Fourthly, Delight in blood. I cannot use the words which would be necessary to describe the second[102] painting of the Scourging, in this missal. But I may generally notice that the degree in which the peculiar feeling we are endeavoring to analyze is present in any district of Roman Catholic countries, may be almost accurately measured by the quantity of blood represented on the crucifixes.
The person employed to repaint, in the Campo Santo of Pisa, the portion of Orcagna's pictures representing the Inferno, has furnished a very notable example of the same feeling; and it must be familiar to all travellers in countries thoroughly subjected to modern Romanism, a thing as different from thirteenth-century Romanism as a prison from a prince's chamber.
Lastly, Utter absence of inventive power. The only ghastliness which this workman is capable of is that of distortion. In ghastly combination he is impotent; he cannot even understand it or copy it when set before him, continually destroying any that exists in the drawing of Schöngauer.
§ 21. Such appear to be the principal component elements in the mind of the painter of this missal, and it possesses these in complete abstraction from nearly all others, showing, in deadly purity, the nature of the venom which in ordinary cases is tempered by counteracting elements. There are even certain feelings, evil enough themselves, but more natural than these, of which the slightest mingling would here be a sort of redemption. Vanity, for instance, would lead to a more finished execution, and more careful copying from nature, and of course subdue the ugliness by fidelity; love of pleasure would introduce occasionally a graceful or sensual form; malice would give some point and meaning to the bordering grotesques, nay, even insanity might have given them some inventive horror. But the pure mortiferousness of this mind, capable neither of patience, fidelity, grace, or wit, in any place, or from any motive,—this horrible apathy of brain, which cannot ascend so high as insanity, but is capable only of putrefaction, save us the task of all analysis, and leave us only that of examining how this black aqua Tophana mingles with other conditions of mind.
§ 22. For I have led the reader over this dark ground, because it was essential to our determination of the influence of mountains that we should get what data we could as to the extent in other districts, and derivation from other causes, of the horror which at first we might have been led to connect too arbitrarily with hill scenery. And I wish that my knowledge permitted me to trace it over wider ground, for the observations hitherto stated leave the question still one of great difficulty. It might appear to a traveller crossing and recrossing the Alps between Switzerland and Italy, that the main strength of the evil lay on the south of the chain, and was attributable to the peculiar circumstances and character of the Italian nation at this period. But as he examined the matter farther he would note that in the districts of Italy generally supposed to be healthy, the evidence of it was less, and that it seemed to gain ground in places exposed to malaria, centralizing itself in the Val d'Aosta. He would then, perhaps, think it inconsistent with justice to lay the blame on the mountains, and transfer his accusation to the marshes, yet would be compelled to admit that the evil manifested itself most where these marshes were surrounded by hills. He would next, probably, suppose it produced by the united effect of hardships, solitude, and unhealthy air; and be disposed to find fault with the mountains, at least so far as they required painful climbing and laborious agriculture;—but would again be thrown into doubt by remembering that one main branch of the feeling,—the love of ugliness, seemed to belong in a peculiar manner to Northern Germany. If at all familiar with the art of the North and South, he would perceive that the endurance of ugliness, which in Italy resulted from languor or depression (while the mind yet retained some apprehension of the difference between fairness and deformity, as above noted in § 12), was not to be confounded with that absence of perception of the Beautiful, which introduced a general hard-featuredness of figure into all German and Flemish early art, even when Germany and Flanders were in their brightest national health and power. And as he followed out in detail the comparison of all the purest ideals north and south of the Alps, and perceived the perpetual contrast existing between the angular and bony sanctities of the one latitude, and the drooping graces and pensive pieties of the other, he would no longer attribute to the ruggedness, or miasma, of the mountains the origin of a feeling which showed itself so strongly in the comfortable streets of Antwerp and Nuremberg, and in the unweakened and active intellects of Van Eyck and Albert Durer.
§ 23. As I think over these various difficulties, the following Conditions which produce the Mountain gloom. conclusions seem to me deducible from the data I at present possess. I am in no wise confident of their accuracy, but they may assist the reader in pursuing the inquiry farther.
I. It seems to me, first, that a fair degree of intellect and General power of intellect. imagination is necessary before this kind of disease is possible. It does not seize on merely stupid peasantries, but on those which belong to intellectual races, and in whom the faculties of imagination and the sensibilities of heart were originally strong and tender. In flat land, with fresh air, the peasantry may be almost mindless, but not infected with this gloom.
II. In the second place, I think it is closely connected Romanism. with the Romanist religion, and that for several causes.
A. The habitual use of bad art (ill-made dolls and bad pictures), in the services of religion, naturally blunts the delicacy of the senses, by requiring reverence to be paid to ugliness, and familiarizing the eye to it in moments of strong and pure feeling; I do not think we can overrate the probable evil results of this enforced discordance between the sight and imagination.
B. The habitually dwelling on the penances, tortures, and martyrdoms of the Saints, as subjects of admiration and sympathy, together with much meditation on Purgatorial suffering; rendered almost impossible to Protestants by the greater fearfulness of such reflections, when the punishment is supposed eternal.