haunts, endeared evermore by a look, tone, or smile, or rapt silence, when more and more with each hour, unfolded before me that nature, so tenderly coy, so cheerful though serious, so attuned by simple cares to affection, yet so filled, from soft musings and solitude, with a poetry that gave grace to duties the homeliest;—setting life's trite things to music. Here nature and fortune concurred alike: equal in birth and pretensions—similar in tastes and in objects,—loving the healthful activity of purpose, but content to find it around us—neither envying the wealthy, nor vying with the great; each framed by temper to look on the bright side of life, and find founts of delight, and green spots fresh with verdure, where eyes but accustomed to cities could see but the sands and the mirage. While afar (as man's duty) I had gone through the travail that, in wrestling with fortune, gives pause to the heart to recover its losses, and know the value of love, in its graver sense of life's earnest realities; heaven had reared, at the thresholds of home, the young tree that should cover the roof with its blossoms, and embalm with its fragrance the daily air of my being.
It had been the joint prayer of those kind ones I left, that such might be my reward; and each had contributed, in his or her several way, to fit that fair life for the ornament and joy of the one that now asked to guard and to cherish it. From Roland came that deep, earnest honour—a man's in its strength, and a woman's in its delicate sense of refinement. From Roland, that quick taste for all things noble in poetry, and lovely in nature—the eye that sparkled to read how Bayard stood alone at the bridge, and saved an army—or wept over the page that told how the dying Sidney put the bowl from his burning lips. Is that too masculine a spirit for some? Let each please himself. Give me the woman who can echo all thoughts that are noblest in man! And that eye, too—like Roland's,—could pause to note each finer mesh in the wonderful webwork of beauty. No landscape to her was the same yesterday and to-day,—a deeper shade from the skies could change the face of the moors—the springing up of fresh wild flowers, the very song of some bird unheard before, lent variety to the broad rugged heath. Is that too simple a source of pleasure for some to prize? Be it so to those who need the keen stimulants that cities afford. But if we were to pass all our hours in those scenes, it was something to have the tastes which own no monotony in Nature.
All this came from Roland; and to this, with thoughtful wisdom, my father had added enough knowledge from books to make those tastes more attractive, and to lend to impulsive perception of beauty and goodness the culture that draws finer essence from beauty, and expands the Good into the Better by heightening the site of the survey: hers, knowledge enough to sympathise with intellectual pursuits, not enough to dispute on man's province—Opinion. Still, whether in nature or in lore, still
"The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the choicest books!"
And yet, thou wise Austin—and thou Roland, poet that never wrote a verse,—yet your work had been incomplete, but then Woman stept in, and the mother gave to her she designed for a daughter the last finish of meek everyday charities—the mild household virtues,—"the soft word that turneth away wrath,"—the angelic pity for man's rougher faults—the patience that bideth its time—and, exacting no "rights of woman," subjugates us, delighted, to the invisible thrall.
Dost thou remember, my Blanche, that soft summer evening when the vows our eyes had long interchanged stole at last from the lip? Wife mine! come to my side,—look over me while I write; there, thy tears—(happy tears, are they not, Blanche?)—have blotted the page! Shall we tell the world more? Right, my Blanche, no words should profane the place where those tears have fallen!
And here I would fain conclude; but alas, and alas! that I cannot associate with our hopes, on this side the grave, him who, we fondly hoped, (even on the bridal-day, that gave his sister to my arms,) would come to the hearth where his place now stood vacant, contented with glory, and fitted at last for the tranquil happiness, which long years of repentance and trial had deserved.
Within the first year of my marriage, and shortly after a gallant share in a desperate action, which had covered his name with new honours, just when we were most elated, in the blinded vanity of human pride—came the fatal news! The brief career was run. He died, as I knew he would have prayed to die, at the close of a day ever memorable in the annals of that marvellous empire, which valour without parallel has annexed to the Throne of the Isles. He died in the arms of Victory, and his last smile met the eyes of the noble chief who, even in that hour, could pause from the tide of triumph by the victim it had cast on its bloody shore. "One favour," faltered the dying man; "I have a father at home—he too is a soldier. In my tent is my will: it gives all I have to him—he can take it without shame. That is not enough! Write to him—you—with your own hand, and tell him how his son fell!" And the hero fulfilled the prayer, and that letter is dearer to Roland than all the long roll of the ancestral dead! Nature has reclaimed her rights, and the forefathers recede before the son.
In a side chapel of the old Gothic church, amidst the mouldering tombs of those who fought at Acre and Agincourt, a fresh tablet records the death of Herbert de Caxton, with the simple inscription—
HE FELL ON THE FIELD:
HIS COUNTRY MOURNED HIM,
AND HIS FATHER IS RESIGNED.
Years have rolled away since that tablet was placed there, and changes have passed on that nook of earth which bounds our little world: fair chambers have sprung up amidst the desolate ruins; far and near, smiling corn-fields replace the bleak, dreary moors. The land supports more retainers than ever thronged to the pennon of its barons of old; and Roland can look from his tower over domains that are reclaimed, year by year, from the waste, till the ploughshare shall win a lordship more opulent than those feudal chiefs ever held by the tenure of the sword. And the hospitable mirth that had fled from the ruin has been renewed in the hall; and rich and poor, great and lowly, have welcomed the rise of an ancient house from the dust of decay. All those dreams of Roland's youth are fulfilled; but they do not gladden his heart as does the thought that his son, at the last, was worthy of his line, and the hope that no gulf shall yawn between the two when the Grand Circle is rounded, and man's past and man's future meet where Time disappears. Never was that lost one forgotten!—never was his name breathed but tears rushed to the eyes; and, each morning, the peasant going to his labour might see Roland steal down the dell to the deep-set door of the chapel. None presume there to follow his steps, or intrude on his solemn thoughts; for there, in sight of that tablet, are his orisons made, and the remembrance of the dead forms a part of the commune with heaven. But the old man's step is still firm, and his brow still erect; and you may see in his face that it was no hollow boast which proclaimed that the "father was resigned:" and ye, who doubt if too Roman a hardness might not be found in that Christian resignation, think what it is to have feared for a son the life of shame, and ask, then, if the sharpest grief to a father is in a son's death of honour.
Years have passed, and two fair daughters play at the knees of Blanche or creep round the footstool of Austin, waiting patiently for the expected kiss when he looks up from the Great Book, now drawing fast to its close; or, if Roland enter the room, forget all their sober demureness, and, unawed by the terrible "Papæ!" run clamorous for the promised swing in the orchard, or the fiftieth recital of "Chevy Chase."
For my part, I take the goods the gods provide me, and am contented with girls that have the eyes of their mother; but Roland, ungrateful man, begins to grumble that we are so neglectful of the rights of heirs-male. He is in doubt whether to lay the fault on Mr Squills or on us: I am not sure that he does not think it a conspiracy of all three to settle the representation of the martial De Caxtons on "the spindle side." Whosoever be the right person to blame, an omission so fatal to the straight line in the pedigree is rectified at last; and Mrs Primmins again rushes, or rather rolls—in the movement natural to forms globular and spheral—into my father's room with—
"Sir, sir—it is a boy!"
Whether my father asked also this time that question so puzzling to metaphysical inquirers, "What is a boy?" I know not; I rather suspect he had not leisure for so abstract a question: for the whole household burst on him, and my mother, in that storm peculiar to the elements of the Mind Feminine—a sort of sunshiny storm between laughter and crying—whirled him off to behold the Neogilos.
Now, some months after that date, on a winter's evening, we were all assembled in the hall, which was still our usual apartment, since its size permitted to each his own segregated and peculiar employment. A large screen fenced off from interruption my father's erudite settlement; and quite out of sight, behind that impermeable barrier, he was now calmly winding up that eloquent peroration which will astonish the world whenever, by Heaven's special mercy, the printer's devils have done with "The History of Human Error." In another nook my uncle had ensconced himself—stirring his coffee, (in the cup my mother had presented to him so many years ago, and which had miraculously escaped all the ills the race of crockery is heir to,) a volume of Ivanhoe in the other hand: and, despite the charm of the Northern Wizard, his eye not on the page. On the wall behind him, hangs the picture of Sir Herbert de Caxton, the soldier-comrade of Sidney and Drake; and, at the foot of the picture, Roland has slung his son's sword beside the letter that spoke of his death, which is framed and glazed: sword and letter had become as the last, nor least honoured, Penates of the hall:—the son was grown an ancestor.
Not far from my uncle sat Mr Squills, employed in mapping out phrenological divisions on a cast he had made from the skull of one of the Australian aborigines—a ghastly present which (in compliance with a yearly letter to that effect) I had brought him over, together with a stuffed "wombat" and a large bundle of sarsaparilla. (For the satisfaction of his patients, I may observe, parenthetically, that the skull and the "wombat"—that last is a creature between a miniature pig and a very small badger—were not precisely packed up with the sarsaparilla!) Farther on stood open, but idle, the new pianoforte, at which, before my father had given his preparatory hem, and sat down to the Great Book, Blanche and my mother had been trying hard to teach me to bear the third in the glee of "The Chough and Crow to roost have gone,"—vain task, in spite of all flattering assurances that I have a very fine "bass," if I could but manage to humour it. Fortunately for the ears of the audience, that attempt is now abandoned. My mother is hard at work on her tapestry—the last pattern in fashion—to wit, a rosy-cheeked young troubadour playing the lute under a salmon-coloured balcony: the two little girls look gravely on, prematurely in love, I suspect, with the troubadour; and Blanche and I have stolen away into a corner, which, by some strange delusion, we consider out of sight, and in that corner is the cradle of the Neogilos. Indeed it is not our fault that it is there—Roland would have it so; and the baby is so good, too, he never cries—at least so say Blanche and my mother: at all events he does not cry to-night. And indeed, that child is a wonder! He seems to know and respond to what was uppermost at our hearts when he was born; and yet more, when Roland (contrary, I dare say, to all custom) permitted neither mother, nor nurse, nor creature of womankind, to hold him at the baptismal font, but bent over the new Christian his own dark, high-featured face, reminding one of the eagle that hid the infant in its nest, and watched over it with wings that had battled with the storm: and from that moment the child, who took the name of Herbert, seemed to recognise Roland better than his nurse, or even mother—seemed to know that, in giving him that name, we sought to give Roland his son once more! Never did the old man come near the infant but it smiled and crowed, and stretched out its little arms; and then the mother and I would press each other's hands secretly, and were not jealous. Well, then, Blanche and Pisistratus were seated near the cradle, and talking in low whispers, when my father pushed aside the screen and said—
"There—the work is done! and now it may go to press as soon as you will."
Congratulations poured in—my father bore them with his usual equanimity; and standing on the hearth, his hand in his waistcoat, he said musingly, "Among the last delusions of Human Error, I have had to notice Rousseau's phantasy of Perpetual Peace, and all the like pastoral dreams, which preceded the bloodiest wars that have convulsed the earth for more than a thousand years!"
"And to judge by the newspapers," said I, "the same delusions are renewed again. Benevolent theorists go about, prophesying peace as a positive certainty, deduced from that sibyl-book the ledger; and we are never again to buy cannons, provided only we can exchange cotton for corn."
Mr Squills, (who, having almost wholly retired from general business, has, from want of something better to do, attended sundry "Demonstrations in the North," since which he has talked much about the march of improvement, the spirit of the age, and "US of the nineteenth century.")—I heartily hope that these benevolent theorists are true prophets. I have found, in the course of my professional practice, that men go out of the world quite fast enough, without hacking them into pieces, or blowing them up into the air. War is a great evil.
Blanche, (passing by Squills, and glancing towards Roland.)—Hush!
Roland remains silent.
Mr Caxton.—War is a great evil; but evil is admitted by Providence into the agency of creation, physical and moral. The existence of evil has puzzled wiser heads than ours, Squills. But, no doubt, there is One above who has His reasons for it. The combative bump seems as common to the human skull as the philoprogenitive; if it is in our organisation, be sure it is not there without cause. Neither is it just to man, nor wisely submissive to the Disposer of all events, to suppose that war is wholly and wantonly produced by human crimes and follies—that it conduces only to ill, and does not as often arise from the necessities interwoven in the framework of society, and speed the great ends of the human race, conformably with the designs of the Omniscient. Not one great war has ever desolated the earth, but has left behind it seeds that have ripened into blessings incalculable.
Mr Squills, (with the groan of a dissentient at a "Demonstration.")—Oh! oh! OH!
Luckless Squills! Little could he have foreseen the shower-bath, or rather douche, of erudition that fell splash on his head, as he pulled the spring with that impertinent Oh! oh! Down first came the Persian War, with Median myriads disgorging all the rivers they had drunk up in their march through the East—all the arts, all the letters, all the sciences, all the notions of liberty that we inherit from Greece—my father rushed on with them all, sousing Squills with his proofs that, without the Persian War, Greece would never have risen to be the teacher of the world. Before the gasping victim could take breath, down came Hun, Goth, and Vandal, on Italy and Squills.
"What, sir!" cried my father, "don't you see that, from those eruptions on demoralised Rome, came the regeneration of manhood; the re-baptism of earth from the last soils of paganism; and the remote origin of whatever of Christianity yet exists, free from the idolatries with which Rome contaminated the faith?"
Squills held up his hands, and made a splutter. Down came Charlemagne—paladins and all! There my father was grand! What a picture he made of the broken, jarring, savage elements of barbaric society. And the iron hand of the great Frank—settling the nations, and founding existent Europe. Squills was now fast sinking into coma, or stupefaction; but, catching at a straw, as he heard the word "Crusades" he stuttered forth, "Ah! there I defy you!"
"Defy me, there!" cries my father; and one would think the ocean was in the shower-bath, it came down with such a rattle. My father scarcely touched on the smaller points in excuse for the Crusades, though he recited very volubly all the humane arts introduced into Europe by that invasion of the East; and showed how it had served civilisation, by the vent it afforded for the rude energies of chivalry—by the element of destruction to feudal tyranny that it introduced—by its use in the emancipation of burghs, and the disrupture of serfdom. But he showed, in colours vivid as if caught from the skies of the East, the great spread of Mahometanism, and the danger it menaced to Christian Europe—and drew up the Godfreys, and Tancreds, and Richards, as a league of the Age and Necessity, against the terrible progress of the sword and the Koran. "You call them madmen," cried my father, "but the frenzy of nations is the statesmanship of fate! How know you that—but for the terror inspired by the hosts who marched to Jerusalem—how know you that the Crescent had not waved over other realms than those which Roderic lost to the Moor? If Christianity had been less a passion, and the passion had less stirred up all Europe—how know you that the creed of the Arab (which was then, too, a passion) might not have planted its mosques in the forum of Rome, and on the site of Notre Dame? For in the war between creeds—when the creeds are embraced by vast races—think you that the reason of sages can cope with the passion of millions? Enthusiasm must oppose enthusiasm. The crusader fought for the tomb of Christ, but he saved the life of Christendom."
My father paused. Squills was quite passive; he struggled no more—he was drowned.
"So," resumed Mr Caxton, more quietly—"so, if later wars yet perplex us as to the good that the All-wise One draws from their evils, our posterity may read their uses as clearly as we now read the finger of Providence resting on the barrows of Marathon, or guiding Peter the Hermit to the battle-fields of Palestine. Nor, while we admit the evil to the passing generation, can we deny that many of the virtues that make the ornament and vitality of peace sprang up first in the convulsions of war!" Here Squills began to evince faint signs of resuscitation, when my father let fly at him one of those numberless waterworks which his prodigious memory kept in constant supply. "Hence," said he, "hence not unjustly has it been remarked by a philosopher, shrewd at least in worldly experience—(Squills again closed his eyes, and became exanimate)—'It is strange to imagine that war, which of all things appears the most savage, should be the passion of the most heroic spirits. But 'tis in war that the knot of fellowship is closest drawn; It is in war that mutual succour is most given—mutual danger run, and common affection most exerted and employed; for heroism and philanthropy are almost one and the same!'"[12]
My father ceased, and mused a little. Squills, if still living, thought it prudent to feign continued extinction.
"Not," said Mr Caxton, resuming—"not but what I hold it our duty never to foster into a passion what we must rather submit to as an awful necessity. You say truly, Mr Squills—war is an evil; and woe to those who, on slight pretences, open the gates of Janus,
——'The dire abode,
And the fierce issues of the furious god.'"
Mr Squills, after a long pause, (employed in some of the more handy means for the reanimation of submerged bodies, supporting himself close to the fire in a semi-erect posture, with gentle friction, self-applied, to each several limb, and copious recourse to certain steaming stimulants which my compassionate hands prepared for him,) stretches himself, and says feebly, "In short, then, not to provoke further discussion, you would go to war in defence of your country. Stop, sir—stop, for God's sake! I agree with you—I agree with you! But, fortunately, there is little chance now that any new Boney will build boats at Boulogne to invade us."
Mr Caxton.—I am not so sure of that, Mr Squills. (Squills falls back with a glassy stare of deprecating horror.) I don't read the newspapers very often, but the past helps me to judge of the present.
Therewith my father earnestly recommended to Mr Squills the careful perusal of certain passages in Thucydides, just previous to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, (Squills hastily nodded the most servile acquiescence,) and drew an ingenious parallel between the signs and symptoms foreboding that outbreak, and the very apprehension of coming war which was evinced by the recent Io pæans to peace. And, after sundry notable and shrewd remarks, tending to show where elements for war were already ripening, amidst clashing opinions and disorganised states, he wound up with saying,—"So that, all things considered, I think we had better just keep up enough of the bellicose spirit, not to think it a sin if we are called upon to fight for our pestles and mortars, our three per cents, goods, chattels, and liberties. Such a time must come, sooner or later, even though the whole world were spinning cotton, and printing sprigged calicoes. We may not see it, Squills, but that young gentleman in the cradle, whom you have lately brought into light, may."
"And if so," said my uncle abruptly, speaking for the first time—"if indeed it is for altar and hearth!"
My father suddenly drew in and pished a little, for he saw that he was caught in the web of his own eloquence.
Then Roland took down from the wall his son's sword. Stealing to the cradle, he laid it in its sheath by the infant's side, and glanced from my father to us with a beseeching eye. Instinctively Blanche bent over the cradle, as if to protect the Neogilos; but the child, waking, turned from her, and, attracted by the glitter of the hilt, laid one hand lustily thereon, and pointed with the other, laughingly, to Roland.
"Only on my father's proviso," said I hesitatingly. "For hearth and altar—nothing less!"
"And even in that case," said my father, "add the shield to the sword!" and on the other side of the infant he placed Roland's well-worn Bible, blistered in many a page with secret tears.
There we all stood, grouping round the young centre of so many hopes and fears—in peace or in war, born alike for the Battle of Life. And he, unconscious of all that made our lips silent, and our eyes dim, had already left that bright bauble of the sword, and thrown both arms round Roland's bended neck.
"Herbert," murmured Roland; and Blanche gently drew away the sword,—and left the Bible.
[LYNMOUTH REVISITED.]
BY THE SKETCHER.
Nearly sixteen years ago, there appeared in the pages of Maga, descriptions of the scenery of Lynmouth, North Devon. As Sketcher, I then proposed to myself to analyse the impressions which landscape scenery makes upon the minds of artists and lovers of nature, and to show that there must be in the artist a higher aim than imitation; and that the pleasure of the unpractising admirer will be in proportion to his power of extracting from the insensitive matter of nature, the poetic life of thought; to rescue both art and nature from the degradation they suffer when disconnected with the higher senses; to show that nature, to be the worthy object of art, should be suggestive. Its charm is to elicit, to draw out finely, and to embellish what is already, in a ruder state, in the mind. If there be poverty within, there is no room for the reception of the riches so profusely surrounding us in the external world. Neither artists nor amateurs are generally sufficiently aware, that a previous education is necessary to make sketching effective and expressive. We find ourselves everywhere. Whatever be the scenery, the sketcher brings little back that he does not take with him. Hence the diversity in the character of sketches—of different sketchers—and the one character that pervades the portfolio of each. I have heard of an artist who visited our lakes, and brought back with him only cottages! Morland would have added, or rather made the principal, the stye and pigs; and even Gainsborough's sketch-book may have shown little more than ragged pollards, and groups of rustic children. To know what is in nature, you must know what is in yourself. If you are ignorant of art, your sketches can only be accidentally good. It is possible to be a very close observer, even of minute beauties, and yet be a very bad sketcher. One of an original genius will convert, and, by a bold dissimilitude in non-essentials, incorporate into his own previous conceptions whatever is before him; and thus, by preserving the great suggestive characteristics, represent nature with a far greater truth, exhibiting her very life and feeling, than they who aim at truth through exact and minute imitation.
Let this be exemplified in Salvator Rosa. Do his wild scenes of rock, and rugged rock-engendered trees, exist to the general eye, exactly in their form, and colour, and composition, as he has represented them? The exact sketcher would have found a less correspondence in branches and foliage—a less marked living feeling between the rocks and trees; he would have found much in the colouring, especially in the green leaves, where they are so few and scattered, of an inconsistent gaiety. These would have been distracting; but his educated eye, toned by a one bold feeling, rejected these, and seized the wilder characteristic, to which he resolutely, under the impulse of his genius, made all the rest subservient and suggestive. He embodied what he saw with what he felt, and marred not the savage freedom by attractive littlenesses, but gave it full play; and with an execution as bold and free, which the minute critic would pronounce not natural, though most natural, as most expressive of that spontaneous out-flung unconstrained-ness of nature's growth, which really pervades all, he harmoniously brought all the parts under the dominion of one poetic feeling. Take his foliage, even in form—to say nothing of its actual unnaturalness of colour in the exact sense—there is a raggedness, as torn and storm-beaten, in the individual leafage, which the untutored sketcher will in vain look for in his beat; but all this stamps one great truth, and that speaks more of nature than many small ones. I do not mean here to give the palm to Salvator Rosa, as if he were "Lord of Landscape;" I mention him as a strong example, as the boldest deviator from that which the unpoetic eye sees, and minds totally uncharmed by poetry can conceive. I think it well here to lay some stress upon these preliminary remarks, because much has been written, with a great fascination of language, recommending, as I believe too strongly, a close observation in detail of the phenomena of nature; overlooking the great phenomenon—the accordance of external nature with the heart, feelings, and very life and soul of man. One writer in particular, with great ability, and audacious confidence, because in his blindness he, uneducated to it, sees not in nature what such great men as Salvator Rosa and Gaspar Poussin, have extracted from it, and yet made it nature's and their own, flings upon their established fame the brutum fulmen of his contempt and abuse. Damnat quod non intelligit. He knows not the true principles of art which exist to perfection in their works, nor knows how strictly these principles belong to art and nature only through and by their connexion with the mind of man. You may study meteorology in the Penny Magazine, or geology and botany, most scientifically; but it will further you a very little way, while your portfolio is under your arm, and your eye in search of a picturesque which you have not learned to find. Nay, it may happen, for it often does happen, that the more you sketch the farther you are from art. It is possible, also, for the most accomplished artist to sketch too much; and to stay the power of his invention, by referring too constantly to the preciseness and individuality of scenery. He dares not so much trust his palette as his portfolio, as it were his register of nature, to which he has bound himself beyond the usual apprenticeship.
It has been remarked by sketchers, amateurs, and artists by profession, that, upon a sketching expedition, "their hands are not in" for some days. I doubt if the fault be so much in the hand as in the eye; for in most cases the hand had come from the immediate practice of the studio: but the eye is distracted by the many beauties which now force themselves into observation, and which in the home-practice, and in following the mind's bent on the canvass, the memory did not vividly present as not wanted. It is more difficult, therefore, at first to generalise, to escape the fascinations of local form and colour, which keep the eye from the instant acknowledgment of a whole. We are thus at first apt to begin with the detail, instead of leaving it to the last, by which means we have more than we want, or less accurately and accommodatingly what is wanted. When we have learned again to reject, and to see, we are surprised with a facility we at first despaired of. We do, then, because we know what to do.
I would recommend therefore, before setting out on such expeditions, where it be practicable, to visit daily, and all day, during a week or fortnight, the best galleries of pictures, such as contain all schools, that as much as possible there may be no bias, but such as every one must find in himself before he reaches the gallery. I would do this to confirm, and fasten upon the memory, the principles of art,—breadth, greatness, truth, expression, colouring, sentiment, and how obtained. Here will be a grammar without its drudgery; for every lesson will be a delight, if we go to it with no conceited opinions of our own, and no cavilling spirit bringing ourselves down to an admission that these great men of former days had some foundation upon which they built their fame, their acknowledged fame—so searching, we shall see the reasons of their doings—why they, each for their own purpose, adopted this or that style of colour, or of composition, or chiaroscuro. Going then immediately to nature from art, we shall see how very true art is—a secret that, without this immediate comparison, would be very apt to be hidden from us. No man in his senses would begin a science from his own observation alone. It was not the first shepherd who, studying the stars, laid open the study of astronomy. We shall learn nothing by despising all that has been learnt before we were born. So it is in art; some principles have been established, which it is well to know thoroughly; and, the more we know them, the more enthusiastic will be our admiration, the love of art through nature, and of nature through art.
During my former visits to the beautiful scenery of Lynmouth, I had seldom taken any whole view, but chiefly studied parts for use in the detail of compositions; and this I think to be a good practice for the landscape painter, which term I use here in contradistinction to the painter of views, there is so great a pleasure in as it were creating—in being the ποιητης, the maker—that, to one accustomed to and at all skilled in composing, it becomes an irksome task to make a "view." The continued habit of view-painting must necessarily check invention, and limit unworthily the painter's aim. In revisiting Lynmouth, I changed my purpose and this, not under the idea of making pictures of any of the sketches, but for the practice of noting how a picture, framed in from nature, as if it were a work of art, would be brought to its completion; for sketching, with such an object, I cannot but think of as great importance as the other method. We must learn from nature to make a whole, as well as the use of the parts separately. With this purpose the sketcher will look out for subjects, not detail; he will be curious to see how nature composes now, and when it is that scenes are most agreeable—made so by what combination of lines, by what agreement of colours, by what proportions of light, and gradations of shadow: for he will often find, when nature looks her best, that light and shade are employed as substitutes for lines which, in the actual and true drawing of them, would be unfortunate. How often is it that a scene strikes the eye at once for its great beauty, that, when we come to it again, seems entirely to have lost its charm! Now these spots should be visited again and again, till the causes be ascertained of the charm and of the deterioration: for here must lie the principles of art, nature assuming and putting off that which is most agreeable to us, that in which our human sympathies are engaged. Sketchers often pass hastily these spots that are no longer beautiful; but they are wrong, for they can learn best, by accurate observation of the changes presented to them. And they will thus learn to remedy deficiencies, and acquire a better power of selecting scenes, by knowing where the deficiencies lie; the mind's eye will not dwell upon them, or will fill them up, and the composition show itself to them in a manner quite otherwise than it would have appeared, had no such previous observations been made. There are sometimes good lines marred by bad effects, and bad lines remedied by skilful management of effects—of light and shadow. It must be a practised eye that can properly abstract and separate lines from effects, and effects from lines. We play with colour, but our serious business is with light and shade; the real picture is more frequently in black and white, than those who addict themselves to colour will credit. I will here but refer to some passages in the early numbers of The Sketcher, on the composition of lines, wherein I showed, and I believe truly explained, the principle of composition upon which many of the old masters worked. And I particularly exemplified the principle in the pictures of Gaspar Poussin, whom Thompson calls learned Poussin, (unless he meant Nicolo, who, though in other respects he may with equal justice be called learned, is, in this art of the composition of lines, in no way to be compared with his brother-in-law.) I showed that there was one simple rule which he invariably adopted. We may likewise go to nature, and find the rule there, when nature, as a composition, looks her best.
I think it will be found that any scene is most pleasing when its variety is in the smallest portion—that is, when the greatest part of the picture is made up of the most simple and pervading lines, and the intricacies, all variety, and alternations, and interchanges of lines and parts, shall be confined to a very small portion; for thus a greatness, a largeness, an importance, is preserved and heightened, and at the same time, monotony is avoided—though there be much in it, the piece is not crowded. There is a print from a picture by Smith of Chichester, who, by the bye, obtained the prize, against Richard Wilson, which attracted my attention the other day at a print-seller's window. It was meant, I presume, as an imitation of Claude, Claude reduced to the then English vulgarity. If multiplicity of parts would make a picture, doubtless Richard Wilson, with his simple, sweeping, free lines, could have no chance in competition with such a painter. Every niche was crowded—and equally so—every niche might have made a picture, such as it was, but all the niches made none, or a bad one. Why, the variety was universal; it should have been confined to the smaller space. The picture is objectionable in other points of view; but this ignorance of the very nature of composition was fatal. Yet this work was evidently an imitation of Claude, whose variety, however, of distance, the modern imitator brought into his very foreground. He could not see the simplicity of Claude. Not that Claude himself was a learned composer; his lines are often incongruous, and there is not unfrequently a poverty of design, scarcely concealed by the magic of his colouring. Now, I find, in looking over my sketches, that I had selected those scenes where the passages of variety lay in the distance, and, it being a narrow valley, they occupied but a small space; but, though small, it was mostly the place of interest—there was the more vivid light or the deeper shade, the change, the life of the picture, and the embellished way of escape out of a defile, that from its closeness would have been otherwise painful. In saying "painful," I seem to point to a defect in this Lynmouth valley. Indeed, it will not suit those who do not love close scenery. That certainly is its character. Yet is it not so close, but that there is room for this kind of variety. I think what I have said upon this point, of interest and variety lying in the smaller portion of the canvass—for I here speak even of nature as a picture—may be applicable generally to light. I imagine those scenes will be found most pleasing, where the light is by far the smallest portion, the half-tone by far the larger, and the dark but to show the power of both. Take, for instance, a garden scene—a broad walk, trees on each side—all is in broad light, but all is in painful glare, monotony, and sameness of endless detail. Let a shadow pass over it, a broad shadow—or rather a half-tone of light, that shall only show the local colour subdued—how, let a gleam pass across it, and just touch here and there the leafage, and seem to escape behind it—how small is the light, but it has given life to the picture. I cannot but think it a fault of our day that half-tone is neglected; light is made a glare, and therefore the very object of light is lost. I believe it was the aim at a mere novelty that first introduced this false principle. It was recommended to Guido, but he failed in it: pictures so painted by him are far from being his best. Rubens erred in it; but modern artists have carried the false principle to the utmost limit; and, in doing so, are liable to a palpable incongruity; an impossibility in nature, which they profess to imitate. For it is the property of light to take away colour; yet in this school, the whitest light, and the most vivid colours, are in the same piece. The old painters, aware of this property of light, in their out-of-door scenes, avoid, not to say a white, but even a light sky—especially the Venetian—so that their great depth and power of colour was rendered natural, by the depth of their skies. Their blues were dark—intensely so—but they were sustained by the general colour. If it be said the Italian skies are notoriously the bluest, Mr Ruskin has, in contradiction, pronounced them to be white, but I believe the fact is, that the great painters considered colour, as a beauty in art, sui generis, and that there was no need of a slavish adherence, in this respect, to nature herself. Indeed, they delighted, even when aiming at the richest colouring, to subdue all glare, and to preserve rather a deep half-tone.
I believe they studied nature through coloured glasses; and we learn from Mrs Merrifield that Gaspar Poussin used a black mirror, which had been bequeathed to him by Bamboccio. The works of some of the Flemish painters evidently show that they used such a mirror.
Have I not, then, reached Lynmouth yet? I found it in full leafage, and the little river as clear as amber, and like it in colour. It is always beautiful, and variable too—after rain it assumes more variety of colour, and of great richness. For most part of the time of my visit, it was more shallow than I had ever seen it. I was pleased that it was so, though I heard many complaints on that score. To those who sketch close to the water, it is, in fact, an advantage; for where the scenery is so confined, it is a great thing to be able to reach the large stones in mid-stream, and thus many new views are obtained; and when you are pretty close to water, whether it be a fall, or still, there is really but very little difference whether the river be full or not—the falls still retain sufficient body, and the still pools are sufficiently wide.
There are but two parties who know anything of the painter-scenery of Lynmouth—the sketchers and the anglers. The common road generally taken by tourists shows not half the beauty of the place. Did Lynmouth appear less beautiful?—certainly not. I easily recognised the chosen spots, and was surprised to find what little change had taken place. I knew individual trees perfectly, and, strange to say, they did not seem to have acquired growth. There were apparently the same branches stretching over the stream.
In one spot where large ledges of rock shoot out in mid-stream, down whose grooves the river rushes precipitously, (I had, sixteen years ago, sketched the scene,) there was growing out of the edge of the rock a young ash-tree shoot—to my surprise, there it was still, or the old had decayed, and a similar had sprang up. There is something remarkable in this continued identity, year after year, as if the law of mutability had been suspended. Yet there were changes. I remember sketching by a little fall of the river, where further progress was staid by a large mass of projecting rock. I felt sure there must be fine subjects beyond, and in my attempt to reach it from the opposite side by climbing, and holding by the boughs of a tree, one broke off, and I fell into the cauldron. I found now that the whole mass of this ledge of rock had given way, and opened a passage, and one of no great difficulty. Here, as I suspected, were some very fine studies. The place where I descended is about half a mile, or less, from Lynmouth, where the road turns, near to a little bridge across a watercourse intercepting the road. The view of this little fall from above is singularly beautiful; and, being so much elevated, you see the bed of the river continuous for a long distance, greatly varied. I know no place where there are such fine studies of this kind, though they are rarely taken, being only parts for composition—the whole not making a view.
Was Lynmouth, then, to me as it was?—not quite. The interval of years had not, I trust, been lost. If there was little change in the place, there was a change in the mind's eye and head of the sketcher. Though I recognised nearly all the spots where I had sketched, I found many new—some that might have escaped me, because I had not taken the feeling with me, at least not in the degree, in which I now possessed it. During all the years that had intervened, I had scarcely painted a single view. I could not but observe that the new scenes were those more especially suggestive, leading to the ideal.
A friend who was part of the time with me observed that he had thought some of my pictures, which he had seen, compositions without the warranty of nature; but he now saw that nature supplied me with what I wanted, and acknowledged that the sketches were correct. It was then I observed that the sketcher may find almost everywhere what he has learnt to look for. The fact is, that it is not whole and large scenery, nor the most beautiful, that best suits the painter, but those parts which he can combine. The real painter looks to nature for form and colour, the elements of his art: upon these he must work; and they seldom reach any great magnitude, or are diffused over large space.
Why is it, that generally what we term beautiful scenery was seldom the ground of the old painters? They were not, generally speaking, painters of views; and why not? There the pictures were made for them. They, and all the world had the thing before them to love and to admire—it was already done; there was no room for their genius, which is a creative, not an imitative faculty. The scene for every eye was not theirs. They found that, by their art, they could take nature's best feeling, even from her fragments. It requires not an Alp to portray grandeur. Fifty feet of rock, precipitous or superimpending, will better represent the greatness of danger; for it is a more immediate and solid mass to crush the intruder, and the form may frown with a demon malice. The whole awe of darkness may be felt in a cavern of a few feet space. Indeed, it may be almost said that largeness is not to be obtained on the canvass, by the largeness of whole extensive scenes in nature, but by the continuous lines of near masses: whatever is actually largest in nature—the forest and the mountain—in art may with advantage occupy the smallest space. For the best magnitude here is in perspective, and in that aerial tone which, as a veil, half conceals, and thereby makes mysterious, and converts into one azure whole the parts which would, otherwise seen, but break up the great character. The Arabian genii were greatest when dimly seen through smoke and vapour.
Art, indeed, differs from nature in this, as regards the pleasure derived through the eye, that nature allows you many unperspective views at many instant glances, and therefore surprises you, if I may so express it, with a perspective impossibility, of which the judgment at the time is not cognisant; whereas art is bounded by a rule, looks not all around, and comprehends by mind beyond the eye, but is constrained to frame in the conception. It must, therefore, make to itself another power—and this power it finds in form, in light and shade, and colour, all which are in greater intensity and force in the fragmentary parts than in the whole and large scenes. It is a step for the young artist to believe that art and nature are not and should not be the same—that they are essentially different, and use their materials differently, have other rules of space and largeness. If art be more limited, its power is greater by being more condensed,—and its impressions more certain, because more direct, and not under the vague and changeable process of making an idea from many perspectives.
If there be truth in these remarks, we may see why the old masters left untouched those scenes which are the delight of tourists. To copy the scene before them was to put their creative faculty in abeyance. It was only to work after a given pattern—and that pattern imperfect—of a whole which defied the laws of optics. I here speak almost entirely of the Italian masters, both the historical, and more strictly the landscape painters. The Flemish and Dutch schools had mostly another aim, and were more imitative; hence they are more easily understood, but felt with a far less passion. But even these, far from undervaluing the conventional aids of art, applied as much of them as the nature of their subjects would admit.
But the sketcher must not consider himself in his studies when he is out with his portfolio. However he may select, he must be faithful. And this fidelity I have seen painters of great skill often unwisely contemn, become too conventional, both in their drawing and colouring. It requires much practice of the eye, as well as that knowledge which constitutes taste, to frame in as it were pictures, from the large space that fills the eye. Nothing is more useful than to carry in the portfolio a light frame of stiff paper or wood, and to hold it up, so as actually to frame in pictures, and thus to experimentalise upon the design, and see what shiftings of the frame make the best choice. It is an assistance even to the most practised in composition.
Lynmouth is greatly improved of late years in accommodation; many new lodging-houses are built, and there are some residents who have shown great taste in laying out their grounds, and in their buildings. The little pier has been rendered picturesque, by the erection of a small look-out house after a model from Rhodes. There is not much here at any time that would deserve the name of shipping; but a few fishing boats, and such small craft compose well with the little pier. The evenings are very fine, the sun setting over the Channel; and the Welsh coast in the distance assumes, occasionally, a very beautiful ultramarine blue, like a glaze over warm colouring. When the tide comes in, and the little vessels are afloat, these are good subjects, the water being of a gray green, softening the reflections. I began a sketch when the boats were aground; but the tide, coming in rapidly, soon so altered the position of the vessels that I did not proceed. When the tide receded, leaving the vessels aground, they were not in the same direction in which I had sketched them; and an artist who was present remarked, that the beauty of the scene as a composition was gone, and referred to the sketch. This led to some discussion, as to the cause—Why should it be less good now, said he, than when you drew it? I believe I saw the reason, and pointed it out. There was a sloop, larger by much than all the rest, which were indeed, though having masts, but boats. The larger vessel was the principal object, even more so than the buildings on the pier, towards which it leaned; and this leaning was important, for a union and certain connexion of parts was everything here, for it made one of many things. Accordingly, the smaller boats on each side the larger vessel inclined their masts towards it; so that this manifest uniting, and the belonging of one to the other, was the pleasing idea, and invested the whole with a kind of life and sensitiveness; but in the alteration, after the receding of the tide, this communication of the one with the other was gone, and, on the contrary, there was left an uncomfortable feeling of disunion.
This reasoning was admitted, and we further discussed the principle involved in the remarks, as applicable to all scenes and subjects. It is this correspondence of part with part which animates the works of nature, invests them with an ideal sensitiveness; and through this fond belief of their life, our own sensitiveness is awakened to a sympathy with them. Whatever inanimate objects we in our fancy invest with life, through our own sympathy, we clothe with a kind of humanity; and thus we look on trees and rocks, and water, as to a degree our fellow creatures, in this great wild world. We love accordingly. Nihil humanum a me alienum puto. The very winds speak to us as human voices, as do the trees in their whisperings or complainings; and the waters are ever repeating their histories and their romances to our willing ears. As we walked we tested the principle, and were believers in its truth. "Mark," said our friend, "that bank of fern—how graceful, how charming, is their bending, their interchange, their masses and their hollow shades, their little home-depths, wherein they grow, and retire as their home-chambers: there is throughout the pleasing idea of a family enjoying their quiet existence, and all in one small green world of their own." He enjoys nature most worthily, and most intensely, who carries with him this sense of nature's life, and of a mutuality, a co-partnership with the blessings of existence with himself. There are some fine rocks at the base of the precipitous cliffs—of fine form and colour; I never went sufficiently near to sketch them, having no fancy to be caught by the tide. I have seen sketches made amongst them that prove them to afford very good subjects. Many years ago, while sitting under these cliffs, I heard a groan; I thought at the time it must have been a delusion, but on that evening a man had fallen over the cliffs. His body was, I think, found the next day. It fell from Countesbury Hill, the road on which is certainly not sufficiently protected. And this reminds me to speak of an alarming occurrence on the road, about half a mile from Lynmouth. We were a small party, and had taken shelter from rain against the receding part of the rocks cut for the widening the road. I and another were reading a newspaper. Looking up, we suddenly saw a woman on horseback very near us. The animal started, and was frightened at the newspaper. Our endeavour to conceal it made the matter worse; the horse retreated from us, and I think his hind legs could not have been many inches from the precipice. It was a trying moment; one step more back would have been certain death to both the woman and the horse. We were truly happy when, by a little management, we contrived to get them past us. The road, too, is in these dangerous places very narrow; yet the people venture to drive at a good pace, and without reins, their uncouth and apparently unmanageable teams—neither quite dray nor cart—fearlessly. It is surprising that accidents do not often occur, especially as there is some danger from the falling of masses of stone from above; and even such as the sheep remove with their feet may frighten horses, and precipitate all to sure destruction. There are great rents in huge masses of rock, close to the road, and some apparently are kept firm with but little earth, and seem to threaten a move. I have had some blows on the back occasionally from small stones, cast down by passing sheep, while I have been sketching down by the water; and once so large a one took the corner of my portfolio, that with my best speed I quitted the place. That was some years ago; but I have recently seen not very small fragments fall very near me. I would, therefore, caution the sketcher to choose as safe a position as he can, which he may generally find under some projection of rock. Some of the masses in the bed of the river are of enormous size; and let me here remark upon the fine, bold character these masses in the river possess—they are very fine in form, and the beauty and variety in their colouring are quite wondrous. Some are very dark, entirely covered with brown, and some with, bright golden moss. But most of them when dry are gray—but one name will not describe that gray, varying as it does from the blue to the green and pink hues. They are commonly in bold relief against the dark water—yet themselves show dark, edged by the white foam, where the water, sloping insinuatingly, falls and rushes by them. Here and there, in some deep-shaded, wild, lonely places, they are of gigantic size, and look like huge Titans turned to stone, amid the fragments that had hurled them down. The sketcher may easily imagine himself in the territory of magic. Shall I confess that, in such places, I do not like to sketch alone? And why not? Why should there be a something like a superstitious awe of the spot, the "severi religio loci?"
Doubtless it is because we do feel contradicting knowledge, in this consciousness of all nature in its own life and power. Nor can we divest ourselves of a kind of natural poetry—a feeling that the rocks, the wild trees, and the somewhere though unseen "genius loci" all look at us, and we fancy ourselves but under sufferance, and know not how long our presence may be endured. It is surprising how a sense of such presences possesses us when alone. I could often have fancied voices, and mocking ones too, in the waters, and threats that thundered in the ear, and went off as if to fetch and bring whole cataracts down upon me. In such places I do not like to be caught by the dusk of the evening, being quite alone.
The fact is, nature, to a real lover and sketcher, is at all times powerful. Scenes affect him as they affect no other. I have often surprised people by the assertion that I could not live in the midst of fine scenery; it is too powerful, it unnerves one with an unrelaxing watchfulness. The presence of the mountain will not be shaken off. It becomes a nightmare upon the spirits, holds communion with the wild winds and storms, and has fearful dealings I would not dream of in the dark, howling, dismal nights. Nor, when the sombre light of a melancholy day just obscures the clouds that have been gathering round it, would I in imagination draw the curtain to behold the unearthly drama.
There is something terrific in the sound of unseen rushing water. When all else is still in the dark night, and you are uncertain of the path, and feel the danger that a false footing may plunge you into an abyss of waters, that seem to cry out and roar for a victim, have you not felt both fear and shame? Recently I experienced this in Lynmouth, having in the darkness lost my way. To the poet and the painter, here is a source of the sublime. Plunge your pencil boldly into this eclipse, and work into it a few dim lights formless and undefined—the obscure will be of a grand mystery. The night-darkness that settles over fine mountainous scenery does not remove the sense of its presence; as its lakes blacken, they become fabulous, of unknown depths, below which may be infernal "bolge." But I am wandering into strange regions now, and far from Lynmouth, whose scenes, after all, are not of a very severe beauty, unless we will to make it so. It will then answer the demand imagination makes upon it. Many are the scenes of a purely quiescent kind, still and calm, and of gentle repose, where the shallow river shows its amber bed, wherein the gleams rest upon the well-defined ledges beneath, whose gray shadows melt into golden tints; and beyond, in the deeper pools, the green of the trees is reflected greener still, across which here and there is a gray streak, showing the river's silent onward movement; and further on, some dark stones send their brown and purple hues, mirrored and softened down into the green, just dotted here and there with white. Then the trees shoot out lovingly from the bank overhead, and reach and communicate pleasantly with those on the opposite side; and here a bough sends down and just forbears to touch the stream, Narcissus-like, loving its own image. The gray stones in the foreground, half beneath the water, are of a delicate hue, blue intermingling with pale greenish and lakey tints; for there is nothing violent in all this scene of peaceful repose. Very many spots of this kind are there that court the sketcher. Let him wind his way over masses of stone, and roots of trees, beyond these—the scene how changed! The masses of stone are huge, blocking up, in various positions, the free passage of the river, which chafes and foams between them, throwing off its whiteness into the brown and green water depths. One broad shadow is over the dark stones; and beyond that rise the tops of other masses, gray illuminated; and beyond them, a gleam or two of falling water. Wilder are the trees that shoot out, from rocky fragments near, and lock their branches with those on the other side; while in the hollow space beneath their arching boles, distant and fantastic stems cross the stream. Opposite are huge masses, ledges with precipitous and brown-mossed sides; above which the high rocky bank sends forth large trees, their roots twisting about the rocks and coming out again through the fissures, and met by green weed leafage. The trees are darker than the dun-red ground, but edged with greenish light; and above them the yellow sunlight gleams through, and the dotted blue of sky is just seen; and, as avoiding the light, a huge branch, or limb rather, shoots down, edged with the light on its upper surface, and dark underneath, and throws a scanty defined leafage across over the depth of the river. But this precipitous bank again terminates towards the ledges in fine masses, rocks that project and recede, partially luminous with reflected light, and then falling back into extreme brown and purple darkness, down into which the ivy falls clustering and perpendicular, with innumerable briar-like shoots and tendrils. Here are severer studies. They are to be found by crossing the Lyn by the wooden bridge, not far from Lynmouth, and following the path through the wood some way, and seeking the bed of the river by a scarcely-discernible sheep-path, till it be lost at the edge of a downward way, not very difficult of descent. Within a very small space, there are fine and very different subjects. One of scarcely less grandeur than the last described, if it had not more beauty blended with it; but it must be seen in the sun's eye—the best time will be about 3 o'clock. Reach a large stone that juts out from the river's side, climb it, and look down the stream. You must sketch rapidly, for the charm will not last—it is most lovely in colour, and the forms are very beautiful. The opposite side of the river may be termed a mountain side, broken into hollows, in which rock and vegetation deepen into shade. The top is covered with trees, very graceful, the sun edges their tops, and rays flow through them, touching with a white and silver light the ivied rock, which is here perpendicular. Beyond this mountain-side, which juts out, is another clothed cliff, terminating at the base in bold and bare rock; beyond this, and high above, shooting into the sky, are piled rocks of a wild and broken character, gray, but dark against the distant mountain range, of an ultramarine haze, over warm and slightly marked downward passages; above is the illumined and illuminating sky. On the side of the river from which this lovely view is seen, are large masses, backed by trees, which shoot across, but high overhead, so that in the sketch the leafage would drop as it were from the sky into the middle of the picture. The river itself is quite accordant in colour, and in the forms and light and shade of the stones, that, though so large, are dwarfed by the large precipitous rocks perpendicular above them. The course of the stream is away from the eye of the spectator—is in parts darkly transparent and deep—here and there showing the white foam, and in other parts its amber and reddish bed.
A little further back from this point of view is another of the same scene; I am doubtful which would make the best picture. On the very same stone from which I sketched the scene described, turning with my back to the opposite side of the river, I was much struck with the fine forms and solemn light and shade of a rock, that was cavernously hollow at its base, and very near the stream. Above it, and declining into the middle of the picture, the sunlit boles of coppice-trees, rising among the light-green leafage, made the only positive sunlight of the picture: whatever else of light there was, was shade luminous. This rock was united with another across the picture, that thus made a centre and opening for the coppice, dotted with the blue sky; but all that side of the picture was in very dark shadow, being rock perpendicular, through the depth of which light and boldly formed trees rose to the top of the picture, and threw down leafage into the deep shade. The colouring of the cavernous hollow was remarkable: it was dark, yet blending gray, and pink, and green. The scene was of an ideal character; and I doubt if the sketch, though taken with as much truth as I could reach, would be thought to be from nature. The same rocky mass, taken in another direction, supplies a very different but perhaps equally good subject for the pencil. I say these sketches are of an ideal kind. It may be asked—Are they not true?—are they not in nature? They are; but still for a better use than the pleasure of the imitation a mere sketch offers. These are the kinds of scenes for the painter's invention, into which he is to throw his mind, and to dip his pencil freely into the gloom of his palette, and concentrate depths, and even change the forms, and even to omit much of the decorative detail, and make severity severer. He would give the little trees a wilder life, a more visible power, as if for lack of inhabitant they only were sentient of the scene. If a figure be introduced, they would be kept down, but shoot their branches towards him, for there would be an agreement, a sentient sympathy. But what figure? It is not peaceful enough for a hermit; too solemn for the bandit, such as Salvator would love to introduce; an early saint, perhaps a St Jerome—no unapt place for him and his lion: and somehow it must be contrived to have the water perhaps entering even into the retreat, and reflecting the aged, the hoary bearded saint. Is not then the subject ideal, and the sketch only suggestive? And here let me remark, with regard to that favourite word "finish,"—an elaborate finish of all the detail, either of objects or colouring, would ruin the sketch; it would lose its suggestive character, which is its value. I have here described, I know how inadequately, several very striking scenes; yet are they scarcely a stone's throw apart. I mention them exclusively on that account, for, where there is so much, it must be the more worth the while of the sketcher to take some pains to find out the spot.
What do we mean by the "ideal" of landscape? The "naturalists" ask the question in a tone of somewhat more than doubt. The sketcher is apt to be caught in the snare of nature's many beauties, and, growing enamoured of them in detail, to lose the higher sense in his practical imitation. This is a danger he must avoid, by study, by reflection, by poetry. If the "ideal" be in himself, he will find it in nature. If he sees in mountains, woods, and fields but materials for the use of man, and what the toil of man has made them, he may be a good workman in his imitation, but he will be a poor designer. The "ideal" grows out of a reverence, which he can scarcely feel. If the earth be nothing to him but for the plough, and the rivers for the mill, and its only people are the present people—doomed to toil, bearing about them parochial cares, and tasteless necessity, ignorant and regardless of the history of the earth they tread—he may boast of his love of nature; but his love is, in fact, the love of his technical skill, of his imitation. He thinks more of the how to represent, than what the scene may represent. The ideal ranges beyond the present aspect, and he who has a belief in it will reverence this ancient earth, the cradle wherein he and all living things took form from their creation. He will see visions of the past, and dream dreams of its future aspects and destiny; and will learn, in his meditations, to recall the people of old, and imprint its soil with imaginary footsteps. The painter is no true artist if he feel not the greatness of nature's immortality—at least, that as it rose from the creation so will it be, throwing forth its bounty, and beaming with the same vigorous beauty, till it shall pass away as a scroll. The painter-poet must be of a loving superstition, must acknowledge powers above his own—beings greater between him and the heavens. They may be invisible as angels, yet leave some understanding of their presence. They will voice the woods and the winds, and tell everywhere that all of nature is life. Are there not noble elements here for the landscape painter, and can neither history nor fable supply him with better figures than toil-worn labourers, drovers taking their cattle or sheep to the butchers, and paupers walking the poorhouse? I like not the "naturalist's" poverty of thought. If the art be not twin sister with poetry, her charm is only for the eye. Nothing great ever came from such hands.
"And deeper faith—intenser fire—
Fed sculptor's chisel—poet's pen;
What nobler theme might art require
Than gods on earth, and godlike men?
Yea, gods then watched with loving care
(Or such, at least, the fond belief)
E'en lifeless things of earth and air—
The cloud, the stream, the stem, the leaf:
Iris, a goddess! tinged the flower
With more than merely rainbow hues;
Great Jove himself sent down the shower,
Or freshen'd earth with healing dews!"
Kenyon's Poems.
How do such thoughts enhance all nature's beauties! The sketcher's real work is to see, to feel them all, and to fit them to the mind's poetic thoughts.
I seem to be forgetting that the reader and myself are all this while at the water's edge, and under deep-brow'd rocks; that sunshine has left us, and it is time to climb to the path that leads toward Lynmouth. For such an hour we are on the wrong side of the stream. Now the woods are mapped, and edged only by the sun hastening downward. Yet after awhile we shall not regret that we are in this path. Escaping the closer and shaded wood, we shall reach a more open space, and see the flood of evening's sunlight pouring in. Here it is; my sketch was poor indeed, for there was neither time nor means to do anything like justice to the scene. Here is a narrow, winding rocky path, a little above the river, from whose superimpending bank, trees that now look large shoot across the landscape, and a bold stem or two rises up boldly to meet them; the river stretches to some distance, wooded on this side to the edge, and wooded hills in front, and in perspective. The distant hills are most lovely in colour, pearly and warm gray; the river, the blazing sky reflected, yet showing how rich the tone, by a few yellowish-gray lighter streaks that mark its movement. The fragments of rock in the river are of a pinkish-gray, and, though not dark, yet strongly marked against the golden stream,—the whole scene great in its simplicity of effect and design. In broad day the scene would be passed unnoticed; it would want that simplicity which is its charm, and be a scene of detail; but now the lines are the simplest, and, happily, where the river really turns, its view is lost in the reflection of the shaded wood. And here, in this smallest portion of the picture, the hills on each side seem to meet and fold, giving the variety in the smallest space, upon which I have made remarks in this paper. This beautiful picture of nature I visited several evenings, and it little varied. But the charm lasts not long—the sun sets, or is behind the wooded hill, before its actual setting, yet leaves its tinge of lake blushing above the gold in the sky—the life of the scene has faded, and it is still and solemn. I cannot better describe the impression it left, than by a quotation from an old play, in which the lover sees his mistress, who had swooned, or was in a deathlike sleep:—
"Antonio.
At the first sight I did believe her dead—
Yet in that state so awful she appeared,
That I approached her with as much respect
As if the soul had animated still
That body which, though dead, scarce mortal seemed.
But as the sun from our horizon gone,
His beams do leave a tincture on the skies,
Which shows it was not long since he withdrew;
So in her lovely face there still appeared
Some scattered streaks of those vermilion beams
Which used t'irradiate that bright firmament.
Thus did I find that distressed miracle,
Able to wound a heart, as if alive—
Incapable to cure it, as if dead."
Thus is there sympathy between our hearts and nature—a sympathy, the secret of taste, which, above all, the sketcher should cultivate as the source of his pleasure, and (may it not be added?) of his improvement.
I will not proceed further with description of scenes; Lynmouth will be long remembered. I scarcely know a better spot for the study of close scenery. On reviewing my former impressions with the present, I should not say that Lynmouth has lost, but I have certainly gained some knowledge, and, I think, improved my sympathies with nature; and if I have not enjoyed so enthusiastically as I did sixteen years ago, I have enlarged my sight and extended my power. I am practically a better sketcher. The hand and the eye, work together; the improvement of one advances the other.
I know no better method of sketching than the mixture of transparent and semi-opaque colouring. It best represents the variety and the power of nature; and as it more nearly resembles in its working the practice of oil-painting, so is it the more likely to improve the painter. I have remarked that, even in depth of colour, the semi-opaque is very much more powerful than the transparent, however rich; for the one has, besides its more varied colour, the solidity of nature; whereas the most transparent has ever an unsubstantial look—you see through to the paper or the canvass. Semi-opaque, (or degrees of opacity, till it borders on the transparent,) as it hides the material, and throws into every part the charm of atmosphere, so it will ever bestow upon the sketch the gift of truth.
I did not begin this paper on Lynmouth Revisited with any intention of entering upon the technicalities of art; so I will refrain from any further remarks tending that way, which leads to far too wide a field for present discussion.
[WHAT HAS REVOLUTIONISING GERMANY ATTAINED?]
It is now rather more than a year since we asked, "What would revolutionising Germany be at?" A full year has passed over the dreamy, theorising, restless, and excited head of Germany, then confused and staggering, like "a giant drunken with new wine," but loudly vaunting that its strong dose of revolution had strengthened and not fuddled it, and that it was about to work out of its troubled brains a wondrous system of German Unity, which was to bring it infinite and permanent happiness; and now we would once more ask, What is the result of the attempted application of German revolutionising theory to practice? In fact, what has revolutionising Germany attained? Our first question we asked without being able to resolve an answer. The problem was stated: an attempt was made to arrive at something like a solution out of the distracting hurly-burly of supposed purposes and so-called intentions; but, after every effort to make out our "sum" in any reasonable manner, we were obliged to give it up, as a task impossible to any political mathematician, not of German mould; to declare any definite solution for the present hopeless,—and to end our amount of calculation by arriving only in a cercle vicieux at the statement of the problem with which we started, and asking, as despairingly as a tired schoolboy with a seemingly impracticable equation before him, "What, indeed, would revolutionising Germany be at?" Are we any further advanced now? We will not attempt the difficult sum again, or we might find ourselves obliged to avow ourselves as much deficient in the study of German political mathematics as before. But we may at least try to undertake a mere sum of addition, endeavour to cast up the amount of figures the Germans themselves have laid before us, and make out, as well as we can, what, after a year's hard—and how hard!—work, revolutionising Germany has attained. The species of sum-total, as far as the addition can yet go, to which we may arrive, may be still a very confused and unsatisfactory one; but in asking, "What has revolutionising Germany attained?" we will not take it entirely to our own charge, if the answer attempted to be made is thus confused and unsatisfactory. German political sums are all too puzzling for English heads.
Last year Germany was, as yet, very young in its revolutionary career. It galloped over the country like an unbroken colt, or rather like a mad bull, "running a-muck" it scarcely knew, and seemingly little cared, at what, provided that it trampled beneath its hoofs all that stood, and, with proper culture, might have flourished and borne fruit. It tried to imitate the frantic caperings of its fellow-revolutioniser in the next paddock, just over the Rhine; but it imitated this model in so clumsy a fashion, that it might have been very aptly compared to the ass in the fable, had not the demonstrations it sought to make been destructive kicks, and not mistaken caresses; and the model it sought to copy resembled the bloodhound rather than the lap-dog. It kicked out to the right and to the left, and, with its kicks, inflicted several stunning blows, from which the other states, upon whose heads the kicks fell, found some difficulty in recovering. Even the maddest of the drivers who spurred it on, however, found it necessary to present some goal, at which it was eventually to arrive in its mad career—that goal was called "German Unity" in one great powerful united Germany. Where this visionary goal existed, or how it was to be attained—by what path, or in what direction, none seemed to know; but the cry was, "On, on, on!" That it should miss this goal, thus visionary and indistinct, and plunge on past it, through the darkness of anarchy, to another winning-post, just as indistinct and visionary, called "a universal republic," was a matter of little consideration, or was even one of hope, to those of its principal drivers who whipped, and spurred, and hooted it, with deafening and distracting cries, like the Roman drivers of the unridden horses in the Corso races. A breaker-in was attempted, however, to be placed, and not, at first, precisely by those who most wished to check it, upon the back of the tearing beast, in order to moderate its paces, and canter it as gently as might be, onwards to the denied goal—which still, however, lay only in a most misty distance, to which none seemed to know the road. In this rider, called a central Frankfort parliament, men began to place their hopes, they trusted confidently that it might ride the animal to its destination, although they knew not where that lay. The revolution, then, was decked out with colours of red, and black, and gold—the colours of an old German empire, and of a new derived German unity—and the rider mounted into the saddle. How the rider endeavoured to show the animal's paces—how he strove to guide him forwards—how sometimes he seemed, indeed, to be proceeding along a path, uncertain, it is true, but apparently leading somewhere—how often he stumbled—how often, in his inexperience, he slipped in his saddle—how, at last, he slipped and fell from it altogether, in vain endeavouring, maimed, mutilated, bruised, and half stunned, to spring into the saddle again, are matters of newspaper history that need no detail here. It suffices to say, that the rider was unhorsed—that the animal gave a last desperate plunge, kicking and wounding the only one of the states around that strove to the last to caress and soothe it with gentle treatment—that it now stands perspiring, shaking, quivering in every limb—snorting in vain struggle, and champing the bit of the bridle which Prussian military force has thrown upon it. To what, then, has Germany attained in its revolutionising career? It has, at all events, not reached that imaginary goal to which men strove to ride it without direction-post. The goal is as far off as ever, perhaps farther off than before, as may be shown. It remains just as vague, and visionary, and misty. Not one step seems to have been taken towards it. Has no farther step whatever been taken, then, after all this mad rushing hither and thither? And if any, how, and whither? We shall endeavour to see, as far as we are able. Our readers must, then, judge whether it be forwards or backwards, or whether, in fact, it be any step at all.
The Frankfort parliament has fallen from its seat. Last year, when we gave a sketch of its sittings in that Lutheran church of St Paul in Frankfort—now bearing a stamp which its sober-minded architect probably never dreamt of, as a historical building—it was young, still in hopes; and amidst its inexperience, its vapouring declamation upon impracticable theories, its noise and confusion, its clamorous radicalism, and its internal treachery, that sought every pretext for exciting to anarchy and insurrection, it put forward men of note and ability—who, however lacking in practical experience, gave evidence of noble hearts, if not sound heads, and good intentions, if not governmental power. It contained, amidst much bad, many elements of good; and, if it has no other advantageous result, it has proved a school of experience, tact, and reason—as far at least as Germans, in the present condition of their political education, have been able to profit by its lessons and its teaching. De mortuis nil nisi bonum as far as possible! It is defunct. What its own inability, want of judgment, internal disorganisation, and "vaulting ambition, that o'erleaps its sell," commenced, was completed by the refusal of the principal northern German states to acknowledge its ill-digested constitution. It sickened upon over-feeding of conceit, excess of supposed authority, and a naturally weak constitution, combined with organic defects, weakened still more by a perpetual and distracting fever; it was killed outright by what the liberals, as well as the democrats, of Germany choose to call the ill faith and treachery of Prussia in declining to accept its offers, and ultimately refusing to listen to its dictates. Its dying convulsions were frightful. It fled to Stutgardt, in the hopes that change of air might save it in its last extremity: and there it breathed its last. Its very home is a wreck; its furniture has been sold to pay the expenses of its burial; its lucubrations, and its mighty acts, in which it once fondly hoped to have swayed all Germany, if not the world, have been dispersed, in their recorded form, among cheesemongers and greengrocers as waste-paper, at so much the pound. Its house—the silent, sad, and denuded church of St Paul—looks now like its only mausoleum; and on its walls remains alive the allegorical picture of that great German empire, which it deemed it had but to will to found—the grim, dark, shaded face of which grows grimmer and darker still, day by day; whilst the sun that rises behind it, without illuminating its form, daily receives its thicker and thicker cloud of dust to obscure its painted rays. Of a sooth, the allegory is complete. It is dead, and resolved to ashes. Its better and brighter elements have given up their last breath, as, in their meeting at Gotha, they made a last effort to discuss the acceptance of the constitution which Prussia offered in lieu of their own, and strove, although only still wearing a most ghostly semblance of life, to propose to themselves the best ultimate means of securing that desideratum, which they still seem to consider as the panacea for all evils—the great and powerful "United Germany" of their theoretical dreams. This last breath was not without its noble aspirations. Its less pure, more self-seeking, and darker elements have striven, by wild and no longer (even in appearance) legal means, to galvanise themselves into a false existence; their last struggles were such hideous and distracted contortions as are usually produced by such galvanic applications; and now the German papers daily record the arrest of various members of the so-called "Rump Parliament," (so nicknamed by the application or rather misapplication of an English historical term,) which received its final extinguishing blow at Stutgardt, mixed up, in these days of imprisonment, as the consequence of mistaken liberty, along with insurgents and rebels engaged in the late disastrous scenes acted in the duchy of Baden. Such was to be their fate. But, be it for good or for evil, the Frankfort parliament has died, as was prophesied, and not without convulsions: its purposes have proved null; its hopes have been dispersed to the winds; its very traces have been swept away; its memory is all but a bitter mockery. Thus far, then, we may indeed shake our heads despairingly as we ask—"What has revolutionising Germany as yet attained?"
What has it attained? Let as go on. In the first place, what remains of the gigantic cloud, which men attempted to catch, embody, and model into a palpable form, although with hands inexperienced, and with as little of the creative and vivifying health really within its power, as Frankenstein, when he sought to remould the crumbling elements he possessed into a human form, and produced a monster. What remains of the great united German empire of men's dreams? Nothing but a phantom of a central power, grasping the powerless sceptre of a ghostly empire; surrounded by ministers whose dictates men despise and disregard, in veritable exercise of their functions, as ghostly as itself. The position of the Imperial administration has become a byword and a scoff; and it is lamentable to see a prince, whose good intentions never have been doubted, and whose popular sympathies have been so often shown, standing thus, in a situation which borders upon the ridiculous—an almost disregarded and now useless puppet—a quasi emperor without even the shadow of an empire; and yet condemned to play at empire-administrating—as children play at kings and queens—none heeding their innocent and bootless game. How far the edicts of the defunct Frankfort parliament, and the decrees of the government of the Imperial Vicarage—paralysed in all real strength, if not utterly defunct now—are held as a public mockery, is very pithily evidenced to the least open eyes of any traveller to the baths of Germany, at most of which the gambling tables—supposed to be suppressed, and declared to be illegal by the shade of the "central power,"—openly pursue their manœuvres, and earn their gains as of yore; or, at most, fix upon the doors of their hells a ticket, written "salons reservés," to give them the faint appearance of private establishments, and thus adopt a very flimsy pretext, and effect a most barefaced evasion of a hitherto useless law. Croupiers and gamblers sit squatting, most disrespectfully, at almost every bathing-place, upon the Imperial edict—as the toads and frogs squatted upon King Log—treating him as a jest, and covering him with their filthy slime. By what authority—of the same Imperial Vicar also—the whole country around Frankfort is overrun with Prussian soldiers, it would be difficult to show. That the so-called free city itself should be occupied by a joint garrison of Prussian and Austrian troops for its protection, may be looked upon as a legal measure, adopted and authorised by a new parliament, and a central power, such as it is, as by the old Diet. But when we see in every village round about—in every house, in almost every hovel—those hosts of Prussian spiked helmets gleaming in the sun—those Prussian bayonets planted before every door—those Prussian uniforms, studding, with variegated colour, every green rural scene; when we never cease to hear upon the breeze—wherever we may wander in the country—the clang of Prussian military bands, and the tramp of Prussian infantry; when we find the faces of Prussian military at every window, and observe Prussian soldiers mixing in every action of the common everyday life of the country; and then turn to ask how it comes that Prussian soldiers swarm throughout a part of the land in no way belonging to Prussia, we are able to receive no more reasonable answer than that "they are there because they are there"—an explanation which has a more significant meaning in it than the apparently senseless words seem to express. "They are there because they are there"—that is to say, without any recognised authority from any central German power. "They are there because they are there,"—because Prussia has sent them. Where, then, is the central power?—what is its force? what its authority? what its sense? If, then, all that still remains, in living form, of that great united Germany of men's dreams, is but the "shadow of a shade," in power—a power disregarded—even more, despised and ridiculed—what has revolutionising Germany attained in its chase after the phantom of its hopes?
If in this respect it has attained nothing which it can show, after more than a year's revolution, for the avowed or pretended purpose of obtaining some result to this very end, it cannot be said, however, that nothing remains to Germany of its dream of unity. Spite of sad experience—spite of the uselessness of every effort—spite of sacrifices made and sorrows suffered—Germany still pursues its phantom with as much ardour as before. Like the prince in the fairy-tale, who, panting, breathless, half-dead with exhaustion and fatigue, still hunted without rest for the imaginary original of the fair portrait placed in his hands—untired and unyielding, after the repeated disappointments of lifting veil after veil from forms which he thought might be that of the beloved one—still driven on by an incurable longing—still yearning despairingly, and with false hope,—so does Germany, after lifting veil after veil only to find delusive spectres beneath, still yearn and long for the object of its adoration. It is impossible to travel, even partially, through the country, without discovering, from every conversation with all classes, that the intense craving for this object—this great blessing of a grand and powerful United Germany—is as strong as ever—far stronger than ever! For what was not very long ago only the watchword of the fancied liberal student, in his play of would-be conspirator—what was but the pretext of really conspiring and subversive democrats—what grew only by degrees into the cry of the people, who clamoured, not knowing what they clamoured for—has taken evidently the strongest root throughout the whole mass of German nationality, and grows—grows in despite of the rottenness of the branches it has as yet sent forth—grows in despite of the lopping, breaking, and burning of its first offshoots—grows in despite of the atmosphere of contention, rather than of union, that becomes thicker and more deleterious to its growth, around it, and of the blight it daily receives from the seemingly undispersable mildew of hatred, suspicion, and total want of sympathy between Southern and Northern Germany, which formerly arose only from uncongeniality of temperament, mixed up more or less with difference of religious creed, but now is generated by a thousand causes. This intense craving for the possession of the phantom—increasing, it would seem, in proportion as the phantom flies farther and farther from the grasp—is no longer expressed by the student, the democrat, and the man of the people: it pervades all classes from below to above; it is in the mouth of the man of caution and of sense, as in that of the wild and poetico-political enthusiast; it becomes more and more universal, and it amounts to a mania. Ask of whom you will, "Whither tends German hope?" and the answer will still and ever be the same—"German unity." But ask no more; for if you inquire, as last year, into the "how," the "when," the "where," the answer will in most cases be given in the same strain of incomprehensible and still more impracticable rhapsody—visionary, poetical, noble sometimes, but purposeless as before; or men will shrug their shoulders, shake their heads, and sigh, but still dream on the dream of German unity—still clamour for it loudly. And well may they shake their heads and groan, if such be the end and aim of all German aspirations! for where, indeed, is the pith that leads to it? That which Germany is itself following up, leads (for the present at least) visibly from it, and not towards it. Prussia has promulgated its constitution,—and we may ask, par parenthèse, whether that is to be put forward as the great end which revolutionising Germany has attained, after more than a year's revolution? Prussia has called upon all Germany to join with it, hand in hand, in this constitution, granted and given, but not accepted, at the hands of a Frankfort parliament. In answer to its call, it has found the cleft between Northern and Southern Germany—the cleft, of envy and jealousy, suspicion and mistrust—growing wider and wider to oppose it. It has attempted to form a partial union of Northern Germany—between the more northern states of Prussia, Hanover, and Saxony; but even in this union has been disunion—reticence, and suspicion, and doubt, and indecision, among the proposed allies themselves; while Austria, Bavaria, and even Wurtemberg, have held aloof to sulk and scoff, and have seemed to bide that time when Austria should be less shackled, and could better oppose the supremacy of Northern German influence. Coalitions even now are talked of, to which, if Prussia be not a stranger, it is to be admitted only as a humbled ally. With these feelings, which exist not only between powers, but in the people, the cry of United Germany is but a jest—the longing a green-sickness. Certainly revolutionising Germany has not thus far attained any step in its progress towards the great desideratum of its nationality. The only semblance of progress has been, in the advances of Prussia towards supremacy, in the cession of the principality of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen to its territory, (an example which other small German principalities may follow,) in its present occupation of the free town of Hamburg, in its military occupation of the duchy of Baden, of which more further on. But if these be steps towards a united Germany, tell it to Southern Germany, and hear what it will say!
If so little, then, has been attained by revolutionising Germany, in its progress towards its most loudly clamoured desire, let us see what else it has attained. After a year's labour, which was not without its throes, revolutionising Germany, as represented by its central parliament, brought forth its constitution—a rickety child, but fully expected by its fond, and in many respects infatuated parents, to grow into a giant, and flourish under the edifice of a United German Empire. The implicit adoption of this bantling by the several German states, as their heir and future master, was declared by revolutionisers to be the sine quâ non of their sufferance still to exist at all, under the will of the people. Unhappy bantling, decked out with all sorts of promised gifts for the future weal of mankind by its would-be fairy godmothers! it proved but a changeling—or rather an imp, provided with every curse, instead of every blessing; as if the gifts it was intended to bestow had been reversed by a wicked fairy among the godmothers, who had more power than the rest. And, of a truth, there was such a one among them: and her name was Anarchy or Subversion, although the title she gave herself was Red Republic, and the beast on which she rode was Self-interest. The consequence was, that the very contrary occurred to that which revolutionisers had prophesied or rather menaced. Prussia, and the other states, which refused to adopt the bantling, thus menacingly thrown into their arms, have gone on, we cannot say the "even," but uneven "tenor of their way"—no matter now by what means, for we speak only of the strange destinies of the much-laboured, long-expected, loudly-vaunted Frankfort constitution. Almost the only one—at least of the larger states the only one—that seemingly accepted the adoption forced upon it, with frankness, willingness, and openness, has been convulsed by the most terrible of civil wars. In Baden, the acceptance of the Frankfort constitution, and not its rejection, by a well-meaning, mild, but perhaps weak ruler, was eagerly seized upon as a pretext for disaffection, armed insurrection, civil war; while Wurtemberg, where it was received by the king, although with evident unwillingness, or, as he himself expressed it, in a somewhat overstrained tone of pathos, "with bleeding and broken heart," narrowly escaped being involved in the same fearful issue. The process by which this result was attained in Baden was curious enough, although fully in accordance with the usual manœuvres of the anarchical leaders of the day, who, while denouncing Jesuitism, in many parts of the world, as the great evil and anti-popular influence against which they have most to contend, evidently adopt the supposed and most denounced principle of Jesuitism—that "the ends justify the means"—as their own peculiar line of conduct; and use every species of treachery, deceit, falsehood, and delusion, as holy and righteous weapons in the sacred cause of liberty, or of that idol of their worship which they choose to nickname liberty. In showing what revolutionising Germany has, or rather perhaps has not, as yet, attained, we must briefly, then, revert once more to that insurrection and its suppression, that has so fearfully devastated the duchy of Baden, and its neighbouring province of the Palatinate, which, although belonging to Bavaria, is so distant and divided from that kingdom as to be included, without further distinction, in the same designation.
It was with almost prophetic spirit that we, last year, spoke of the unhappy duchy of Baden, which had then, as since, the least cause of complaint of any of the several subdivisions of Germany. "Nothing," it was then said, "can be more uneasy and disquieting than its appearance. In this part of Germany, the revolutionary fermentation appears far more active, and is more visible in the manner, attitude, and language of the lower classes, than even in those (at that time) hotbeds of revolutionary movement, Austria and Prussia. To this state of things the confinity with agitated France, and consequently a more active affinity with its ideas, caught like a fever from a next-door neighbour's house, the agency of the emissaries from the ultra-republican Parisian clubs, who find an easier access across the frontiers, and the fact also that the unhappy duchy has been, if not the native country, at least the scene of action of the republican insurgents, Hecker and Struve, have all combined to contribute." "It is impossible to enter the duchy, and converse with the peasant population, formerly and proverbially so peacefully disposed in patriarchal Germany—formerly so smiling, so ready, so civil, perhaps only too obsequious in their signs of respect, now so insolent and rude—without finding the poison of those various influences gathering and festering in all their ideas, words, and actions."
Such were the views written last year; and this state of things has since continued to increase, as regards popular fermentation, and disposition to insurrection. Demagogic agitators swarmed in the land, instilling poison wherever they went, and rejoicing as they saw the virus do its work in the breaking out of festering sores. The tactics of this party, in all lands, has been to try their experiments upon the military; but it has only been in Baden, thus demoralised, and disorganised by weakness of sufferance, and a vain spirit of concession and looked-for conciliation, that these subjects were found fitting for the efforts of the experimentalisers. The virus had already done its work among them, to the utmost hopes of the poisoning crew, when the New Frankfort Constitution—the rejection of which was to be the signal for a quasi legal insurrection—was accepted by the Grand-duke of Baden. But the agitators were not to be thus baffled. A pretence, however shallow and false, was easily found in the well-prepared fermentation of men's minds; and the military, summoned by demagogic leaders to tumultuous meetings, were easily persuaded that a false, or at least a defective draught of the new boasted constitution had been read to them and proclaimed—that, in the real constitution, an enactment provided that the soldiers were to choose and elect their own officers—that this paragraph had been carefully suppressed; and that the military had been thus deprived and cheated of their rights. Easily detected as might have been the falsehood, it nevertheless succeeded in its purposes. The military insurrection, in which the tumultuous and evil-disposed of the lower classes, and a great portion of the disaffected peasantry joined, broke out on the very evening of one of these great meetings; and, by means of a well-prepared and actively organised concentration of measures, in various parts of the duchy at the same time. Thus was the very acceptance of the revolutionary constitution made in Baden a pretext to stir the land to insurrection.
After the full account already published in these pages, it is needless to enter into detail, with regard to the events which marked the progress and suppression of this great insurrection. It is only to show the insensate state of mind to which revolutionary agents, left to do their will, were able to work up the military; the confused ideas and purposes, with which these would-be revolutionising German heads were filled; the ignorance that was displayed among these men, said to be enlightened by "patriots," and their want of all comprehension of the very rights for which they pretended to clamour—in fact, the utter absence of any experience gained by the lower classes, and especially the military portion of them, after more than a year's revolutionising, that we briefly recapitulate some of the leading events of the outbreak. It was with a perfect headlong frenzy that the garrison of the fortress of Rastadt first revolted; it was with just as much appearance of madness that the mutiny broke out simultaneously in the other garrison towns. There was every evidence of rabid mania in the deplorable scenes which followed, when superior officers in vain attempted with zeal and courage to stem the torrent, and, in many instances, lost their lives at the hands of the infuriated soldiery; when others were cruelly and disgracefully mis-handled, and two or three, unable to contend with the sense of dishonour and degradation which overwhelmed them as military men, rushed, maddened also, into suicide, to have their very corpses mutilated by the men whom they had treated, as it happened, with kindness and concession; when others again, who had escaped over the frontiers, were, by a violation of the Wurtemberg territory, captured, led back prisoners, and immured, under every circumstances of cruelty and ignominy, in the fortress they had in vain attempted loyally to guard. There was madness in all this; and then we learn, to complete the deplorable picture, from a very accurate account of all the circumstances, lately published by a Baden officer, as well as from another pamphlet, more circumscribed in detail, but fully as conclusive as regards narration of feeling, in almost every page, that when the insurgent soldiers were asked by their officers what they wanted, they could only answer, "Our rights and those of the people;" and, when questioned further, "What are those rights?" either held their tongues and shook their heads in ignorance, or replied with the strangest naïveté, "That you ought to know better than we." Still more strikingly characteristic of the insensate nature of the struggle are the examples where the infatuated soldiers parted from their officers with tears in their eyes, then, driven on by their agitators, hunted them to the death; and then, again, with eyes opened at last to their delusion, sobbed forth the bitterest repentance for their blindness.
It has been already seen how the Grand-duke fled the land, how Baden was given up, in a state of utter anarchy, to a Provisional government, that existed but long enough to be utterly rent and torn by the very instruments which its members had contributed to set in movement; and to a disorganised, tumultuous army, prepared to domineer and tyrannise in its newly-acquired self-power; how the insurrection was suppressed, after an unwilling appeal to Prussia by the Grand-duke—how the insurgent troops were dispersed by means of a Prussian army—and how Rastadt was finally surrendered by the revolutionary leaders. As these events have already been detailed, and as it is our purpose to ask in general, "What has revolutionising Germany attained?" we need do no more on this head, than ask, "What, by its late movement, has revolutionising Baden attained?" "What then is the present position, and the present aspect of the country, after the armed suppression?"
What, indeed! Poor old Father Rhine, although still, in these revolutionary days, somewhat depressed in spirits, does not now, however, exhibit that aspect of utter melancholy and despair which we last year pictured; he has even contrived to reassume something of that conceited air which we have so often witnessed in his old face. Foreign tourists, if not in the pleasure-seeking shoals of aforetime, at least in very decent sprinklings, return again to pay him visits; and the hotels upon his banks give evidence that his courts are not wholly deserted. Ems, from various causes independent of its natural beauties—the principal one of which has been the pilgrimage of French Legitimists to the heir of the fallen Bourbons, during his short residence in that sweet bathing-place—has overflowed with "guests." Homburg has had scarcely a bed to offer to the wanderer on his arrival. Rhenish Prussia, then, has profited, by its comparative state of quiet, somewhat to redeem its losses of last year. But the poor duchy of Baden still hangs its head mournfully; and Baden-Baden, the fairest queen of German watering-places, finds itself utterly deprived of its well-deserved crown of supremacy, and seems to have covered itself, in shame, with a veil of sadness. Although all now wears again a smiling face of peaceful quiet, and Prussian uniforms, which at least have the merit of studding with colour the gay scene, give warrant for peace by the force of the bayonet, yet tourists seem to avoid the scene of the late fearful convulsions, as they would a house in which the plague has raged, although now declared wholly disinfected. A few wandering "guests" only come and go, and tell the world of foreign wanderers with dismal faces, "Baden-Baden is empty!" Travellers seem to hurry through the country, as swiftly as the railroad can whirl them across it, towards Strasburg and Bâle—ay! rather to republican France, or fermenting Switzerland: they appear unwilling to turn aside and seek rest among the beautiful hills of a country where the reek of blood, or the vapour of the cannon-smoke, may be still upon the air. In Baden-Baden bankrupt hotels are closed; and the lower classes, who have been accustomed to amass comparative wealth by the annual influx of foreigners, either by their produce, or in the various different occupations of attending upon visitors, wear the most evident expression of disappointment, listlessness, and want. Baden pays the bitter penalty of insurrection, by being utterly crippled in one of the branches of its most material interests. It bears as quiet an aspect outwardly, however, as if it were sitting, in humiliation and shame, upon the stool of repentance. There is nothing (if they go not beyond the surface) to prevent foreign pleasure or health seekers from finding their pleasure or repose in this sweet country; and in what has been simply, but correctly, termed "one of the loveliest spots upon God's earth," as of yore; but they are evidently shy, and look askance upon it. Baden pays its penalty.
Although nature smiles, however, upon mountain and valley, and romantic village, as cheerily as before, and there is gaiety still in every sunbeam, yet traces of the horrors lately enacted in the land are still left, which cannot fail to strike the eye of the most listless, mere outward observer, as he whisks along, the country—sometimes in the trampled plain, on which nature has not been as yet able to throw her all-covering veil again, and which shows where has been the battle-field, which should have been the harvest-field, and was not—sometimes in the shattered wall or ruined house—sometimes in the wood cut down or burned. At every step the traveller may be shown, by his guide, the spots on which battles or skirmishes have taken place, where the cannon has lately roared, where blood has been shed, where men have fallen in civil contest. Here he may be conveyed over the noble railway-bridge of the Neckar, and see the broken parapet, and hear how the insurgents had commenced their work of destruction upon the edifice, but were arrested in its accomplishment by the rapid advance of the Prussian troops. Here again he may mark the late repairs of the railroad, where it has been cut up into trenches, to prevent the speedy conveyance of the war-material of the enemy. If he lingers on his way, he may seek in vain in the capital, or other "residence towns" of Baden, where ducal palaces stand, for the treasures of antiquity which were their boast. Pillage has done its work: insurgents have appropriated these objects of value to themselves, in the name of the people; and the costly and bejewelled trappings of the East, the rich gold inlaid armour, and the valuable arms, brought in triumph home by the Margrave Louis of Baden, after his Turkish campaigns, are now dispersed, none knows where, after having fed the greed of some French red-republican or Polish democrat. But it is more particularly in the neighbourhood of the fortress town of Rastadt, where the insurgents last held out, that the strongest traces of the late convulsions may be found. Marks of devastation are everywhere perceptible in the country around; the remains of the temporary defences of the besiegers still lie scattered in newly dug trenches; and the blackened walls of a railway station-house, by the road-side, tell him how it was bombarded from the town by the besieged insurgents, and then burned to the ground, lest it should afford shelter to the besiegers. These are, however, after all, but slight evidences of what the duchy of Baden has attained by its late revolution. If we go below the surface, the dark spots are darker and far more frequent still.
It is impossible to enter into conversation with persons of any class, without discovering, either directly or indirectly, how deeply rooted still remains the demoralisation of the country. The bitterness of feeling, and the revolutionary mania of revolutionising, to obtain no one can tell what, may have been crushed down and overawed; but they evidently still smoulder below the surface and ferment. The volcano-mouth has been filled with a mass of Prussian bayonets; but it still burns below: it is clogged, not extinct. The democratic spirit has been too deeply infused to be drugged out of the mass of the people by the dose of military force. Fearful experience seems to have taught the sufferers little or nothing; and although, here and there, may be found evidences of bitter repentance, consequent upon personal loss of property, or family suffering, yet even below that may be constantly found a profound bitterness, and an eager rancour, against unknown and visionary enemies. Talk to that poor old woman, who sits with pale face upon a stile on the mountain-side. She will weep for the son she has lost among the insurgents, and deplore, with bitter tears, his error and his delusion; and yet, if you gain her confidence, she will raise her head, and, with some fire in her sunken eye, tell you that she has still a son at home, a boy, her last-born, who bides but his time to take up the musket against "those, accursed enemies of the people and the people's rights!" Enter into conversation with that shopkeeper behind his counter, or that hotel-keeper in his palace hotel—both are "well to do" in the world, or have been so, until revolutions shattered the commerce of the one, or deprived the other of wealthy visitors—you may expect to find in them a feeling, taught them at least by experience, against any further convulsion. No such thing; they are as ripe for further revolution as the lower classes, and as eager to avenge their losses—not upon those who have occasioned them, but upon those who would have averted them. Even in the upper classes you will find that craving for the idol, "United Germany," to which we have before alluded, and which seems to invite revolutions, rather than to fear them. Of course exceptions may be found, and many, to the examples here given; but in putting these figures into the foreground of the picture to be painted of the state of Baden, (if not of Germany in general,) we firmly believe we have given characteristic types of the prevailing feelings of the country. German heads, once let loose into the regions of ideal fantasy, be it political or philosophical, or the strange and unpractical mixture of both, seem as if they were not to be recalled to the earth and the realms of palpable truth by the lessons of experience, however strongly, and even terribly, inculcated.
The prevailing feeling, however, at the present time in Baden, among the lower classes, seems the hatred of the occupation of the Prussian army, which has saved the land from utter anarchy. The very men who have been taught by their demagogues to clamour for "German Unity" as a pretext for insurrection, look on the Prussian military as usurping aliens and foreign oppressors. Military occupation is certainly the prevailing feature of the country. Prussian troops are everywhere—in every town, in every village, in every house, in every hovel. Whichever way you turn your eyes, there are soldiers—soldiers—soldiers—horse and foot. The military seem to form by far the greater half of the population; and, much disposed as many may have been to greet the return of the Grand-duke to his states, as the symbol of the cause of order, yet, in spite of birthday fêtes, and banners, and garlands, and loyal devices in flowers, which have bedecked the road of the traveller in the land not long since, these same men will grumble to you of those "accursed Prussian soldiers," who alone were able to restore him to his country, when the Baden army, as troops to support their sovereign, existed no longer—when those who composed it fought at the head of the insurgents. The very shadow of a Baden army, even, is not now to be found. And it is this fact, and the evidences that an insurrectionary spirit is still widely spread abroad, which are given as the excuse of a continued Prussian occupation. It is difficult, certainly, for a traveller in a land so lately convulsed, and still placed in circumstances so peculiar, to arrive at truth. Prussian officers will tell him how, on the arrival of the Prussian army in the country, and the dispersion of the insurgents, flowers were strewn along its path by the populations, who thus seemingly hailed the Prussian soldiers as their deliverers; and in the next breath they will inform him that this was only done from fear, and that, were it not for this salutary fear, the insurrection would break forth again. He may suspect that this account is given as the pretext for a continued occupation of the land. But Baden officials will tell him that such is the case—that Prussian troops alone keep, down a further rising; and if he still suspects his source, he will certainly find among the people, at all events, both the hatred and the fear. Meanwhile the Prussian officers seem to think that both these feelings are necessary for the pacification of the land; and, upon their own showing, or rather boasting, they inculcate them by flogging insolent peasants across the cannon, by shooting down insurgent prisoners, who spit upon them from prison windows, without any other form of trial, and by other autocratic repressive measures of a similar stamp. Meanwhile, also, they seem, by all their words as well as actions, to look upon Baden as a conquered province, acquired to Prussia, and openly and loudly vaunt their conquest. Let it not be supposed that this is exaggeration. It is the general tone of Prussian officers—ay, and even of the common Prussian soldiers occupying the duchy of Baden—with a super-addition of true Prussian conceit in manner, indescribable by words. In spite of what we may read in late newspaper reports, then, of conciliation between the two great powers of Northern and Southern Germany, we may well ask, What will rival Austria say to this? Where is the prospect here of a great United Germany? And, after this resumé of the present position of Baden as a part, we may well ask, also, What has revolutionising Germany attained as a whole?
We have seen that the main object, and at all events the chief pretext of the revolution, the establishment of a great United Germany, is still further from the grasp of the revolutionising country than ever—although it remains still the clamour and the cry. Prussia may point in irony to its advances, by the occupation of the duchy of Baden and of Hamburg, and by its acquisition of the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and smile while it says that it has effected thus much towards a union of Germany under one head. Or, in more serious mood, it may put forward its projected alliance of the three northern German potentates. But, with regard to the former, what, in spite of the reports we hear of conciliation, will be the conduct of jealous Austria, now at last unshackled in its dealings? The latter only shows still more the cleft that divides the northern portion of the would-be united country from the southern. "United Germany" only remains, then, a plaything in the hands of dreamers and democrats—a pretty toy, about which they may build up airy castles to the one—an instrument blunted and notched, for the present, to the other. What has revolutionising Germany attained here?
What declared last year the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, and leading member of the cabinet of the newly established central power—put forward, as it was, as the programme of the new government for all Germany? It denounced "jealousies between the individual states, and revilings of the northern by the southern parts of the empire," as "criminal absurdities;" and yet went on to say that "if the old spirit of discord and separation were still too powerfully at work—if the jealousy between race and race, between north and south, were still too strongly felt—the nation must convince itself of the fact, and return to the old feudal system." It declared, however, in the same breath as it were, that "to retrograde to a confederation of states would only be to create a mournful period of transition to fresh catastrophes, and new revolutions." Failing of the realisation of the great union, to which the revolution was supposed to tend, the manifesto then placed revolutionising Germany between the alternative of returning to a part, which it declared impossible, or further convulsions and civil wars. It put Germany, in fact, into a cleft stick. Has a year's revolution tended to extricate it from this position? The alternative, remains the same—Germany sticks in the cleft stick as much as ever. Revolutionising Germany, with all its throes and all its efforts, has attained nothing to relieve it from this position. Without accepting the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, either as necessarily prophetic, or as a political dictum, from which there is no evasion or escape, it is yet impossible to look back upon it, while trying to discover what revolutionising Germany has attained, without sad presentiments, without looking with much mournful apprehension upon the future fate of the country. To return, however to the present state of Germany—for the investigation of that is our purpose, and not speculation upon the future, although none may look upon the present without asking with a sigh, "What is to become of Germany?"
We find the revolutionary spirit crushed by the events of the last year, but not subdued; writhing, but not avowing itself vanquished. The fermentation is as great as heretofore: experience seems to have taught the German children in politics no useful lesson. Now that the great object, for which the revolution appeared to struggle, has received so notable a check, the confusion of purposes, (if German political rhapsodies may be called such;) of projects, (if, indeed, in such visionary schemes there be any,) and pretexts, (of a nature so evidently false,) is greater than ever—the confusion not only exists, but ferments, and generates foul air, which must find vent somewhere, be it even in imagination. Of the revolutionary spirits whom we sketched last year in Germany, the students alone seem somewhat to have learned a lesson of experience and tactics. Although many may have been found in the ranks of insurgents, yet the general mass has sadly sobered down, and, it may be hoped, acquired more reason and method. The Jews—we cannot again now inquire into the strange whys and wherefores—still remain the restless, gnawing, cankering, agitating agents of revolutionary movement. The insolence and coarseness of the lower classes increases into bitter rancour, and has been in no way amended by concession and a show of good-will. Among the middle-lower classes, the most restless and reckless spirits, it appears from well-drawn statistical accounts, are the village schoolmasters, (as in France)—to exemplify that "a little learning is a dangerous thing"—the barbers, and the tailors. Had we time, it might form the subject of curious speculation to attempt to discover why these two latter occupations, (and especially the last one) induce, more than all others, heated brains and revolutionary habits; but we cannot stop on our way to play with such curious questions. Over all the relations of social, as well as public life, hover politics like a deleterious atmosphere, blighting all that is bright and fair, withering art in all its branches, science, and social intercourse. And, good heavens, what politics!—the politics of a bedlamite philosopher in his ravings. In the late festivities, given in honour of Goethe at Frankfort, the city of his birth, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of that event, when it might have been supposed that all men might have, for once, united to do homage to the memory of one whom Germans considered their greatest spirit, politics again interfered to thwart, and oppose, and spoil. The democratic party endeavoured to prevent the supplies offered to be given by the town for the festivities, because they saw the names of those they called the "aristocrats," among the list of the committee, even although men of all classes were invited to join it; and, when a serenade was given before the house in which the poet was born, the musicians were driven away, and their torches extinguished, by a band of so-called "patriots," who insisted upon singing, in the place of the appointed cantato composed for the occasion, the revolutionary chorus in honour of the republican Hecker—the now famous song of the revolutionary battle-field, the Hecker-Lied. And such an example of this fermentation of politics in all the circumstances of life, however far from political intents, is not singular: it is only characteristic of the everyday doings of the times. Among the upper classes, those feelings which we last year summed up in the characteristic words, "the dulness of doubt and the stupor of apprehension," have only increased in intensity. None see an issue out of the troubled passage of the revolution. Their eyes are blinded by a mist, and they stumble on their way, dreading a precipice at every step. This impression depicts more especially the feelings of the so-called moderates and liberal conservatives who had their representatives among the best elements of the Frankfort parliament, and who, with the vision of a united Germany before their eyes, laboured to reach that visionary goal, at the same time that they endeavoured to stem the ever-invading torrent of ultra-revolution and red-republicanism. "The dulness of doubt, and the stupor of apprehension," seem indeed to have fallen upon them since the last vain meeting of the heads of their party in Gotha. They let their hands fall upon their laps, and sit shaking their heads. Gagern, the boldest spirit, and one of the best hearts that represents their cause and has struggled for its maintenance, is represented as wholly prostrate in spirit, unstrung—missgestimmt, as the Germans have it. He has retired entirely into private life, to await events with aching heart. If any feeling is still expressed by the moderate liberals, it has been, of late, sympathy in the fate of Hungary, which the Prussians put forward visibly only out of opposition to Austria, at the same time that, with but little consistency, they condemn all the agents of the Hungarian struggle.
We have endeavoured to give a faint and fleeting sketch of what revolutionising Germany has attained, after a year's revolution. The picture is a dark one, of a truth, but we believe in no ways overdone. In actual progress the sum-total appears to be a zero. The position of Germany, although calmer on the surface, is as difficult, as embarrassing, as much in the "cleft stick," as when we speculated upon it last year. All the well-wishers of the country and of mankind may give it their hopes; but when they look for realisation of their hopes, they can only shake their heads, with the Germans themselves, as they ask, "What will become of Germany?"