The sense of power which man cannot control is one thing that makes the sea such a delightful object of contemplation; the huge white main, and deep, tremendous voice of the vast creature over which man's daring and his knowledge give him but such imperfect mastery, suggest images of strength which are full of sublime fascination as one stands on the shore, looking at the vasty deep, and remembers how precarious and uncertain is man's dominion over it, and how God alone rules and governs it. It is impossible not to rejoice in the great sense of its huge power and freedom, even though their manifestations toward men are so often terrible and destructive.... Oh yes, indeed, I, like Wallenstein, have faith in the "strong hours," and hold their influence the more efficacious that we seldom think of resisting it; or, if we do, are seldom successful in the attempt....
The theater is going on very ill, but negotiations are pending between the partners, which it is hoped may eventually terminate in some arrangement with the creditors about the property. I have been acting Bianca again; I certainly am not jealous, and cannot imagine being so, any more of my husband than of my friend. I doubt if I have the power of loving which produces jealousy, in spite of which that part tries me dreadfully. I can conceive no torment comparable to that passion, which, however, I think is foreign to my own nature. I am reading Daru's "History of Venice," and am rather disappointed in the entertainment I expected to derive from it. It is a pretty long undertaking, too.... Remember me to all your people; and since you will have it that I am twin-sister to a fountain, remember me to my cousin, the dear little spring in the dell, which I love the more that it sometimes reflects your face and figure, as well as the fairies who dance round it by night. Do you hear that poor Lord Grey is said to be haunted by a vision of Lord Castlereagh's head? It sounds like a temptation of the devil to scare him into cutting his throat. Lord Brougham and the Duke of Wellington seem to me the only two men likely to keep their heads in these times of infinite political perturbation; but the one is made of steel, and the other of india-rubber.
Yours, dearest, always,
F. A. K.
Monday, 19th.—Went to Fozzard's, and had a pleasant, gossiping ride with Lady Grey and Miss Cavendish. While I was still riding, the Duchess of Kent and our little queen that is to be came down into the school; I was presented to them at their desire, and thought Princess Victoria a very unaffected, bright-looking girl. Fozzard made me gallop round; I think he is rather proud of showing me off.... My father is not so well again to-day. How dreadful these alternations are! I read Daru all the afternoon, and then sang in my own room to amuse Henry, till dinner-time. Colonel Bailey sent me the mare's saddle and bridle, and after dinner the boys put them on a chair for me, and gave me an absurd make-believe ride.
Wednesday, 21st—Dear Mr. Harness called, and I received him. He tells me that at the theater they want to do his tragedy ("The Wife of Antwerp," was, I think, the name of the piece) without my father; but this seems to me really sheer madness. The play is a pretty, interesting, well-written piece, and, well propped and sustained, may perhaps succeed for a few nights, but as to throwing the whole weight, or rather weakness of it, upon my shoulders, or any one pair of shoulders, it is folly to think of it. It is not a powerful sort of monologue like "Fazio," where the interest centres in one person and one passion, and therefore if that character is well sustained the rest can shift for itself. It is no such matter; it is a play of incident and not of character, and must be played by people and not one person. What terrible bad management! But, poor people! what can they do, with my father lying disabled there? If it was not for their complete disregard for their own interest, I should be inclined to quarrel with them for the way in which they are ruining mine; and I sincerely hope, for the sake of everybody concerned, that Mr. Harness will resist this senseless proposition.
I went with John in the afternoon to Angerstein's Gallery (M. Angerstein's fine collection of pictures was not then incorporated in the National Gallery, of which it subsequently became so important a portion); there are some new pictures there. Unluckily, we had only an hour to stay, but I brought away a great deal with me for so short a time. Among the additions was a very singular old painting, "The Holy Family," by one of the earliest masters, whose name I forget, not being familiar with it. I looked long at the glorious Titian, the "Bacchus and Ariadne," which always reminds me of—
"Whence come ye, jolly Satyrs, whence come ye?
Like to a moving vintage down they came."
One of the most famous pictures here is "Our Saviour disputing with the Doctors," by Leonardo da Vinci. I hardly ever receive pleasure from his pictures; there is a mannerism in all that I have seen that is positively disagreeable to me. How the later artists lost the simple secret of earnest vigor of their predecessors, while gaining in everything that was not that! Grace, finish, refinement, accuracy of drawing, richness of coloring, all that merely tended towards perfection and execution, while the simplicity and single-heartedness of conception died away more and more. All art seems by degrees to outgrow its strength, and certainly in painting the archaic cradle touches one's imagination as neither the graceful youth nor mature manhood do. "Le mieux c'est l'ennemi du bien" in nothing more than the progress of art after a certain period of its development, and when its mere mechanism is best understood, and applied in the most masterly manner. The spirit has tarried behind, and we have to return to seek it among the earlier days, when the genius of man was like a giant, rude, naked, and savage, but vigorous and free—unadorned indeed, but also untrammeled. Only a certain proportion of excellence is allowed to our race, but that is granted; and let us stretch it, expand it, roll and beat it out as we will, it is still but the same square inch made thin to cover a greater surface. For one good we still must yield another; we have no gain that is not loss, no acquisition but surrender, "exchange" which may perhaps be "no robbery," though quantity does seem a poor substitute for quality in matters of beauty. I wish I had lived in the times when the ore lay in the ingot (and had been one of the few who owned a nugget), instead of in these times of universal gold-leaf, glitter without weight, and shining shallowness of mere surface. Vigor is better than refinement, and to create better than to improve, and to conceive better than to combine. I wonder if the world, or rather the human mind, will ever really grow decrepit, and the fountain of beauty in men's souls run dry to the dregs; or will the manifestations only change, and the eternal spirit reveal itself in other ways?...
On our way home I had a long and interesting talk with John about the different forms of religious faith into which the gradual development of the human mind has successively expanded; each, of course, being the result of that very development, acting on the original necessity to believe in and worship and obey something higher and better than itself, implanted in our nature. It seems strange that he has a leaning to Roman Catholicism, which I have not. Our Protestant profession appears to me the purest creed—form—that Christianity has yet arrived at; but, I suppose, a less spiritual one, or perhaps I should say external accompaniments, affecting more palpably the senses and imagination, are wholesome and necessary to the cultivation and preservation of the religious sentiment in some minds. Catholicism was the faith of the chivalrous times, of the poetical times, of times when the creative faculty of man poured forth in since unknown abundance masterpieces of every kind of beauty, as manifestations of the pious and devout enthusiasm. Protestantism is undoubtedly the faith of these times; a denying faith, a rejecting creed, a questioning belief, its evil seems essentially to coincide with the worst tendency of the present age, but its good seems to me positive and unconditional, independent of time or circumstance; the best, in that kind, that the believing necessity in our nature has yet attained. Rightly understood and lived up to, the only service of God which is intellectual freedom, as all His service, lived up to, under what creed soever, is moral freedom. And it is in some sort in spite of myself that I say this, for my fancy delights in all the devout and poetical legendary conceptions which the stern hand of reason has stripped from our altars.