In what mood of mind were they conceived by the great Artist? Of what feelings of his are they the expression—springing up out of the dust, in these gigantic, waste, and desolate regions, where one would think the sense of his almightiness might overpower the soul? Born in the track of the glacier and the avalanche, they seem to say to us that this Almighty Being is very pitiful, and of tender compassion; that, in his infinite soul, there is an exquisite gentleness and love of the beautiful, and that, if we would be blessed, his will to bless is infinite.
The greatest men have always thought much of flowers. Luther always kept a flower in a glass, on his writing table; and when he was waging his great public controversy with Eckius, he kept a flower in his hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. As to Shakspeare, he is a perfect Alpine valley—he is full of flowers; they spring, and blossom, and wave in every cleft of his mind. Witness the Midsummer Night's Dream. Even Milton, cold, serene, and stately as he is, breaks forth into exquisite gushes of tenderness and fancy when he marshals the flowers, as in Lycidas and Comus.
But all this while the sun has been withering the flowers the guide brought me; how they look! blue and white Canterbury bells, harebells, clochettes, all bedraggled and wilted, like a young lady who has been up all night at a ball.
"No, no," say I to the guide; "don't pick me any more. I don't want them. The fact is, if they are pretty I cannot help it. I must even take it out in looking as I go by."
One thing is evident; He who made the world is no utilitarian, no despiser of the fine arts, and no condemner of ornament; and those religionists, who seek to restrain every thing within the limits of cold, bare utility, do not imitate our Father in heaven.
Cannot a bonnet cover your head, without the ribbon and the flowers, say they? Yes; and could not a peach tree bear peaches without a blossom? What a waste is all this colored corolla of flowers, as if the seed could not mature without them! God could have created the fruit in good, strong, homely bushel baskets, if he had been so disposed.
"Turn off my eyes from beholding vanity," says a good man, when he sees a display of graceful ornament. What, then, must he think of the Almighty Being, all whose useful work is so overlaid with ornament? There is not a fly's leg, nor an insect's wing, which is not polished and decorated to an extent that we should think positive extravagance in finishing up a child's dress. And can we suppose that this Being can take delight in dwellings and modes of life or forms of worship where every thing is reduced to cold, naked utility? I think not. The instinct to adorn and beautify is from him; it likens us to him, and if rightly understood, instead of being a siren to beguile our hearts away, it will be the closest affiliating band.
If this power of producing the beautiful has been always so fascinating that the human race for its sake have bowed down at the feet even of men deficient in moral worth, if we cannot forbear loving the painter, poet, and sculptor, how much more shall we love God, who, with all goodness, has also all beauty!
But all this while we have been riding on till we have passed the meadows, and the fields, and are coming into the dark and awful pass of the Tête Noir, which C. has described to you.
One thing I noticed which he did not. When we were winding along the narrow path, bearing no more proportion to the dizzy heights above and below than the smallest insect creeping on the wall, I looked across the chasm, and saw a row of shepherds' cottages perched midway on a narrow shelf, that seemed in the distance not an inch wide. By a very natural impulse, I exclaimed, "What does become of the little children there? I should think they would all fall over the precipice!"