The double mention of the stars is hardly tautological; for the first mention of them is an indispensable stroke in the sketch, which was intended to convey to our minds the idea of a fine bright night; while the shining of so many particular stars in the immeasurable field of heaven is the point of the simile. As many as are the stars visible in such a sky, so many were the camp fires of the Trojan bivouac on the broad plain.
Of this witching power of the moon all people appear to be conscious. But how does it come to act upon us in this way? Many, doubtless, have tried to analyze, and get to the bottom of the feeling. I would suggest that the effect is produced by an unconscious comparison of the moon with the sun; and, then, by an unconscious inference drawn from the comparison. The sun is the lord of our waking hours, and, as respects the moon, is our standard of comparison. Whatever we think of we must think of in reference to something else, that something else being the leading and most familiar object of the class the thing, at the moment thought about, belongs to, except it be the leading object itself, when the reverse reference is made. When, then, we look at the moon, there is a reference in the mind to the ideas and feelings, the results of our experience, we have about the sun. We may not be aware of this, but it is so, and cannot be otherwise. The sun is what gives us our conception of a large luminous body, apparently moving, majestically, round our earth. Having, then, made this comparison unconsciously—if it were done consciously there would be no spell, or witchery—we note the differences. The light is not the same. It does not penetrate to the recesses of objects. It does not give clear definition. It does not enable us to make out surfaces at a distance. It is not dazzling. It does not enable the beholder to distinguish colours. There is something spectral about it. But, above all, it is light unaccompanied by warmth. The substratum of our thought, as we look at the moon, is the sun: yet everything is different. The inference, again unconsciously arrived at, is that of the wondrous variety, combined with unspeakable magnitude, and other deeply affecting particulars, in these the greatest works, as they strike us at the moment, of the dimly-apprehended mystery of the universe. These half-formed thoughts, and their corresponding emotions, are brought home, not so much by the sun, because we are too familiar with it, and the objects we compare it with unconsciously are of inferior grandeur, as they are by the moon, that is, by the contemplation of it on a bright clear night. The moon stands far above all natural objects, indeed, it stands almost alone, in possessing the means for producing, in the way I have supposed, on all minds the effect we are endeavouring to understand. And the effect is deepened by the character of the hour. It is night. All is still. There is nothing to distract attention; nothing to dissipate the effect.
It will help us here, if we see that it is, in part, the same reason, which impels the dog to bay the moon. With him, as with ourselves, the standard of comparison is the sun. The light of the full moon invites him to look out from his kennel. He sees, as he thinks, the sun in heaven. The sun has ever been to him the source of warmth as well as of light. He has come to connect the idea of light emanating from a great luminary in heaven with that of warmth. But this sun, he is looking at now, does not give him any warmth. It even appears to strike him with a chill. The light, too, which it emits has differences, which are very perceptible, but unwonted, and unintelligible. It does not enable him to make out familiar objects in the way in which light ought. His nerves are affected by these differences and disappointments. His agitation increases. In the still night there is nothing to divert his thoughts. It becomes insupportable. He gives unconscious expression to his agitation. He bays the moon. It is an expression of deep distress.
These feelings of the dog may also in some respects be compared to the feelings that used to come over all mankind, and still come over the savage, and other untutored people, at the contemplation of an eclipse.
September 18.—The lightning of last night was not an empty threat, for this morning dense masses of cloud were rolling down the valley, and there was much rain. We had been talking of going up the Dent du Midi; but, as it was, we could not get out till late in the afternoon, and then it still continued to be showery. We managed, however, to see one of the factories for parquetry floors, of which there are several here. Their work is beautifully executed, and very cheap. It is sent all over the world. We saw some orders that had just been executed for Egypt, and for the United States.
The contrast between Aigle and Leukabad is complete. Here everything is new, and neat, and bright. Opposite to us, across the road—we were quite new ourselves—was a house, in its trim grounds, as new, and neat, and bright as freshly wrought stone, and fresh paint could make it. There was not a weather-stain upon it. At the bottom of our garden were a party of jabbering Italian masons running up what was to be a large pension. But the most conspicuous of the new things in Aigle was a grand hotel, a little way off, nearer the mountains: so new that the grounds were not yet laid out. And so it was with almost everything in this flourishing little place, which has secured its full share in the rapidly-growing prosperity of the country. Its attractions are that it has a dry soil; a warm, sunny situation; and cheerful views. The baths of Leukabad cannot keep it alive. The sunshine of Aigle gives it life. If the decay of Leukabad, and the prosperity of Aigle at all show that people now endeavour to retain health by natural means, whereas the plan formerly was to let it go, and then endeavour to recover it by very doubtful means, we may deem the world has, in this particular, grown somewhat wiser than it was of yore; and so far, to go back once more to our old friend, Homer, we may boast that we are better than our fathers.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DRAMA OF THE MOUNTAINS
Non canimus surdis.—Virgil.
I will here give two or three pages to the blue boy. He is not at all aware that I am about to put him into print. The reader, I trust, will think that the betrayal of confidence involved in my doing so is not altogether unjustifiable. I mentioned that on the day we crossed the Grimsel, from the Rhone Glacier to Meiringen, he was unusually silent. He afterwards told me that he had then been engaged in composing a drama, which was to be entitled ‘The Drama of the Mountains,’ in which the most conspicuous mountains he had seen—he had in 1870 made the acquaintance of M. Blanc—were to be the Dramatis Personæ. Nothing more was said on the subject then, or afterwards. We have infantine productions of Dr. Johnson, Pope, the late Professor Conington, and of others. I now offer the following drama, as an addition to this kind of literature. I can vouch for its entire authenticity and genuineness. It shall be printed from the blue boy’s own MS. The whole composition was arranged in his mind, some days before it was put upon paper, without a hint or suggestion from anybody, and subsequently not a word was corrected, nor even a point in the stopping altered. It could not have been more entirely his own had he been the only soul in Switzerland at the time it was composed. He was alone, too, at the time it was put upon paper. On the first day we were at Aigle—I have just mentioned that it was a wet day—I found him writing it currente calamo; and on hearing what he was about, I immediately left the room.