[Footnote 33: "Homilles on St. Matthew." Part II. ]
[Footnote 34: "Homilles on St. John." Part II.]
[Footnote 35: "Homilles on 2 Corinthians." ]
The passage is full of the deepest interest. Mr. Ruskin has shown us with what mixed feelings the Greeks loved the clouds, and how the mediaevalist feared them. It would be well to know how they have been and are still viewed in England by the lower classes. For, as we before said, the upper classes care little about the clouds. The (
(changeful days) of England pass by unnoticed, except to fill up a gap in a conversation. St. Swithin is our national saint, but we are not enthusiastic devotees. Only when a picnic or a cricket match is involved do we trouble ourselves about the clouds. Then the barometer is studied, and the weathercock becomes an object of interest. In short, only when our pleasures are at stake do we care whether the day is wet or fine. On the other hand, life with the poor, man depends on the weather. Three continuous wet days in London throw no less than twenty thousand people out of employment. Fine weather is the poor man's bread-winner, his comforter, his physician. He may therefore be pardoned if, with Ulysses, he in the first place regards it from an economical point of view. Thus the laborers in the north midland counties speak of showery weather as "rich weather,"—that is, not only enriching the crops, but themselves. On the contrary, as producing a different effect on their calling, the sailors on the north-east [{215}] coast speak of such weather as "shabby weather," and call rain—useless to them—"dirt." This indeed must be the case. In the lowest as in the earliest stages of society, this utilitarian spirit—not necessarily base, but co-existent with even a passionate love of beauty—must prevail. The laborer whose day's wage depends on the clouds, and the fisherman whose meal rests with the winds, will naturally first think of them as subservient to the needs of life. Badly clothed, and ill-fed, they cannot possibly appreciate Mr. Kingsley's admiration of the east wind. The fisherman only knows it as producing a dearth of fish. To the midland peasant it is his "red wind,"—just as Virgil spoke of nigerrimus Auster, and as the Greeks called the north wind "the black wind," still the bise of the Mediterranean. In the east of England the nightingale is not the bird of song, not Ben Jonson's "dear good angel of the spring," but the "barley-bird," because it arrives when the barley is sown. For, on the whole, barley is more important to the peasant than song, and therefore the bird is thus called. Nevertheless the song may be highly prized, but it is still secondary. Thus we stumble upon a curious explanation of the utilitarian spirit observed in Homer and the earliest painters. And the terms of our country-people throw a plain light upon the Homeric epithets "fruitful" (
), and "loamy" (
), applied to the earth; and the phrases of our fishermen curiously illustrate the terms "barren" (