II.
The Boboli Gardens.
The high wall of our raised garden binds on the southern entrance to the Boboli: our white spirae droops down into it like a willow, so large and in such perfect bloom that strangers stop to sketch it as they pass. The good grand duke has gone since I last was here; the Sardinian bayonet is gleaming exactly where the Austrian sentinel stood. The Boboli has changed masters—not for the first time—and accepts the situation with the serenity of a veteran.
It is a bright Sunday morning. There is still time for a walk there before the Military Mass at Santo Spirito. Twelve years have not disturbed the placid sameness of this creature of the hill-side: the laurels are clipped just as evenly, the old busts and statues look at you, or at each other, just as archly or just as stolidly. It is all thoroughly man-made—intensely artificial. Every impulse of nature has been stifled in tree and shrub, until they no more dare to lean out of line than soldiers on parade. The very crocuses steal timidly through the grass, as if they were afraid of doing wrong.
"Grove nods to grove, each alley has its brother;
One half the garden represents the other."
It looks human, every inch; the Lord is completely banished; his Spirit could not possibly walk in such a garden. And yet this creature of man seems clothed with imperishable bloom: this death of all nature seems able to outlive all other life. You cannot despise it, for it possesses the semblance of indestructibility— unchangefulness in the midst of change. In the forests, dissolution and reproduction are palpably waging their unending warfare; even on the eternal Apennines, the snow comes and goes, the lights and shadows of the clouds are endlessly shifting. But in this miniature world monotony counterfeits the terrible fixity and relentlessness of fate. Nature is deprived of all free-will, and moves obedient to a fixed design.
It is difficult to say how far civilization, apart from religion, may go with advantage in remodelling the natural man. It is equally difficult to say how far art may safely encroach upon nature in reconstructing a landscape. Some of the grand elemental presentations disdain our interference. We have no control over the clouds, or the curves of the ocean, or the nocturnal radiance of the skies. But the surface of the earth is an unfinished sketch, which the Creator has left us to humanize, in some small degree, after our fancy. We do not make even the smallest impression upon its planetary aspect; but, after centuries of toil, we succeed in partially changing its more immediate expression. We take the groundwork ready made, accept the laws as we find them, and then, inspired by the supreme longing after unrevealed beauty, which, in some shape or other, haunts every human soul, proceed to establish a little paradise of our own.
But above and beyond that last temporal Eden, there is still another—the one beyond the grave. I, who am an immortal spirit capable of sharing the celestial joy of angels, predestined for the beatific vision; I, whose hereafter should be passed amid perpetual light, and peace, and beauty; may I not have imaginings of better forms, of sweeter faces, of fairer prospects, of deeper skies, and even of diviner stars than those revealed to the senses? Did Raphael ever see a face that equalled hers of the San Sisto? Was there ever in the flesh a form to rival the Apollo of the Vatican? Is there any pattern in nature for Giotto's Campanile? Is there any voice in the woods or seas to suggest the melodies of Kreutzer or the harmonies of Beethoven? And may we not, then, poetize our landscapes too, and throw into the face of nature the expression of a human soul? But here is precisely the difficulty: the landscape has a soul of its own, which must not be murdered, even to make way for ours. The Grand Master has been at work before us; his works have wandered, of their own sweet will, into shapes and combinations that exhibit the grace beyond the reach of art. The mountains, the streams. the valleys, are full of these sweet surprises. The true artist can do little more than reproduce them, squared and framed, for parlor contemplation: the true gardener can do little more than display them to the best advantage.
It is more than likely, though, that, when the Boboli Gardens were laid out by the Medici, the artists employed had only to deal with unornamented slopes of olive orchards and arable land. The landscape was less to be remodelled than created. The surface under treatment was artistically as blank as uncolored canvas— as meaningless as quarried marble. With this difference, however: that while the groundwork of the painter fades and wrinkles, while marble stains and shatters, while even the sculptured arches of great cathedrals crumble into dust, the living canvas on which the landscape gardener works is not only imperishable, but so charged with vitality that it gains instead of losing by duration; or, should a touch of decay at last appear, it is but in transition to new phases of beauty. One would think that, where human fancy is free to conceive a garden of delight, and human means sufficient to ransack the ages and spoil the climes for its embellishment, the result could not escape being a public and paramount attraction. I take this Boboli Garden as a sample of most public gardens or parks. Are they popularly, or even selectly, attractive? Are they ever thronged, except at stated hours, when people chiefly congregate to exhibit themselves and criticise each other? Was an artist, by any miracle, ever caught there more than once, save in the capacity of casual saunterer? Are they not startlingly unfrequented, in spite of their superb richness and beauty? However conducive these civic Edens to municipal health, have not the park police an almost exclusive monopoly of the fresh air and gravel? Do these magnets draw by dint of their intrinsic beauty? It may safely be questioned. And may not this failure be attributed to our vague, unpronounced repugnance to having nature out of harmony with itself and ourselves? Notwithstanding all the gilt and carmine of the new emblazonry, we keep asking the gay palimpsest to restore the lost features of our first friend.
The curse that fell on Adam also visited the earth from which he was taken. The heart of fallen man is full of yearning; the face of nature is full of sympathetic sadness; her voice is nearer a sigh than a song. More than half the year is clouded, more than half the hours belong to night, and over more than half the world goes the wail of the unresting seas. The vast distances are everywhere softened or shaded into pensiveness; the very sunshine turns to blue and purple on the hills; it is only the small near which presumes to be glad with the flash of a rivulet, the song of birds, or the glance of flowers. And, in these minor poems too, there is apt to lurk some sly suggestion of the unattained. Even where the universe is transfigured by the coming morn, and the world thrills with the joyous cry of reawakened life, the momentary exultation, the piercing delight of existence, are soon sobered by toil, or care, or thought; and, bright as the coming day may prove, the impression left on human hearts is that of promise unfulfilled. The poorest part of sunrise is the sun itself; the horns on the Rigi are silent as soon as the orb is fairly up.
It may not be overbold to affirm that some of these grander parks, such as the Bois de Boulogne, bear no mean resemblance to the first paradise itself. But our lot is changed since then; the primitive tradition of Deity incarnate has been fulfilled. Eden could no longer content us; we would not care to pass those Cherubim with the flaming sword, even if we dared. Between us and any possible paradise lies the grave. It is worse than mockery to expect the sorely laden Christian heart to find more than casual enjoyment in arbitrary walks, and endless beds of roses, and artificial fountains, and manufactured grottoes. Sorrow, passion, death, were encountered by God in descending to man; sorrow, passion, death, must be encountered by man in ascending to God. Spiritual felicity is less to be extracted from violets and roses than from sackcloth and ashes. Temporal happiness is not to be compassed by meandering through shaded avenues and even lawns, but by the sweat of the brow and the work of the hands; and in our respites from toil we like the wild, suggestive irregularities of nature better than a too glaring array of brightnesses with which we are seldom in complete accord. The post-Adamic garden needs depth and gloom and mystery as well as sunshine and flowers.