,ver4#aj_/jd_/ja99;,,end99 ,scanned and proofed by ,alfred ,j4 ,drake 7www4ajdrake4com7 ,,miscellaneous ,,studies3 ,a ,,series ,,of ,,essays ,,walter ,,horatio ,,pater ,london3 #aiaj4 7,the ,library ,edition47 ,,notes ,,by ,,the ,e-,,text ,,editor3 ,notes3 ,the #aiaj ,library ,edition employs footnotes1 a style inconvenient in an electronic edition4 ,i have therefore placed an asterisk immediately after each of ,pater's footnotes and a sign after my own notes1 and have listed each chapter's notes at that chapter's end4 ,pagination and ,paragraphing3 ,to avoid an unwieldy electronic copy1 ,i have transferred original pagination to brackets4 ,a bracketed numeral such as #bb indicates that the material immediately following the number marks the beginning of the relevant page4 ,i have preserved paragraph structure except for first-line indentation4 ,hyphenation3 ,i have not preserved original hyphenation since an e-text does not require line-end or page-end hyphenation4 ,greek typeface3 ,for this full-text edition1 ,i have transliterated ,pater's ,greek quotations4 ,if there is a need for the original ,greek1 it can be viewed at my site1 http3_/_/www4ajdrake4com_/etexts1 a ,victorianist archive that contains the complete works of ,walter ,pater and many other nineteenth-century texts1 mostly in first editions4 ,,miscellaneous ,,studies3 ,a ,,series ,,of ,,essays ,,walter ,,horatio ,,pater ,,contents ,c4 ,shadwell's ,preface -- ,publication ,chronology3 #a-g ,prosper ,mrime3 #aa-cg ,raphael3 #ch-fa ,pascal3 #fb-hi ,art ,notes in ,north ,italy3 #ij-ajh ,notre ,dame ,d',amiens3 #aji-abe ,vzelay3 #abf-ada ,apollo in ,picardy3 #adb-aga ,the ,child in the ,house3 #agb-aif ,emerald ,uthwart3 #aig-bdf ,diaphaneit3 #bdg-bed ,,charles ,l4 ,,shadwell',s ,,preface #a ,the volume of ,greek ,studies1 issued early in the present year1 dealt with ,mr4 ,pater's contributions to the study of ,greek art1 mythology1 and poetry4 ,the present volume has no such unifying principle4 ,some of the papers would naturally find their place alongside of those collected in ,imaginary ,portraits1 or in ,appreciations1 or in the ,studies in the ,renaissance4 ,and there is no doubt1 in the case of several of them1 that ,mr4 ,pater1 if he had lived1 would have subjected them to careful revision before allowing them to reappear in a permanent form4 ,the task1 which he left unexecuted1 cannot now be taken up by any other hand4 ,but it is hoped that students of his writings will be glad to possess1 in a collected shape1 what has hitherto only been accessible in the scattered volumes of magazines4 ,it is with some hesitation that the paper on ,diaphaneit1 the last in this volume1 has been added1 as the only specimen known to #b be preserved of those early essays of ,mr4 ,pater's1 by which his literary gifts were first made known to the small circle of his ,oxford friends4 ,subjoined is a brief chronological list of his published writings4 ,it will be observed how considerable a period1 #ahhj to #ahhe1 was given up to the composition of ,marius the ,epicurean1 the most highly finished of all his works1 and the expression of his deepest thought4 ,august1 #ahie4 ,a ,,chronology ,,of ,,pater',s ,,works1 #ahff-ahie 7,adapted from a compilation by ,charles ,l4 ,shadwell in the #ahie ,macmillan edition of ,miscellaneous ,studies47 #ahff4 ,,coleridge4 ,appeared in ,westminster ,review1 ,january1 #ahff4 ,reprinted #ahhi in ,appreciations4 #ahfg4 ,,winckelmann4 ,appeared in ,westminster ,review1 ,january1 #ahfg4 ,reprinted #ahgc in ,studies in the ,renaissance4 #ahfh4 99,,aesthetic ,,poetry4 ,written in #ahfh4 ,first published #ahhi in ,appreciations4 7,not included in the #aiaj ,macmillan ,library ,edition1 but published separately at ,project ,gutenberg and www4ajdrake4com_/etexts47 #ahfi4 ,,notes ,,on ,,leonardo ,,da ,,vinci4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,novermber1 #ahfi4 ,reprinted #ahgc in ,studies in the ,renaissance4 #ahgj4 ,,sandro ,,botticelli4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,august1 #ahgj1 entitled ,a ,fragment on ,sandro ,botticelli4 ,reprinted #ahgc in ,studies in the ,renaissance4 #ahga4 ,,pico ,,della ,,mirandola4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,october1 #ahga4 ,reprinted #ahgc in ,studies in the ,renaissance4 ,,poetry ,,of ,,michelangelo4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,november1 #ahga4 ,reprinted #ahgc in ,studies in the ,renaissance4 #ahgc4 ,,studies ,,in ,,the ,,history ,,of ,,the ,,renaissance4 ,published #ahgc by ,macmillan4 ,contents3 ,aucassin and ,nicolette4 ,entitled in second and later editions1 ,two ,early ,french ,stories4 ,pico della ,mirandola4 ,see #ahga4 ,sandro ,botticelli4 ,see #ahgj4 ,luca della ,robbia4 ,poetry of ,michelangelo4 ,see #ahga4 ,leonardo da ,vinci4 ,see #ahfi4 ,joachim du ,bellay4 ,winckelmann4 ,see #ahfg4 ,conclusion4 #ahgd4 ,,wordsworth4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,april1 #ahgd4 ,reprinted #ahhi in ,appreciations4 ,,measure ,,for ,,measure4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,november1 #ahgd4 ,reprinted #ahhi in ,appreciations4 #ahge4 ,,demeter ,,and ,,persephone4 ,written as two lectures1 and delivered in #ahge at the ,birmingham and ,midland ,institute4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,january and ,february1 #ahgf4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,greek ,studies4 #ahgf4 ,,romanticism4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,november1 #ahgf4 ,reprinted #ahhi in ,appreciations under the title ,postscript4 ,a ,,study ,,of ,,dionysus4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,december1 #ahgf4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,greek ,studies4 #ahgg4 ,,the ,,school ,,of ,,giorgione4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,october1 #ahgg4 ,reprinted #ahhh in third edition of ,the ,renaissance4 ,,the ,,renaissance3 ,,studies ,,in ,,art ,,and ,,poetry4 ,second edition4 ,macmillan4 ,contents3 ,two ,early ,french ,stories4 ,pico della ,mirandola4 ,sandro ,botticelli4 ,luca della ,robbia4 ,the ,poetry of ,michelangelo4 ,leonardo da ,vinci4 ,joachim du ,bellay4 ,winckelmann4 #ahgh4 ,,the ,,child ,,in ,,the ,,house4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,august1 #ahgh1 under the heading1 ,imaginary ,portrait4 ,the ,child in the ,house4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,miscellaneous ,studies4 ,,charles ,,lamb4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,october1 #ahgh4 ,reprinted #ahhi in ,appreciations4 ,,love',s ,,labours ,,lost4 ,written in #ahgh4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,december1 #ahhe4 ,reprinted #ahhi in ,appreciations4 ,,the ,,bacchanals ,,of ,,euripides4 ,written in #ahgh4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,may1 #ahhi4 ,reprinted in ,tyrrell's edition of the ,bacchae in #ahib4 ,reprinted in #ahie in ,greek ,studies4 #ahhj4 ,,the ,,beginnings ,,of ,,greek ,,sculpture4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,february and ,march1 #ahhj4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,greek ,studies4 ,,the ,,marbles ,,of ,,aegina4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,april1 #ahhj4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,greek ,studies4 #ahhc4 ,,dante ,,gabriel ,,rossetti4 ,written in #ahhc4 ,published #ahhi in ,appreciations4 #ahhe4 ,,marius ,,the ,,epicurean4 ,published in #ahhe by ,macmillan4 ,two volumes4 ,a ,,prince ,,of ,,court ,,painters4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,october1 #ahhe4 ,reprinted #ahhg in ,imaginary ,portraits4 #ahhf4 ,,feuillet',s ,,la ,,morte4 ,written in #ahhf4 ,published #ahij in second edition of ,appreciations4 ,,sir ,,thomas ,,browne4 ,written in #ahhf4 ,published #ahhi in ,appreciations4 ,,sebastian ,,van ,,storck4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,march1 #ahhf4 ,reprinted #ahhg in ,imaginary ,portraits4 ,,denys ,l',,auxerrois4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,october1 #ahhf4 ,reprinted #ahhg in ,imaginary ,portraits4 #ahhg4 ,,duke ,,carl ,,of ,,rosenmold4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,may1 #ahhg4 ,reprinted the same year in ,imaginary ,portraits4 ,,imaginary ,,portraits4 ,published #ahhg by ,macmillan4 ,contents3 ,a ,prince of ,court ,painters4 ,see #ahhe4 ,denys l',auxerrois4 ,see #ahhf4 ,sebastian van ,storck4 ,see #ahhf4 ,duke ,carl of ,rosenmold4 ,see above4 #ahhh4 ,,gaston ,,de ,,latour4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine as under3 viz4 ,chapter ,i in ,june4 ,chapter ,,ii in ,july4 ,chapter ,,iii in ,august4 ,chapter ,,iv in ,september4 ,chapter ,v in ,october4 ,,style4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,december1 #ahhh4 ,reprinted #ahhi in ,appreciations4 ,,the ,,renaissance4 ,third ,edition4 ,macmillan4 ,contents3 ,two ,early ,french ,stories4 ,pico della ,mirandola4 ,sandro ,botticelli4 ,luca della ,robbia4 ,the ,poetry of ,michelangelo4 ,leonardo da ,vinci4 ,the ,school of ,giorgione4 ,see #ahgg4 ,joachim du ,bellay4 ,winckelmann4 ,conclusion4 #ahhi4 ,,hippolytus ,,veiled4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,august1 #ahhi4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,greek ,studies4 99,,giordano ,,bruno4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,august1 #ahhi4 7,not included in the #aiaj ,macmillan ,library ,edition1 but published separately online at ,project ,gutenberg and www4ajdrake4com_/etexts47 ,,appreciations1 ,,with ,,an ,,essay ,,on ,,style4 ,published #ahhi by ,macmillan4 ,contents3 ,style4 ,see #ahhh4 ,wordsworth4 ,see #ahgd4 ,coleridge4 ,see #ahff4 ,charles ,lamb4 ,see #ahgh4 ,sir ,thomas ,browne4 ,see #ahhf4 ,love's ,labours ,lost4 ,see #ahgh4 ,measure for ,measure4 ,see #ahgd4 ,shakespeare's ,english ,kings4 99,aesthetic ,poetry4 ,see #ahfh4 ,dante ,gabriel ,rossetti4 ,see #ahhc4 ,postscript4 ,see under ,romanticism1 #ahgf4 #ahij4 ,,art ,,notes ,,in ,,northern ,,italy4 ,appeared in ,new ,review in ,november1 #ahij4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,miscellaneous ,studies4 ,,prosper ,m,,rim,e4 ,delivered as a lecture at ,oxford in ,november1 #ahij4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,december1 #ahij4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,miscellaneous ,studies4 ,,appreciations4 ,second edition4 ,macmillan4 ,contents as in first edition of #ahhi1 but omitting ,aesthetic ,poetry and including a paper on ,feuillet's ,la ,morte 7,see #ahhf74 #ahib4 ,,the ,,genius ,,of ,,plato4 ,appeared in ,contemporary ,review in ,february1 #ahib4 ,reprinted #ahic as ,chapter ,,vi of ,plato and ,platonism4 ,a ,,chapter ,,on ,,plato4 ,appeared in ,macmillan's ,magazine in ,may1 #ahib4 ,reprinted #ahic as ,chapter ,i of ,plato and ,platonism4 ,,lacedaemon4 ,appeared in ,contemporary ,review in ,june1 #ahib4 ,reprinted #ahic as ,chapter ,,viii of ,plato and ,platonism4 ,,emerald ,,uthwart4 ,appeared in ,new ,review in ,june and ,july1 #ahib4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,miscellaneous ,studies4 ,,raphael4 ,delivered as a lecture at ,oxford in ,august1 #ahib4 ,appeared in ,fortnightly ,review in ,october1 #ahib4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,miscellaneous ,studies4 #ahic4 ,,apollo ,,in ,,picardy4 ,appeared in ,harper's ,magazine in ,november1 #ahic4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,miscellaneous ,studies4 ,,plato ,,and ,,platonism4 ,published #ahic by ,macmillan4 ,included1 as ,chapters #a1 #f1 and #h1 papers which had already appeared in ,magazines in #ahib4 ,contents3 #a4 ,plato and the ,doctrine of ,motion4 #b4 ,plato and the ,doctrine of ,rest4 #c4 ,plato and the ,doctrine of ,number4 #d4 ,plato and ,socrates4 #e4 ,plato and the ,sophists4 #f4 ,the ,genius of ,plato4 #g4 ,the ,doctrine of ,plato-- ,i4 ,the ,theory of ,ideas4 ,,ii4 ,dialectic4 #h4 ,lacedaemon4 #i4 ,the ,republic4 #aj4 ,plato's ,aesthetics4 #ahid4 ,,the ,,age ,,of ,,athletic ,,prizemen4 ,appeared in ,contemporary ,review in ,february1 #ahid4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,greek ,studies4 ,,some ,,great ,,churches ,,in ,,france4 #a7 ,,notre-,,dame ,d',,amiens2 #b7 ,v,,zelay4 ,appeared in ,nineteenth ,century in ,march and ,june1 #ahid4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,miscellaneous ,studies as two separate essays4 ,,pascal4 ,written for delivery as a lecture at ,oxford in ,july1 #ahid4 ,appeared in ,contemporary ,review in ,december1 #ahid4 ,reprinted #ahie in ,miscellaneous ,studies4 #ahie4 ,,greek ,,studies4 ,published #ahie by ,macmillan4 ,contents3 ,a ,study of ,dionysus4 ,see #ahgf4 ,the ,bacchanals of ,euripides4 ,see #ahgh4 ,the ,myth of ,demeter and ,persephone4 ,see #ahge4 ,hippolytus ,veiled4 ,see #ahhi4 ,the ,beginnings of ,greek ,sculpture4 ,see #ahhj3 #a7 ,the ,heroic ,age of ,greek ,art4 #b7 ,the ,age of ,graven ,images4 ,the ,marbles of ,aegina4 ,see #ahhj4 ,the ,age of ,athletic ,prizemen4 ,see #ahid4 ,,prosper ,m,,rim,e99 ,,for one born in eighteen hundred and three much was recently become incredible that had at least warmed the imagination even of the sceptical eighteenth century4 ,napoleon1 sealing the tomb of the ,revolution1 had foreclosed many a problem1 extinguished many a hope1 in the sphere of practice4 ,and the mental parallel was drawn by ,heine4 ,in the mental world too a great outlook had lately been cut off4 ,after ,kant's criticism of the mind1 its pretensions to pass beyond the limits of individual experience seemed as dead as those of old ,french royalty4 ,and ,kant did but furnish its innermost theoretic force to a more general criticism1 which had withdrawn from every department of action1 underlying principles once thought eternal4 ,a time of disillusion followed4 ,the typical personality of the day was ,obermann1 the very genius of ennui1 a ,frenchman disabused even of patriotism1 who has hardly strength enough to die4 #ab ,more energetic souls1 however1 would recover themselves1 and find some way of making the best of a changed world4 ,art3 the passions1 above all1 the ecstasy and sorrow of love3 a purely empirical knowledge of nature and man3 these still remained1 at least for pastime1 in a world of which it was no longer proposed to calculate the remoter issues3--art1 passion1 science1 however1 in a somewhat novel attitude towards the practical interests of life4 ,the dsillusionn1 who had found in ,kant's negations the last word concerning an unseen world1 and is living1 on the morrow of the ,revolution1 under a monarchy made out of hand1 might seem cut off from certain ancient natural hopes1 and will demand1 from what is to interest him at all1 something in the way of artificial stimulus4 ,he has lost that sense of large proportion in things1 that all-embracing prospect of life as a whole 7from end to end of time and space1 it had seemed71 the utmost expanse of which was afforded from a cathedral tower of the ,middle ,age3 by the church of the thirteenth century1 that is to say1 with its consequent aptitude for the co-ordination of human effort4 ,deprived of that exhilarating yet pacific outlook1 imprisoned now in the narrow cell of its own subjective experience1 the action of a powerful nature will be intense1 but exclusive and peculiar4 ,it will come to art1 or science1 to the experience of life itself1 not as to portions of human nature's daily food1 but as to #ac something that must be1 by the circumstances of the case1 exceptional2 almost as men turn in despair to gambling or narcotics1 and in a little while the narcotic1 the game of chance or skill1 is valued for its own sake4 ,the vocation of the artist1 of the student of life or books1 will be realised with something--say6 of fanaticism1 as an end in itself1 unrelated1 unassociated4 ,the science he turns to will be a science of crudest fact2 the passion extravagant1 a passionate love of passion1 varied through all the exotic phases of ,french fiction as inaugurated by ,balzac2 the art exaggerated1 in matter or form1 or both1 as in ,hugo or ,baudelaire4 ,the development of these conditions is the mental story of the nineteenth century1 especially as exemplified in ,france4 ,in no century would ,prosper ,mrime have been a theologian or metaphysician4 ,but that sense of negation1 of theoretic insecurity1 was in the air1 and conspiring with what was of like tendency in himself made of him a central type of disillusion4 ,in him the passive ennui of ,obermann became a satiric1 aggressive1 almost angry conviction of the littleness of the world around2 it was as if man's fatal limitations constituted a kind of stupidity in him1 what the ,french call btise4 ,gossiping friends1 indeed1 linked what was constitutional in him and in the age with an incident of his earliest years4 ,corrected for some childish fault1 in passionate distress1 he overhears a half-pitying laugh at his expense1 and has determined1 #ad in a moment1 never again to give credit--to be for ever on his guard1 especially against his own instinctive movements4 ,quite unreserved1 certainly1 he never was again4 ,almost everywhere he could detect the hollow ring of fundamental nothingness under the apparent surface of things4 ,irony surely1 habitual irony1 would be the proper complement thereto1 on his part4 ,in his infallible self- possession1 you might even fancy him a mere man of the world1 with a special aptitude for matters of fact4 ,though indifferent in politics1 he rises to social1 to political eminence2 but all the while he is feeding all his scholarly curiosity1 his imagination1 the very eye1 with the1 to him ever delightful1 relieving1 reassuring spectacle1 of those straightforward forces in human nature1 which are also matters of fact4 ,there is the formula of ,mrime6 the enthusiastic amateur of rude1 crude1 naked force in men and women wherever it could be found2 himself carrying ever1 as a mask1 the conventional attire of the modern world--carrying it with an infinite1 contemptuous grace1 as if that1 too1 were an all-sufficient end in itself4 ,with a natural gift for words1 for expression1 it will be his literary function to draw back the veil of time from the true greatness of old ,roman character2 the veil of modern habit from the primitive energy of the creatures of his fancy1 as the ,lettres une ,inconnue discovered to general gaze1 after his death1 a certain depth of #ae passionate force which had surprised him in himself4 ,and how forcible will be their outlines in an otherwise insignificant world6 ,fundamental belief gone1 in almost all of us1 at least some relics of it remain--queries1 echoes1 reactions1 after-thoughts2 and they help to make an atmosphere1 a mental atmosphere1 hazy perhaps1 yet with many secrets of soothing light and shade1 associating more definite objects to each other by a perspective pleasant to the inward eye against a hopefully receding background of remoter and ever remoter possibilities4 ,not so with ,mrime6 ,for him the fundamental criticism has nothing more than it can do2 and there are no half-lights4 ,the last traces of hypothesis1 of supposition1 are evaporated4 ,sylla1 the false ,demetrius1 ,carmen1 ,colomba1 that impassioned self within himself1 have no atmosphere4 ,painfully distinct in outline1 inevitable to sight1 unrelieved1 there they stand1 like solitary mountain forms on some hard1 perfectly transparent day4 ,what ,mrime gets around his singularly sculpturesque creations is neither more nor less than empty space4 ,so disparate are his writings that at first sight you might fancy them only the random efforts of a man of pleasure or affairs1 who1 turning to this or that for the relief of a vacant hour1 discovers to his surprise a workable literary gift1 of whose scope1 however1 he is not precisely aware4 ,his sixteen volumes nevertheless range themselves in three compact groups4 ,there are his letters #af -- those ,lettres une ,inconnue1 and his letters to the librarian ,panizzi1 revealing him in somewhat close contact with political intrigue4 ,but in this age of novelists1 it is as a writer of novels1 and of fiction in the form of highly descriptive drama1 that he will count for most3--,colomba1 for instance1 by its intellectual depth of motive1 its firmly conceived structure1 by the faultlessness of its execution1 vindicating the function of the novel as no tawdry light literature1 but in very deed a fine art4 ,the ,chronique du ,rgne de ,charles ,,ix41 an unusually successful specimen of historical romance1 links his imaginative work to the third group of ,mrime's writings1 his historical essays4 ,one resource of the disabused soul of our century1 as we saw1 would be the empirical study of facts1 the empirical science of nature and man1 surviving all dead metaphysical philosophies4 ,mrime1 perhaps1 may have had in him the making of a master of such science1 disinterested1 patient1 exact3 scalpel in hand1 we may fancy1 he would have penetrated far4 ,but quite certainly he had something of genius for the exact study of history1 for the pursuit of exact truth1 with a keenness of scent as if that alone existed1 in some special area of historic fact1 to be determined by his own peculiar mental preferences4 ,power here too again1--the crude power of men and women which mocks1 while it makes its use of1 average human nature3 it was the magic function of history to put one in living #ag contact with that4 ,to weigh the purely physiognomic import of the memoir1 of the pamphlet saved by chance1 the letter1 the anecdote1 the very gossip by which one came face to face with energetic personalities3 there lay the true business of the historic student1 not in that pretended theoretic interpretation of events by their mechanic causes1 with which he dupes others if not invariably himself4 ,in the great hero of the ,social ,war1 in ,sylla1 studied1 indeed1 through his environment1 but only so far as that was in dynamic contact with himself1 you saw1 without any manner of doubt1 on one side1 the solitary height of human genius2 on the other1 though on the seemingly so heroic stage of antique ,roman story1 the wholly inexpressive level of the humanity of every day1 the spectacle of man's eternal btise4 ,fascinated1 like a veritable son of the old pagan ,renaissance1 by the grandeur1 the concentration1 the satiric hardness of ancient ,roman character1 it is to ,russia nevertheless that he most readily turns--youthful ,russia1 whose native force1 still unbelittled by our western civilisation1 seemed to have in it the promise of a more dignified civilisation to come4 ,it was as if old ,rome itself were here again2 as1 occasionally1 a new quarry is laid open of what was thought long since exhausted1 ancient marble1 cipollino or verde antique4 ,mrime1 indeed1 was not the first to discern the fitness for imaginative service of the career of the false ,demetrius1 pretended #ah son of ,ivan the ,terrible2 but he alone seeks its utmost force in a calm1 matter-of-fact carefully ascertained presentment of the naked events4 ,yes6 ,in the last years of the ,valois1 when its fierce passions seemed to be bursting ,france to pieces1 you might have seen1 far away beyond the rude ,polish dominion of which one of those ,valois princes had become king1 a display more effective still of exceptional courage and cunning1 of horror in circumstance1 of btise1 of course1 of btise and a slavish capacity of being duped1 in average mankind3 all that under a mask of solemn ,muscovite court- ceremonial4 ,and ,mrime's style1 simple and unconcerned1 but with the eye ever on its object1 lends itself perfectly to such purpose-- to an almost phlegmatic discovery of the facts1 in all their crude natural colouring1 as if he but held up to view1 as a piece of evidence1 some harshly dyed oriental carpet from the sumptuous floor of the ,kremlin1 on which blood had fallen4 ,a lover of ancient ,rome1 its great character and incident1 ,mrime valued1 as if it had been personal property of his1 every extant relic of it in the art that had been most expressive of its genius-- architecture4 ,in that grandiose art of building1 the most national1 the most tenaciously rooted of all the arts in the stable conditions of life1 there were historic documents hardly less clearly legible than the manuscript chronicle4 ,by the mouth of those stately ,romanesque #ai churches1 scattered in so many strongly characterised varieties over the soil of ,france1 above all in the hot1 half-pagan south1 the people of empire still protested1 as he understood1 against what must seem a smaller race4 ,the ,gothic enthusiasm indeed was already born1 and he shared it--felt intelligently the fascination of the ,pointed ,style1 but only as a further transformation of old ,roman structure2 the round arch is for him still the great architectural form1 la forme noble1 because it was to be seen in the monuments of antiquity4 ,romanesque1 ,gothic1 the manner of the ,renaissance1 of ,lewis the ,fourteenth3--they were all1 as in a written record1 in the old abbey church of ,saint-,savin1 of which ,mrime was instructed to draw up a report4 ,again1 it was as if to his concentrated attention through many months that deserted sanctuary of ,benedict were the only thing on earth4 ,its beauties1 its peculiarities1 its odd military features1 its faded mural paintings1 are no merely picturesque matter for the pencil he could use so well1 but the lively record of a human society4 ,with what appetite6 with all the animation of ,george ,sand's ,mauprat1 he tells the story of romantic violence having its way there1 defiant of law1 so late as the year #afaa2 of the family of robber nobles perched1 as abbots in commendam1 in those sacred places4 ,that grey1 pensive old church in the little valley of ,poitou1 was for a time like ,santa ,maria del ,fiore to #bj ,michelangelo1 the mistress of his affections- -of a practical affection2 for the result of his elaborate report was the ,government grant which saved the place from ruin4 ,in architecture1 certainly1 he had what for that day was nothing less than intuition--an intuitive sense1 above all1 of its logic1 of the necessity which draws into one all minor changes1 as elements in a reasonable development4 ,and his care for it1 his curiosity about it1 were symptomatic of his own genius4 ,structure1 proportion1 design1 a sort of architectural coherency3 that was the aim of his method in the art of literature1 in that form of it1 especially1 which he will live by1 in fiction4 ,as historian and archaeologist1 as a man of erudition turned artist1 he is well seen in the ,chronique du ,rgne de ,charles ,,ix41 by which we pass naturally from ,mrime's critical or scientific work to the products of his imagination4 ,what economy in the use of a large antiquarian knowledge6 what an instinct amid a hundred details1 for the detail that carries physiognomy in it1 that really tells6 ,and again what outline1 what absolute clarity of outline6 ,for the historian of that puzzling age which centres in the ,eve of ,saint ,bartholomew1 outward events themselves seem obscured by the vagueness of motive of the actors in them4 ,but ,mrime1 disposing of them as an artist1 not in love with half-lights1 compels events and actors alike to the clearness he #ba desired2 takes his side without hesitation2 and makes his hero a ,huguenot of pure blood1 allowing its charm1 in that charming youth1 even to ,huguenot piety4 ,and as for the incidents--however freely it may be undermined by historic doubt1 all reaches a perfectly firm surface1 at least for the eye of the reader4 ,the ,chronicle of ,charles the ,ninth is like a series of masterly drawings in illustration of a period--the period in which two other masters of ,french fiction have found their opportunity1 mainly by the development of its actual historic characters4 ,those characters--,catherine de ,medicis and the rest--,mrime1 with significant irony and self-assertion1 sets aside1 preferring to think of them as essentially commonplace4 ,for him the interest lies in the creatures of his own will1 who carry in them1 however1 so lightly6 a learning equal to ,balzac's1 greater than that of ,dumas4 ,he knows with like completeness the mere fashions of the time--how courtier and soldier dressed themselves1 and the large movements of the desperate game which fate or chance was playing with those pretty pieces4 ,comparing that favourite century of the ,french ,renaissance with our own1 he notes a decadence of the more energetic passions in the interest of general tranquillity1 and perhaps 7only perhaps67 of general happiness4 ,assassination1 he observes1 as if with regret1 is no longer a part of our manners4 ,in fact1 the duel1 and the whole #bb morality of the duel1 which does but enforce a certain regularity on assassination1 what has been well called le sentiment du fer1 the sentiment of deadly steel1 had then the disposition of refined existence4 ,it was1 indeed1 very different1 and is1 in ,mrime's romance4 ,in his gallant hero1 ,bernard de ,mergy1 all the promptings of the lad's virile goodness are in natural collusion with that sentiment du fer4 ,amid his ingenuous blushes1 his prayers1 and plentiful tears between-while1 it is a part of his very sex4 ,with his delightful1 fresh-blown air1 he is for ever tossing the sheath from the sword1 but always as if into bright natural sunshine4 ,a winsome1 yet withal serious and even piteous figure1 he conveys his pleasantness1 in spite of its gloomy theme1 into ,mrime's one quite cheerful book4 ,cheerful1 because1 after all1 the gloomy passions it presents are but the accidents of a particular age1 and not like the mental conditions in which ,mrime was most apt to look for the spectacle of human power1 allied to madness or disease in the individual4 ,for him1 at least1 it was the office of fiction to carry one into a different if not a better world than that actually around us2 and if the ,chronicle of ,charles the ,ninth provided an escape from the tame circumstances of contemporary life into an impassioned past1 ,colomba is a measure of the resources for mental alteration which may be found even in the modern age4 ,there was a corner of #bc the ,french ,empire1 in the manners of which assassination still had a large part4 ,the beauty of ,corsica1 says ,mrime1 is grave and sad4 ,the aspect of the capital does but augment the impression caused by the solitude that surrounds it4 ,there is no movement in the streets4 ,you hear there none of the laughter1 the singing1 the loud talking1 common in the towns of ,italy4 ,sometimes1 under the shadow of a tree on the promenade1 a dozen armed peasants will be playing cards1 or looking on at the game4 ,the ,corsican is naturally silent4 ,those who walk the pavement are all strangers3 the islanders stand at their doors3 every one seems to be on the watch1 like a falcon on its nest4 ,all around the gulf there is but an expanse of tanglework2 beyond it1 bleached mountains4 ,not a habitation6 ,only1 here and there1 on the heights about the town1 certain white constructions detach themselves from the background of green4 ,they are funeral chapels or family tombs4 ,crude in colour1 sombre1 taciturn1 ,corsica1 as ,mrime here describes it1 is like the national passion of the ,corsican--that morbid personal pride1 usurping the place even of grief for the dead1 which centuries of traditional violence had concentrated into an all- absorbing passion for bloodshed1 for bloody revenges1 in collusion with the natural wildness1 and the wild social condition of the island still unaffected even by the finer #bd ethics of the duel4 ,the supremacy of that passion is well indicated by the cry1 put into the mouth of a young man in the presence of the corpse of his father deceased in the course of nature--a young man meant to be commonplace4 ,ah6 ,would thou hadst died malamorte--by violence6 ,we might have avenged thee6 ,in ,colomba1 ,mrime's best known creation1 it is united to a singularly wholesome type of personal beauty1 a natural grace of manner which is irresistible1 a cunning intellect patiently diverting every circumstance to its design2 and presents itself as a kind of genius1 allied to fatal disease of mind4 ,the interest of ,mrime's book is that it allows us to watch the action of this malignant power on ,colomba's brother1 ,orso della ,robbia1 as it discovers1 rouses1 concentrates to the leaping-point1 in the somewhat weakly diffused nature of the youth1 the dormant elements of a dark humour akin to her own4 ,two years after his father's murder1 presumably at the instigation of his ancestral enemies1 the young lieutenant is returning home in the company of two humorously conventional ,english people1 himself now half ,parisianised1 with an immense natural cheerfulness1 and willing to believe an account of the crime which relieves those hated ,barricini of all complicity in its guilt4 ,but from the first1 ,colomba1 with voice soft and musical1 is at his side1 gathering every accident and echo and circumstance1 the very lightest circumstance1 #be into the chain of necessity which draws him to the action every one at home expects of him as the head of his race4 ,he is not unaware4 ,her very silence on the matter speaks so plainly4 ,you are forming me6 he admits4 ,well6 ',hot shot1 or cold steel6'--you see ,i have not forgotten my ,corsican4 ,more and more1 as he goes on his way with her1 he finds himself accessible to the damning thoughts he has so long combated4 ,in horror1 he tries to disperse them by the memory of his comrades in the regiment1 the drawing-rooms of ,paris1 the ,english lady who has promised to be his bride1 and will shortly visit him in the humble manoir of his ancestors4 ,from his first step among them the villagers of ,pietranera1 divided already into two rival camps1 are watching him in suspense--,pietranera1 perched among those deep forests where the stifled sense of violent death is everywhere4 ,colomba places in his hands the little chest which contains the father's shirt covered with great spots of blood4 ,behold the lead that struck him6 and she laid on the shirt two rusted bullets4 ,orso6 you will avenge him6 ,she embraces him with a kind of madness1 kisses wildly the bullets and the shirt1 leaves him with the terrible relics already exerting their mystic power upon him4 ,it is as if in the nineteenth century a girl1 amid ,christian habits1 had gone back to that primitive old pagan version of the story of the ,grail1 which #bf identifies it not with the ,most ,precious ,blood1 but only with the blood of a murdered relation crying for vengeance4 ,awake at last in his old chamber at ,pietranera1 the house of the ,barricini at the other end of the square1 with its rival tower and rudely carved escutcheons1 stares him in the face4 ,his ancestral enemy is there1 an aged man now1 but with two well-grown sons1 like two stupid dumb animals1 whose innocent blood will soon be on his so oddly lighted conscience4 ,at times1 his better hope seemed to lie in picking a quarrel and killing at least in fair fight1 one of these two stupid dumb animals2 with rude ill-suppressed laughter one day1 as they overhear ,colomba's violent utterances at a funeral feast1 for she is a renowned improvisatrice4 ,your father is an old man1 he finds himself saying1 ,i could crush with my hands4 ',tis for you ,i am destined1 for you and your brother6 ,and if it is by course of nature that the old man dies not long after the murder of these sons 7self-provoked after all71 dies a fugitive at ,pisa1 as it happens1 by an odd accident1 in the presence of ,colomba1 no violent death by ,orso's own hand could have been more to her mind4 ,in that last hard page of ,mrime's story1 mere dramatic propriety itself for a moment seems to plead for the forgiveness1 which from ,joseph and his brethren to the present day1 as we know1 has been as winning in story as in actual life4 ,such dramatic propriety1 however1 was by no means #bg in ,mrime's way4 ,what ,i must have is the hand that fired the shot1 she had sung1 the eye that guided it2 aye6 and the mind moreover-- the mind1 which had conceived the deed6 ,and now1 it is in idiotic terror1 a fugitive from ,orso's vengeance1 that the last of the ,barricini is dying4 ,exaggerated art6 you think4 ,but it was precisely such exaggerated art1 intense1 unrelieved1 an art of fierce colours1 that is needed by those who are seeking in art1 as ,i said of ,mrime1 a kind of artificial stimulus4 ,and if his style is still impeccably correct1 cold-blooded1 impersonal1 as impersonal as that of ,scott himself1 it does but conduce the better to his one exclusive aim4 ,it is like the polish of the stiletto ,colomba carried always under her mantle1 or the beauty of the fire-arms1 that beauty coming of nice adaptation to purpose1 which she understood so well--a task characteristic also of ,mrime himself1 a sort of fanatic joy in the perfect pistol-shot1 at its height in the singular story he has translated from the ,russian of ,pouchkine4 ,those raw colours he preferred2 ,spanish1 ,oriental1 ,african1 perhaps1 irritant certainly to cisalpine eyes1 he undoubtedly attained the colouring you associate with sun-stroke1 only possible under a sun in which dead things rot quickly4 ,pity and terror1 we know1 go to the making of the essential tragic sense4 ,in ,mrime1 certainly1 we have all its terror1 but without the #bh pity4 ,saint-,clair1 the consent of his mistress barely attained at last1 rushes madly on self-destruction1 that he may die with the taste of his great love fresh on his lips4 ,all the grotesque accidents of violent death he records with visual exactness1 and no pains to relieve them2 the ironic indifference1 for instance1 with which1 on the scaffold or the battle-field1 a man will seem to grin foolishly at the ugly rents through which his life has passed4 ,seldom or never has the mere pen of a writer taken us so close to the cannon's mouth as in the ,taking of the ,redoubt1 while ,matteo ,falcone--twenty-five short pages--is perhaps the cruellest story in the world4 ,colomba1 that strange1 fanatic being1 who has a code of action1 of self-respect1 a conscience1 all to herself1 who with all her virginal charm only does not make you hate her1 is1 in truth1 the type of a sort of humanity ,mrime found it pleasant to dream of--a humanity as alien as the animals1 with whose moral affinities to man his imaginative work is often directly concerned4 ,were they so alien1 after all8 ,were there not survivals of the old wild creatures in the gentlest1 the politest of us8 ,stories that told of sudden freaks of gentle1 polite natures1 straight back1 not into ,paradise1 were always welcome to men's fancies2 and that could only be because they found a psychologic truth in them4 ,with much success1 with a credibility insured by his literary tact1 ,mrime tried his own hand at such stories3 unfrocked the #bi bear in the amorous young ,lithuanian noble1 the wolf in the revolting peasant of the ,middle ,age4 ,there were survivals surely in himself1 in that stealthy presentment of his favourite themes1 in his own art4 ,you seem to find your hand on a serpent1 in reading him4 ,in such survivals1 indeed1 you see the operation of his favourite motive1 the sense of wild power1 under a sort of mask1 or assumed habit1 realised as the very genius of nature itself2 and that interest1 with some superstitions closely allied to it1 the belief in the vampire1 for instance1 is evidenced especially in certain pretended ,illyrian compositions--prose translations1 the reader was to understand1 of more or less ancient popular ballads2 ,la ,guzla1 he called the volume1 ,the ,lyre1 as we might say2 only that the instrument of the ,illyrian minstrel had but one string4 ,artistic deception1 a trick of which there is something in the historic romance as such1 in a book like his own ,chronicle of ,charles the ,ninth1 was always welcome to ,mrime2 it was part of the machinery of his rooted habit of intellectual reserve4 ,a master of irony also1 in ,madame ,lucrezia he seems to wish to expose his own method cynically2 to explain his art--how he takes you in--as a clever1 confident conjuror might do4 ,so properly were the readers of ,la ,guzla taken in that he followed up his success in that line by the ,theatre of ,clara ,gazul1 purporting to be from a rare ,spanish original1 the work #cj of a nun1 who1 under tame1 conventual reading1 had felt the touch of mundane1 of physical passions2 had become a dramatic poet1 and herself a powerful actress4 ,it may dawn on you in reading her that ,mrime was a kind of ,webster1 but with the superficial mildness of our nineteenth century4 ,at the bottom of the true drama there is ever1 logically at least1 the ballad3 the ballad dealing in a kind of short-hand 7or1 say6 in grand1 simple1 universal outlines7 with those passions1 crimes1 mistakes1 which have a kind of fatality in them1 a kind of necessity to come to the surface of the human mind1 if not to the surface of our experience1 as in the case of some frankly supernatural incidents which ,mrime re-handled4 ,whether human love or hatred has had most to do in shaping the universal fancy that the dead come back1 ,i cannot say4 ,certainly that old ballad literature has instances in plenty1 in which the voice1 the hand1 the brief visit from the grave1 is a natural response to the cry of the human creature4 ,that ghosts should return1 as they do so often in ,mrime's fiction1 is but a sort of natural justice4 ,only1 in ,mrime's prose ballads1 in those admirable1 short1 ballad-like stories1 where every word tells1 of which he was a master1 almost the inventor1 they are a kind of half-material ghosts--a vampire tribe-- and never come to do people good2 congruously with the mental constitution of the writer1 which1 alike in fact and fiction1 #ca could hardly have horror enough--theme after theme4 ,mrime himself emphasises this almost constant motive of his fiction when he adds to one of his volumes of short stories some letters on a matter of fact- -a ,spanish bull-fight1 in which those old ,romans1 he regretted1 might seem1 decadently1 to have survived4 ,it is as if you saw it4 ,in truth1 ,mrime was the unconscious parent of much we may think of dubious significance in later ,french literature4 ,it is as if there were nothing to tell of in this world but various forms of hatred1 and a love that is like lunacy2 and the only other world1 a world of maliciously active1 hideous1 dead bodies4 ,mrime1 a literary artist1 was not a man who used two words where one would do better1 and he shines especially in those brief compositions which1 like a minute intaglio1 reveal at a glance his wonderful faculty of design and proportion in the treatment of his work1 in which there is not a touch but counts4 ,that is an art of which there are few examples in ,english2 our somewhat diffuse1 or slipshod1 literary language hardly lending itself to the concentration of thought and expression1 which are of the essence of such writing4 ,it is otherwise in ,french1 and if you wish to know what art of that kind can come to1 read ,mrime's little romances2 best of all1 perhaps1 ,la ,vnus d',ille and ,arsne ,guillot4 ,the former is a modern version of the beautiful old story of the ,ring given to ,venus1 given to her1 in #cb this case1 by a somewhat sordid creature of the nineteenth century1 whom she looks on with more than disdain4 ,the strange outline of the ,canigou1 one of the most imposing outlying heights of the ,pyrenees1 down the mysterious slopes of which the traveller has made his way towards nightfall into the great plain of ,toulouse1 forms an impressive background1 congruous with the many relics of irrepressible old paganism there1 but in entire contrast to the bourgeois comfort of the place where his journey is to end1 the abode of an aged antiquary1 loud and bright just now with the celebration of a vulgar worldly marriage4 ,in the midst of this well- being1 prosaic in spite of the neighbourhood1 in spite of the pretty old wedding customs1 morsels of that local colour in which ,mrime delights1 the old pagan powers are supposed to reveal themselves once more 7malignantly1 of course71 in the person of a magnificent bronze statue of ,venus recently unearthed in the antiquary's garden4 ,on her finger1 by ill-luck1 the coarse young bridegroom on the morning of his marriage places for a moment the bridal ring only too effectually 7the bronze hand closes1 like a wilful living one1 upon it71 and dies1 you are to understand1 in her angry metallic embraces on his marriage night4 ,from the first1 indeed1 she had seemed bent on crushing out men's degenerate bodies and souls1 though the supernatural horror of the tale is adroitly made credible by a certain vagueness in the #cc events1 which covers a quite natural account of the bridegroom's mysterious death4 ,the intellectual charm of literary work so thoroughly designed as ,mrime's depends in part on the sense as you read1 hastily perhaps1 perhaps in need of patience1 that you are dealing with a composition1 the full secret of which is only to be attained in the last paragraph1 that with the last word in mind you will retrace your steps1 more than once 7it may be7 noting then the minuter structure1 also the natural or wrought flowers by the way4 ,nowhere is such method better illustrated than by another of ,mrime's quintessential pieces1 ,arsne ,guillotand here for once with a conclusion ethically acceptable also4 ,mrime loved surprises in human nature1 but it is not often that he surprises us by tenderness or generosity of character1 as another master of ,french fiction1 ,m4 ,octave ,feuillet1 is apt to do2 and the simple pathos of ,arsne ,guillot gives it a unique place in ,mrime's writings4 ,it may be said1 indeed1 that only an essentially pitiful nature could have told the exquisitely cruel story of ,matteo ,falcone precisely as ,mrime has told it2 and those who knew him testify abundantly to his own capacity for generous friendship4 ,he was no more wanting than others in those natural sympathies 7sending tears to the eyes at the sight of suffering age or childhood7 which happily are no extraordinary component in men's natures4 ,it was1 perhaps1 no fitting return for a #cd friendship of over thirty years to publish posthumously those ,lettres une ,inconnue1 which reveal that reserved1 sensitive1 self- centred nature1 a little pusillanimously in the power1 at the disposition of another4 ,for just there lies the interest1 the psychological interest1 of those letters4 ,an amateur of power1 of the spectacle of power and force1 followed minutely but without sensibility on his part1 with a kind of cynic pride rather for the mainspring of his method1 both of thought and expression1 you find him here taken by surprise at last1 and somewhat humbled1 by an unsuspected force of affection in himself4 ,his correspondent1 unknown but for these letters except just by name1 figures in them as1 in truth1 a being only too much like himself1 seen from one side2 reflects his taciturnity1 his touchiness1 his incredulity except for self-torment4 ,agitated1 dissatisfied1 he is wrestling in her with himself1 his own difficult qualities4 ,he demands from her a freedom1 a frankness1 he would have been the last to grant4 ,it is by first thoughts1 of course1 that what is forcible and effective in human nature1 the force1 therefore1 of carnal love1 discovers itself2 and for her first thoughts ,mrime is always pleading1 but always complaining that he gets only her second thoughts2 the thoughts1 that is1 of a reserved1 self-limiting nature1 well under the yoke of convention1 like his own4 ,strange conjunction6 ,at the beginning of the correspondence he seems to have been #ce seeking only a fine intellectual companionship2 the lady1 perhaps1 looking for something warmer4 ,towards such companionship that likeness to himself in her might have been helpful1 but was not enough of a complement to his own nature to be anything but an obstruction in love2 and it is to that1 little by little1 that his humour turns4 ,he--the ,megalopsychus1 as ,aristotle defines him--acquires all the lover's humble habits3 himself displays all the tricks of love1 its casuistries1 its exigency1 its superstitions1 aye6 even its vulgarities2 involves with the significance of his own genius the mere hazards and inconsequence of a perhaps average nature2 but too late in the day--the years4 ,after the attractions and repulsions of half a lifetime1 they are but friends1 and might forget to be that1 but for his death1 clearly presaged in his last weak1 touching letter1 just two hours before4 ,there1 too1 had been the blind and naked force of nature and circumstance1 surprising him in the uncontrollable movements of his own so carefully guarded heart4 ,the intimacy1 the effusion1 the so freely exposed personality of those letters does but emphasise the fact that impersonality was1 in literary art1 ,mrime's central aim4 ,personality versus impersonality in art3--how much or how little of one's self one may put into one's work3 whether anything at all of it3 whether one can put there anything else3--is clearly a far-reaching and complex question4 ,serviceable as #cf the basis of a precautionary maxim towards the conduct of our work1 self-effacement1 or impersonality1 in literary or artistic creation1 is1 perhaps1 after all1 as little possible as a strict realism4 ,it has always been my rule to put nothing of myself into my works1 says another great master of ,french prose1 ,gustave ,flaubert2 but1 luckily as we may think1 he often failed in thus effacing himself1 as he too was aware4 ,it has always been my rule to put nothing of myself into my works 7to be disinterested in his literary creations1 so to speak71 yet ,i have put much of myself into them3 and where he failed ,mrime succeeded4 ,there they stand--,carmen1 ,colomba1 the ,false ,demetrius--as detached from him as from each other1 with no more filial likeness to their maker than if they were the work of another person4 ,and to his method of conception1 ,mrime's much-praised literary style1 his method of expression1 is strictly conformable--impersonal in its beauty1 the perfection of nobody's style--thus vindicating anew by its very impersonality that much worn1 but not untrue saying1 that the style is the man3--a man1 impassible1 unfamiliar1 impeccable1 veiling a deep sense of what is forcible1 nay1 terrible1 in things1 under the sort of personal pride that makes a man a nice observer of all that is most conventional4 ,essentially unlike other people1 he is always fastidiously in the fashion--an expert in all the little1 half- #cg contemptuous elegances of which it is capable4 ,mrime's superb self-effacement1 his impersonality1 is itself but an effective personal trait1 and1 transferred to art1 becomes a markedly peculiar quality of literary beauty4 ,for1 in truth1 this creature of disillusion who had no care for half-lights1 and1 like his creations1 had no atmosphere about him1 gifted as he was with pure mind1 with the quality which secures flawless literary structure1 had1 on the other hand1 nothing of what we call soul in literature3--hence1 also1 that singular harshness in his ideal1 as if1 in theological language1 he were incapable of grace4 ,he has none of those subjectivities1 colourings1 peculiarities of mental refraction1 which necessitate varieties of style--could we spare such8--and render the perfections of it no merely negative qualities4 ,there are masters of ,french prose whose art has begun where the art of ,mrime leaves off4 ,,notes #aa4 99,a lecture delivered at the ,taylor ,institution1 ,oxford1 and at the ,london ,institution4 ,published in the ,fortnightly ,review1 ,dec4 #ahij1 and now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors4 ,,raphael99 #ch ,by his immense productiveness1 by the even perfection of what he produced1 its fitness to its own day1 its hold on posterity1 in the suavity of his life1 some would add in the opportunity of his early death1 ,raphael may seem a signal instance of the luckiness1 of the good fortune1 of genius4 ,yet1 if we follow the actual growth of his powers1 within their proper framework1 the age of the ,renaissance--an age of which we may say1 summarily1 that it enjoyed itself1 and found perhaps its chief enjoyment in the attitude of the scholar1 in the enthusiastic acquisition of knowledge for its own sake3--if we thus view ,raphael and his works in their environment we shall find even his seemingly mechanical good fortune hardly distinguishable from his own patient disposal of the means at hand4 ,facile master as he may seem1 as indeed he is1 he is also one of the world's typical scholars1 with #ci ,plato1 and ,cicero1 and ,virgil1 and ,milton4 ,the formula of his genius1 if we must have one1 is this3 genius by accumulation2 the transformation of meek scholarship into genius-- triumphant power of genius4 ,urbino1 where this prince of the ,renaissance was born in #adhc1 year also of the birth of ,luther1 leader of the other great movement of that age1 the ,reformation--,urbino1 under its dukes of the house of ,montefeltro1 had wherewithal just then to make a boy of native artistic faculty from the first a willing learner4 ,the gloomy old fortress of the feudal masters of the town had been replaced1 in those later years of the ,quattro-cento1 by a consummate monument of ,quattro-cento taste1 a museum of ancient and modern art1 the owners of which lived there1 gallantly at home1 amid the choicer flowers of living humanity4 ,the ducal palace was1 in fact1 become nothing less than a school of ambitious youth in all the accomplishments alike of war and peace4 ,raphael's connexion with it seems to have become intimate1 and from the first its influence must have overflowed so small a place4 ,in the case of the lucky ,raphael1 for once1 the actual conditions of early life had been suitable1 propitious1 accordant to what one's imagination would have required for the childhood of the man4 ,he was born amid the art he was1 not to transform1 but to perfect1 by a thousand reverential retouchings4 ,in no palace1 however1 but #dj in a modest abode1 still shown1 containing the workshop of his father1 ,giovanni ,santi4 ,but here1 too1 though in frugal form1 art1 the arts1 were present4 ,a store of artistic objects was1 or had recently been1 made there1 and now especially1 for fitting patrons1 religious pictures in the old ,umbrian manner4 ,in quiet nooks of the ,apennines ,giovanni's works remain2 and there is one of them1 worth study1 in spite of what critics say of its crudity1 in the ,national ,gallery4 ,concede its immaturity1 at least1 though an immaturity visibly susceptible of a delicate grace1 it wins you nevertheless to return again and again1 and ponder1 by a sincere expression of sorrow1 profound1 yet resigned1 be the cause what it may1 among all the many causes of sorrow inherent in the ideal of maternity1 human or divine4 ,but if you keep in mind when looking at it the facts of ,raphael's childhood1 you will recognise in his father's picture1 not the anticipated sorrow of the ,mater ,dolorosa over the dead son1 but the grief of a simple household over the mother herself taken early from it4 ,that may have been the first picture the eyes of the world's great painter of ,madonnas rested on2 and if he stood diligently before it to copy1 and so copying1 quite unconsciously1 and with no disloyalty to his original1 refined1 improved1 substituted1--substituted himself1 in fact1 his finer self--he had already struck the persistent note of his career4 ,as with his age1 it is #da his vocation1 ardent worker as he is1 to enjoy himself--to enjoy himself amiably1 and to find his chief enjoyment in the attitude of a scholar4 ,and one by one1 one after another1 his masters1 the very greatest of them1 go to school to him4 ,it was so especially with the artist of whom ,raphael first became certainly a learner--,perugino4 ,giovanni ,santi had died in ,raphael's childhood1 too early to have been in any direct sense his teacher4 ,the lad1 however1 from one and another1 had learned much1 when1 with his share of the patrimony in hand1 enough to keep him1 but not to tempt him from scholarly ways1 he came to ,perugia1 hoping still further to improve himself4 ,he was in his eighteenth year1 and how he looked just then you may see in a drawing of his own in the ,university ,galleries1 of somewhat stronger mould than less genuine likenesses may lead you to expect4 ,there is something of a fighter in the way in which the nose springs from the brow between the wide- set1 meditative eyes4 ,a strenuous lad6 capable of plodding1 if you dare apply that word to labour so impassioned as his--to any labour whatever done at ,perugia1 centre of the dreamiest ,apennine scenery4 ,its various elements 7one hardly knows whether one is thinking of ,italian nature or of ,raphael's art in recounting them71 the richly- planted lowlands1 the sensitive mountain lines in flight one beyond the other into clear distance1 the cool yet glowing atmosphere1 #db the romantic morsels of architecture1 which lend to the entire scene ,i know not what expression of reposeful antiquity1 arrange themselves here as for set purpose of pictorial effect1 and have gone with little change into his painted backgrounds4 ,in the midst of it1 on titanic old ,roman and ,etruscan foundations1 the later ,gothic town had piled itself along the lines of a gigantic land of rock1 stretched out from the last slope of the ,apennines into the plain4 ,between its fingers steep dark lanes wind down into the olive gardens2 on the finger-tips military and monastic builders had perched their towns4 ,a place as fantastic in its attractiveness as the human life which then surged up and down in it in contrast to the peaceful scene around4 ,the ,baglioni who ruled there had brought certain tendencies of that age to a typical completeness of expression1 veiling crime-- crime1 it might seem1 for its own sake1 a whole octave of fantastic crime--not merely under brilliant fashions and comely persons1 but under fashions and persons1 an outward presentment of life and of themselves1 which had a kind of immaculate grace and discretion about them1 as if ,raphael himself had already brought his unerring gift of selection to bear upon it all for motives of art4 ,with life in those streets of ,perugia1 as with nature1 with the work of his masters1 with the mere exercises of his fellow-students1 his hand rearranges1 refines1 renews1 as if by simple contact2 #dc but it is met here half-way in its renewing office by some special aptitude for such grace in the subject itself4 ,seemingly innocent1 full of natural gaiety1 eternally youthful1 those seven and more deadly sins1 embodied and attired in just the jaunty dress then worn1 enter now and afterwards as spectators1 or assistants1 into many a sacred foreground and background among the friends and kinsmen of the ,holy ,family1 among the very angels1 gazing1 conversing1 standing firmly and unashamed4 ,during his apprenticeship at ,perugia ,raphael visited and left his work in more modest places round about1 along those seductive mountain or lowland roads1 and copied for one of them ,perugino's ,marriage of the ,virgin significantly1 did it by many degrees better1 with a very novel effect of motion everywhere1 and with that grace which natural motion evokes1 introducing for a temple in the background a lovely bit of his friend ,bramante's sort of architecture1 the true ,renaissance or perfected ,quattro-cento architecture4 ,he goes on building a whole lordly new city of the like as he paints to the end of his life4 ,the subject1 we may note1 as we leave ,perugia in ,raphael's company1 had been suggested by the famous mystic treasure of its cathedral church1 the marriage ring of the ,blessed ,virgin herself4 ,raphael's copy had been made for the little old ,apennine town of ,citt di ,castello2 and another place he visits at this time is still more #dd effective in the development of his genius4 ,about his twentieth year he comes to ,siena--that other rocky ,titan's hand1 just lifted out of the surface of the plain4 ,it is the most grandiose place he has yet seen2 it has not forgotten that it was once the rival of ,florence2 and here the patient scholar passes under an influence of somewhat larger scope than ,perugino's4 ,perugino's pictures are for the most part religious contemplations1 painted and made visible1 to accompany the action of divine service--a visible pattern to priests1 attendants1 worshippers1 of what the course of their invisible thoughts should be at those holy functions4 ,learning in the workshop of ,perugino to produce the like--such works as the ,ansidei ,madonna--to produce them very much better than his master1 ,raphael was already become a freeman of the most strictly religious school of ,italian art1 the so devout ,umbrian soul finding there its purest expression1 still untroubled by the naturalism1 the intellectualism1 the antique paganism1 then astir in the artistic soul everywhere else in ,italy4 ,the lovely work of ,perugino1 very lovely at its best1 of the early ,raphael also1 is in fact conservative1 and at various points slightly behind its day1 though not unpleasantly4 ,in ,perugino's allegoric frescoes of the ,cambio1 the ,hall of the ,money-changers1 for instance1 under the mystic rule of the ,planets in person1 pagan personages take their place indeed side by side with the figures of the ,new #de ,testament1 but are no ,romans or ,greeks1 neither are the ,jews ,jews1 nor is any one of them1 warrior1 sage1 king1 precisely of ,perugino's own time and place1 but still contemplations only1 after the manner of the personages in his church-work2 or1 say1 dreams--monastic dreams--thin1 do-nothing creatures1 conjured from sky and cloud4 ,perugino clearly never broke through the meditative circle of the ,middle ,age4 ,now ,raphael1 on the other hand1 in his final period at ,rome1 exhibits a wonderful narrative power in painting2 and the secret of that power--the power of developing a story in a picture1 or series of pictures--may be traced back from him to ,pinturicchio1 as that painter worked on those vast1 well-lighted walls of the cathedral library at ,siena1 at the great series of frescoes illustrative of the life of ,pope ,pius the ,second4 ,it had been a brilliant personal history1 in contact now and again with certain remarkable public events--a career religious yet mundane1 you scarcely know which1 so natural is the blending of lights1 of interest in it4 ,how unlike the ,peruginesque conception of life in its almost perverse other- worldliness1 which ,raphael now leaves behind him1 but1 like a true scholar1 will not forget4 ,pinturicchio then had invited his remarkable young friend hither1 to assist him by his counsels1 who1 however1 pupil-wise1 after his habit also learns much as he thus assists4 ,he stands depicted there in person in the scene #df of the canonisation of ,saint ,catherine2 and though his actual share in the work is not to be defined1 connoisseurs have felt his intellectual presence1 not at one place only1 in touches at once finer and more forcible than were usual in the steady-going1 somewhat ,teutonic1 ,pinturicchio1 ,raphael's elder by thirty years4 ,the meek scholar you see again1 with his tentative sketches and suggestions1 had more than learned his lesson2 through all its changes that flexible intelligence loses nothing2 does but add continually to its store4 ,henceforward ,raphael will be able to tell a story in a picture1 better1 with a truer economy1 with surer judgment1 more naturally and easily than any one else4 ,and here at ,siena1 of all ,italian towns perhaps most deeply impressed with medieval character--an impress it still retains--grotesque1 parti-coloured--parti-coloured1 so to speak1 in its genius--,satanic1 yet devout of humour1 as depicted in its old chronicles1 and beautiful withal1 dignified2 it is here that ,raphael becomes for the first time aware of that old pagan world1 which had already come to be so much for the art-schools of ,italy4 ,there were points1 as we saw1 at which the school of ,perugia was behind its day4 ,amid those intensely ,gothic surroundings in the cathedral library where ,pinturicchio worked1 stood1 as it remained till recently1 unashamed there1 a marble group of the three ,graces--an average ,roman work in #dg effect--the sort of thing we are used to4 ,that1 perhaps1 is the only reason why for our part1 except with an effort1 we find it conventional or even tame4 ,for the youthful ,raphael1 on the other hand1 at that moment1 antiquity1 as with the dew of herbs1 seemed therein to awake and sing out of the dust1 in all its sincerity1 its cheerfulness and natural charm4 ,he has turned it into a picture2 has helped to make his original only too familiar1 perhaps1 placing the three sisters against his own favourite1 so unclassic1 ,umbrian background indeed1 but with no trace of the ,peruginesque ascetic1 ,gothic meagreness in themselves2 emphasising rather1 with a hearty acceptance1 the nude1 the flesh2 making the limbs1 in fact1 a little heavy4 ,it was but one gleam he had caught just there in medieval ,siena of that large pagan world he was1 not so long afterwards1 more completely than others to make his own4 ,and when somewhat later he painted the exquisite1 still ,peruginesque1 ,apollo and ,marsyas1 semi-medieval habits again asserted themselves with delightfully blent effects4 ,it might almost pass for a parable--that little picture in the ,louvre--of the contention between classic art and the romantic1 superseded in the person of ,marsyas1 a homely1 quaintly poetical young monk1 surely6 ,only1 ,apollo himself also is clearly of the same brotherhood2 has a touch1 in truth1 of ,heine's fancied ,apollo in exile1 who1 ,christianity now triumphing1 has served as #dh a hired shepherd1 or hidden himself under the cowl in a cloister2 and ,raphael1 as if at work on choir-book or missal1 still applies symbolical gilding for natural sunlight4 ,it is as if he wished to proclaim amid newer lights--this scholar who never forgot a lesson--his loyal pupilage to ,perugino1 and retained still something of medieval stiffness1 of the monastic thoughts also1 that were born and lingered in places like ,borgo ,san ,sepolcro or ,citt di ,castello4 ,chef-d'oeuvre6 you might exclaim1 of the peculiar1 tremulous1 half- convinced1 monkish treatment of that after all damnable pagan world4 ,and our own generation certainly1 with kindred tastes1 loving or wishing to love pagan art as sincerely as did the people of the ,renaissance1 and medieval art as well1 would accept1 of course1 of work conceived in that so seductively mixed manner1 ten per cent of even ,raphael's later1 purely classical presentments4 ,that picture was suggested by a fine old intaglio in the ,medicean collection at ,florence1 was painted1 therefore1 after ,raphael's coming thither1 and therefore also a survival with him of a style limited1 immature1 literally provincial2 for in the phase on which he had now entered he is under the influence of style in its most fully determined sense1 of what might be called the thorough-bass of the pictorial art1 of a fully realised intellectual system in regard to its processes1 well tested by experiment1 upon a survey #di of all the conditions and various applications of it--of style as understood by ,da ,vinci1 then at work in ,florence4 ,raphael's sojourn there extends from his twenty-first to his twenty-fifth year4 ,he came with flattering recommendations from the ,court of ,urbino2 was admitted as an equal by the masters of his craft1 being already in demand for work1 then and ever since duly prized2 was1 in fact1 already famous1 though he alone is unaware--is in his own opinion still but a learner1 and as a learner yields himself meekly1 systematically to influence2 would learn from ,francia1 whom he visits at ,bologna2 from the earlier naturalistic works of ,masolino and ,masaccio2 from the solemn prophetic work of the venerable dominican1 ,bartolommeo1 disciple of ,savonarola4 ,and he has already habitually this strange effect1 not only on the whole body of his juniors1 but on those whose manner had been long since formed2 they lose something of themselves by contact with him1 as if they went to school again4 ,bartolommeo1 ,da ,vinci1 were masters certainly of what we call the ideal in art4 ,yet for ,raphael1 so loyal hitherto to the traditions of ,umbrian art1 to its heavy weight of hieratic tradition1 dealing still somewhat conventionally with a limited1 non-natural matter--for ,raphael to come from ,siena1 ,perugia1 ,urbino1 to sharp-witted1 practical1 masterful ,florence was in immediate effect a transition from reverie to #ej realities--to a world of facts4 ,those masters of the ideal were for him1 in the first instance1 masters also of realism1 as we say4 ,henceforth1 to the end1 he will be the analyst1 the faithful reporter1 in his work1 of what he sees4 ,he will realise the function of style as exemplified in the practice of ,da ,vinci1 face to face with the world of nature and man as they are2 selecting from1 asserting one's self in a transcript of its veritable data2 like drawing to like there1 in obedience to the master's preference for the embodiment of the creative form within him4 ,portrait-art had been nowhere in the school of ,perugino1 but it was the triumph of the school of ,florence4 ,and here a faithful analyst of what he sees1 yet lifting it withal1 unconsciously1 inevitably1 recomposing1 glorifying1 ,raphael too becomes1 of course1 a painter of portraits4 ,we may foresee them already in masterly series1 from ,maddalena ,doni1 a kind of younger1 more virginal sister of ,la ,gioconda1 to cardinals and popes--to that most sensitive of all portraits1 the ,violin- player1 if it be really his4 ,but then1 on the other hand1 the influence of such portraiture will be felt also in his inventive work1 in a certain reality there1 a certain convincing loyalty to experience and observation4 ,in his most elevated religious work he will still keep1 for security at least1 close to nature1 and the truth of nature4 ,his modelling of the visible surface is lovely because he understands1 can see the hidden causes #ea of momentary action in the face1 the hands--how men and animals are really made and kept alive4 ,set side by side1 then1 with that portrait of ,maddalena ,doni1 as forming together a measure of what he has learned at ,florence1 the ,madonna del ,gran ,duca1 which still remains there4 ,call it on revision1 and without hesitation1 the loveliest of his ,madonnas1 perhaps of all ,madonnas2 and let it stand as representative of as many as fifty or sixty types of that subject1 onwards to the ,sixtine ,madonna1 in all the triumphancy of his later days at ,rome4 ,observe the veritable atmosphere about it1 the grand composition of the drapery1 the magic relief1 the sweetness and dignity of the human hands and faces1 the noble tenderness of ,mary's gesture1 the unity of the thing with itself1 the faultless exclusion of all that does not belong to its main purpose2 it is like a single1 simple axiomatic thought4 ,note withal the novelty of its effect on the mind1 and you will see that this master of style 7that's a consummate example of what is meant by style7 has been still a willing scholar in the hands of ,da ,vinci4 ,but then1 with what ease also1 and simplicity1 and a sort of natural success not his6 ,it was in his twenty-fifth year that ,raphael came to the city of the popes1 ,michelangelo being already in high favour there4 ,for the remaining years of his life he paces the same streets with that grim artist1 who was so great a #eb contrast with himself1 and for the first time his attitude towards a gift different from his own is not that of a scholar1 but that of a rival4 ,if he did not become the scholar of ,michelangelo1 it would be difficult1 on the other hand1 to trace anywhere in ,michelangelo's work the counter influence usual with those who had influenced him4 ,it was as if he desired to add to the strength of ,michelangelo that sweetness which at first sight seems to be wanting there4 ,ex forti dulcedo3 and in the study of ,michelangelo certainly it is enjoyable to detect1 if we may1 sweet savours amid the wonderful strength1 the strangeness and potency of what he pours forth for us3 with ,raphael1 conversely1 something of a relief to find in the suavity of that so softly moving1 tuneful existence1 an assertion of strength4 ,there was the promise of it1 as you remember1 in his very look as he saw himself at eighteen2 and you know that the lesson1 the prophecy of those holy women and children he has made his own1 is that the meek shall possess4 ,so1 when we see him at ,rome at last1 in that atmosphere of greatness1 of the strong1 he too is found putting forth strength1 adding that element in due proportion to the mere sweetness and charm of his genius2 yet a sort of strength1 after all1 still congruous with the line of development that genius has hitherto taken1 the special strength of the scholar and his proper reward1 a purely cerebral strength #ec the strength1 the power of an immense understanding4 ,now the life of ,raphael at ,rome seems as we read of it hasty and perplexed1 full of undertakings1 of vast works not always to be completed1 of almost impossible demands on his industry1 in a world of breathless competition1 amid a great company of spectators1 for great rewards4 ,you seem to lose him1 feel he may have lost himself1 in the multiplicity of his engagements2 might fancy that1 wealthy1 variously decorated1 a courtier1 cardinal in petto1 he was serving tables4 ,but1 you know1 he was forcing into this brief space of years 7he died at thirty-seven7 more than the natural business of the larger part of a long life2 and one way of getting some kind of clearness into it1 is to distinguish the various divergent outlooks or applications1 and group the results of that immense intelligence1 that still untroubled1 flawlessly operating1 completely informed understanding1 that purely cerebral power1 acting through his executive1 inventive or creative gifts1 through the eye and the hand with its command of visible colour and form4 ,in that way you may follow him along many various roads till brain and eye and hand suddenly fail in the very midst of his work--along many various roads1 but you can follow him along each of them distinctly4 ,at the end of one of them is the ,galatea1 and in quite a different form of industry1 the datum #ed for the beginnings of a great literary work of pure erudition4 ,coming to the capital of ,christendom1 he comes also for the first time under the full influence of the antique world1 pagan art1 pagan life1 and is henceforth an enthusiastic archaeologist4 ,on his first coming to ,rome a papal bull had authorised him to inspect all ancient marbles1 inscriptions1 and the like1 with a view to their adaptation in new buildings then proposed4 ,a consequent close acquaintance with antiquity1 with the very touch of it1 blossomed literally in his brain1 and1 under his facile hand1 in artistic creations1 of which the ,galatea is indeed the consummation4 ,but the frescoes of the ,farnese palace1 with a hundred minor designs1 find their place along that line of his artistic activity2 they do not exhaust his knowledge of antiquity1 his interest in and control of it4 ,the mere fragments of it that still cling to his memory would have composed1 had he lived longer1 a monumental illustrated survey of the monuments of ancient ,rome4 ,to revive something of the proportionable spirit at least of antique building in the architecture of the present1 came naturally to ,raphael as the son of his age2 and at the end of another of those roads of diverse activity stands ,saint ,peter's1 though unfinished4 ,what a proof again of that immense intelligence1 by which1 as ,i said1 the element of strength supplemented the element of mere sweetness and charm in his #ee work1 that at the age of thirty1 known hitherto only as a painter1 at the dying request of the venerable ,bramante himself1 he should have been chosen to succeed him as the director of that vast enterprise6 ,and if little in the great church1 as we see it1 is directly due to him1 yet we must not forget that his work in the ,vatican also was partly that of an architect4 ,in the ,loggie1 or open galleries of the ,vatican1 the last and most delicate effects of ,quattro-cento taste come from his hand1 in that peculiar arabesque decoration which goes by his name4 ,saint ,peter's1 as you know1 had an indirect connexion with the ,teutonic reformation4 ,when ,leo ,x4 pushed so far the sale of indulgences to the overthrow of ,luther's ,catholicism1 it was done after all for the not entirely selfish purpose of providing funds to build the metropolitan church of ,christendom with the assistance of ,raphael2 and yet1 upon another of those diverse outways of his so versatile intelligence1 at the close of which we behold his unfinished picture of the ,transfiguration1 what has been called ,raphael's ,bible finds its place--that series of biblical scenes in the ,loggie of the ,vatican4 ,and here1 while he has shown that he could do something of ,michelangelo's work a little more soothingly than he1 this graceful ,roman ,catholic rivals also what is perhaps best in the work of the rude ,german reformer--of ,luther1 who came to ,rome about this very #ef time1 to find nothing admirable there4 ,place along with them the ,cartoons1 and observe that in this phase of his artistic labour1 as ,luther printed his vernacular ,german version of the ,scriptures1 so ,raphael is popularising them for an even larger world2 he brings the simple1 to their great delight1 face to face with the ,bible as it is1 in all its variety of incident1 after they had so long had to content themselves with but fragments of it1 as presented in the symbolism and in the brief lections of the ,liturgy3- -,biblia ,pauperum1 in a hundred forms of reproduction1 though designed for popes and princes4 ,but then1 for the wise1 at the end of yet another of those divergent ways1 glows his painted philosophy in the ,parnassus and the ,school of ,athens1 with their numerous accessories4 ,in the execution of those works1 of course1 his antiquarian knowledge stood him in good stead2 and here1 above all1 is the pledge of his immense understanding1 at work on its own natural ground on a purely intellectual deposit1 the apprehension1 the transmission to others of complex and difficult ideas4 ,we have here1 in fact1 the sort of intelligence to be found in ,lessing1 in ,herder1 in ,hegel1 in those who1 by the instrumentality of an organised philosophic system1 have comprehended in one view or vision what poetry has been1 or what ,greek philosophy1 as great complex dynamic facts in the world4 ,but then1 with the artist of the sixteenth century1 #eg this synoptic intellectual power worked in perfect identity with the pictorial imagination and a magic hand4 ,by him large theoretic conceptions are addressed1 so to speak1 to the intelligence of the eye4 ,there had been efforts at such abstract or theoretic painting before1 or say rather1 leagues behind him4 ,modern efforts1 again1 we know1 and not in ,germany alone1 to do the like for that larger survey of such matters which belongs to the philosophy of our own century2 but for one or many reasons they have seemed only to prove the incapacity of philosophy to be expressed in terms of art4 ,they have seemed1 in short1 so far1 not fit to be seen literally-- those ideas of culture1 religion1 and the like4 ,yet ,plato1 as you know1 supposed a kind of visible loveliness about ideas4 ,well6 in ,raphael1 painted ideas1 painted and visible philosophy1 are for once as beautiful as ,plato thought they must be1 if one truly apprehended them4 ,for note1 above all1 that with all his wealth of antiquarian knowledge in detail1 and with a perfect technique1 it is after all the beauty1 the grace of poetry1 of pagan philosophy1 of religious faith that he thus records4 ,of religious faith also4 ,the ,disputa1 in which1 under the form of a council representative of all ages1 he embodies the idea of theology1 divinarum rerum notitia1 as constantly resident in the ,catholic ,church1 ranks with the ,parnassus and the ,school of ,athens1 if it does not rather #eh close another of his long lines of intellectual travail--a series of compositions1 partly symbolic1 partly historical1 in which the ,deliverance of ,st4 ,peter from ,prison1 the ,expulsion of the ,huns1 and the ,coronation of ,charlemagne1 find their places2 and by which1 painting in the great official chambers of the ,vatican1 ,raphael asserts1 interprets the power and charm of the ,catholic ideal as realised in history4 ,a scholar1 a student of the visible world1 of the natural man1 yet even more ardently of the books1 the art1 the life of the old pagan world1 the age of the ,renaissance1 through all its varied activity1 had1 in spite of the weakened hold of ,catholicism on the critical intellect1 been still under its influence1 the glow of it1 as a religious ideal1 and in the presence of ,raphael you cannot think it a mere after-glow4 ,independently1 that is1 of less or more evidence for it1 the whole creed of the ,middle ,age1 as a scheme of the world as it should be1 as we should be glad to find it1 was still welcome to the heart1 the imagination4 ,now1 in ,raphael1 all the various conditions of that age discover themselves as characteristics of a vivid personal genius1 which may be said therefore to be conterminous with the genius of the ,renaissance itself4 ,for him1 then1 in the breadth of his immense cosmopolitan intelligence1 for ,raphael1 who had done in part the work of ,luther also1 the ,catholic ,church--through all its phases1 as reflected in its visible local centre1 #ei the papacy--is alive still as of old1 one and continuous1 and still true to itself4 ,ah6 what is local and visible1 as you know1 counts for so much with the artistic temper6 ,old friends1 or old foes with but new faces1 events repeating themselves1 as his large1 clear1 synoptic vision can detect1 the invading ,king of ,france1 ,louis ,,xii41 appears as ,attila3 ,leo ,x4 as ,leo ,i43 and he thinks of1 he sees1 at one and the same moment1 the coronation of ,charlemagne and the interview of ,pope ,leo with ,francis ,i41 as a dutiful son of the ,church3 of the deliverance of ,leo ,x4 from prison1 and the deliverance of ,st4 ,peter4 ,i have abstained from anything like description of ,raphael's pictures in speaking of him and his work1 have aimed rather at preparing you to look at his work for yourselves1 by a sketch of his life1 and therein especially1 as most appropriate to this place1 of ,raphael as a scholar4 ,and now if1 in closing1 ,i commend one of his pictures in particular to your imagination or memory11 your purpose to see it1 or see it again1 it will not be the ,transfiguration nor the ,sixtine ,madonna1 nor even the ,madonna del ,gran ,duca1 but the picture we have in ,london--the ,ansidei1 or ,blenheim1 ,madonna4 ,i find there1 at first sight1 with something of the pleasure one has in a proposition of ,euclid1 a sense of the power of the understanding1 in the economy with which he has reduced his material to the #fj simplest terms1 has disentangled and detached its various elements4 ,he is painting in ,florence1 but for ,perugia1 and sends it a specimen of its own old art--,mary and the babe enthroned1 with ,st4 ,nicolas and the ,baptist in attendance on either side4 ,the kind of thing people there had already seen so many times1 but done better1 in a sense not to be measured by degrees1 with a wholly original freedom and life and grace1 though he perhaps is unaware1 done better as a whole1 because better in every minute particular1 than ever before4 ,the scrupulous scholar1 aged twenty-three1 is now indeed a master2 but still goes carefully4 ,note1 therefore1 how much mere exclusion counts for in the positive effect of his work4 ,there is a saying that the true artist is known best by what he omits4 ,yes1 because the whole question of good taste is involved precisely in such jealous omission4 ,note this1 for instance1 in the familiar ,apennine background1 with its blue hills and brown towns1 faultless1 for once- -for once only--and observe1 in the ,umbrian pictures around1 how often such background is marred by grotesque1 natural1 or architectural detail1 by incongruous or childish incident4 ,in this cool1 pearl-grey1 quiet place1 where colour tells for double--the jewelled cope1 the painted book in the hand of ,mary1 the chaplet of red coral--one is reminded that among all classical writers ,raphael's preference was for the faultless ,virgil4 ,how orderly1 how divinely #fa clean and sweet the flesh1 the vesture1 the floor1 the earth and sky6 ,ah1 say rather the hand1 the method of the painter6 ,there is an unmistakeable pledge of strength1 of movement and animation in the cast of the ,baptist's countenance1 but reserved1 repressed4 ,strange1 ,raphael has given him a staff of transparent crystal4 ,keep then to that picture as the embodied formula of ,raphael's genius4 ,amid all he has here already achieved1 full1 we may think1 of the quiet assurance of what is to come1 his attitude is still that of the scholar2 he seems still to be saying1 before all things1 from first to last1 ,i am utterly purposed that ,i will not offend4 ,,notes #ch4 99,a lecture delivered to the ,university ,extension ,students1 ,oxford1 #b ,august1 #ahib4 ,published in the ,fortnightly ,review1 ,oct4 #ahib1 and now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors4 ,,pascal99 #fb ,,about the middle of the seventeenth century1 two opposite views of a question1 upon which neither ,scripture1 nor ,council1 nor ,pope1 had spoken with authority--the question as to the amount of freedom left to man by the overpowering work of divine grace upon him--had seemed likely for a moment to divide the ,roman ,church into two rival sects4 ,in the diocese of ,paris1 however1 the controversy narrowed itself into a mere personal quarrel between the ,jesuit ,fathers and the religious community of ,port-,royal1 and might have been forgotten but for the intervention of a new writer in whom ,french literature made more than a new step4 ,it became at once1 as if by a new creation1 what it has remained--a pattern of absolutely unencumbered expressiveness4 ,in #afef ,pascal1 then thirty-three years old1 under the form of ,letters to a ,provincial by one of his ,friends1 put forth a series of #fc pamphlets in which all that was vulnerable in the ,jesuit ,fathers was laid bare to the profit of their opponents4 ,at the moment the quarrel turned on the proposed censure of ,antoine ,arnauld by the ,sorbonne1 by the ,university of ,paris as a religious body4 ,pascal1 intimate1 like many another fine intellect of the day1 with the ,port-,royalists1 was ,arnauld's friend1 and it belonged to the ardour of his genius1 at least as he was then1 to be a very active friend4 ,he took up the pen as other chivalrous gentlemen of the day took up the sword1 and showed himself a master of the art of fence therewith4 ,his delicate exercise of himself with that weapon was nothing less than a revelation to all the world of the capabilities1 the true genius of the ,french language in prose4 ,those who think of ,pascal in his final sanctity1 his detachment of soul from all but the greatest matters1 may be surprised1 when they turn to the ,letters1 to find him treating questions1 as serious for the friends he was defending as for their adversaries1 ironically1 with a but half-veiled disdain for them1 or an affected humility at being unskilled in them and no theologian4 ,he does not allow us to forget that he is1 after all1 a layman2 while he introduces us1 almost avowedly1 into a world of unmeaning terms1 and unreal distinctions and suppositions that can never be verified4 ,the world in general1 indeed1 se paye des paroles4 ,that saying belongs to ,pascal1 and #fd he uses it with reference to the ,jesuits and their favourite expression of sufficient grace4 ,in the earliest ,letters he creates in us a feeling that1 however orthodox one's intention1 it is scarcely possible to speak of the matters then so abundantly discussed by religious people without heresy at some unguarded point4 ,the suspected proposition of ,arnauld1 it is admitted by one of his foes1 would be ,catholic in the mouth of any one but ,m4 ,arnauld4 ,the truth1 as it lay between ,arnauld and his opponents1 is a thing so delicate that pour peu qu'on s'en retire1 on tombe dans l'erreur2 mais cette erreur est si dlie1 que1 pour peu qu'on s'en loigne1 on se trouve dans la vrit4 ,some1 indeed1 may find in the very delicacy1 the curiosity1 with which such distinctions are drawn1 by ,pascal's friends as well as by their foes1 only the impertinence1 the profanities1 of the theologian by profession1 all too intimate in laying down the law of the things he deals with--the things which eye hath not seen pressing into the secrets of ,god's sublime commerce with men1 in which1 it may be1 ,he differs with every single human soul1 by forms of thought adapted from the poorest sort of men's dealings with each other1 from the trader1 or the attorney4 ,pascal notes too the impious buffooneries of his opponents4 ,the good ,fathers1 perhaps1 only meant them to promote geniality of temper in the debate4 ,but of such failures-- failures of taste1 of respect towards one's #fe own point of view-- the world is ever unamiably aware2 and in the ,letters there is much to move the self-complacent smile of the worldling1 as ,pascal describes his experiences1 while he went from one authority to another to find out what was really meant by the distinction between grace sufficient1 grace efficacious1 grace active1 grace victorious4 ,he heard1 for instance1 that all men have sufficient grace to do ,god's will2 but it is not always prochain1 not always at hand1 at the moment of temptation to do otherwise4 ,so far1 then1 ,pascal's charges are those which may seem to lie ready to hand against all who study theology1 a looseness of thought and language1 that would pass nowhere else1 in making what are professedly very fine distinctions2 the insincerity with which terms are carefully chosen to cover opposite meanings2 the fatuity with which opposite meanings revolve into one another1 in the strange vacuous atmosphere generated by professional divines4 ,up to this point1 you see1 ,pascal is the countryman of ,rabelais and ,montaigne1 smiling with the fine malice of the one1 laughing outright with the gaiety of the other1 all the world joining in the laugh-- well1 at the silliness of the clergy1 who seem indeed not to know their own business4 ,it is we1 the laity1 he would urge1 who are serious1 and disinterested1 because sincerely interested1 in these great questionings4 ,jalousie de mtier1 the reader may suspect1 has something to do with #ff the ,professional leaders on both sides of the controversy2 but at the actual turn controversy took just then1 it was against the ,jesuit ,fathers that ,pascal's charges came home in full force4 ,and their sin is above all that sin1 unpardonable with men of the world sans peur et sans reproche1 of a lack of self- respect1 sins against pride1 if the paradox may be allowed1 all the undignified faults1 in a word1 of essentially little people when they interfere in great matters--faults promoted in the direction of the consciences of women and children1 weak concessions to weak people who want to be saved in some easy way quite other than ,pascal's high1 fine1 chivalrous way of gaining salvation1 an incapacity to say what one thinks with the glove thrown down4 ,he supposes a ,jansenist to turn upon his opponent who uses the term sufficient grace1 while really meaning1 as he alleges1 insufficient1 with the words3--,your explanation would be odious to men of the world4 ,they speak more sincerely than you on matters of far less importance than this4 ,with the world1 ,pascal1 in the ,provincial ,letters1 had immediate success4 ,all the world1 we read in his friend's supposed reply to the second ,letter1 sees them2 all the world understands them4 ,men of the world find them agreeable1 and even women intelligible4 ,a century later ,voltaire found them very agreeable4 ,the spirit in which ,pascal deals with his opponents1 his irony1 may remind us of the ,apology of #fg ,socrates2 the style which secured them immediate access to people who1 as a rule1 find the subjects there treated hopelessly dry1 reminds us of the ,apologia of ,newman4 ,the essence of all good style1 whatever its accidents may be1 is expressiveness4 ,it is mastered in proportion to the justice1 the nicety with which words balance or match their meaning1 and their writer succeeds in saying what he wills1 grave or gay1 severe or florid1 simple or complex4 ,pascal was a master of style because1 as his sister tells us1 recording his earliest years1 he had a wonderful natural facility dire ce qu'il voulait en la manire qu'il voulait4 ,facit indignatio versus4 ,the indignation which caused ,pascal to write the ,letters was of a supercilious kind1 and what he willed to say in them led to the development of all those qualities that are summed up in the ,french term l'esprit4 ,voltaire declared that the best comedies of ,molire n'ont pas plus de sel que les premires lettres4 ,vos maximes1 ,pascal assures the ,jesuit ,fathers1 ont je ne sais quoi de divertissant1 qui rjouit toujours le monde1 and they lose nothing of that character in his handling of them1 so much so that it was clear from the first that the world in general would never ask whether ,pascal had been quite fair to his opponents3 ,n'tes-vous donc pas ridicules1 mes ,pres8 ,qu'on satisfait au prcepte d'our la messe en entendant quatre quarts de messe la fois de diffrents prtres6 ,when #fh you have the like of that it is impossible not to laugh1 parce que rien n'y porte davantage qu'une disproportion surprenante entre ce qu'on attend et ce qu'on voit4 ,he has salt also1 of another kind4 ,he drives straight at the ,jesuits1 for instance1 rather than at those who do but copy them1 because1 as he tells us3 ,les choses valent toujours mieux dans leur source4 ,what equity of expression1 how brief1 how untranslateable6 ,and the ,letters abound in such things4 ,but to his comparison of ,pascal with ,molire1 ,voltaire added that ,bossuet n'a rien de plus sublime que les dernires4 ,and in truth the more serious note of the impassioned servant of religion whose lips have been touched with altar-fire1 whose seriousness came to be like some incurable malady1 a visitation of ,god1 as people used to say1 is presently struck when1 in the natural course of his argument1 his thoughts are carried1 from a mere passage of arms between one man or one class of men and another1 deep down to those awful encounters of the individual soul with itself which are formulated in the eternal problem of predestination4 ,in their doctrine of sufficient grace the ,jesuits had presented a view of the conflict of good and evil in the soul1 which is honourable to ,god and encouraging to man1 and which has catholicity on its face4 ,all to whom entrance into the ,church1 through its formal ministries1 #fi lies open are truly called of ,god1 while beyond it stretches the ocean of ,his uncovenanted mercies4 ,that is a doctrine for the many1 for those whose position in the religious life is mediocrity1 who so far as themselves or others can discern have nothing about them of eternal or necessary or irresistible reprobation1 or of the eternal condition opposite to that4 ,the so-called ,jansenist doctrine1 on the other hand1 of but irresistible grace was the appropriate view of the ,port-,royalists1 high-pitched1 eager souls as they were1 and of their friend ,pascal himself1 however much in his turn he might refine upon it4 ,whether or not1 as a matter of fact1 upon which1 as distinct from matters of faith1 an infallible pope can be mistaken1 the dreary old ,dutch bishop ,jansenius had really taught ,jansenism1 the ,port-,royalists had found in his ,augustinus an incentive to devotion1 and were avowedly his adherents4 ,in that somewhat gloomy1 that too deeply impressed1 that fanatical age1 they were the ,calvinists of the ,roman ,catholic ,church1 maintaining1 emphasising in it a view1 a tradition1 really constant in it from ,st4 ,augustin1 from ,st4 ,paul himself4 ,it is a merit of ,pascal1 his literary merit1 to have given a very fine-toned expression to that doctrine1 though mainly in the way of a criticism of its opponents1 to one side or aspect of an eternal controversy1 eternally suspended1 as representing two opposite aspects of experience #gj itself4 ,calvin and ,arminius1 ,jansen and ,molina sum up1 in fact1 respectively1 like the respective adherents of the freedom or of the necessity of the human will1 in the more general question of moral philosophy1 two opposed1 two counter trains of phenomena actually observable by us in human action1 too large and complex a matter1 as it is1 to be embodied or summed up in any one single proposition or idea4 ,there are moments of one's own life1 aspects of the life of others1 of which the conclusion that the will is free seems to be the only-- is the natural or reasonable--account4 ,yet those very moments on reflexion1 on second thoughts1 present themselves again1 as but links in a chain1 in an all-embracing network of chains4 ,in all education we assume1 in some inexplicable combination1 at once the freedom and the necessity of the subject of it4 ,and who on a survey of life from outside would willingly lose the dramatic contrasts1 the alternating interests1 for which the opposed ideas of freedom and necessity are our respective points of view8 ,how significant become the details we might otherwise pass by almost unobserved1 but to which we are put on the alert by the abstract query whether a man be indeed a freeman or a slave1 as we watch from aside his devious course1 his struggles1 his final tragedy or triumph4 ,so much value at least there may be in problems insoluble in themselves1 such as that great controversy of ,pascal's day #ga between ,jesuit and ,jansenist4 ,and here again who would forego1 in the spectacle of the religious history of the human soul1 the aspects1 the details which the doctrines of universal and particular grace respectively embody8 ,the ,jesuit doctrine of sufficient grace is certainly1 to use the familiar expression1 a very pleasant doctrine conducive to the due feeding of the whole flock of ,christ1 as being1 as assuming them to be1 what they really are1 at the worst1 ,god's silly sheep4 ,it has something in it congruous with the rising of the physical sun on the evil and on the good1 while the wheat and the tares grow naturally1 peacefully together4 ,but how pleasant also the opposite doctrine1 how true1 how truly descriptive of certain distinguished1 magnifical1 or elect souls1 vessels of election1 pris des hauteurs1 as we see them pass across the world's stage1 as if led on by a kind of thirst for ,god6 ,its necessary counterpart1 of course1 we may find1 at least dramatically true of some2 we can name them in history1 perhaps from our own experience2 souls of whom it seems but an obvious story to tell that they seemed to be in love with eternal death1 to have borne on them from the first signs of reprobation4 ,of certain quite visibly elect souls1 at all events1 the theory of irresistible grace might seem the almost necessary explanation4 ,most reasonable1 most natural1 most truly is it descriptive of ,pascal himself4 #gb ,so far1 indeed1 up to the year #afef1 ,pascal's annus mirabilis1 the year of the ,letters1 the world had been allowed to see only one side of him4 ,early in life he had achieved brilliant overtures in the abstract sciences1 and1 inheriting much of the quality of a fine gentleman1 he figures1 with his trenchant manner1 never at a loss1 as a quite secular person1 stirred on occasion to take part in a religious debate4 ,but it is after the grand fashion of the mundane quarrels of that day1 the age of the sentiment of personal honour1 in which it was so natural for the good-natured ,jesuits1 stirring all ,pascal's satiric power1 to excuse as well as they could the act de tuer pour un simple mdisance4 ,the ,church was still an estate of the realm with all the obligations of the noblesse1 and it was still something worse than bad taste1 it was dangerous to express religious doubts4 ,about the ,catholic religion1 as he conceived it1 ,pascal displays the assured attitude of an ancient ,crusader4 ,he has the full courage of his opinions1 and by his elegant easy gallantry in speaking for it he gives to religion then and now a kind of dignity it had lost with other controversialists in the eyes of the world4 ,there is abundant gaiety also in the ,letters4 ,he quotes from ,tertullian to the effect that c'est proprement la vrit qu'il appartient de rire parce qu'elle est gaie1 et de se jouer de ses ennemis parce qu'elle est assure de sa victoire4 ,for he could find quotations to his purpose from recondite writers1 #gc though he was not a man of erudition2 like a man of the world again1 he read little1 but that absorbingly1 was the master of two authors1 ,epictetus and ,montaigne1 and1 as appeared afterwards1 of the ,scriptures in the ,vulgate4 ,so far1 his imposing carriage of himself intellectually might lead us to suspect that the forced humilities of his later years are indirectly a discovery of what seems one leading quality of the natural man in him1 a pride that could be quite fierce on occasion4 ,and1 like another rich young man whom ,jesus loved1 he lacked nothing to make the world also love and confide in1 as it already flattered1 him4 ,he turned from it1 decided to live a single life4 ,was it the mere oddity of genius8 ,or its last fine dainty touch of difference from ordinary people and their motives8 ,or that sanctity of which1 in some cases1 the world itself instinctively feels the distinction1 though it shrinks from the true explanation of it8 ,certainly1 all things considered1 on the morrow of the ,letters1 ,blaise ,pascal1 at the age of thirty-three1 had a brilliant worldly future before him1 had he cared duly to wait upon1 to serve it4 ,to develop the already considerable position of his family among the gentry of ,auvergne would have been to follow the way of his time1 in which so many noble names had been founded on professional talents4 ,increasingly1 however1 from early youth1 he had been the subject of a malady so hopeless #gd and inexplicable that in that superstitious age some fancied it the result of a malign spell in infancy4 ,gradually1 the world almost loses sight of him1 hears at last1 some time after it had looked for that event1 that he had died1 of course very piously1 among those sombre people1 his friends and relations of ,port-,royal1 with whom he had taken refuge1 and seemed already to have been buried alive4 ,and in the year #afgj1 not till eight years after his death1 the ,penses appeared--,penses de ,m4 ,pascal sur la ,religion et sur quelques autres sujets--or rather a selection from those ,thoughts by the ,port-,royalists1 still in fear of consequences to the struggling ,jansenist party1 anxious to present ,pascal's doctrine as far as possible in conformity with the ,jesuit sense1 as also to divert the vaguer parts of it more entirely into their own4 ,the incomparable words were altered1 the order changed or lost1 the thoughts themselves omitted or retrenched4 ,written in short intervals of relief from suffering1 they were contributions to a large and methodical work--,penses de ,m4 ,pascal sur la ,religion et sur quelques autres sujets--on a good many things besides1 as the reader finds1 on many of the great things of this world which seemed to him to come in contact or competition with religion4 ,in the true version of the ,thoughts1 edited at last by ,faugre1 in #ahdd1 from ,pascal's own ,,mss41 in the ,national ,library1 they group themselves into certain definite trains #ge of speculation and study4 ,but it is still1 nevertheless1 as isolated thoughts1 as inspirations1 so to call them1 penetrating what seemed hopelessly dark1 summarising what seemed hopelessly confused1 sticking fast in men's memories1 floating lightly1 or going far1 that they have left so deep a mark in literature4 ,for again the manner1 also1 their style precisely becomes them4 ,the merits of ,pascal's style1 indeed1 as of the ,french language itself1 still is to say beaucoup de choses en peu de mots2 and the brevity1 the discerning edge1 the impassioned concentration of the language are here one with the ardent immediate apprehensions of his spirit4 ,one of the literary merits of the ,provincial ,letters is that they are really like letters2 they are essentially a conversation by writing with other persons4 ,what we have in the ,thoughts is the conversation of the writer with himself1 with himself and with ,god1 or rather concerning ,him1 for ,he is1 in ,pascal's favourite phrase from the ,vulgate1 ,deus absconditus1 ,he who never directly shows ,himself4 ,choses de coeur the ,thoughts are1 indeed those of an individual1 though they seem to have determined the very outlines of a great subject for all other persons4 ,in ,pascal1 at the summit of the ,puy de ,dme in his native ,auvergne1 experimenting on the weight of the invisible air1 proving it to be ever all around by its effects1 we are presented with one of the more pleasing #gf aspects of his earlier1 more wholesome1 open-air life4 ,in the great work of which the ,thoughts are the first head1 ,pascal conceived himself to be doing something of the same kind in the spiritual order by a demonstration of this other invisible world all around us1 with its really ponderable forces1 its movement1 its attractions and repulsions1 the world of grace1 unseen1 but1 as he thinks1 the one only hypothesis that can explain the experienced1 admitted facts4 ,whether or not he was fixing permanently in the ,penses the outlines1 the principles1 of a great system of assent1 of conviction1 for acceptance by the intellect1 he was certainly fixing these with all the imaginative depth and sufficiency of ,shakespeare himself1 the fancied opposites1 the attitudes1 the necessary forms of pathos1 of a great tragedy in the heart1 the soul1 the essential human tragedy1 as typical and central in its expression here1 as ,hamlet--what the soul passes1 and must pass1 through1 aux abois with nothingness1 or with those offended mysterious powers that may really occupy it--or when confronted with the thought of what are called the four last things it yields this way or that4 ,what might have passed with all its fiery ways for an esprit de secte et de cabale is now revealed amid the disputes not of a single generation but of eternal ones1 by the light of a phenomenal storm of blinding and blasting inspirations4 #gg ,observe1 he is not a sceptic converted1 a returned infidel1 but is seen there as if at the very centre of a perpetually maintained tragic crisis holding the faith steadfastly1 but amid the well-poised points of essential doubt all around him and it4 ,it is no mere calm supersession of a state of doubt by a state of faith2 the doubts never die1 they are only just kept down in a perpetual agonia4 ,everywhere in the ,letters he had seemed so great a master--a master of himself--never at a loss1 taking the conflict so lightly1 with so light a heart3 in the great ,atlantean travail of the ,thoughts his feet sometimes are almost gone4 ,in his soul's agony1 theological abstractions seem to become personal powers4 ,it was as if just below the surface of the green undulations1 the stately woods1 of his own strange country of ,auvergne1 the volcanic fires had suddenly discovered themselves anew4 ,in truth into his typical diagnosis1 as it may seem1 of the tragedy of the human soul1 there have passed not merely the personal feelings1 the temperament of an individual1 but his malady also1 a physical malady4 ,great genius1 we know1 has the power of elevating1 transmuting1 serving itself by the accidental conditions about it1 however unpromising--poverty1 and the like4 ,it was certainly so with ,pascal's long-continued physical sufferings4 ,that aigreur1 which is part of the native colour of ,pascal's genius1 is reinforced in the #gh ,penses by insupportable languor1 alternating with supportable pain1 as he died little by little through the eight years of their composition4 ,they are essentially the utterance of a soul malade--a soul of great genius1 whose malady became a new quality of that genius1 perfecting it thus1 by its very defect1 as a type on the intellectual stage1 and thereby guiding1 reassuring sympathetically1 manning by a sense of good company that large class of persons who are malade in the same way4 ,la maladie est l'tat naturel des ,chrtiens1 says ,pascal himself4 ,and we concede that every one of us more or less is ailing thus1 as another has told us that life itself is a disease of the spirit4 ,from ,port-,royal also came1 about the year #afgj1 a painful book1 the ,life of ,pascal1 a portrait painted slowly from the life or living death1 but with an almost exclusive preference for traits expressive of disease4 ,the post-mortem examination of ,pascal's brain revealed1 we are now told1 the secret1 not merely of that long prostration1 those sudden passing torments1 but of something analogous to them in ,pascal's genius and work4 ,well6 the light cast indirectly on the literary work of ,pascal by ,mme4 ,prier's ,life is of a similar kind4 ,it is a veritable chapter in morbid pathology1 though it may have truly a beauty for experts1 the beauty which belongs to all refined cases even of cerebral disturbance4 ,that he should #gi have sought relief from his singular wretchedness1 in that sombre company1 is like the second stroke of tragedy upon him4 ,at moments ,pascal becomes almost a sectarian1 and seems to pass out of the genial broad heaven of the ,catholic ,church4 ,he had lent himself in those last years to a kind of pieties which do not make a winning picture1 which always have about them1 even when they show themselves in men physically strong1 something of the small compass of the sick- chamber4 ,his medieval or oriental self-tortures1 all the painful efforts at absolute detachment1 a perverse asceticism taking all there still was to spare from the denuded and suffering body1 might well1 you may think1 have died with him1 but are here recorded1 chiefly by way of showing the world1 the ,jesuits1 that the ,jansenists1 too1 had a saint quite after their mind4 ,but though1 at first sight1 you may find a pettiness in those minute pieties1 they have their signification as a testimony to the wholeness of ,pascal's assent1 the entirety of his submission1 his immense sincerity1 the heroic grandeur of his achieved faith4 ,the seventeenth century presents survivals of the gloomy mental habits of the ,middle ,age1 but for the most part of a somewhat theatrical kind1 imitations of ,francis and ,dominic or of their earlier imitators4 ,in ,pascal they are original1 and have all their seriousness4 ,que je n'en sois #hj jamais spar--pas spar ternellement1 he repeats1 or makes that strange sort of ,,ms4 amulet1 of which his sister tells us1 repeat for him4 ,cast me not away from ,thy presence2 and take not ,thy ,holy ,spirit from me4 ,it is table rase he is trying to make of himself1 that ,he might reign there absolutely alone1 who1 however1 as he was bound to think1 had made and blest all those things he declined to accept4 ,deeper and deeper1 then1 he retreated into the renuncient life4 ,he could not1 had he wished1 deprive himself of that his greatest gift--literally a gift he might have thought it not to be buried but accounted for--the gift of le beau dire1 of writing beautifully4 ,il avoit renonc depuis longtemps aux sciences purement humains4 ,to him who had known them so well1 and as if by intuition1 those abstract and perdurable forms of service might well have seemed a part of the ,lord's doing1 marvellous in our eyes1 as his favourite ,psalm cxix41 the psalm des petites heures1 the cxviii4 of the ,vulgate1 says499 ,these1 too1 he counts now as but a variety of le nant and vanity of things4 ,he no longer records1 therefore1 the mathematical aperus that may visit him2 and in his scruples1 his suspicions of' visible beauty1 he interests us as precisely an inversion of what is called the aesthetic life4 #ha ,yet his faith1 as in the days of the ,middle ,age1 had been supported1 rewarded1 by what he believed to be visible miracle among the strange lights and shades of that retired place4 ,pascal's niece1 the daughter of ,madame ,prier1 a girl ten years of age1 suffered from a disease of the eyes pronounced to be incurable4 ,the disease was a peculiarly distressing one1 the sort of affliction which1 falling on a young child1 may lead one to question the presence of divine justice in the world1 makes one long that miracles were possible4 ,well6 ,pascal1 for one1 believed that on occasion that profound aspiration had been followed up by the power desired4 ,a thorn from the crown of ,jesus1 as was believed1 had been lately brought to the ,port-,royal du ,faubourg ,s4 ,jacques in ,paris1 and was one day applied devoutly to the eye of the suffering child4 ,what followed was an immediate and complete cure1 fully attested by experts4 ,ah6 ,thou hast given him his heart's desire3 and hast not denied him the request of his lips4 ,pascal1 and the young girl herself1 faithfully to the end of a long life1 believed the circumstances to have been miraculous4 ,otherwise1 we do not see that ,pascal was ever permitted to enjoy 7so to speak7 the religion for which he had exchanged so much2 that the sense of acceptance1 of assurance1 had come to him2 that for him the ,spouse had ever penetrated the veil of the ordinary routine of the means of grace2 #hb nothing that corresponded as a matter of clear personal intercourse of the very senses to the greatness of his surrender--who had emptied himself of all other things4 ,besides1 there was some not wholly-explained delay in his reception1 in those his last days1 of the ,sacrament4 ,it was brought to him just in time--,voici celui que vous avez tant dsir6--the ministrant says to the dying man4 ,pascal was then aged thirty-nine-- an age you may remember fancifully noted as fatal to genius4 ,pascal's ,thoughts1 then1 we shall not rightly measure but as the outcome1 the utterance1 of a soul diseased1 a soul permanently ill at ease4 ,we find in their constant tension something of insomnia1 of that sleeplessness which can never be a quite healthful condition of mind in a human body4 ,sometimes they are cries1 cries of obscure pain rather than thoughts--those great fine sayings which seem to betray by their depth of sound the vast unseen hollow places of nature1 of humanity1 just beneath one's feet or at one's side4 ,reading them1 so modern still are those thoughts1 so rich and various in suggestion1 that one seems to witness the mental seed-sowing of the next two centuries1 and perhaps more1 as to those matters with which he concerns himself4 ,intuitions of a religious genius1 they may well be taken also as the final considerations of the natural man1 as a religious inquirer on doubt and faith1 and their place in #hc things4 ,listen now to some of these ,thoughts taken at random3 taken at first for their brevity4 ,peu de chose nous console1 parce que peu de chose nous afflige4 ,par l'espace l'univers me comprend et m'engloutit comme un point3 par la pense je le comprends4 ,things like these put us en route with ,pascal4 ,toutes les bonnes maximes sont dans le monde3 on ne manque que de les appliquer4 ,the great ascetic was always hard on amusements1 on mere pastimes3 ,le divertissement nous amuse1 one and all of us1 et nous fait arriver insensiblement la mort4 ,nous perdons encore la vie avec joie1 pourvu qu'on en parle4 ,on ne peut faire une bonne physionomie 7in a portrait7 qu'en accordant toutes nos contrarits4 ,l'homme n'est qu'un roseau1 le plus foible de la nature1 mais c'est un roseau pensant4 ,il ne faut pas que l'univers entier s'arme pour l'craser4 ,une vapeur1 une goutte d'eau1 suffit pour le tuer4 ,mais quand l'univers l'craseroit1 l'homme seroit encore plus noble que se qui le tue1 parce qu'il sait qu'il meurt1 et l'avantage que l'univers a sur lui1 l'univers n'en sait rien4 ,it is not thought by which that excels1 but the convincing force of imagination which sublimates its very triteness4 ,toute notre dignit consiste donc en la pense4 ,there1 then1 you have at random the sort of stuff of which the ,pensees are made4 ,let me now briefly indicate1 also by quotation again1 some of the main leading tendencies in them4 ,la chose la plus importante toute la vie c'est la #hd choix du mtier3 le hasard en dispose4 ,there we recognise the manner of thought of ,montaigne4 ,now one of the leading interests in the study of ,pascal is to trace the influence upon him of the typical sceptic of the preceding century4 ,pascal's ,thoughts we shall never understand unless we realise the under-texture in them of ,montaigne's very phrases1 the fascination the ,essays had for ,pascal in his capacity of one of the children of light1 as giving a veritable compte rendu of the ,satanic course of this world since the ,fall1 set forth with all the persuasiveness1 the power and charm1 all the gifts of ,satan1 the veritable light on things he has at his disposal4 ,pascal re-echoes ,montaigne then in asserting the paradoxical character of man and his experience4 ,the old headings under which the ,port-,royalist editors grouped the ,thoughts recall the titles of ,montaigne's ,essays--,of the ,disproportion of ,man1 and the like4 ,as strongly as ,montaigne he delights in asserting the relative1 local1 ephemeral and merely provisional character of our ideas of law1 vice1 virtue1 happiness1 and so forth4 ,comme la mode fait l'agrment aussi fait-elle la justice4 ,la justice et la vrit sont deux pointes si subtiles1 que nos instruments sont trop mousses pour y toucher exactement4 ,bien suivant la seule raison n'est juste de soi3 tout branle avec le temps4 ,sometimes he strikes the express accent of ,montaigne3 ,ceux qui sont dans un vaisseau croient que ceux qui sont #he au bord fuient4 ,le langage est pareil de tous cts4 ,il faut avoir un point fixe pour en juger4 ,le port juge ceux qui sont dans un vaisseau1 mais o prendrons-nous un port dans la morale8 ,at times he seems to forget that he himself and ,montaigne are after all not of the same flock1 as his mind grazes in those pleasant places4 ,qu'il 7man7 se regarde comme gar dans ce canton dtourn de la nature1 et de ce petit cachot o il se trouve log1 qu'il apprenne the earth1 et soi-mme son juste prix4 ,il ffre1 mais elle est ployable tous sens2 et ainsi il n'y en a point4 ,un mme sens change selon les paroles qui l'expriment4 ,he has touches even of what he calls the malignity1 the malign irony of ,montaigne4 ,rien que la mdiocrit n'est bon1 he says1--pris des hauteurs1 as he so conspicuously was-- ,c'est sortir de l'humanit que de sortir du milieu2 la grandeur de l'me humaine consiste savoir s'y tenir4 ,rien ne fortifie plus le pyrrhonisme--that is ever his word for scepticism--que ce qu'il y en a qui ne sont pas pyrrhoniens3 si tous taient ils auraient tort4 ,you may even credit him1 like ,montaigne1 with a somewhat ,satanic intimacy with the ways1 the cruel ways1 the weakness1 lchet1 of the human heart1 so that1 as he says of ,montaigne1 himself too might be a pernicious study for those who have a native tendency to corruption4 ,the paradoxical condition of the world1 the natural inconsistency of man1 his strange #hf blending of meanness with ancient greatness1 the caprices of his status here1 of his power and attainments1 in the issue of his existence--that is what the study of ,montaigne had enforced on ,pascal as the sincere compte rendu of experience4 ,but then he passes at a tangent from the circle of the great sceptic's apprehension4 ,that prospect of man and the world1 undulant1 capricious1 inconsistent1 contemptible1 lche1 full of contradiction1 with a soul of evil in things good1 irreducible to law1 upon which1 after all1 ,montaigne looks out with a complacency so entire1 fills ,pascal with terror4 ,it is the world on the morrow of a great catastrophe1 the casual forces of which have by no means spent themselves4 ,yes6 this world we see1 of which we are a part1 with its thousand dislocations1 is precisely what we might expect as resultant from the ,fall of ,man1 with consequences in full working still4 ,it presents the appropriate aspect of a lost world1 though with beams of redeeming grace about it1 those1 too1 distributed somewhat capriciously to chosen people and elect souls1 who1 after all1 can have but an ill time of it here4 ,under the tragic clairs of divine wrath essentially implacable1 the gentle1 pleasantly undulating1 sunny1 earthly prospect of poor loveable humanity which opens out for one in ,montaigne's ,essays1 becomes for ,pascal a scene of harsh precipices1 of threatening heights and depths--the depths of his own nothingness4 ,vanity3 nothingness3 these #hg are his catchwords3 ,nous sommes incapables et du vrai et du bien2 nous sommes tous condamns4 ,ce qui y parat 7i4e41 what we see in the world7 ne marque ni une exclusion totale ni une prsence manifeste de divinit1 mais la prsence d'un ,dieu qui se cache3 7,deus absconditus1 that is a recurrent favourite thought of his7 tout porte ce caractre4 ,in this world of abysmal dilemmas1 he is ready to push all things to their extremes4 ,all or nothing2 for him real morality will be nothing short of sanctity4 ,en ,jsus ,christ toutes les contradictions sont accordes4 ,yet what difficulties again in the religion of ,christ6 ,nulle autre religion n'a propos de se har4 ,la seule religion contraire la nature1 contraire au sens commun1 est la seule qui ait toujours t4 ,multitudes in every generation have felt at least the aesthetic charm of the rites of the ,catholic ,church4 ,for ,pascal1 on the other hand1 a certain weariness1 a certain puerility1 a certain unprofitableness in them is but an extra trial of faith4 ,he seems to have little sense of the beauty of holiness4 ,and for his sombre1 trenchant1 precipitous philosophy there could be no middle terms2 irresistible election1 irresistible reprobation2 only sometimes extremes meet1 and again it may be the trial of faith that the justified seem as loveless and unlovely as the reprobate4 ,abtissez-vous6 ,a nature1 you may think1 that would magnify things to the utmost1 nurse1 expand them beyond their natural bounds by his #hh reflex action upon them4 ,thus revelation is to be received on evidence1 indeed1 but an evidence conclusive only on a presupposition or series of presuppositions1 evidence that is supplemented by an act of imagination1 or by the grace of faith1 shall we say8 ,at any rate1 the fact is1 that the genius of the great reasoner1 of this great master of the abstract and deductive sciences1 turned theologian1 carrying the methods of thought there formed into the things of faith1 was after all of the imaginative order4 ,now hear what he says of imagination3 ,cette facult trompeuse1 qui semble nous tre donne exprs pour nous induire une erreur ncessaire4 ,that has a sort of necessity in it4 ,what he says has again the air of ,montaigne1 and he says much of the same kind3 ,cette superbe puissance ennemie de la raison1 combien toutes les richesses de la terre sont insuffisantes sans son consentement4 ,the imagination has the disposition of all things3 ,elle fait la beaut1 la justice1 et le bonheur1 qui est le tout du monde4 ,l'imagination dispose de tout4 ,and what we have here to note is its extraordinary power in himself4 ,strong in him as the reasoning faculty1 so to speak1 it administered the reasoning faculty in him son grbut he was unaware of it1 that power d'autant plus fourbe qu'elle ne l'est pas toujours4 ,hidden under the apparent rigidity of his favourite studies1 imagination1 even in them1 played a large part4 ,physics1 mathematics were with him largely matters of intuition1 anticipation1 #hi precocious discovery1 short cuts1 superb guessing4 ,it was the inventive element in his work and his way of putting things that surprised those best able to judge4 ,he might have discovered the mathematical sciences for himself1 it is alleged1 had his father1 as he once had a mind to do1 withheld him from instruction in them4 ,about the time when he was bidding adieu to the world1 ,pascal had an accident4 ,as he drove round a corner on the ,seine side to cross the bridge at ,neuilly1 the horses were precipitated down the bank into the water4 ,pascal escaped1 but with a nervous shock1 a certain hallucination1 from which he never recovered4 ,as he walked or sat he was apt to perceive a yawning depth beside him2 would set stick or chair there to reassure himself4 ,we are now told1 indeed1 that that circumstance has been greatly exaggerated4 ,but how true to ,pascal's temper1 as revealed in his work1 that alarmed precipitous character in it6 ,intellectually the abyss was evermore at his side4 ,nous avons1 he observes1 un autre principe d'erreur1 les maladies4 ,now in him the imagination itself was like a physical malady1 troubling1 disturbing1 or in active collusion with it4 4 4 4 ,,notes #fb4 99,published in the ,contemporary ,review1 ,feb4 #ahie1 and now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors4 #gf4 ,transliteration3 pathos4 #hj4 99,the words here cited are1 however1 from ,psalm cxviii41 the cxvii4 of the ,vulgate1 and not from ,pascal's favourite ,psalm4 7,c4,l4,s47 ,c4,l4,s4 stands for ,charles ,shadwell1 editor of the original volume4 ,,art ,,notes ,,in ,,north ,,italy99 #ij ,,titian1 as we see him in what some have thought his noblest work1 the large altar-piece1 dated #aebb1 his forty-fifth year1 of ,,ss4 ,nazaro e ,celso1 at ,brescia1 is certainly a religious--a great1 religious painter4 ,the famous ,gabriel of the ,annunciation1 aflight1 in all the effortless energy of an angel indeed1 and ,sebastian1 adapted1 it was said1 from an ancient statue1 yet as novel in design as if ,titian had been the first to handle that so familiar figure in old religious art--may represent for us a vast and varied amount of work--in which he expands to their utmost artistic compass the earlier religious dreams of ,mantegna and the ,bellini1 affording sufficient proof how sacred themes could rouse his imagination1 and all his manual skill1 to heroic efforts4 ,but he is also the painter of the ,venus of the ,tribune and the ,triumph of ,bacchus2 and such frank acceptance of the voluptuous paganism of the ,renaissance1 the motive of a large proportion of his work1 #ia might make us think that religion1 grandly dramatic as was his conception of it1 can have been for him only one of many pictorial attitudes4 ,there are however painters of that date who1 while their work is great enough to be connected 7perhaps groundlessly7 with ,titian's personal influence1 or directly attributed to his hand1 possess at least this psychological interest1 that about their religiousness there can be no question4 ,their work is to be looked for mainly in and about the two sub-alpine towns of ,brescia and ,bergamo2 in the former of which it becomes definable as a school--the school of ,moretto1 in whom the perfected art of the later ,renaissance is to be seen in union with a catholicism as convinced1 towards the middle of the sixteenth century1 as that of ,giotto or ,angelico4 ,moretto of ,brescia1 for instance1 is one of the few painters who have fully understood the artistic opportunities of the subject of ,saint ,paul1 for whom1 for the most part1 art has found only the conventional trappings of a ,roman soldier 7a soldier1 as being in charge of those prisoners to ,damascus71 or a somewhat commonplace old age4 ,moretto also makes him a nobly accoutred soldier--the rim of the helmet1 thrown backward in his fall to the earth1 rings the head already with a faint circle of glory--but a soldier still in possession of all those resources of unspoiled youth which he is ready to offer in a #ib moment to the truth that has just dawned visibly upon him4 ,the terrified horse1 very grandly designed1 leaps high against the suddenly darkened sky above the distant horizon of ,damascus1 with all ,moretto's peculiar understanding of the power of black and white4 ,but what signs the picture inalienably as ,moretto's own is the thought of the saint himself1 at the moment of his recovery from the stroke of ,heaven4 ,the pure1 pale1 beardless face1 in noble profile1 might have had for its immediate model some military monk of a later age1 yet it breathes all the joy and confidence of the ,apostle who knows in a single flash of time that he has found the veritable captain of his soul4 ,it is indeed the ,paul whose genius of conviction has so greatly moved the minds of men--the soldier who1 bringing his prisoners bound to ,damascus1 is become the soldier of ,jesus ,christ4 ,moretto's picture has found its place 7in a dark recess1 alas67 in the ,church of ,santa ,maria presso ,san ,celso1 in the suburbs of ,milan1 hard by the site of the old ,roman cemetery1 where ,ambrose1 at a moment when in one of his many conflicts a sign was needed1 found the bodies of ,nazarus and ,celsus1 youthful patrician martyrs in the reign of ,nero1 overflowing now with miraculous powers1 their blood still fresh upon them--conspersa recenti sanguine4 ,the body of ,saint ,nazarus he removed into the city3 that of ,saint ,celsus remained within the little sanctuary #ic which still bears his name1 and beside which1 in the fifteenth century1 arose the glorious ,church of the ,madonna1 with spacious atrium after the ,ambrosian manner1 a faade richly sculptured in the style of the ,renaissance1 and sumptuously adorned within4 ,behind the massive silver tabernacle of the altar of the miraculous picture which gave its origin to this splendid building1 the rare visitor1 peeping as into some sacred bird-nest1 detects one of the loveliest works of ,luini1 a small1 but exquisitely finished ,holy ,family4 ,among the fine pictures around are works by two other very notable religious painters of the cinque- cento4 ,both alike1 ,ferrari and ,borgognone1 may seem to have introduced into fiery ,italian latitudes a certain northern temperature1 and somewhat twilight1 ,french1 or ,flemish1 or ,german1 thoughts4 ,ferrari1 coming from the neighbourhood of ,varallo1 after work at ,vercelli and ,novara1 returns thither to labour1 as both sculptor and painter1 in the stations of the ,sacro ,monte1 at a form of religious art which would seem to have some natural kinship with the temper of a mountain people4 ,it is as if the living actors in the ,passion ,play of ,oberammergau had been transformed into almost illusive groups in painted terra-cotta4 ,the scenes of the ,last ,supper1 of the ,martyrdom of the ,innocents1 of the ,raising of ,jairus' daughter1 for instance1 are certainly touching in the nave piety of their life-sized realism4 ,but ,gaudenzio ,ferrari had many #id helpmates at the ,sacro ,monte2 and his lovelier work is in the ,franciscan ,church at the foot of the hill1 and in those two1 truly ,italian1 far-off towns of the ,lombard plain4 ,even in his great1 many-storied fresco in the ,franciscan ,church at ,varallo there are traces of a somewhat barbaric hankering after solid form2 the armour of the ,roman soldiers1 for example1 is raised and gilt4 ,it is as if this serious soul1 going back to his mountain home1 had lapsed again into mountain grotesque1 with touches also1 in truth1 of a peculiarly northern poetry--a mystic poetry1 which now and again1 in his treatment1 for instance1 of angel forms and faces1 reminds one of ,blake4 ,there is something of it certainly in the little white spectral soul of the penitent thief making its escape from the dishonoured body along the beam of his cross4 ,the contrast is a vigorous one when1 in the space of a few hours1 the traveller finds himself at ,vercelli1 half-stifled in its thick pressing crop of pumpkins and mulberry trees4 ,the expression of the prophet occurs to him3 ,a lodge in a garden of cucumbers4 ,garden of cucumbers and half-tropical flowers1 it has invaded the quiet open spaces of the town4 ,search through them1 through the almost cloistral streets1 for the ,church of the ,umiliati2 and there1 amid the soft garden-shadows of the choir1 you may find the sentiment of the neighbourhood expressed with great refinement in what is perhaps #ie the masterpiece of ,ferrari1 ,our ,lady of the ,fruit-garden1 as we might say--attended by twelve life-sized saints and the monkish donors of the picture4 ,the remarkable proportions of the tall panel1 up which the green-stuff is climbing thickly above the mitres and sacred garniture of those sacred personages1 lend themselves harmoniously to the gigantic stature of ,saint ,christopher in the foreground as the patron saint of the church4 ,with the savour of this picture in his memory1 the visitor will look eagerly in some half-dozen neighbouring churches and deserted conventual places for certain other works from ,ferrari's hand2 and so1 leaving the place under the influence of his delicate religious ideal1 may seem to have been listening to much exquisite church-music there1 violins and the like1 on that perfectly silent afternoon--such music as he may still really hear on ,sundays at the neighbouring town of ,novara1 famed for it from of old4 ,here1 again1 the art of ,gaudenzio ,ferrari reigns4 ,gaudenzio6 ,it is the name of the saintly prelate on whom his pencil was many times employed1 ,first ,bishop of ,novara1 and patron of the magnificent basilica hard by which still covers his body1 whose earthly presence in cope and mitre ,ferrari has commemorated in the altar-piece of the ,marriage of ,st4 ,catherine1 with its refined richness of colour1 like a bank of real flowers blooming there1 and like nothing else around it in the #if vast duomo of old ,roman architecture1 now heavily masked in modern stucco4 ,the solemn mountains1 under the closer shadow of which his genius put on a northern hue1 are far away1 telling at ,novara only as the grandly theatrical background to an entirely lowland life4 ,and here1 as at ,vercelli so at ,novara1 ,ferrari is not less graciously ,italian than ,luini himself4 ,if the name of ,luini's master1 ,borgognone1 is no proof of northern extraction1 a northern temper is nevertheless a marked element of his genius--something of the patience1 especially1 of the masters of ,dijon or ,bruges1 nowhere more clearly than in the two groups of male and female heads in the ,national ,gallery1 family groups1 painted in the attitude of worship1 with a lowly religious sincerity which may remind us of the contemporary work of ,m4 ,legros4 ,like those northern masters1 he accepts piously1 but can refine1 what has no comeliness4 ,and yet perhaps no painter has so adequately presented that purely personal beauty 7for which1 indeed1 even profane painters for the most part have seemed to care very little7 as ,borgognone in the two deacons1 ,stephen and ,laurence1 who1 in one of the altar- pieces of the ,certosa1 assist at the throne of ,syrus1 ancient1 sainted1 ,first ,bishop of ,pavia--stately youths in quite imperial dalmatics of black and gold4 ,an indefatigable worker at many forms of religious art1 here and elsewhere1 assisting at last in the #ig carving and inlaying of the rich marble faade of the ,certosa1 the rich carved and inlaid wood-work of ,santa ,maria at ,bergamo1 he is seen perhaps at his best1 certainly in his most significantly religious mood1 in the ,church of the ,incoronata at ,lodi1 especially in one picture there1 the ,presentation of ,christ in the ,temple4 ,the experienced visitor knows what to expect in the sacristies of the great ,italian churches2 the smaller1 choicer works of ,luini1 say1 of ,della ,robbia or ,mino of ,fiesole1 the superb ambries and drawers and presses of old oak or cedar1 the still untouched morsel of fresco-- like sacred priestly thoughts visibly lingering there in the half- light4 ,well6 the little octagonal ,church of the ,incoronata is like one of these sacristies4 ,the work of ,bramante--you see it1 as it is so rarely one's luck to do1 with its furniture and internal decoration complete and unchanged1 the coloured pavement1 the colouring which covers the walls1 the elegant little organ of ,domenico da ,lucca 7#aejg71 the altar-screens with their dainty rows of brass cherubs4 ,in ,borgognone's picture of the ,presentation1 there the place is1 essentially as we see it to-day4 ,the ceremony1 invested with all the sentiment of a ,christian sacrament1 takes place in this very church1 this ,temple of the ,incoronata where you are standing1 reflected on the dimly glorious wall1 as in a mirror4 ,borgognone in his picture has #ih but added in long legend1 letter by letter1 on the fascia below the cupola1 the ,song of ,simeon4 ,the ,incoronata however is1 after all1 the monument less of ,ambrogio ,borgognone than of the gifted ,piazza family3--,callisto1 himself born at ,lodi1 his father1 his uncle1 his brothers1 his son ,fulvio1 working there in three generations1 under marked religious influence1 and with so much power and grace that1 quite gratuitously1 portions of their work have been attributed to the master-hand of ,titian1 in some imaginary visit here to these painters1 who were in truth the disciples of another--,romanino of ,brescia4 ,at ,lodi1 the lustre of ,scipione ,piazza is lost in that of ,callisto1 his elder brother2 but he might worthily be included in a list of painters memorable for a single picture1 such pictures as the solemn ,madonna of ,pierino del ,vaga1 in the ,duomo of ,pisa1 or the ,holy ,family of ,pellegrino ,piola1 in the ,goldsmiths' ,street at ,genoa4 ,a single picture1 a single figure in a picture1 signed and dated1 over the altar of ,saint ,clement1 in the ,church of ,san ,spirito1 at ,bergamo1 might preserve the fame of ,scipione ,piazza1 who did not live to be old4 ,the figure is that of the youthful ,clement of ,rome himself1 who had seen the blessed ,apostles1 writing at the dictation of ,saint ,paul4 ,for a moment he looks away from the letters of the book with all the wistful intelligence of a boy softly touched already by the radiancy of the #ii celestial ,wisdom4 ,her ways are ways of pleasantness6 ,that is the lesson this winsome1 docile1 spotless creature--ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris--younger brother or cousin of ,borgognone's noble deacons at the ,certosa--seems put there to teach us4 ,and in this church1 indeed1 as it happens1 ,scipione's work is side by side with work of his4 ,it is here1 in fact1 at ,bergamo and at ,brescia1 that the late survival of a really convinced religious spirit becomes a striking fact in the history of ,italian art4 ,vercelli and ,novara1 though famous for their mountain neighbourhood1 enjoy but a distant and occasional view of ,monte ,rosa and its companions2 and even then those awful stairways to tracts of airy sunlight may seem hardly real4 ,but the beauty of the twin sub-alpine towns further eastward is shaped by the circumstance that mountain and plain meet almost in their streets1 very effectively for all purposes of the picturesque4 ,brescia1 immediately below the ,falcon of ,lombardy 7so they called its masterful fortress on the last ledge of the ,pi di ,monte71 to which you may now ascend by gentle turfed paths1 to watch the purple mystery of evening mount gradually from the great plain up the mountain-walls close at hand1 is as level as a church pavement1 home- like1 with a kind of easy walking from point to point about it1 rare in ,italian towns--a town full of walled gardens1 giving even to #ajj its smaller habitations the retirement of their more sumptuous neighbours1 and a certain ,english air4 ,you may peep into them1 pacing its broad streets1 from the blaze of which you are glad to escape into the dim and sometimes gloomy churches1 the twilight sacristies1 rich with carved and coloured woodwork4 ,the art of ,romanino still lights up one of the darkest of those churches with the altar-piece which is perhaps his most expressive and noblest work4 ,the veritable blue sky itself seems to be breaking into the dark-cornered1 low-vaulted1 ,gothic sanctuary of the ,barefoot ,brethren1 around the ,virgin and ,child1 the bowed1 adoring figures of ,bonaventura1 ,saint ,francis1 ,saint ,antony1 the youthful majesty of ,saint ,louis1 to keep for ever in memory--not the ,king of ,france however1 in spite of the fleurs-de-lys on his cope of azure1 but ,louis1 ,bishop of ,toulouse4 ,a ,rubens in ,italy6 you may think1 if you care to rove from the delightful fact before you after vague supposititious alliances--something between ,titian and ,rubens6 ,certainly1 ,romanino's bold1 contrasted colouring anticipates something of the northern freshness of ,rubens4 ,but while the peculiarity of the work of ,rubens is a sense of momentary transition1 as if the colours were even now melting in it1 ,romanino's canvas bears rather the steady glory of broad ,italian noonday2 while he is distinguished also for a remarkable clearness of #aja design1 which has perhaps something to do1 is certainly congruous with1 a markedly religious sentiment1 like that of ,angelico or ,perugino1 lingering still in the soul of this ,brescian painter towards the middle of the sixteenth century4 ,romanino and ,moretto1 the two great masters of ,brescia in successive generations1 both alike inspired above all else by the majesty1 the majestic beauty1 of religion--its persons1 its events1 every circumstance that belongs to it--are to be seen in friendly rivalry1 though with ten years' difference of age between them1 in the ,church of ,san ,giovanni ,evangelista2 ,romanino approaching there1 as near as he might1 in a certain candle-lighted scene1 to that harmony in black1 white1 and grey preferred by the younger painter4 ,before this or that example of ,moretto's work1 in that admirably composed picture of ,saint ,paul's ,conversion1 for instance1 you might think of him as but a very noble designer in grisaille4 ,a more detailed study would convince you that1 whatever its component elements1 there is a very complex tone which almost exclusively belongs to him2 the ,saint ,ursula finally1 that he is a great1 though very peculiar colourist-- a lord of colour who1 while he knows the colour resources that may lie even in black and white1 has really included every delicate hue whatever in that faded silver grey1 which yet lingers in one's memory as their final effect4 ,for some admirers indeed he is definable #ajb as a kind of really sanctified ,titian4 ,it must be admitted1 however1 that whereas ,titian sometimes lost a little of himself in the greatness of his designs1 or committed their execution1 in part1 to others1 ,moretto1 in his work1 is always all there--thorough1 steady1 even1 in his workmanship4 ,that1 again1 was a result of his late-surviving religious conscience4 ,and here1 as in other instances1 the supposed influence of the greater master is only a supposition4 ,as a matter of fact1 at least in his earlier life1 ,moretto made no visit to ,venice2 developed his genius at home1 under such conditions for development as were afforded by the example of the earlier masters of ,brescia itself2 left his work there abundantly1 and almost there alone1 as the thoroughly representative product of a charming place4 ,in the little ,church of ,san ,clemente he is still at home to his lovers2 an intimately religious artist1 full of cheerfulness1 of joy4 ,upon the airy galleries of his great altar-piece1 the angels dance against the sky above the ,mother and the ,child2 ,saint ,clement1 patron of the church1 being attendant in pontifical white1 with ,dominic1 ,catherine1 the ,magdalen1 and good1 big-faced ,saint ,florian in complete armour1 benign and strong4 ,he knows many a saint not in the ,roman breviary4 ,was there a single sweet-sounding name without its martyr patron8 ,lucia1 ,agnes1 ,agatha1 ,barbara1 ,cecilia--holy women1 dignified1 high-bred1 intelligent-- #ajc have an altar of their own2 and here1 as in that festal high altar-piece1 the spectator may note yet another artistic alliance1 something of the pale effulgence of ,correggio--an approach1 at least1 to that peculiar treatment of light and shade1 and a pre-occupation with certain tricks therein of nature itself1 by which ,correggio touches ,rembrandt on the one hand1 ,da ,vinci on the other4 ,here1 in ,moretto's work1 you may think that manner more delightful1 perhaps because more refined1 than in ,correggio himself4 ,those pensive1 tarnished1 silver side-lights1 like mere reflexions of natural sunshine1 may be noticed indeed in many another painter of that day1 in ,lanini1 for instance1 at the ,national ,gallery4 ,in his ,nativity at the ,brera1 ,procaccini of ,verona almost anticipates ,correggio's ,heilige ,nacht4 ,it is1 in truth1 the first step in the decomposition of light1 a touch of decadence1 of sunset1 along the whole horizon of ,north-,italian art4 ,it is1 however1 as the painter of the white- stoled ,ursula and her companions that the great master of ,brescia is most likely to remain in the memory of the visitor2 with this fact1 above all1 clearly impressed on it1 that ,moretto had attained full intelligence of all the pictorial powers of white4 ,in the clearness1 the cleanliness1 the hieratic distinction1 of this earnest and deeply-felt composition1 there is something pre-,raphaelite2 as also in a certain liturgical formality in the grouping of the virgins--the #ajd looks1 all one way1 of the closely-ranged faces2 while in the long folds of the drapery we may see something of the severe grace of early ,tuscan sculpture--something of severity in the long1 thin1 emphatic shadows4 ,for the light is high1 as with the level lights of early morning1 the air of which ruffles the banners borne by ,ursula in her two hands1 her virgin companions laying their hands also upon the tall staves1 as if taking share1 with a good will1 in her self- dedication1 with all the hazard of battle4 ,they bring us1 appropriately1 close to the grave of this manly yet so virginal painter1 born in the year #aejj1 dead at forty-seven4 ,of ,moretto and ,romanino1 whose works thus light up1 or refine1 the dark churches of ,brescia and its neighbourhood1 ,romanino is scarcely to be seen beyond it4 ,the ,national ,gallery1 however1 is rich in ,moretto's work1 with two of his rare poetic portraits2 and if the large altar-picture would hardly tell his secret to one who had not studied him at ,brescia1 in those who already know him it will awake many a reminiscence of his art at its best4 ,the three white mitres1 for instance1 grandly painted towards the centre of the picture1 at the feet of ,saint ,bernardino of ,siena--the three bishoprics refused by that lowly saint--may remind one of the great white mitre which1 in the genial picture of ,saint ,nicholas1 in the ,miracoli at ,brescia1 one of the children1 who as delightfully #aje unconventional acolytes accompany their beloved patron into the presence of the ,madonna1 carries along so willingly1 laughing almost1 with pleasure and pride1 at his part in so great a function4 ,in the altar-piece at the ,national ,gallery those white mitres form the key-note from which the pale1 cloistral splendours of the whole picture radiate4 ,you see what a wealth of enjoyable colour ,moretto1 for one1 can bring out of monkish habits in themselves sad enough1 and receive a new lesson in the artistic value of reserve4 ,rarer still 7the single work of ,romanino1 it is said1 to be seen out of ,italy7 is the elaborate composition in five parts on the opposite side of the doorway4 ,painted for the high-altar of one of the many churches of ,brescia1 it seems to have passed into secular hands about a century ago4 ,alessandro1 patron of the church1 one of the many youthful patrician converts ,italy reveres from the ranks of the ,roman army1 stands there on one side1 with ample crimson banner superbly furled about his lustrous black armour1 and on the other--,saint ,jerome1 ,romanino's own namesake--neither more nor less than the familiar1 self-tormenting anchorite2 for few painters 7,bellini1 to some degree1 in his picture of the saint's study7 have perceived the rare pictorial opportunities of ,jerome2 ,jerome with the true cradle of the ,lord1 first of ,christian antiquaries1 author of the fragrant ,vulgate version of the #ajf ,scriptures4 ,alessandro and ,jerome support the ,mother and the ,child in the central place4 ,but the loveliest subjects of this fine group of compositions are in the corners above1 half-length1 life-sized figures--,gaudioso1 ,bishop of ,brescia1 above ,saint ,jerome2 above ,alessandro1 ,saint ,filippo ,benizzi1 meek founder of the ,order of ,servites to which that church at ,brescia belonged1 with his lily1 and in the right hand a book2 and what a book6 ,it was another very different painter1 ,giuseppe ,caletti1 of ,cremona1 who1 for the truth and beauty of his drawing of them1 gained the title of the ,painter of ,books4 ,but if you wish to see what can be made of the leaves1 the vellum cover1 of a book1 observe that in ,saint ,philip's hand4--,the writer8 the contents8 you ask3 ,what may they be8 and whence did it come8--out of embalmed sacristy1 or antique coffin of some early ,brescian martyr1 or1 through that bright space of blue ,italian sky1 from the hands of an angel1 like his ,annunciation lily1 or the book received in the ,apocalypse by ,john the ,divine8 ,it is one of those old saints1 ,gaudioso 7at home in every church in ,brescia71 who looks out with full face from the opposite corner of the altar-piece1 from a background which1 though it might be the new heaven over a new earth1 is in truth only the proper1 breathable air of ,italy4 ,as we see him here1 ,saint ,gaudioso is one of the more exquisite treasures of our ,national ,gallery4 ,it was thus that at the magic #ajg touch of ,romanino's art the dim1 early1 hunted-down ,brescian church of the primitive centuries1 crushed into the dust1 it might seem1 was brought to her king1 out of those old dark crypts1 in raiment of needle-work--the delicate1 richly folded1 pontifical white vestments1 the mitre and staff and gloves1 and rich jewelled cope1 blue or green4 ,the face1 of remarkable beauty after a type which all feel though it is actually rare in art1 is probably a portrait of some distinguished churchman of ,romanino's own day2 a second ,gaudioso1 perhaps1 setting that later ,brescian church to rights after the terrible ,french occupation in the painter's own time1 as his saintly predecessor1 the ,gaudioso of the earlier century here commemorated1 had done after the invasion of the ,goths4 ,the eloquent eyes are open upon some glorious vision4 ,he hath made us kings and priests6 they seem to say for him1 as the clean1 sensitive lips might do so eloquently4 ,beauty and ,holiness had kissed each other1 as in ,borgognone's imperial deacons at the ,certosa4 ,at the ,renaissance the world might seem to have parted them again4 ,but here certainly1 once more1 ,catholicism and the ,renaissance1 religion and culture1 holiness and beauty1 might seem reconciled1 by one who had conceived neither after any feeble way1 in a gifted person4 ,here at least1 by the skill of ,romanino's hand1 the obscure martyr of the crypts shines as a #ajh saint of the later ,renaissance1 with a sanctity of which the elegant world itself would hardly escape the fascination1 and which reminds one how the great ,apostle ,saint ,paul has made courtesy part of the content of the ,divine charity itself4 ,a ,rubens in ,italy6--so ,romanino has been called4 ,in this gracious presence we might think that1 like ,rubens also1 he had been a courtier4 ,,notes #ij4 99,published in the ,new ,review1 ,nov4 #ahij1 and now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors4 ,,notre-,,dame ,d',,amiens99 #aji ,,the greatest and purest of ,gothic churches1 ,notre-,dame d',amiens1 illustrates1 by its fine qualities1 a characteristic secular movement of the beginning of the thirteenth century4 ,philosophic writers of ,french history have explained how1 in that and in the two preceding centuries1 a great number of the more important towns in eastern and northern ,france rose against the feudal establishment1 and developed severally the local and municipal life of the commune4 ,to guarantee their independence therein they obtained charters from their formal superiors4 ,the ,charter of ,amiens served as the model for many other communes4 ,notre-,dame d',amiens is the church of a commune4 ,in that century of ,saint ,francis1 of ,saint ,louis1 they were still religious4 ,but over against monastic interests1 as identified with a central authority--king1 emperor1 or pope--they pushed forward the local1 and1 so to call it1 secular authority of their #aaj bishops1 the flower of the secular clergy in all its mundane astuteness1 ready enough to make their way as the natural ,protectors of such townships4 ,the people of ,amiens1 for instance1 under a powerful episcopal patron1 invested their civic pride in a vast cathedral1 outrivalling neighbours1 as being in effect their parochial church1 and promoted there the new1 revolutionary1 ,gothic manner1 at the expense of the derivative and traditional1 ,roman or ,romanesque1 style1 the imperial style1 of the great monastic churches4 ,nay1 those grand and beautiful people's churches of the thirteenth century1 churches pre-eminently of ,our ,lady1 concurred also with certain novel humanistic movements of religion itself at that period1 above all with the expansion of what is reassuring and popular in the worship of ,mary1 as a tender and accessible1 though almost irresistible1 intercessor with her severe and awful ,son4 ,hence the splendour1 the space1 the novelty1 of the great ,french cathedrals in the first ,pointed style1 monuments for the most part of the artistic genius of laymen1 significant pre-eminently of that ,queen of ,gothic churches at ,amiens4 ,in most cases those early ,pointed churches are entangled1 here or there1 by the constructions of the old round-arched style1 the heavy1 ,norman or other1 ,romanesque chapel or aisle1 side by side1 though in strong contrast with1 the soaring new ,gothic of nave or transept4 ,but of that older #aaa manner of the round arch1 the plein-cintre1 ,amiens has nowhere1 or almost nowhere1 a trace4 ,the ,pointed style1 fully pronounced1 but in all the purity of its first period1 found here its completest expression4 ,and while those venerable1 ,romanesque1 profoundly characteristic1 monastic churches1 the gregarious product of long centuries1 are for the most part anonymous1 as if to illustrate from the first a certain personal tendency which came in with the ,gothic manner1 we know the name of the architect under whom1 in the year ,a4,d4 #abbj1 the building of the church of ,amiens began--a layman1 ,robert de ,luzarches4 ,light and space--floods of light1 space for a vast congregation1 for all the people of ,amiens1 for their movements1 with something like the height and width of heaven itself enclosed above them to breathe in2--you see at a glance that this is what the ingenuity of the ,pointed method of building has here secured4 ,for breadth1 for the easy flow of a processional torrent1 there is nothing like the ambulatory1 the aisle of the choir and transepts4 ,and the entire area is on one level4 ,there are here no flights of steps upward1 as at ,canterbury1 no descending to dark crypts1 as in so many ,italian churches--a few low1 broad steps to gain the choir1 two or three to the high altar4 ,to a large extent the old pavement remains1 though almost worn-out by the footsteps of centuries4 ,priceless1 though not composed of precious material1 it gains its effect #aab by ingenuity and variety in the patterning1 zig-zags1 chequers1 mazes1 prevailing respectively1 in white and grey1 in great square1 alternate spaces-- the original floor of a medieval church for once untouched4 ,the massive square bases of the pillars of a ,romanesque church1 harshly angular1 obstruct1 sometimes cruelly1 the standing1 the movements1 of a multitude of persons4 ,to carry such a multitude conveniently round them is the matter-of-fact motive of the gradual chiselling away1 the softening of the angles1 the graceful compassing1 of the ,gothic base1 till in our own ,perpendicular period it all but disappears4 ,you may study that tendency appropriately in the one church of ,amiens2 for such in effect ,notre-,dame has always been4 ,that circumstance is illustrated by the great font1 the oldest thing here1 an oblong trough1 perhaps an ancient saintly coffin1 with four quaint prophetic figures at the angles1 carved from a single block of stone4 ,to it1 as to the baptistery of an ,italian town1 not so long since all the babes of ,amiens used to come for christening4 ,strange as it may seem1 in this queen of ,gothic churches1 l'glise ogivale par excellence1 there is nothing of mystery in the vision1 which yet surprises1 over and over again1 the eye of the visitor who enters at the western doorway4 ,from the flagstone at one's foot to the distant keystone of the chevet1 noblest of its species-- #aac reminding you of how many largely graceful things1 sails of a ship in the wind1 and the like6--at one view the whole is visible1 intelligible2--the integrity of the first design2 how later additions affixed themselves thereto2 how the rich ornament gathered upon it2 the increasing richness of the choir2 its glazed triforium2 the realms of light which expand in the chapels beyond2 the astonishing boldness of the vault1 the astonishing lightness of what keeps it above one2 the unity1 yet the variety of perspective4 ,there is no mystery here1 and indeed no repose4 ,like the age which projected it1 like the impulsive communal movement which was here its motive1 the ,pointed style at ,amiens is full of excitement4 ,go1 for repose1 to classic work1 with the simple vertical law of pressure downwards1 or to its ,lombard1 ,rhenish1 or ,norman derivatives4 ,here1 rather1 you are conscious restlessly of that sustained equilibrium of oblique pressure on all sides1 which is the essence of the hazardous ,gothic construction1 a construction of which the flying buttress is the most significant feature4 ,across the clear glass of the great windows of the triforium you see it1 feel it1 at its ,atlas-work audaciously4 ,a pleasant thing it is to behold the sun those first ,gothic builders would seem to have said to themselves2 and at ,amiens1 for instance1 the walls have disappeared2 the entire building is composed of its windows4 ,those who built it #aad might have had for their one and only purpose to enclose as large a space as possible with the given material4 ,no2 the peculiar ,gothic buttress1 with its double1 triple1 fourfold flights1 while it makes such marvels possible1 securing light and space and graceful effect1 relieving the pillars within of their massiveness1 is not a restful architectural feature4 ,consolidation of matter naturally on the move1 security for settlement in a very complex system of construction--that is avowedly a part of the ,gothic situation1 the ,gothic problem4 ,with the genius which contended1 though not always quite successfully1 with this difficult problem1 came also novel aesthetic effect1 a whole volume of delightful aesthetic effects4 ,for the mere melody of ,greek architecture1 for the sense as it were of music in the opposition of successive sounds1 you got harmony1 the richer music generated by opposition of sounds in one and the same moment2 and were gainers4 ,and then1 in contrast with the classic manner1 and the ,romanesque survivals from it1 the vast complexity of the ,gothic style seemed1 as if consciously1 to correspond to the richness1 the expressiveness1 the thousandfold influence of the ,catholic religion1 in the thirteenth century still in natural movement in every direction4 ,the later ,gothic of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tended to conceal1 as it now took for granted1 the structural use of the buttress1 for #aae example2 seemed to turn it into a mere occasion for ornament1 not always pleasantly3--while the ornament was out of place1 the structure failed4 ,such falsity is far enough away from what at ,amiens is really of the thirteenth century4 ,in this pre-eminently secular church1 the execution1 in all the defiance of its method1 is direct1 frank1 clearly apparent1 with the result not only of reassuring the intelligence1 but of keeping one's curiosity also continually on the alert1 as we linger in these restless aisles4 ,the integrity of the edifice1 together with its volume of light1 has indeed been diminished by the addition of a range of chapels1 beyond the proper limits of the aisles1 north and south4 ,not a part of the original design1 these chapels were formed for private uses in the fourteenth century1 by the device of walling in and vaulting the open spaces between the great buttresses of the nave4 ,under the broad but subdued sunshine which falls through range upon range of windows1 reflected from white wall and roof and gallery1 soothing to the eye1 while it allows you to see the delicate carved work in all its refinement of touch1 it is only as an after-thought1 an artificial after-thought1 that you regret the lost stained glass1 or the vanished mural colour1 if such to any large extent there ever were4 ,the best stained glass is often that stained by weather1 by centuries of weather1 #aaf and we may well be grateful for the amazing cheerfulness of the interior of ,amiens1 as we actually find it4 ,windows of the richest remain1 indeed1 in the apsidal chapels2 and the rose-windows of the transepts are known1 from the prevailing tones of their stained glass1 as ,fire and ,water1 the western rose symbolising in like manner ,earth and ,air1 as respectively green and blue4 ,but there is no reason to suppose that the interior was ever so darkened as to prevent one's seeing1 really and clearly1 the dainty ornament1 which from the first abounded here2 the floriated architectural detail2 the broad band of flowers and foliage1 thick and deep and purely sculptured1 above the arches of nave and choir and transepts1 and wreathing itself continuously round the embedded piers which support the roof2 with the woodwork1 the illuminated metal1 the magnificent tombs1 the jewellers' work in the chapels4 ,one precious1 early thirteenth-century window of grisaille remains1 exquisite in itself1 interesting as evidence of the sort of decoration which originally filled the larger number of the windows4 ,grisaille1 with its lace-work of transparent grey1 set here and there with a ruby1 a sapphire1 a gemmed medallion1 interrupts the clear light on things hardly more than the plain glass1 of which indeed such windows are mainly composed4 ,the finely designed frames of iron for the support of the glass1 in the windows from which even #aag this decoration is gone1 still remain1 to the delight of those who are knowing in the matter4 ,very ancient light1 this seems1 at any rate1 as if it had been lying imprisoned thus for long centuries2 were in fact the light over which the great vault originally closed1 now become almost substance of thought1 one might fancy1--a mental object or medium4 ,we are reminded that after all we must of necessity look on the great churches of the ,middle ,age with other eyes than those who built or first worshipped in them2 that there is something verily worth having1 and a just equivalent for something else lost1 in the mere effect of time1 and that the salt of all aesthetic study is in the question1--,what1 precisely what1 is this to me8 ,you and ,i1 perhaps1 should not care much for the mural colouring of a medieval church1 could we see it as it was2 might think it crude1 and in the way4 ,what little remains of it at ,amiens has parted1 indeed1 in the course of ages1 with its shrillness and its coarse grain4 ,and in this matter certainly1 in view of ,gothic polychrome1 our difference from the people of the thirteenth century is radical4 ,we have1 as it was very unlikely they should have1 a curiosity1 a very pleasurable curiosity1 in the mere working of the stone they built with1 and in the minute facts of their construction1 which their colouring1 and the layer of plaster it involved1 disguised or hid4 ,we may think that in architecture stone is the most beautiful #aah of all things4 ,modern hands have replaced the colour on some of the tombs here--the effigies1 the tabernacles above--skilfully as may be1 and have but deprived them of their dignity4 ,medieval colouring1 in fact1 must have improved steadily1 as it decayed1 almost till there came to be no question of colour at all4 ,in architecture1 close as it is to men's lives and their history1 the visible result of time is a large factor in the realised aesthetic value1 and what a true architect will in due measure always trust to4 ,a false restoration only frustrates the proper ripening of his work4 ,if we may credit our modern eyes1 then1 those old1 very secular builders aimed at1 they achieved1 an immense cheerfulness in their great church1 with a purpose which still pursued them into their minuter decoration4 ,the conventional vegetation of the ,romanesque1 its blendings of human or animal with vegetable form1 in cornice or capital1 have given way here1 in the first ,pointed style1 to a pleasanter1 because more natural1 mode of fancy2 to veritable forms of vegetable life1 flower or leaf1 from meadow and woodside1 though still indeed with a certain survival of the grotesque in a confusion of the leaf with the flower1 which the subsequent ,decorated period will wholly purge away in its perfect garden-borders4 ,it was not with monastic artists and artisans that the sheds and workshops around ,amiens ,cathedral were filled1 #aai as it rose from its foundations through fifty years2 and those lay schools of art1 with their communistic sentiment1 to which in the thirteenth century the great episcopal builders must needs resort1 would in the natural course of things tend towards naturalism4 ,the subordinate arts also were no longer at the monastic stage1 borrowing inspiration exclusively from the experiences of the cloister1 but belonged to guilds of laymen--smiths1 painters1 sculptors4 ,the great confederation of the city1 the commune1 subdivided itself into confederations of citizens4 ,in the natural objects of the first ,pointed style there is the freshness as of nature itself1 seen and felt for the first time2 as if1 in contrast1 those older cloistral workmen had but fed their imagination in an embarrassed1 imprisoned1 and really decadent manner1 or mere reminiscence of1 or prescriptions about1 things visible4 ,congruous again with the popularity of the builders of ,amiens1 of their motives1 is the wealth1 the freedom and abundance1 of popular1 almost secular1 teaching1 here afforded1 in the carving especially1 within and without2 an open ,bible1 in place of later legend1 as at monastic ,vzelay1--the ,bible treated as a book about men and women1 and other persons equally real1 but blent with lessons1 with the liveliest observations1 on the lives of men as they were then and now1 what they do1 and how they do it1 or did it then1 and on the doings of nature #abj which so greatly influence what man does2 together with certain impressive metaphysical and moral ideas1 a sort of popular scholastic philosophy1 or as if it were the virtues and vices ,aristotle defines1 or the characters of ,theophrastus1 translated into stone4 ,above all1 it is to be observed that as a result of this spirit1 this free spirit1 in it1 art has at last become personal4 ,the artist1 as such1 appears at ,amiens1 as elsewhere1 in the thirteenth century2 and1 by making his personal way of conception and execution prevail there1 renders his own work vivid and organic1 and apt to catch the interest of other people4 ,he is no longer a ,byzantine1 but a ,greek--an unconscious ,greek4 ,proof of this is in the famous ,beau-,dieu of ,amiens1 as they call that benign1 almost classically proportioned figure1 on the central pillar of the great west doorway2 though in fact neither that1 nor anything else on the west front of ,amiens1 is quite the best work here4 ,for that we must look rather to the sculpture of the portal of the south transept1 called1 from a certain image there1 ,portail de la ,vierge dore1 gilded at the expense of some unknown devout person at the beginning of the last century4 ,a presentation of the mystic1 the delicately miraculous1 story of ,saint ,honor1 eighth ,bishop of ,amiens1 and his companions1 with its voices1 its intuitions1 and celestial intimations1 it has evoked a correspondent method of work at once #aba nave and nicely expressive4 ,the rose1 or roue1 above it1 carries on the outer rim seventeen personages1 ascending and descending--another piece of popular philosophy--the wheel of fortune1 or of human life4 ,and they were great brass-founders1 surely1 who at that early day modelled and cast the tombs of the ,bishops ,evrard and ,geoffrey1 vast plates of massive black bronze in half-relief1 like abstract thoughts of those grand old prelatic persons4 ,the tomb of ,evrard1 who laid the foundations 7qui fundamenta hujus basilicae locavit71 is not quite as it was4 ,formerly it was sunk in the pavement1 while the tomb of ,bishop ,geoffrey opposite 7it was he closed in the mighty vault of the nave3 hanc basilicam culmen usque perduxit71 itself vaulted-over the space of the grave beneath4 ,the supreme excellence of those original workmen1 the journeymen of ,robert de ,luzarches and his successor1 would seem indeed to have inspired others1 who have been at their best here1 down to the days of ,louis the ,fourteenth4 ,it prompted1 we may think1 a high level of execution1 through many revolutions of taste in such matters2 in the marvellous furniture of the choir1 for instance1 like a whole wood1 say a thicket of old hawthorn1 with its curved topmost branches spared1 slowly transformed by the labour of a whole family of artists1 during fourteen years1 into the stalls1 in number one hundred and ten1 with nearly four #abb thousand figures4 ,yet they are but on a level with the ,flamboyant carved and coloured enclosures of the choir1 with the histories of ,john the ,baptist1 whose face-bones are here preserved1 and of ,saint ,firmin--popular saint1 who protects the houses of ,amiens from fire4 ,even the screens of forged iron around the sanctuary1 work of the seventeenth century1 appear actually to soar1 in their way1 in concert with the airy ,gothic structure2 to let the daylight pass as it will2 to have come1 they too1 from smiths1 odd as it may seem at just that time1 with some touch of inspiration in them4 ,in the beginning of the fifteenth century they had reared against a certain bald space of wall1 between the great portal and the western rose1 an organ1 a lofty1 many-chambered1 veritable house of church- music1 rich in azure and gold1 finished above at a later day1 not incongruously1 in the quaint1 pretty manner of ,henri-,deux4 ,and those who are interested in the curiosities of ritual1 of the old provincial ,gallican uses1 will be surprised to find one where they might least have expected it4 ,the reserved ,eucharist still hangs suspended in a pyx1 formed like a dove1 in the midst of that lamentable glory of the eighteenth century in the central bay of the sanctuary1 all the poor1 gaudy1 gilt rays converging towards it4 ,there are days in the year in which the great church is still literally filled with reverent worshippers1 and if you come late to service you push the #abc doors in vain against the closely serried shoulders of the good people of ,amiens1 one and all in black for church-holiday attire4 ,then1 one and all1 they intone the ,tantum ergo 7did it ever sound so in the ,middle ,ages87 as the ,eucharist1 after a long procession1 rises once more into its resting-place4 ,if the ,greeks1 as at least one of them says1 really believed there could be no true beauty without bigness1 that thought certainly is most specious in regard to architecture2 and the thirteenth-century church of ,amiens is one of the three or four largest buildings in the world1 out of all proportion to any ,greek building1 both in that and in the multitude of its external sculpture4 ,the chapels of the nave are embellished without by a double range of single figures1 or groups1 commemorative of the persons1 the mysteries1 to which they are respectively dedicated--the gigantic form of ,christopher1 the ,mystery of the ,annunciation4 ,the builders of the church seem to have projected no very noticeable towers2 though it is conventional to regret their absence1 especially with visitors from ,england1 where indeed cathedral and other towers are apt to be good1 and really make their mark4 ,robert de ,luzarches and his successors aimed rather at the domical outline1 with its central point at the centre of the church1 in the spire or flche4 ,the existing spire is a wonderful mass of carpentry #abd of the beginning of the sixteenth century1 at which time the lead that carefully wraps every part of it was heavily gilt4 ,the great western towers are lost in the west front1 the grandest1 perhaps the earliest1 example of its species--three profound1 sculptured portals2 a double gallery above1 the upper gallery carrying colossal images of twenty-two kings of the ,house of ,judah1 ancestors of ,our ,lady2 then the great rose2 above it the ringers' gallery1 half masking the gable of the nave1 and uniting at their top-most storeys the twin1 but not exactly equal or similar1 towers1 oddly oblong in plan1 as if never intended to carry pyramids or spires4 ,they overlook an immense distance in those flat1 peat-digging1 black and green regions1 with rather cheerless rivers1 and are the centre of an architectural region wider still--of a group to which ,soissons1 far beyond the woods of ,compigne1 belongs1 with ,st4 ,quentin1 and1 towards the west1 a too ambitious rival1 ,beauvais1 which has stood however--what we now see of it--for six centuries4 ,it is a spare1 rather sad world at most times that ,notre-,dame d',amiens thus broods over2 a country with little else to be proud of2 the sort of world1 in fact1 which makes the range of conceptions embodied in these cliffs of quarried and carved stone all the more welcome as a hopeful complement to the meagreness of most people's present existence1 and its apparent ending in a #abe sparely built coffin under the flinty soil1 and grey1 driving sea-winds4 ,in ,notre- ,dame1 therefore1 and her sisters1 there is not only a common method of construction1 a single definable type1 different from that of other ,french latitudes1 but a correspondent common sentiment also2 something which speaks1 amid an immense achievement just here of what is beautiful and great1 of the necessity of an immense effort in the natural course of things1 of what you may see quaintly designed in one of those hieroglyphic carvings--radix de terra sitienti3 a root out of a dry ground4 ,,notes #aji4 99,published in the ,nineteenth ,century1 ,march #ahid1 and now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors4 ,v,,zelay99 #abf ,as you discern the long unbroken line of its roof1 low-pitched for ,france1 above the cottages and willow-shaded streams of the place1 you might think the abbey church of ,pontigny1 the largest ,cistercian church now remaining1 only a great farm-building4 ,on a nearer view there is something unpretending1 something pleasantly ,english1 in the plain grey walls1 pierced with long lancet windows1 as if they overlooked the lowlands of ,essex1 or the meadows of ,kent or ,berkshire1 the sort of country from which came those saintly exiles of our race who made the cloisters of ,pontigny famous1 and one of whom1 ,saint ,edmund of ,abingdon1 ,saint-,edme1 still lies enshrined here4 ,the country which the sons of ,saint ,bernard choose for their abode is in fact but a patch of scanty pasture-land in the midst of a heady wine-district4 ,like its majestic ,cluniac rivals1 the church has its western portico1 elegant in structure but of comparatively humble #abg proportions1 under a plain roof of tiles1 pent-wise4 ,within1 a heavy coat of white-wash seems befitting to the simple forms of the ,transition1 or quite earliest ,pointed1 style1 to its remarkable continence of spirit1 its uniformity1 and cleanness of build4 ,the long prospect of nave and choir ends1 however1 with a sort of graceful smallness1 in a chevet of seven closely packed1 narrow bays4 ,it is like a nun's church1 or like a nun's coif4 ,the church of ,pontigny1 representative generally of the churches of the ,cistercian order1 including some of the loveliest early ,english ones1 was in truth significant of a reaction1 a reaction against monasticism itself1 as it had come to be in the order of ,cluny1 the genius of which found its proper expression in the imperious1 but half-barbaric1 splendours of the richest form of the ,romanesque1 the monastic style pre-eminently1 as we may still see it at ,la ,charit- sur-,loire1 at ,saint-,benot1 above all1 on the hill of ,vzelay4 ,saint ,bernard1 who had lent his immense influence to the order of ,cteaux by way of a monastic reform1 though he had a genius for hymns and was in other ways an eminent religious poet1 and though he gave new life to the expiring romance of the crusades1 was1 as regards the visible world1 much of a ,puritan4 ,was it he who1 wrapt in thought upon the world unseen1 walked along the shores of ,lake ,leman without observing it8--the eternal snows he might have taken for the walls of the ,new ,jerusalem2 the blue waves he #abh might have fancied its pavement of sapphire4 ,in the churches1 the worship1 of his new order he required simplicity1 and even severity1 being fortunate in finding so winsome an exponent of that principle as the early ,gothic of ,pontigny1 or of the first ,cistercian church1 now destroyed1 at ,cteaux itself4 ,strangely enough1 while ,bernard's own temper of mind was a survival from the past 7we see this in his contest with ,abelard71 hierarchic1 reactionary1 suspicious of novelty1 the architectural style of his preference was largely of secular origin4 ,it had a large share in that inventive and innovating genius1 that expansion of the natural human soul1 to which the art1 the literature1 the religious movements of the thirteenth century in ,france1 as in ,italy1 where it ends with ,dante1 bear witness4 ,in particular1 ,bernard had protested against the sculpture1 rich and fantastic1 but gloomy1 it might be indecent1 developed more abundantly than anywhere else in the churches of ,burgundy1 and especially in those of the ,cluniac order4 ,what is the use1 he asks1 of those grotesque monsters in painting and sculpture8 and almost certainly he had in mind the marvellous carved work at ,vzelay1 whither doubtless he came often--for example on ,good ,friday1 #aadf1 to preach1 as we know1 the second crusade in the presence of ,louis the ,seventh4 ,he too might have wept at the sight of the doomed multitude 7one in ten1 it is said1 returned from the ,holy #abi ,land71 as its enthusiasm1 under the charm of his fiery eloquence1 rose to the height of his purpose4 ,even the aisles of ,vzelay were not sufficient for the multitude of his hearers1 and he preached to them in the open air1 from a rock still pointed out on the hillside4 ,armies indeed have been encamped many times on the slopes and meadows of the valley of the ,cure1 now to all seeming so impregnably tranquil4 ,the ,cluniac order even then had already declined from its first intention2 and that decline became especially visible in the ,abbey of ,vzelay itself not long after ,bernard's day4 ,its majestic immoveable church was complete by the middle of the twelfth century4 ,and there it still stands in spite of many a threat1 while the conventual buildings around it have disappeared2 and the institution it represented--secularised at its own request at the ,reformation-- had dwindled almost to nothing at all1 till in the last century the last ,abbot built himself1 in place of the old ,gothic lodging below those solemn walls1 a sort of ,chteau ,gaillard1 a dainty abode in the manner of ,louis ,quinze--swept away that too at the ,revolution--where the great oaks now flourish1 with the rooks and squirrels4 ,yet the order of ,cluny1 in its time1 in that dark period of the eleventh and twelfth centuries1 had deserved well of those to whom religion1 and art1 and social order are precious4 ,the ,cluniacs had in fact represented monasticism in the most #acj legitimate form of its activity2 and1 if the church of ,vzelay was not quite the grandest of their churches1 it is certainly the grandest of them which remains4 ,it is also typical in character4 ,as ,notre-,dame d',amiens is pre-eminently the church of the city1 of a commune1 so the ,madeleine of ,vzelay is typically the church of a monastery4 ,the monastic style proper1 then1 in its peculiar power and influence1 was ,romanesque1 and with the ,cluniac order2 and here perhaps better than anywhere else we may understand what it really came to1 what was its effect on the spirits1 the imagination4 ,as at ,pontigny1 the ,cistercians1 for the most part1 built their churches in lowly valleys1 according to the intention of their founder4 ,the representative church of the ,cluniacs1 on the other hand1 lies amid the closely piled houses of the little town1 which it protected and could punish1 on a steep hill-top1 like a long massive chest there1 heavy above you1 as you climb slowly the winding road1 the old unchanged pathway of ,saint ,bernard4 ,in days gone by it threatened the surrounding neighbourhood with four boldly built towers2 had then also a spire at the crossing2 and must have been at that time like a more magnificent version of the buildings which still crown the hill of ,laon4 ,externally1 the proportions1 the squareness1 of the nave 7west and east1 the vast narthex or porch1 and the #aca ,gothic choir1 rise above its roof-line71 remind one of another great ,romanesque church at home--of the nave of ,winchester1 out of which ,wykeham carved his richly panelled ,perpendicular interior4 ,at ,vzelay however1 the ,romanesque1 the ,romanesque of ,burgundy1 alike in the first conception of the whole structure1 and in the actual locking together of its big stones1 its masses of almost unbroken masonry1 its inertia1 figures as of more imperial character1 and nearer to the ,romans of old1 than its feebler kindred in ,england or ,normandy4 ,we seem to have before us here a ,romanesque architecture1 studied1 not from ,roman basilicas or ,roman temples1 but from the arenas1 the colossal gateways1 the triumphal arches1 of the people of empire1 such as remain even now1 not in the ,south of ,france only4 ,the simple flying1 or rather leaning and almost couchant1 buttresses1 quadrants of a circle1 might be parts of a ,roman aqueduct4 ,in contrast to the lightsome ,gothic manner of the last quarter of the twelfth century 7as we shall presently find it here too1 like an escape for the eye1 for the temper1 out of some grim underworld into genial daylight71 the ,cluniac church might seem a still active instrument of the iron tyranny of ,rome1 of its tyranny over the animal spirits4 ,as the ghost of ancient ,rome still lingers over the grave thereof1 in the papacy1 the hierarchy1 so is it with the material structures #acb also1 the ,cluniac and other ,romanesque churches1 which most emphatically express the hierarchical1 the papal system4 ,there is something about this church of ,vzelay1 in the long-sustained patience of which it tells1 that brings to mind the labour of slaves1 whose occasional ,fescennine licence and fresh memories of a barbaric life also find expression1 now and again1 in the strange sculpture of the place4 ,yet here for once1 around a great ,french church1 there is the kindly repose of ,english precincts1 and the country which this monastic acropolis overlooks southwards is a very pleasant one1 as we emerge from the shadows of-- yes6 of that peculiarly sad place--a country all the pleasanter by reason of the toil upon it1 performed1 or exacted from others1 by the monks1 through long centuries2 ,le ,morvan1 with its distant blue hills and broken foreground1 the vineyards1 the patches of woodland1 the roads winding into their cool shadows2 though in truth the fortress- like outline of the monastic church and the sombre hue of its material lend themselves most readily to the effects of a stormy sky4 ,by a door1 which in the great days opened from a magnificent cloister1 you enter what might seem itself but the ambulatory of a cloister1 superbly vaulted and long and regular1 and built of huge stones of a metallic colour4 ,it is the southern aisle of the nave1 a nave of ten bays1 the grandest ,romanesque interior in ,france1 #acc perhaps in the world4 ,in its mortified light the very soul of monasticism1 ,roman and half-military1 as the completest outcome of a religion of threats1 seems to descend upon one4 ,monasticism is indeed the product of many various tendencies of the religious soul1 one or another of which may very properly connect itself with the ,pointed style1 as we saw in those lightsome aisles of ,pontigny1 so expressive of the purity1 the lowly sweetness1 of the soul of ,bernard4 ,but it is here at ,vzelay1 in this iron place1 that monasticism in its central1 its historically most significant purpose1 presents itself as most completely at home4 ,there is no triforium4 ,the monotonous cloistral length of wall above the long- drawn series of stately round arches1 is unbroken save by a plain small window in each bay1 placed as high as possible just below the cornice1 as a mere after-thought1 you might fancy4 ,those windows were probably unglazed1 and closed only with wooden shutters as occasion required4 ,furnished with the stained glass of the period1 they would have left the place almost in darkness1 giving doubtless full effect to the monkish candle-light in any case needful here4 ,an almost perfect cradle-roof1 tunnel-like from end to end of the long central aisle1 adds by its simplicity of form to the magnificent unity of effect4 ,the bearing-arches1 which span it from bay to bay1 being parti-coloured1 with voussures of alternate white and a kind of grey or green1 #acd being also somewhat flat at the keystone1 and literally eccentric1 have1 at least for ,english eyes1 something of a ,saracenic or other ,oriental character4 ,again1 it is as if the architects--the engineers--who worked here1 had seen things undreamt of by other ,romanesque builders1 the builders in ,england and ,normandy4 ,here then1 scarcely relieving the almost savage character of the work1 abundant on tympanum and doorway without1 above all on the immense capitals of the nave within1 is the sculpture which offended ,bernard4 ,a sumptuous band of it1 a carved guipure of singular boldness1 passes continuously round the arches1 and along the cornices from bay to bay1 and with the large bossy tendency of the ornament throughout may be regarded as typical of ,burgundian richness4 ,of sculptured capitals1 to like1 or to dislike with ,saint ,bernard1 there are nearly a hundred1 unwearied in variety1 unique in the energy of their conception1 full of wild promise in their coarse execution1 cruel1 you might say1 in the realisation of human form and features4 ,irresistibly they rivet attention4 ,the subjects are for the most part ,scriptural1 chosen apparently as being apt for strongly satiric treatment1 the suicide of ,judas1 the fall of ,goliath4 ,the legend of ,saint ,benedict1 naturally at home in a ,benedictine church1 presented the sculptor with a series of forcible grotesques ready-made4 ,some monkish story1 #ace half moral1 half facetious1 perhaps a little coarse1 like that of ,sainte ,eugnie1 from time to time makes variety2 or an example of the punishment of the wicked by men or by devils1 who play a large1 and to themselves thoroughly enjoyable and merry1 part here4 ,the sculptor would seem to have witnessed the punishment of the blasphemer2 how adroitly the executioner planted knee on the culprit's bosom1 as he lay on the ground1 and out came the sinful tongue1 to meet the iron pincers4 ,the minds of those who worked thus seem to have been almost insanely preoccupied just then with the human countenance1 but by no means exclusively in its pleasantness or dignity4 ,bold1 crude1 original1 their work indicates delight in the power of reproducing fact1 curiosity in it1 but little or no sense of beauty4 ,the humanity therefore here presented1 as in the ,cluniac sculpture generally1 is wholly unconventional4 ,m4 ,viollet-le-,duc thinks he can trace in it individual types still actually existing in the peasantry of ,le ,morvan4 ,man and morality1 however1 disappearing at intervals1 the acanthine capitals have a kind of later ,venetian beauty about them1 as the ,venetian birds also1 the conventional peacocks1 or birds wholly of fantasy1 amid the long fantastic foliage4 ,there are still however no true flowers of the field here4 ,there is pity1 it must be confessed1 on the other hand1 and the delicacy1 the beauty1 which that always brings #acf with it1 where ,jephtha peeps at the dead daughter's face1 lifting timidly the great leaves that cover it2 in the hanging body of ,absalom2 in the child carried away by the eagle1 his long frock twisted in the wind as he goes4 ,the parents run out in dismay1 and the devil grins1 not because it is the punishment of the child or of them2 but because he is the author of all mischief everywhere1 as the monkish carver conceived--so far wholesomely4 ,we must remember that any sculpture less emphatic would have been ineffective1 because practically invisible1 in this sombre place4 ,but at the west end there is an escape for the eye1 for the soul1 towards the unhindered1 natural1 afternoon sun2 not however into the outer and open air1 but through an arcade of three bold round arches1 high above the great closed western doors1 into a somewhat broader and loftier place than this1 a reservoir of light1 a veritable camera lucida4 ,the light is that which lies below the vault and within the tribunes of the famous narthex 7as they say71 the vast fore-church or vestibule1 into which the nave is prolonged4 ,a remarkable feature of many ,cluniac churches1 the great western porch1 on a scale which is approached in ,england only at ,peterborough1 is found also in some of the churches of the ,cistercians4 ,it is characteristic1 in fact1 rather of ,burgundy than of either of those religious orders especially4 #acg ,at ,pontigny itself1 for instance1 there is a good one2 and a very early one at ,paray-le-,monial4 ,saint-,pre-sous-,vzelay1 daughter of the great church1 in the vale below1 has a late ,gothic example2 ,semur also1 with fantastic lodges above it4 ,the cathedral of ,autun1 a secular church in rivalry of the religious1 presents1 by way of such western porch or vestibule1 two entire bays of the nave1 unglazed1 with the vast western arch open to the air2 the west front1 with its rich portals1 being thrown back into the depths of the great fore-church thus produced4 ,the narthex of ,vzelay1 the largest of these singular structures1 is glazed1 and closed towards the west by what is now the faade4 ,it is itself in fact a great church1 a nave of three magnificent bays1 and of three aisles1 with a spacious triforium4 ,with their fantastic sculpture1 sheltered thus from accident and weather1 in all its original freshness1 the great portals of the primitive faade serve now for doorways1 as a second1 solemn1 door of entrance1 to the church proper within4 ,the very structure of the place1 and its relation to the main edifice1 indicate that it was for use on occasion1 when1 at certain great feasts1 that of the ,magdalen especially1 to whom the church of ,vzelay is dedicated1 the monastery was swollen with pilgrims1 too poor1 too numerous1 to be lodged in the town1 come hither to worship before the #ach relics of the friend of ,jesus1 enshrined in a low-vaulted crypt1 the floor of which is the natural rocky surface of the hill-top4 ,it may be that the pilgrims were permitted to lie for the night1 not only on the pavement1 but 7if so favoured7 in the high and dry chamber formed by the spacious triforium over the north aisle1 awaiting an early ,mass4 ,the primitive west front1 then1 had become but a wall of partition2 and above its central portal1 where the round arched west windows had been1 ran now a kind of broad1 arcaded tribune1 in full view of the entire length of the church4 ,in the midst of it stood an altar2 and here perhaps1 the priest who officiated being visible to the whole assembled multitude east and west1 the early ,mass was said4 ,the great vestibule was finished about forty years after the completion of the nave1 towards the middle of the twelfth century4 ,and here1 in the great pier-arches1 and in the eastern bay of the vault1 still with the large masonry1 the large1 flat1 unmoulded surfaces1 and amid the fantastic carvings of the ,romanesque building about it1 the ,pointed style1 determined yet discreet1 makes itself felt--makes itself felt by appearing1 if not for the first time1 yet for the first time in the organic or systematic development of ,french architecture4 ,not in the unambitious faade of ,saint-,denis1 nor in the austere aisles of ,sens1 but at ,vzelay1 in this grandiose fabric1 so worthy of the event1 ,viollet-le-,duc would #aci fain see the birthplace of the ,pointed style4 ,here at last1 with no sense of contrast1 but by way of veritable transition1 and as if by its own matured strength1 the round arch breaks into the double curve1 les arcs briss1 with a wonderful access of grace4 ,and the imaginative effect is forthwith enlarged4 ,beyond1 far beyond1 what is actually presented to the eye in that peculiar curvature1 its mysterious grace1 and by the stateliness1 the elevation of the ogival method of vaulting1 the imagination is stirred to present one with what belongs properly to it alone4 ,the masonry1 though large1 is nicely fitted2 a large light is admitted through the now fully pronounced ,gothic windows towards the west4 ,at ,amiens we found the ,gothic spirit1 reigning there exclusively1 to be a restless one4 ,at ,vzelay1 where it breathes for the first time amid the heavy masses of the old imperial style1 it breathes the very genius of monastic repose4 ,and then1 whereas at ,amiens1 and still more at ,beauvais1 at ,saint- ,quentin1 you wonder how these monuments of the past can have endured so long1 in strictly monastic ,vzelay you have a sense of freshness1 such as1 in spite of their ruin1 we perceive in the buildings of ,greece4 ,we enjoy here not so much1 as at ,amiens1 the sentiment of antiquity1 but that of eternal duration4 ,but let me place you once more where we stood for a while1 on entering by the doorway #adj in the midst of the long southern aisle4 ,cross the aisle1 and gather now in one view the perspective of the whole4 ,away on the left hand the eye is drawn upward to the tranquil light of the vaults of the fore-church1 seeming doubtless the more spacious because partly concealed from us by the wall of partition below4 ,but on the right hand1 towards the east1 as if with the set purpose of a striking architectural contrast1 an instruction as to the place of this or that manner in the architectural series1 the long1 tunnel-like1 military work of the ,romanesque nave opens wide into the exhilarating daylight of choir and transepts1 in the sort of ,gothic ,bernard would have welcomed1 with a vault rising now high above the roof-line of the body of the church1 sicut lilium excelsum4 ,the simple flowers1 the flora1 of the early ,pointed style1 which could never have looked at home as an element in the half- savage decoration of the nave1 seem to be growing here upon the sheaves of slender1 reedy pillars1 as if naturally in the carved stone4 ,even here indeed1 ,roman1 or ,romanesque1 taste still lingers proudly in the monolith columns of the chevet4 ,externally1 we may note with what dexterity the ,gothic choir has been inserted into its place1 below and within the great buttresses of the earlier ,romanesque one4 ,visitors to the great church of ,assisi have sometimes found a kind of parable in the threefold #ada ascent from the dark crypt where the body of ,saint ,francis lies1 through the gloomy lower church1 into the height and breadth1 the physical and symbolic illumination1 of the church above4 ,at ,vzelay that kind of contrast suggests itself in one view2 the hopeful1 but transitory1 glory upon which one enters2 the long1 darksome1 central avenue2 the open vision into which it conducts us4 ,as a symbol of resurrection1 its choir is a fitting diadem to the church of the ,magdalen1 whose remains the monks meant it to cover4 ,and yet1 after all1 notwithstanding this assertion of the superiority 7are we so to call it87 of the new ,gothic way1 perhaps by the very force of contrast1 the ,madeleine of ,vzelay is still pre-eminently a ,romanesque1 and thereby the typically monastic1 church4 ,in spite of restoration even1 as we linger here1 the impression of the monastic ,middle ,age1 of a very exclusive monasticism1 that has verily turned its back upon common life1 jealously closed inward upon itself1 is a singularly weighty one2 the more so because1 as the peasant said when asked the way to an old sanctuary that had fallen to the occupation of farm-labourers1 and was now deserted even by them3 ,maintenant il n'y a personne l4 ,,notes #abf4 99,published in the ,nineteenth ,century1 ,june #ahid1 and now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors4 ,,apollo ,,in ,,picardy99 #adb ,,consecutive upon ,apollo in all his solar fervour and effulgence1 says a writer of ,teutonic proclivities1 we may discern even among the ,greeks themselves1 elusively1 as would be natural with such a being1 almost like a mock sun amid the mists1 the northern or ultra-northern sun-god4 ,in hints and fragments the lexicographers and others have told us something of this ,hyperborean ,apollo1 fancies about him which evidence some knowledge of the ,land of the ,midnight ,sun1 of the sun's ways among the ,laplanders1 of a hoary summer breathing very softly on the violet beds1 or say1 the ,london-pride and crab-apples1 provided for those meagre people1 somewhere amid the remoteness of their icy seas4 ,in such wise ,apollo had already anticipated his sad fortunes in the ,middle ,age as a god definitely in exile1 driven north of the ,alps1 and even here ever in flight before the summer4 ,summer indeed he leaves now to the management of #adc others1 finding his way from ,france and ,germany to still paler countries1 yet making or taking with him always a certain seductive summer-in-winter1 though also with a divine or titanic regret1 a titanic revolt in his heart1 and consequent inversion at times of his old beneficent and properly solar doings4 ,for his favours1 his fallacious good-humour1 which has in truth a touch of malign magic about it1 he makes men pay sometimes a terrible price1 and is in fact a devil6 ,devilry1 devil's work3--traces of such you might fancy were to be found in a certain manuscript volume taken from an old monastic library in ,france at the ,revolution4 ,it presented a strange example of a cold and very reasonable spirit disturbed suddenly1 thrown off its balance1 as by a violent beam1 a blaze of new light1 revealing1 as it glanced here and there1 a hundred truths unguessed at before1 yet a curse1 as it turned out1 to its receiver1 in dividing hopelessly against itself the well-ordered kingdom of his thought4 ,twelfth volume of a dry enough treatise on mathematics1 applied1 still with no relaxation of strict method1 to astronomy and music1 it should have concluded that work1 and therewith the second period of the life of its author1 by drawing tight together the threads of a long and intricate argument4 ,in effect however1 it began1 or1 in perturbed manner1 and as #add with throes of childbirth1 seemed the preparation for1 an argument of an entirely new and disparate species1 such as would demand a new period of life also1 if it might be1 for its due expansion4 ,but with what confusion1 what baffling inequalities6 ,how afflicting to the mind's eye6 ,it was a veritable solar storm--this illumination1 which had burst at the last moment upon the strenuous1 self-possessed1 much-honoured monastic student1 as he sat down peacefully to write the last formal chapters of his work ere he betook himself to its well-earned practical reward as superior1 with lordship and mitre and ring1 of the abbey whose music and calendar his mathematical knowledge had qualified him to reform4 ,the very shape of ,volume ,twelve1 pieced together of quite irregularly formed pages1 was a solecism4 ,it could never be bound4 ,in truth1 the man himself1 and what passed with him in one particular space of time1 had invaded a matter1 which is nothing if not entirely abstract and impersonal4 ,indirectly the volume was the record of an episode1 an interlude1 an interpolated page of life4 ,and whereas in the earlier volumes you found by way of illustration no more than the simplest indispensable diagrams1 the scribe's hand had strayed here into mazy borders1 long spaces of hieroglyph1 and as it were veritable pictures of the theoretic elements of his subject4 ,soft wintry auroras seemed to play behind whole pages of crabbed textual writing1 line and figure #ade bending1 breathing1 flaming1 in1 to lovely arrangements that were like music made visible2 till writing and writer changed suddenly1 to one thing constant never1 after the known manner of madmen in such work4 ,finally1 the whole matter broke off with an unfinished word1 as a later hand testified1 adding the date of the author's death1 deliquio animi4 ,he had been brought to the monastery as a little child2 was bred there2 had never yet left it1 busy and satisfied through youth and early manhood2 was grown almost as necessary a part of the community as the stones of its material abode1 as a pillar of the great tower he ascended to watch the movement of the stars4 ,the structure of a fortified medieval town barred in those who belonged to it very effectively4 ,high monastic walls intrenched the monk still further4 ,from the summit of the tower you looked straight down into the deep narrow streets1 upon the houses 7in one of which ,prior ,saint-,jean was born7 climbing as high as they dared for breathing space within that narrow compass4 ,but you saw also the green breadth of ,normandy and ,picardy1 this way and that2 felt on your face the free air of a still wider realm beyond what was seen4 ,the reviving scent of it1 the mere sight of the flowers brought thence1 of the country produce at the convent gate1 stirred the ordinary monkish soul with desires1 sometimes with efforts1 to be sent on duty there4 ,prior #adf ,saint- ,jean1 on the other hand1 shuddered at the view1 at the thoughts it suggested to him2 thoughts of unhallowed wild places1 where the old heathen had worshipped stocks and stones1 and where their wickedness might still survive them in something worse than mischievous tricks of nature1 such as you might read of in ,ovid1 whose verses1 however1 he for his part had never so much as touched with a finger4 ,he gave thanks rather1 that his vocation to the abstract sciences had kept him far apart from the whole crew of miscreant poets--,abode of demons4 ,thither nevertheless he was now to depart1 sent to the ,grange or ,obedience of ,notre-,dame ,de-,pratis by the aged ,abbot 7about to resign in his favour7 for the benefit of his body's health1 a little impaired at last by long intellectual effort1 yet so invaluable to the community4 ,but let him beware6 whispered his dearest friend1 who shared those strange misgivings1 let him take heed to his ways when he was come to that place4 ,the mere contact of one's feet with its soil might change one4 ,and that same night1 disturbed perhaps by thoughts of the coming journey with which his brain was full1 ,prior ,saint-,jean himself dreamed vividly1 as he had been little used to do4 ,he saw the very place in which he lay 7he knew it6 his little inner cell1 the brown doors1 the white breadth of wall1 the black crucifix upon it7 alight1 alight #adg softly2 and looking1 as he fancied1 from the window1 saw also a low circlet of soundless flame1 waving1 licking daintily up the black sky1 but harmless1 beautiful1 closing in upon that round dark space in the midst1 which was the earth4 ,he seemed to feel upon his shoulder just then the touch of his friend beside him4 ,it is hell-fire6 he said4 ,the ,prior took with him a very youthful though devoted companion-- ,hyacinthus1 the pet of the community4 ,they laughed admiringly at the rebellious masses of his black hair1 with blue in the depths of it1 like the wings of the swallow1 which refused to conform to the monkish pattern4 ,it only grew twofold1 crown upon crown1 after the half-yearly shaving4 ,and he was as neat and serviceable as he was delightful to be with4 ,prior ,saint-,jean1 then1 and the boy started before daybreak for the long journey2 onwards1 till darkness1 a soft twilight rather1 was around them again4 ,how unlike a winter night it seemed1 the further they went through the endless1 lonely1 turf-grown tracts1 and along the edge of a valley1 at length--vallis monachorum1 monksvale--taken aback by its sudden steepness and depth1 as of an immense oval cup sunken in the grassy upland1 over which a golden moon now shone broadly4 ,ah6 there it was at last1 the white ,grange1 the white gable of the chapel apart amid a few scattered white gravestones1 the white flocks crouched about on the hoar-frost1 #adh like the white clouds1 packed somewhat heavily on the horizon1 and nacrs as the clouds of ,june1 with their own light and heat in them1 in their hollows1 you might fancy4 ,from the very first1 the atmosphere1 the light1 the influence of things1 seemed different from what they knew2 and how distant already the dark buildings of their home6 ,was there the breath of surviving summer blossom on the air8 ,now and then came a gentle1 comfortable bleating from the folds1 and themselves slept soundly at last in the great open upper chamber of the ,grange2 were awakened by the sound of thunder4 ,strange1 in the late ,november night6 ,it had parted1 however1 with its torrid fierceness2 modulated by distance1 seemed to break away into musical notes4 ,and the lightning lingered along with it1 but glancing softly2 was in truth an aurora1 such as persisted month after month on the northern sky as they sojourned here4 ,like ,prospero's enchanted island1 the whole place was full of noises4 ,the wind it might have been1 passing over metallic strings1 but that they were audible even when the night was breathless4 ,so like veritable music1 however1 were they on that first night that1 upon reflexion1 the ,prior climbed softly the winding stair down which they appeared to flow1 to the great solar among the beams of the roof1 where the farm produce lay stored4 ,a flood of moonlight now fell through the unshuttered dormer-windows2 and1 #adi under the glow of a lamp hanging from the low rafters1 ,prior ,saint-,jean seemed to be looking for the first time on the human form1 on the old ,adam fresh from his ,maker's hand4 ,a servant of the house1 or farm- labourer1 perhaps6--fallen asleep there by chance on the fleeces heaped like golden stuff high in all the corners of the place4 ,a serf6 ,but what unserflike ease1 how lordly1 or godlike rather1 in the posture6 ,could one fancy a single curve bettered in the rich1 warm1 white limbs2 in the haughty features of the face1 with the golden hair1 tied in a mystic knot1 fallen down across the inspired brow8 ,and yet what gentle sweetness also in the natural movement of the bosom1 the throat1 the lips1 of the sleeper6 ,could that be diabolical1 and really spotted with unseen evil1 which was so spotless to the eye8 ,the rude sandals of the monastic serf lay beside him apart1 and all around was of the roughest1 excepting only two strange objects lying within reach 7even in their own renowned treasury ,prior ,saint-,jean had not seen the like of them71 a harp1 or some such instrument1 of silver-gilt once1 but the gold had mostly passed from it1 and a bow1 fashioned somehow of the same precious substance4 ,the very form of these things filled his mind with inexplicable misgivings4 ,he repeated a befitting collect1 and trod softly away4 ,it was in truth but a rude place to which they were come4 ,but1 after life in the #aej monastery1 the severe discipline of which the ,prior himself had done much to restore1 there was luxury in the free1 self- chosen hours1 the irregular fare1 in doing pretty much as one pleased1 in the sweet novelties of the country2 to the boy ,hyacinth especially1 who forgot himself1 or rather found his true self for the first time4 ,girding up his heavy frock1 which he laid aside erelong altogether to go in his coarse linen smock only1 he seemed a monastic novice no longer2 yet1 in his natural gladness1 was found more companionable than ever by his senior1 surprised1 delighted1 for his part1 at the fresh springing of his brain1 the spring of his footsteps over the close greensward1 as if smoothed by the art of man4 ,cause of his renewed health1 or concurrent with its effects1 the air here might have been that of a veritable paradise1 still unspoiled4 ,could there be unnatural magic1 he asked himself again1 any secret evil1 lurking in these tranquil vale-sides1 in their sweet low pastures1 in the belt of scattered woodland above them1 in the rills of pure water which lisped from the open down beyond8 ,making what was really a boy's experience1 he had a wholly boyish delight in his holiday1 and certainly did not reflect how much we beget for ourselves in what we see and feel1 nor how far a certain diffused music in the very breath of the place was the creation of his own ear or brain4 #aea ,that strange enigmatic owner of the harp and the bow1 whom he had found sleeping so divinely1 actually waited on them the next morning with all obsequiousness1 stirred the great fire of peat1 adjusted duly their monkish attire1 laid their meal4 ,it seemed an odd thing to be served thus1 like ,st4 ,jerome by the lion1 as if by some imperiously beautiful wild animal tamed4 ,you hesitated to permit1 were a little afraid of1 his services4 ,their silent tonsured porter himself1 contrast grim enough to any creature of that kind1 had been so far seduced as to permit him to sleep there in the ,grange1 as he loved to do1 instead of in ruder1 rougher quarters2 and1 coaxed into odd garrulity on this one matter1 told the new- comers the little he knew1 with much also that he only suspected1 about him2 among other things1 as to the origin of those precious objects1 which might have belonged to some sanctuary or noble house1 found thus in the possession of a mere labourer1 who is no ,frenchman1 but a pagan1 or gipsy1 white as he looks1 from far south or east1 and who works or plays furtively1 by night for the most part1 returning to sleep awhile before daybreak4 ,the other herdsmen of the valley are bond-servants1 but he a hireling at will1 though coming regularly at a certain season4 ,he has come thus for any number of years past1 though seemingly never grown older 7as the speaker reflects71 singing his way meagrely from farm to farm1 to the sound of #aeb his harp4 ,his name8--,it was scarcely a name at all1 in the diffident syllables he uttered in answer to that question1 on first coming there2 but of names known to them it came nearest to a malignant one in ,scripture1 ,apollyon4 ,apollyon had a just discernible tonsure1 but probably no right to it4 ,well skilled in architecture1 ,prior ,saint-,jean was set1 by way of a holiday task1 to superintend the completion of the great monastic barn then in building4 ,the visitor admires it still2 perhaps supposes it1 with its noble aisle1 though set north and south1 to be a desecrated church4 ,if he be an expert in such matters1 he will remark a sort of classical harmony in its broad1 very simple proportions1 with a certain suppression of ,gothic emphasis1 more especially in that peculiarly ,gothic feature1 the buttresses1 scarcely marking the unbroken1 windowless walls1 which rise very straight1 taking the sun placidly4 ,the silver-grey stone1 cut1 if it came from this neighbourhood at all1 from some now forgotten quarry1 has the fine1 close-grained texture of antique marble4 ,the great northern gable is almost a classic pediment4 ,the horizontal lines of plinth and ridge and cornice are kept unbroken1 the roof of sea-grey slates being pitched less angularly than is usual in this rainy clime4 ,a welcome contrast1 the ,prior thought it1 to the sort of architectural nightmare he came from4 ,he found the structure already more than half- #aec way up1 the low squat pillars ready for their capitals4 ,yes6 it must have so happened often in the ,middle ,age1 as you feel convinced1 in looking sometimes at medieval building4 ,style must have changed under the very hands of men who were no wilful innovators4 ,thus it was here1 in the later work of ,prior ,saint-,jean1 all unconsciously4 ,the mysterious harper sat there always1 at the topmost point achieved2 played1 idly enough it might seem1 on his precious instrument1 but kept in fact the hard taxed workmen literally in tune1 working for once with a ready will1 and1 so to speak1 with really inventive hands--working expeditiously1 in this favourable weather1 till far into the night1 as they joined unbidden in a chorus1 which hushed1 or rather turned to music1 the noise of their chipping4 ,it was hardly noise at all1 even in the night-time4 ,now and again ,brother ,apollyon descended nimbly to surprise them1 at an opportune moment1 by the display of an immense strength4 ,a great cheer exploded suddenly1 as single-handed he heaved a massive stone into its place4 ,he seemed to have no sense of weight3 ,put there by the devil6 the modern villager assures you4 ,with a change then1 not so much of style as of temper1 of management1 in the application of acknowledged rules1 ,prior ,saint-,jean shaping only1 adapting1 simplifying1 partly with a view #aed to economy1 not the heavy stones only1 but the heavy manner of using them1 turned light4 ,with no pronounced ornamentation1 it is as if in the upper story ponderous root and stem blossomed gracefully1 blossomed in cornice and capital and pliant arch-line1 as vigorous as they were graceful1 and rose on high quickly4 ,almost suddenly tie-beam and rafter knit themselves together into the stone1 and the dark1 dry1 roomy place was closed in securely to this day4 ,mere audible music1 certainly1 had counted for something in the operations of an art1 held at its best 7as we know7 to be a sort of music made visible4 ,that idle singer1 one might fancy1 by an art beyond art1 had attracted beams and stones into their fit places4 ,and there1 sure enough1 he still sits1 as a final decorative touch1 by way of apex on the gable which looks northward1 though much weather-worn1 and with an ugly gap between the shoulder and the fingers on the harp199 as if1 literally1 he had cut off his right hand and put it from him3--,king ,david1 or an angel8 guesses the careless tourist4 ,the space below has been lettered4 ,after a little puzzling you recognise there the relics of a familiar verse from a ,latin psalm ,nisi ,dominus aedificaverit domum1 and the rest3 inscribed as well as may be in ,greek characters4 ,prior ,saint-,jean caused it to be so inscribed1 absurdly1 during his last days there4 #aee ,and is not the human body1 too1 a building1 with architectural laws1 a structure1 tending by the very forces which primarily held it together to drop asunder in time8 ,not in vain1 it seemed1 had ,prior ,saint-,jean come to this mystic place for the improvement of his body's health4 ,thenceforth that fleshly tabernacle had housed him1 had housed his cunning1 overwrought and excitable soul1 ever the better day by day1 and he began to feel his bodily health to be a positive quality or force1 the presence near him of that singular being having surely something to do with this result4 ,he and his fascinations1 his music1 himself1 might at least be taken for an embodiment of all those genial influences of earth and sky1 and the easy ways of living here1 which made him turn1 with less of an effort than he had known for many years past1 to his daily tasks1 and sink so regularly1 so immediately1 to wholesome rest on returning from them4 ,it was as if ,brother ,apollyon himself abhorred the spectacle of distress1 and mainly for his own satisfaction charmed away other people's maladies4 ,the mere touch of that ice-cold hand1 laid on the feverish brow1 when the ,prior lapsed from time to time into his former troubles1 certainly calmed the respiration of a troubled sleeper4 ,was there magic in it1 not wholly natural8 ,the hand might have been a dead one4 ,but then1 was it surprising1 after all1 that the #aef methods of curing men's maladies1 as being in very deed the fruit of sin1 should have something strange and unlooked-for about them1 like some of those ,old ,testament healings and purifications which the ,prior's biblical lore suggested to him8 ,yet ,brother ,apollyon1 if their surly ,janitor1 in his less kindly moments1 spoke truly1 himself greatly needed purification1 being not only a thief1 but a homicide in hiding from the law4 ,nay1 once1 on his annual return from southern or eastern lands1 he had been observed on his way along the streets of the great town literally scattering the seeds of disease till his serpent-skin bag was empty4 ,and within seven days the black death was there1 reaping its thousands4 ,as a wise man declared1 he who can best cure disease can also most cunningly engender it4 ,in short1 these creatures of rule1 these regulars1 the ,prior and his companion1 were come in contact for the first time in their lives with the power of untutored natural impulse1 of natural inspiration4 ,the boy experienced it immediately in the games which suited his years1 but which he had never so much as seen before2 as his superior was to undergo its influence by-and-by in serious study4 ,by night chiefly1 in its long1 continuous twilights1 ,hyacinth became really a boy at last1 with immense gaiety2 eyes1 hands and feet awake1 expanding1 as he raced his comrade over the #aeg turf1 with the conical ,druidic stone for a goal1 or wrestled lithely enough with him1 though as with a rock2 or1 taking the silver bow in hand for a moment1 transfixed a mark1 next a bird1 on the bough1 on the wing1 shedding blood for the first time1 with a boy's delight1 a boy's remorse4 ,friend ,apollyon seemed able to draw the wild animals too1 to share their sport1 yet not altogether kindly4 ,tired1 surfeited1 he destroys them when his game with them is at an end2 breaks the toy2 deftly snaps asunder the fragile back4 ,though all alike would come at his call1 or the sound of his harp1 he had his preferences2 and warred in the night-time1 as if on principle1 against the creatures of the day4 ,the small furry thing he pierced with his arrow fled to him nevertheless caressingly1 with broken limb1 to die palpitating in his hand4 ,in this wonderful season1 the migratory birds1 from ,norway1 from ,britain beyond the seas1 came there as usual on the north wind1 with sudden tumult of wings2 but went that year no further1 and by ,christmas-time had built their nests1 filling that belt of woodland around the vale with the chatter of their business and love quarrels4 ,in turn they drew after them strangers no one here had ever known before2 the like of which ,hyacinth1 who knew his bestiary1 had never seen even in a picture4 ,the wild-cat1 the wild- swan--the boy peeped on these wonders as they floated over the vale1 or #aeh glided with unwonted confidence over its turf1 under the moonlight1 or that frequent continuous aurora which was not the dawn4 ,even the modest rivulets of the hill-side felt that influence1 and lisped no longer1 but babbled as they leapt1 like mountain streams1 exposing their rocky bed4 ,were they angry1 as they ran red sometimes with blood-drops from the stricken bird caught there by rock or bough1 as it fell with rent breast among the waves8 ,but say1 think1 what you might against him1 the pagan outlaw was worth his hire as a herdsman2 seemingly loved his sheep2 was an affectionate shepherd2 cured their diseases2 brought them easily to the birth1 and if they strayed afar would bring them back tenderly upon his shoulders4 ,monastic persons would have seen that image many times before4 ,yet if ,apollyon looked like the great carved figure over the low doorway of their place of penitence at home1 that could be but an accident1 or perhaps a deceit2 so closely akin to those soulless creatures did he still seem to the wondering ,prior1-- immersed in1 or actually a part of1 that irredeemable natural world he had dreaded so greatly ere he came hither4 ,and was he after all making terms with it now1 in the seductive person of this mysterious being--man or demon--suspected of murder2 who has an air of unfathomable evil about him as from a distant but ineffaceable past1 and a sort of heathen #aei understanding with the dark realm of matter2 who is bringing the simple people1 the women and lovesick lads1 back to those caves and cromlechs and blasted trees1 resorts of old godless secret-telling8 ,and still he has all his own way with beasts and man1 with the ,prior himself1 much as all alike distrust him4 ,most conspicuous in the little group of buildings1 a feudal tower of goodly white stone1 cylindrical and smoothly polished without to hinder the ascent of creeping things1 and snugly plastered within to resist the damp1 was the pigeon-house--a veritable feudal tower1 a veritable feudal plaisance of birds1 which the common people dared not so much as ruffle4 ,about a thousand of them were housed there1 each in its little chamber1 encouraged to grow plump1 and to breed1 in perfect self-content4 ,from perch to perch of the great axle-tree in the centre1 monastic feet might climb1 gentle monastic hands pass round to every tiny compartment in turn4 ,the arms of the monastery were carved on the keystone of the doorway1 and the tower finished in a conical roof1 with becoming aerial gaillardise1 with pretty dormer- windows for the inmates to pass in and out1 little balconies for brooding in the sun1 little awnings to protect them from rough breezes1 and a great weather-vane1 on which the birds crowded for the chance of a ride4 ,if the peasants of that day1 whose small fields they plundered1 noting all this1 perhaps #afj envied the birds dumbly1 for the brethren1 on the other hand1 it was a constant delight to watch the feathered brotherhood1 which supplied likewise their daintiest fare4 ,who then1 what hawk1 or wild-cat1 or other savage beast1 had ravaged it so wantonly1 so very cruelly destroyed the bright creatures in a single night--broken backs1 rent away limbs1 pierced the wings8 ,and what was that object there below8 ,the silver harp surely1 lying broken likewise on the sanded floor1 soaking in the pale milky blood and torn plumage4 ,apollyon sobbed and wept audibly as he went about his ordinary doings next day1 for once fully1 though very sadly1 awake in it2 and towards evening1 when the villagers came to the ,prior to confess themselves1 the ,feast of the ,nativity being now at hand1 he too came along with them in his place meekly1 like any other penitent1 touched the lustral water devoutly1 knew all the ways1 seemed to desire absolution from some guilt of blood heavier than the slaughter of beast or bird4 ,the ,prior and his attendant1 on their side1 are reminded that by this time they have wellnigh forgotten the monastic duties still incumbent upon them1 especially in that matter of the ,offices4 ,on the vigil of the feast1 however1 ,brother ,apollyon himself summoned the devout to ,midnight ,mass with the great bell1 which had hung silent for a generation1 wedged in immoveably by a beam of #afa the cradle fallen out of its place4 ,with an immense effort of strength he relieved it1 hitched the bell back upon its wheel2 the thick rust cracked on the hinges1 and the strokes tolled forth betimes1 with a hundred querulous1 quaint creatures1 bats and owls1 circling stupidly in the waves of sound1 but allowed to settle back again undisturbedly into their beds4 ,people and priest1 the ,prior1 vested as well as might be1 with ,hyacinth as server1 come in due course1 all alike amazed to find that frozen neglected place1 with its low-browed vault and narrow windows1 alight1 and as if warmed with flowers from a summer more radiant far than that of ,france1 with ilex and laurel--gilt laurel-- by way of holly and box4 ,prior ,saint-,jean felt that he had never really seen flowers before4 ,somewhat later they and the like of them seemed to have grown into and over his brain2 to have degraded the scientific and abstract outlines of things into a tangle of useless ornament4 ,whence were they procured8 ,from what height1 or hellish depth perhaps8 ,apollyon1 who entered the chapel just then1 as if quite naturally1 though with a bleating lamb in his bosom 7dropped thus early in that wonderful season7 by way of an offering1 took his place at the altar's very foot1 and drawing forth his harp1 now restrung1 at the right moment1 turned to real silvery music the hoarse ,gloria in ,excelsis of those rude worshippers1 still #afb shrinking from him1 while they listened in a little circle1 as he stood there in his outlandish attire of skins strangely spotted and striped4 ,with that however the ,mass broke off unconsummated4 ,the ,prior felt obliged to desist from the sacred office1 and had left the altar hurriedly4 ,but ,brother ,apollyon put his strange attire aside next day1 and in a much-worn monk's frock1 drawn forth from a dark corner1 came with them1 still like a ,penitent1 when they turned once more to their neglected studies somewhat sadly4 ,see them then1 after a collect for ,light repeated by ,hyacinth1 skull-cap in hand1 seated at their desks in the little scriptorium1 panelled off from their living-room on the first floor1 while the ,prior makes an effort to recover the last thought of his long-suspended work1 in the execution of which the boy is to assist with his skilful pen4 ,the great glazed windows remain open2 admit1 as if already on the soft air of spring1 what seems like a stream of flowery odours1 the entire moonlit scene1 with the thorn bushes on the vale-side prematurely bursting into blossom1 and the sound of birds and flocks emphasising the deep silence of the night4 ,apollyon then1 as if by habit1 as he had shared all their occupations of late1 had taken his seat beside them1 meekly enough1 at first with the manner of a mere suppliant for the #afc crumbs of their high studies4 ,but1 straightway again1 he surprises by more than racing forward incredibly on the road to facts1 and from facts to luminous doctrine2 ,prior ,saint-,jean himself1 in comparison1 seeming to lag incompetently behind4 ,he can but wonder at this strange scholar's knowledge of a distant past1 evidenced in his familiarity 7it was as if he might once have spoken them7 with the dead languages in which their text-books are written4 ,there was more surely than the utmost merely natural acuteness in his guesses as to the words intended by those crabbed contractions1 of their meaning1 in his sense of allusions and the like4 ,an ineffaceable memory it might rather seem of the entire world of which those languages had been the living speech1 once more vividly awake under the ,prior's cross- questioning1 and now more than supplementing his own laborious search4 ,and at last something of the same kind happens with himself4 ,had he1 on his way hither from the convent1 passed unwittingly through some river or rivulet of ,lethe1 that had carried away from him all his so carefully accumulated intellectual baggage of fact and theory8 ,the hard and abstract laws1 or theory of the laws1 of music1 of the stars1 of mechanical structure1 in hard and abstract formulae1 adding to the abstract austerity of the man1 seemed to have deserted him2 to be revived in him again #afd however1 at the contact of this extraordinary pupil or fellow-inquirer1 though in a very different guise or attitude towards himself1 as matters no longer to be reasoned upon and understood1 but to be seen rather1 to be looked at and heard4 ,did not he see the angle of the earth's axis with the ecliptic1 the deflexions of the stars from their proper orbits with fatal results here below1 and the earth--wicked1 unscriptural truth6- -moving round the sun1 and those flashes of the eternal and unorbed light such as bring water1 flowers1 living things1 out of the rocks1 the dust8 ,the singing of the planets3 he could hear it1 and might in time effect its notation4 ,having seen and heard1 he might erelong speak also1 truly and with authority1 on such matters4 ,could one but arrest it for one's self1 for final transference to others1 on the written or printed page--this beam of insight1 or of inspiration6 ,alas6 one result of its coming was that it encouraged delay4 ,if he set hand to the page1 the firm halo1 here a moment since1 was gone1 had flitted capriciously to the wall2 passed next through the window1 to the wall of the garden2 was dancing back in another moment upon the innermost walls of one's own miserable brain1 to swell there-- that astounding white light6--rising steadily in the cup1 the mental receptacle1 till it overflowed1 and he lay faint and drowning in it4 ,or he rose above it1 as above a great liquid surface1 and hung giddily over it--light1 #afe simple1 and absolute--ere he fell4 ,or there was a battle between light and darkness around him1 with no way of escape from the baffling strokes1 the lightning flashes2 flashes of blindness one might rather call them4 ,in truth1 the intuitions of the night 7for they worked still1 or tried to work1 by night7 became the sickly nightmares of the day1 in which ,prior ,saint-,jean slept1 or tried to sleep1 or lay sometimes in a trance without food for many hours1 from which he would spring up suddenly to crowd1 against time1 as much as he could into his book with pen or brush2 winged flowers1 or stars with human limbs and faces1 still intruding themselves1 or mere notes of light and darkness from the actual horizon4 ,there it all is still in the faded gold and colours of the ancient volume-- ,prior ,saint-,jean's folly3--till on a sudden the hand collapses1 as he becomes aware of that real1 prosaic1 broad daylight lying harsh upon the page1 making his delicately toned auroras seem but a patch of grey1 and himself for a moment1 with a sigh of disgust1 of self- reproach1 to be his old unimpassioned monastic self once more4 ,the boy1 for his part1 was grown at last full of misgiving4 ,he ponders how he may get the ,prior away1 or escape by himself1 find his way back to the convent and report his master's condition1 his strange loss of memory for names and the like1 his illusions about himself and #aff others4 ,and he is more than ever distrustful now of his late beloved playmate1 who quietly obstructs any movement of the kind1 and has undertaken1 at the ,prior's entreaty1 to draw down the moon from the sky1 for some shameful price1 known to the magicians of that day4 ,yet ,apollyon1 at all events1 would still play as gaily as ever on occasion4 ,hitherto they had played as young animals do2 without playthings namely1 applying hand or foot only to their games4 ,but it happened about this time that a grave was dug1 a grave of unusual depth1 to be ready1 in that fiery plaguesome weather1 the first heat of veritable summer come suddenly1 for the body of an ancient villager then at the point of death4 ,in the drowsy afternoon ,hyacinth awakes ,apollyon1 to see the strange thing he has found at the grave-side1 among the gravel and yellow bones cast up there4 ,he had wrested it with difficulty from the hands of the half-crippled gravedigger1 at eighty still excitable by the mere touch of metal4 ,the like of it had indeed been found before1 within living memory1 in this place of immemorial use as a graveyard--,devil's penny-pieces people called them4 ,five such lay hidden already in a dark corner of the chapel1 to keep them from superstitious employment4 ,to-day they came out of hiding at last4 ,apollyon knew the use of the thing at a glance2 had put an expert hand to it forthwith2 poises the #afg discus2 sets it wheeling4 ,how easily it spins round under one's arm1 in the groove of the bent fingers1 slips thence smoothly like a knife flung from its sheath1 as if for a course of perpetual motion6 ,splendescit eundo3 it seems to burn as it goes4 ,it is heavier many times than it looks1 and sharp-edged4 ,by night they have scoured and polished the corroded surfaces4 ,apollyon promises ,hyacinth and himself rare sport in the cool of the evening--an evening however1 as it turned out1 not less breathless than the day4 ,in the great heat ,apollyon had flung aside1 as if for ever1 the last sorry remnant of his workman's attire1 and challenged the boy to do the same4 ,on the moonlit turf there1 crouching1 right foot foremost1 and with face turned backwards to the disk in his right hand1 his whole body1 in that moment of rest1 full of the circular motion he is about to commit to it1 he seemed--beautiful pale spectre--to shine from within with a light of his own1 like that of the glow-worm in the thicket1 or the dead and rotten roots of the old trees4 ,and as if they had a proper motion of their own in them1 the disks1 the quoits1 ran1 amid the delighted shouts and laughter of the boy1 as he follows1 scarcely less swift1 to score the points of their contact with the grass4 ,again and again they recommence1 forgetful of the hours2 while the death-bell cries out harshly for the grave's occupant1 and #afh the corpse itself is borne along stealthily not far from them1 and1 unnoticed by either1 the entire aspect of things has changed4 ,under the overcast sky it is in darkness they are playing1 by guess and touch chiefly2 and suddenly an icy blast of wind has lifted the roof from the old chapel1 the trees are moaning in wild circular motion1 and their devil's penny-piece1 when ,apollyon throws it for the last time1 is itself but a twirling leaf in the wind1 till it sinks edgewise1 sawing through the boy's face1 uplifted in the dark to trace it1 crushing in the tender skull upon the brain4 ,his shout of laughter is turned in an instant to a cry of pain1 of reproach2 and in that which echoed it--an immense cry1 as from the very heart of ancient tragedy1 over the ,picard wolds--it was as if that half-extinguished deity1 its proper immensity1 its old greatness and power1 were restored for a moment4 ,the villagers in their beds wondered4 ,it was like the sound of some natural catastrophe4 ,the storm which followed was still in possession1 still moving tearfully among the poplar groves1 though it had spent its heat and thunder4 ,the last drops of the blood of ,hyacinth still trickled through the thick masses of dark hair1 where the tonsure had been4 ,an abundant rain1 mingling with the copious purple stream1 had coloured the grass all around where the corpse lay1 stealing afar in tiny channels4 #afi ,so it was1 when ,apollyon1 reduced in the morning light to his smaller self1 came with the other people of the ,grange to gaze1 to enquire1 and found the ,prior already there1 speechless4 ,clearly this was no lightning stroke2 and ,apollyon straightway conceives certain very human fears that1 coming upon those antecedent suspicions of himself1 the boy's death may be thought the result of intention on his part4 ,he proposes to bury the body at once1 with no delay for religious rites1 in that still uncovered grave1 the bearers having fled from it in the tempest4 ,and next day1 fulfilling his annual custom1 he went his way northward1 without a word of farewell to ,prior ,saint-,jean1 whom he leaves in fact under suspicion of murder4 ,from the profound slumber which had followed the excitements of yesterday1 the ,prior awoke amid the sound of voices1 the voices of the peasants singing no ,christian song1 certainly1 but a song which ,apollyon himself had taught them1 to dismiss him on his journey4 ,for1 strange or not as it might be1 they loved him1 perhaps in spite of themselves2 would certainly protect him at any risk4 ,prior ,saint-,jean arose1 and looked forth-- with wonder4 ,a brief spell of sunshine amid the rain had clothed the vale with a marvel of blue flowers1 if it were not rather with remnants of the blue sky itself1 fallen among the woods there4 ,but there too1 in the little courtyard1 #agj the officers of justice are already in waiting to take him1 on the charge of having caused the death of his young server by violence1 in a fit of mania1 induced by dissolute living in that solitary place4 ,one hitherto so prosperous in life would1 of course1 have his enemies4 ,the monastic authorities1 however1 claim him from the secular power1 to correct his offence in their own way1 and with friendly interpretation of the facts4 ,madness1 however wicked1 being still madness1 ,prior1 now simple ,brother1 ,saint-,jean1 is detained in a sufficiently cheerful apartment1 in a region of the atmosphere likely to restore lost wits1 whence indeed he can still see the country-- vallis monachorum4 ,the one desire which from time to time fitfully rouses him again to animation for a few moments is to return thither4 ,here then he remains in peace1 ostensibly for the completion of his great work4 ,he never again set pen to it1 consistent and clear now on nothing save that longing to be once more at the ,grange1 that he may get well1 or die and be well so4 ,he is like the damned spirit1 think some of the brethren1 saying ,i will return to the house whence ,i came out4 ,gazing thither daily for many hours1 he would mistake mere blue distance1 when that was visible1 for blue flowers1 for hyacinths1 and wept at the sight2 though blue1 as he observed1 was the colour of ,holy ,mary's gown on the illuminated page1 the colour of hope1 of merciful #aga omnipresent deity4 ,the necessary permission came with difficulty1 just too late4 ,brother ,saint-,jean died1 standing upright with an effort to gaze forth once more1 amid the preparations for his departure4 ,,notes #adb4 99,published in ,harper's ,new ,monthly ,magazine1 ,nov4 #ahic1 and now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors4 #aed4 99,or sundial1 as some maintain1 though turned from the south4 #aed4 ,latin ,vulgate 7ed4 ,saint ,jerome7 ,psalm #abf1 verse #a3 canticum graduum ,salomonis nisi ,dominus aedificaverit domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam nisi ,dominus custodierit civitatem frustra vigilavit qui custodit4 ,king ,james ,bible's translation3 ,when the ,lord turned again the captivity of ,zion1 we were like them that dream4 ,,the ,,child ,,in ,,the ,,house99 #agb ,as ,florian ,deleal walked1 one hot afternoon1 he overtook by the wayside a poor aged man1 and1 as he seemed weary with the road1 helped him on with the burden which he carried1 a certain distance4 ,and as the man told his story1 it chanced that he named the place1 a little place in the neighbourhood of a great city1 where ,florian had passed his earliest years1 but which he had never since seen1 and1 the story told1 went forward on his journey comforted4 ,and that night1 like a reward for his pity1 a dream of that place came to ,florian1 a dream which did for him the office of the finer sort of memory1 bringing its object to mind with a great clearness1 yet1 as sometimes happens in dreams1 raised a little above itself1 and above ordinary retrospect4 ,the true aspect of the place1 especially of the house there in which he had lived as a child1 the fashion of its doors1 its hearths1 its windows1 the very scent upon the air of it1 was with him in sleep for a season2 only1 with tints more musically blent on wall #agc and floor1 and some finer light and shadow running in and out along its curves and angles1 and with all its little carvings daintier4 ,he awoke with a sigh at the thought of almost thirty years which lay between him and that place1 yet with a flutter of pleasure still within him at the fair light1 as if it were a smile1 upon it4 ,and it happened that this accident of his dream was just the thing needed for the beginning of a certain design he then had in view1 the noting1 namely1 of some things in the story of his spirit--in that process of brain-building by which we are1 each one of us1 what we are4 ,with the image of the place so clear and favourable upon him1 he fell to thinking of himself therein1 and how his thoughts had grown up to him4 ,in that half-spiritualised house he could watch the better1 over again1 the gradual expansion of the soul which had come to be there--of which indeed1 through the law which makes the material objects about them so large an element in children's lives1 it had actually become a part2 inward and outward being woven through and through each other into one inextricable texture--half1 tint and trace and accident of homely colour and form1 from the wood and the bricks2 half1 mere soul-stuff1 floated thither from who knows how far4 ,in the house and garden of his dream he saw a child moving1 and could divide the main streams at least of the winds that had played on #agd him1 and study so the first stage in that mental journey4 ,the old house1 as when ,florian talked of it afterwards he always called it1 7as all children do1 who can recollect a change of home1 soon enough but not too soon to mark a period in their lives7 really was an old house2 and an element of ,french descent in its inmates-- descent from ,watteau1 the old court-painter1 one of whose gallant pieces still hung in one of the rooms--might explain1 together with some other things1 a noticeable trimness and comely whiteness about everything there--the curtains1 the couches1 the paint on the walls with which the light and shadow played so delicately2 might explain also the tolerance of the great poplar in the garden1 a tree most often despised by ,english people1 but which ,french people love1 having observed a certain fresh way its leaves have of dealing with the wind1 making it sound1 in never so slight a stirring of the air1 like running water4 ,the old-fashioned1 low wainscoting went round the rooms1 and up the staircase with carved balusters and shadowy angles1 landing half-way up at a broad window1 with a swallow's nest below the sill1 and the blossom of an old pear-tree showing across it in late ,april1 against the blue1 below which the perfumed juice of the find of fallen fruit in autumn was so fresh4 ,at the next turning came the closet which held on its deep shelves the best china4 ,little angel #age faces and reedy flutings stood out round the fireplace of the children's room4 ,and on the top of the house1 above the large attic1 where the white mice ran in the twilight--an infinite1 unexplored wonderland of childish treasures1 glass beads1 empty scent-bottles still sweet1 thrum of coloured silks1 among its lumber--a flat space of roof1 railed round1 gave a view of the neighbouring steeples2 for the house1 as ,i said1 stood near a great city1 which sent up heavenwards1 over the twisting weather-vanes1 not seldom1 its beds of rolling cloud and smoke1 touched with storm or sunshine4 ,but the child of whom ,i am writing did not hate the fog because of the crimson lights which fell from it sometimes upon the chimneys1 and the whites which gleamed through its openings1 on summer mornings1 on turret or pavement4 ,for it is false to suppose that a child's sense of beauty is dependent on any choiceness or special fineness1 in the objects which present themselves to it1 though this indeed comes to be the rule with most of us in later life2 earlier1 in some degree1 we see inwardly2 and the child finds for itself1 and with unstinted delight1 a difference for the sense1 in those whites and reds through the smoke on very homely buildings1 and in the gold of the dandelions at the road-side1 just beyond the houses1 where not a handful of earth is virgin and untouched1 in the lack of better ministries to its desire of beauty4 #agf ,this house then stood not far beyond the gloom and rumours of the town1 among high garden-wall1 bright all summer-time with ,golden- rod1 and brown-and-golden ,wall-flower--,flos ,parietis1 as the children's ,latin-reading father taught them to call it1 while he was with them4 ,tracing back the threads of his complex spiritual habit1 as he was used in after years to do1 ,florian found that he owed to the place many tones of sentiment afterwards customary with him1 certain inward lights under which things most naturally presented themselves to him4 ,the coming and going of travellers to the town along the way1 the shadow of the streets1 the sudden breath of the neighbouring gardens1 the singular brightness of bright weather there1 its singular darknesses which linked themselves in his mind to certain engraved illustrations in the old big ,bible at home1 the coolness of the dark1 cavernous shops round the great church1 with its giddy winding stair up to the pigeons and the bells--a citadel of peace in the heart of the trouble--all this acted on his childish fancy1 so that ever afterwards the like aspects and incidents never failed to throw him into a well-recognised imaginative mood1 seeming actually to have become a part of the texture of his mind4 ,also1 ,florian could trace home to this point a pervading preference in himself for a kind of comeliness and dignity1 an urbanity literally1 in modes of life1 which he connected with the pale #agg people of towns1 and which made him susceptible to a kind of exquisite satisfaction in the trimness and well-considered grace of certain things and persons he afterwards met with1 here and there1 in his way through the world4 ,so the child of whom ,i am writing lived on there quietly2 things without thus ministering to him1 as he sat daily at the window with the birdcage hanging below it1 and his mother taught him to read1 wondering at the ease with which he learned1 and at the quickness of his memory4 ,the perfume of the little flowers of the lime-tree fell through the air upon them like rain2 while time seemed to move ever more slowly to the murmur of the bees in it1 till it almost stood still on ,june afternoons4 ,how insignificant1 at the moment1 seem the influences of the sensible things which are tossed and fall and lie about us1 so1 or so1 in the environment of early childhood4 ,how indelibly1 as we afterwards discover1 they affect us2 with what capricious attractions and associations they figure themselves on the white paper1 the smooth wax1 of our ingenuous souls1 as with lead in the rock for ever1 giving form and feature1 and as it were assigned house-room in our memory1 to early experiences of feeling and thought1 which abide with us ever afterwards1 thus1 and not otherwise4 ,the realities and passions1 the rumours of the greater world without1 steal in upon us1 each by its own special little passage-way1 through the wall of custom #agh about us2 and never afterwards quite detach themselves from this or that accident1 or trick1 in the mode of their first entrance to us4 ,our susceptibilities1 the discovery of our powers1 manifold experiences-- our various experiences of the coming and going of bodily pain1 for instance--belong to this or the other well-remembered place in the material habitation--that little white room with the window across which the heavy blossoms could beat so peevishly in the wind1 with just that particular catch or throb1 such a sense of teasing in it1 on gusty mornings2 and the early habitation thus gradually becomes a sort of material shrine or sanctuary of sentiment2 a system of visible symbolism interweaves itself through all our thoughts and passions2 and irresistibly1 little shapes1 voices1 accidents--the angle at which the sun in the morning fell on the pillow--become parts of the great chain wherewith we are bound4 ,thus far1 for ,florian1 what all this had determined was a peculiarly strong sense of home--so forcible a motive with all of us--prompting to us our customary love of the earth1 and the larger part of our fear of death1 that revulsion we have from it1 as from something strange1 untried1 unfriendly2 though life-long imprisonment1 they tell you1 and final banishment from home is a thing bitterer still2 the looking forward to but a short space1 a mere childish goter and dessert of it1 before the end1 being so great a resource of #agi effort to pilgrims and wayfarers1 and the soldier in distant quarters1 and lending1 in lack of that1 some power of solace to the thought of sleep in the home churchyard1 at least--dead cheek by dead cheek1 and with the rain soaking in upon one from above4 ,so powerful is this instinct1 and yet accidents like those ,i have been speaking of so mechanically determine it2 its essence being indeed the early familiar1 as constituting our ideal1 or typical conception1 of rest and security4 ,out of so many possible conditions1 just this for you and that for me1 brings ever the unmistakeable realisation of the delightful chez soi2 this for the ,englishman1 for me and you1 with the closely-drawn white curtain and the shaded lamp2 that1 quite other1 for the wandering ,arab1 who folds his tent every morning1 and makes his sleeping-place among haunted ruins1 or in old tombs4 ,with ,florian then the sense of home became singularly intense1 his good fortune being that the special character of his home was in itself so essentially home-like4 ,as after many wanderings ,i have come to fancy that some parts of ,surrey and ,kent are1 for ,englishmen1 the true landscape1 true home-counties1 by right1 partly1 of a certain earthy warmth in the yellow of the sand below their gorse- bushes1 and of a certain grey-blue mist after rain1 in the hollows of the hills there1 welcome to fatigued eyes1 and never seen farther south2 so ,i think that the sort of #ahj house ,i have described1 with precisely those proportions of red-brick and green1 and with a just perceptible monotony in the subdued order of it1 for its distinguishing note1 is for ,englishmen at least typically home-life4 ,and so for ,florian that general human instinct was reinforced by this special home-likeness in the place his wandering soul had happened to light on1 as1 in the second degree1 its body and earthly tabernacle2 the sense of harmony between his soul and its physical environment became1 for a time at least1 like perfectly played music1 and the life led there singularly tranquil and filled with a curious sense of self-possession4 ,the love of security1 of an habitually undisputed standing-ground or sleeping-place1 came to count for much in the generation and correcting of his thoughts1 and afterwards as a salutary principle of restraint in all his wanderings of spirit4 ,the wistful yearning towards home1 in absence from it1 as the shadows of evening deepened1 and he followed in thought what was doing there from hour to hour1 interpreted to him much of a yearning and regret he experienced afterwards1 towards he knew not what1 out of strange ways of feeling and thought in which1 from time to time1 his spirit found itself alone2 and in the tears shed in such absences there seemed always to be some soul-subduing foretaste of what his last tears might be4 ,and the sense of security could hardly have #aha been deeper1 the quiet of the child's soul being one with the quiet of its home1 a place inclosed and sealed4 ,but upon this assured place1 upon the child's assured soul which resembled it1 there came floating in from the larger world without1 as at windows left ajar unknowingly1 or over the high garden walls1 two streams of impressions1 the sentiments of beauty and pain--recognitions of the visible1 tangible1 audible loveliness of things1 as a very real and somewhat tyrannous element in them--and of the sorrow of the world1 of grown people and children and animals1 as a thing not to be put by in them4 ,from this point he could trace two predominant processes of mental change in him--the growth of an almost diseased sensibility to the spectacle of suffering1 and1 parallel with this1 the rapid growth of a certain capacity of fascination by bright colour and choice form--the sweet curvings1 for instance1 of the lips of those who seemed to him comely persons1 modulated in such delicate unison to the things they said or sang1--marking early the activity in him of a more than customary sensuousness1 the lust of the eye1 as the ,preacher says1 which might lead him1 one day1 how far6 ,could he have foreseen the weariness of the way6 ,in music sometimes the two sorts of impressions came together1 and he would weep1 to the surprise of older people4 ,tears of joy too the child knew1 also to older people's surprise2 real tears1 once1 of relief from long-strung1 #ahb childish expectation1 when he found returned at evening1 with new roses in her cheeks1 the little sister who had been to a place where there was a wood1 and brought back for him a treasure of fallen acorns1 and black crow's feathers1 and his peace at finding her again near him mingled all night with some intimate sense of the distant forest1 the rumour of its breezes1 with the glossy blackbirds aslant and the branches lifted in them1 and of the perfect nicety of the little cups that fell4 ,so those two elementary apprehensions of the tenderness and of the colour in things grew apace in him1 and were seen by him afterwards to send their roots back into the beginnings of life4 ,let me note first some of the occasions of his recognition of the element of pain in things--incidents1 now and again1 which seemed suddenly to awake in him the whole force of that sentiment which ,goethe has called the ,weltschmerz1 and in which the concentrated sorrow of the world seemed suddenly to lie heavy upon him4 ,a book lay in an old book-case1 of which he cared to remember one picture--a woman sitting1 with hands bound behind her1 the dress1 the cap1 the hair1 folded with a simplicity which touched him strangely1 as if not by her own hands1 but with some ambiguous care at the hands of others--,queen ,marie ,antoinette1 on her way to execution--we all remember ,david's drawing1 meant merely to make her ridiculous4 ,the face #ahc that had been so high had learned to be mute and resistless2 but out of its very resistlessness1 seemed now to call on men to have pity1 and forbear2 and he took note of that1 as he closed the book1 as a thing to look at again1 if he should at any time find himself tempted to be cruel4 ,again1 he would never quite forget the appeal in the small sister's face1 in the garden under the lilacs1 terrified at a spider lighted on her sleeve4 ,he could trace back to the look then noted a certain mercy he conceived always for people in fear1 even of little things1 which seemed to make him1 though but for a moment1 capable of almost any sacrifice of himself4 ,impressible1 susceptible persons1 indeed1 who had had their sorrows1 lived about him2 and this sensibility was due in part to the tacit influence of their presence1 enforcing upon him habitually the fact that there are those who pass their days1 as a matter of course1 in a sort of going quietly4 ,most poignantly of all he could recall1 in unfading minutest circumstance1 the cry on the stair1 sounding bitterly through the house1 and struck into his soul for ever1 of an aged woman1 his father's sister1 come now to announce his death in distant ,india2 how it seemed to make the aged woman like a child again2 and1 he knew not why1 but this fancy was full of pity to him4 ,there were the little sorrows of the dumb animals too--of the white angora1 with a dark tail like an ermine's1 and a face like a #ahd flower1 who fell into a lingering sickness1 and became quite delicately human in its valetudinarianism1 and came to have a hundred different expressions of voice--how it grew worse and worse1 till it began to feel the light too much for it1 and at last1 after one wild morning of pain1 the little soul flickered away from the body1 quite worn to death already1 and now but feebly retaining it4 ,so he wanted another pet2 and as there were starlings about the place1 which could be taught to speak1 one of them was caught1 and he meant to treat it kindly2 but in the night its young ones could be heard crying after it1 and the responsive cry of the mother-bird towards them2 and at last1 with the first light1 though not till after some debate with himself1 he went down and opened the cage1 and saw a sharp bound of the prisoner up to her nestlings2 and therewith came the sense of remorse1--that he too was become an accomplice in moving1 to the limit of his small power1 the springs and handles of that great machine in things1 constructed so ingeniously to play pain-fugues on the delicate nerve-work of living creatures4 ,i have remarked how1 in the process of our brain-building1 as the house of thought in which we live gets itself together1 like some airy bird's-nest of floating thistle-down and chance straws1 compact at last1 little accidents have their consequence2 and thus it happened that1 as he #ahe walked one evening1 a garden gate1 usually closed1 stood open2 and lo6 within1 a great red hawthorn in full flower1 embossing heavily the bleached and twisted trunk and branches1 so aged that there were but few green leaves thereon--a plumage of tender1 crimson fire out of the heart of the dry wood4 ,the perfume of the tree had now and again reached him1 in the currents of the wind1 over the wall1 and he had wondered what might be behind it1 and was now allowed to fill his arms with the flowers-- flowers enough for all the old blue-china pots along the chimney- piece1 making fte in the children's room4 ,was it some periodic moment in the expansion of soul within him1 or mere trick of heat in the heavily-laden summer air8 ,but the beauty of the thing struck home to him feverishly2 and in dreams all night he loitered along a magic roadway of crimson flowers1 which seemed to open ruddily in thick1 fresh masses about his feet1 and fill softly all the little hollows in the banks on either side4 ,always afterwards1 summer by summer1 as the flowers came on1 the blossom of the red hawthorn still seemed to him absolutely the reddest of all things2 and the goodly crimson1 still alive in the works of old ,venetian masters or old ,flemish tapestries1 called out always from afar the recollection of the flame in those perishing little petals1 as it pulsed gradually out of them1 kept long in the drawers of an old cabinet4 #ahf ,also then1 for the first time1 he seemed to experience a passionateness in his relation to fair outward objects1 an inexplicable excitement in their presence1 which disturbed him1 and from which he half longed to be free4 ,a touch of regret or desire mingled all night with the remembered presence of the red flowers1 and their perfume in the darkness about him2 and the longing for some undivined1 entire possession of them was the beginning of a revelation to him1 growing ever clearer1 with the coming of the gracious summer guise of fields and trees and persons in each succeeding year1 of a certain1 at times seemingly exclusive1 predominance in his interests1 of beautiful physical things1 a kind of tyranny of the senses over him4 ,in later years he came upon philosophies which occupied him much in the estimate of the proportion of the sensuous and the ideal elements in human knowledge1 the relative parts they bear in it2 and1 in his intellectual scheme1 was led to assign very little to the abstract thought1 and much to its sensible vehicle or occasion4 ,such metaphysical speculation did but reinforce what was instinctive in his way of receiving the world1 and for him1 everywhere1 that sensible vehicle or occasion became1 perhaps only too surely1 the necessary concomitant of any perception of things1 real enough to be of any weight or reckoning1 in his house of thought4 ,there were times when he could think of the #ahg necessity he was under of associating all thoughts to touch and sight1 as a sympathetic link between himself and actual1 feeling1 living objects2 a protest in favour of real men and women against mere grey1 unreal abstractions2 and he remembered gratefully how the ,christian religion1 hardly less than the religion of the ancient ,greeks1 translating so much of its spiritual verity into things that may be seen1 condescends in part to sanction this infirmity1 if so it be1 of our human existence1 wherein the world of sense is so much with us1 and welcomed this thought as a kind of keeper and sentinel over his soul therein4 ,but certainly1 he came more and more to be unable to care for1 or think of soul but as in an actual body1 or of any world but that wherein are water and trees1 and where men and women look1 so or so1 and press actual hands4 ,it was the trick even his pity learned1 fastening those who suffered in anywise to his affections by a kind of sensible attachments4 ,he would think of ,julian1 fallen into incurable sickness1 as spoiled in the sweet blossom of his skin like pale amber1 and his honey-like hair2 of ,cecil1 early dead1 as cut off from the lilies1 from golden summer days1 from women's voices2 and then what comforted him a little was the thought of the turning of the child's flesh to violets in the turf above him4 ,and thinking of the very poor1 it was not the things which most men care most for that he yearned to give them2 #ahh but fairer roses1 perhaps1 and power to taste quite as they will1 at their ease and not task-burdened1 a certain desirable1 clear light in the new morning1 through which sometimes he had noticed them1 quite unconscious of it1 on their way to their early toil4 ,so he yielded himself to these things1 to be played upon by them like a musical instrument1 and began to note with deepening watchfulness1 but always with some puzzled1 unutterable longing in his enjoyment1 the phases of the seasons and of the growing or waning day1 down even to the shadowy changes wrought on bare wall or ceiling--the light cast up from the snow1 bringing out their darkest angles2 the brown light in the cloud1 which meant rain2 that almost too austere clearness1 in the protracted light of the lengthening day1 before warm weather began1 as if it lingered but to make a severer workday1 with the school-books opened earlier and later2 that beam of ,june sunshine1 at last1 as he lay awake before the time1 a way of gold- dust across the darkness2 all the humming1 the freshness1 the perfume of the garden seemed to lie upon it--and coming in one afternoon in ,september1 along the red gravel walk1 to look for a basket of yellow crab-apples left in the cool1 old parlour1 he remembered it the more1 and how the colours struck upon him1 because a wasp on one bitten apple stung him1 and he felt the passion of #ahi sudden1 severe pain4 ,for this too brought its curious reflexions2 and1 in relief from it1 he would wonder over it--how it had then been with him-- puzzled at the depth of the charm or spell over him1 which lay1 for a little while at least1 in the mere absence of pain2 once1 especially1 when an older boy taught him to make flowers of sealing-wax1 and he had burnt his hand badly at the lighted taper1 and been unable to sleep4 ,he remembered that also afterwards1 as a sort of typical thing--a white vision of heat about him1 clinging closely1 through the languid scent of the ointments put upon the place to make it well4 ,also1 as he felt this pressure upon him of the sensible world1 then1 as often afterwards1 there would come another sort of curious questioning how the last impressions of eye and ear might happen to him1 how they would find him--the scent of the last flower1 the soft yellowness of the last morning1 the last recognition of some object of affection1 hand or voice2 it could not be but that the latest look of the eyes1 before their final closing1 would be strangely vivid2 one would go with the hot tears1 the cry1 the touch of the wistful bystander1 impressed how deeply on one6 or would it be1 perhaps1 a mere frail retiring of all things1 great or little1 away from one1 into a level distance8 ,for with this desire of physical beauty mingled itself early the fear of death--the fear of death #aij intensified by the desire of beauty4 ,hitherto he had never gazed upon dead faces1 as sometimes1 afterwards1 at the ,morgue in ,paris1 or in that fair cemetery at ,munich1 where all the dead must go and lie in state before burial1 behind glass windows1 among the flowers and incense and holy candles- -the aged clergy with their sacred ornaments1 the young men in their dancing-shoes and spotless white linen--after which visits1 those waxen1 resistless faces would always live with him for many days1 making the broadest sunshine sickly4 ,the child had heard indeed of the death of his father1 and how1 in the ,indian station1 a fever had taken him1 so that though not in action he had yet died as a soldier2 and hearing of the resurrection of the just1 he could think of him as still abroad in the world1 somehow1 for his protection--a grand1 though perhaps rather terrible figure1 in beautiful soldier's things1 like the figure in the picture of ,joshua's ,vision in the ,bible--and of that1 round which the mourners moved so softly1 and afterwards with such solemn singing1 as but a worn-out garment left at a deserted lodging4 ,so it was1 until on a summer day he walked with his mother through a fair churchyard4 ,in a bright dress he rambled among the graves1 in the gay weather1 and so came1 in one corner1 upon an open grave for a child--a dark space on the brilliant grass-- the black mould lying heaped up round it1 weighing down the little jewelled #aia branches of the dwarf rose-bushes in flower4 ,and therewith came1 full-grown1 never wholly to leave him1 with the certainty that even children do sometimes die1 the physical horror of death1 with its wholly selfish recoil from the association of lower forms of life1 and the suffocating weight above4 ,no benign1 grave figure in beautiful soldier's things any longer abroad in the world for his protection6 only a few poor1 piteous bones2 and above them1 possibly1 a certain sort of figure he hoped not to see4 ,for sitting one day in the garden below an open window1 he heard people talking1 and could not but listen1 how1 in a sleepless hour1 a sick woman had seen one of the dead sitting beside her1 come to call her hence2 and from the broken talk evolved with much clearness the notion that not all those dead people had really departed to the churchyard1 nor were quite so motionless as they looked1 but led a secret1 half-fugitive life in their old homes1 quite free by night1 though sometimes visible in the day1 dodging from room to room1 with no great goodwill towards those who shared the place with them4 ,all night the figure sat beside him in the reveries of his broken sleep1 and was not quite gone in the morning--an odd1 irreconcileable new member of the household1 making the sweet familiar chambers unfriendly and suspect by its uncertain presence4 ,he could have hated the dead he had pitied so1 for being #aib thus4 ,afterwards he came to think of those poor1 home-returning ghosts1 which all men have fancied to themselves--the revenants--pathetically1 as crying1 or beating with vain hands at the doors1 as the wind came1 their cries distinguishable in it as a wilder inner note4 ,but1 always making death more unfamiliar still1 that old experience would ever1 from time to time1 return to him2 even in the living he sometimes caught its likeness2 at any time or place1 in a moment1 the faint atmosphere of the chamber of death would be breathed around him1 and the image with the bound chin1 the quaint smile1 the straight1 stiff feet1 shed itself across the air upon the bright carpet1 amid the gayest company1 or happiest communing with himself4 ,to most children the sombre questionings to which impressions like these attach themselves1 if they come at all1 are actually suggested by religious books1 which therefore they often regard with much secret distaste1 and dismiss1 as far as possible1 from their habitual thoughts as a too depressing element in life4 ,to ,florian such impressions1 these misgivings as to the ultimate tendency of the years1 of the relationship between life and death1 had been suggested spontaneously in the natural course of his mental growth by a strong innate sense for the soberer tones in things1 further strengthened by actual circumstances2 and religious sentiment1 that #aic system of biblical ideas in which he had been brought up1 presented itself to him as a thing that might soften and dignify1 and light up as with a lively hope1 a melancholy already deeply settled in him4 ,so he yielded himself easily to religious impressions1 and with a kind of mystical appetite for sacred things2 the more as they came to him through a saintly person who loved him tenderly1 and believed that this early pre-occupation with them already marked the child out for a saint4 ,he began to love1 for their own sakes1 church lights1 holy days1 all that belonged to the comely order of the sanctuary1 the secrets of its white linen1 and holy vessels1 and fonts of pure water2 and its hieratic purity and simplicity became the type of something he desired always to have about him in actual life4 ,he pored over the pictures in religious books1 and knew by heart the exact mode in which the wrestling angel grasped ,jacob1 how ,jacob looked in his mysterious sleep1 how the bells and pomegranates were attached to the hem of ,aaron's vestment1 sounding sweetly as he glided over the turf of the holy place4 ,his way of conceiving religion came then to be in effect what it ever afterwards remained-- a sacred history indeed1 but still more a sacred ideal1 a transcendent version or representation1 under intenser and more expressive light and shade1 of human life and its familiar or exceptional incidents1 birth1 death1 marriage1 #aid youth1 age1 tears1 joy1 rest1 sleep1 waking--a mirror1 towards which men might turn away their eyes from vanity and dullness1 and see themselves therein as angels1 with their daily meat and drink1 even1 become a kind of sacred transaction--a complementary strain or burden1 applied to our every-day existence1 whereby the stray snatches of music in it re-set themselves1 and fall into the scheme of some higher and more consistent harmony4 ,a place adumbrated itself in his thoughts1 wherein those sacred personalities1 which are at once the reflex and the pattern of our nobler phases of life1 housed themselves2 and this region in his intellectual scheme all subsequent experience did but tend still further to realise and define4 ,some ideal1 hieratic persons he would always need to occupy it and keep a warmth there4 ,and he could hardly understand those who felt no such need at all1 finding themselves quite happy without such heavenly companionship1 and sacred double of their life1 beside them4 ,thus a constant substitution of the typical for the actual took place in his thoughts4 ,angels might be met by the way1 under ,english elm or beech-tree2 mere messengers seemed like angels1 bound on celestial errands2 a deep mysticity brooded over real meetings and partings2 marriages were made in heaven2 and deaths also1 with hands of angels thereupon1 to bear soul and body quietly asunder1 each to its #aie appointed rest4 ,all the acts and accidents of daily life borrowed a sacred colour and significance2 the very colours of things became themselves weighty with meanings like the sacred stuffs of ,moses' tabernacle1 full of penitence or peace4 ,sentiment1 congruous in the first instance only with those divine transactions1 the deep1 effusive unction of the ,house of ,bethany1 was assumed as the due attitude for the reception of our every-day existence2 and for a time he walked through the world in a sustained1 not unpleasurable awe1 generated by the habitual recognition1 beside every circumstance and event of life1 of its celestial correspondent4 ,sensibility--the desire of physical beauty--a strange biblical awe1 which made any reference to the unseen act on him like solemn music-- these qualities the child took away with him1 when1 at about the age of twelve years1 he left the old house1 and was taken to live in another place4 ,he had never left home before1 and1 anticipating much from this change1 had long dreamed over it1 jealously counting the days till the time fixed for departure should come2 had been a little careless about others even1 in his strong desire for it--when ,lewis fell sick1 for instance1 and they must wait still two days longer4 ,at last the morning came1 very fine2 and all things--the very pavement with its dust1 at the roadside--seemed to have a white1 pearl-like lustre in them4 ,they were to travel by a #aif favourite road on which he had often walked a certain distance1 and on one of those two prisoner days1 when ,lewis was sick1 had walked farther than ever before1 in his great desire to reach the new place4 ,they had started and gone a little way when a pet bird was found to have been left behind1 and must even now--so it presented itself to him--have already all the appealing fierceness and wild self-pity at heart of one left by others to perish of hunger in a closed house2 and he returned to fetch it1 himself in hardly less stormy distress4 ,but as he passed in search of it from room to room1 lying so pale1 with a look of meekness in their denudation1 and at last through that little1 stripped white room1 the aspect of the place touched him like the face of one dead2 and a clinging back towards it came over him1 so intense that he knew it would last long1 and spoiling all his pleasure in the realisation of a thing so eagerly anticipated4 ,and so1 with the bird found1 but himself in an agony of home-sickness1 thus capriciously sprung up within him1 he was driven quickly away1 far into the rural distance1 so fondly speculated on1 of that favourite country-road4 ,,notes #agb4 99,published in ,macmillan's ,magazine1 ,aug4 #ahgh4 ,,emerald ,,uthwart99 #aig ,,we smile at epitaphs--at those recent enough to be read easily2 smile1 for the most part1 at what for the most part is an unreal and often vulgar branch of literature2 yet a wide one1 with its flowers here or there1 such as make us regret now and again not to have gathered more carefully in our wanderings a fair average of the like4 ,their very simplicity1 of course1 may set one's thoughts in motion to fill up the scanty tale1 and those of the young at least are almost always worth while4 ,at ,siena1 for instance1 in the great ,dominican church1 even with the impassioned work of ,sodoma at hand1 you may linger in a certain dimly lit chapel to spell out the black-letter memorials of the ,german students who died here--aetatis flore6--at the ,university1 famous early in the last century2 young nobles chiefly1 far from the ,rhine1 from ,nuremberg1 or ,leipsic4 ,note one in particular6 ,loving parents and elder brother meant to record #aih carefully the very days of the lad's poor life--annos1 menses1 dies2 sent the order1 doubtless1 from the distant old castle in the ,fatherland1 but not quite explicitly2 the spaces for the numbers remain still unfilled2 and they never came to see4 ,after two centuries the omission is not to be rectified2 and the young man's memorial has perhaps its propriety as it stands1 with those unnumbered1 or numberless1 days4 ,full of affections1 observed1 once upon a time1 a great lover of boys and young men1 speaking to a large company of them3--full of affections1 full of powers1 full of occupation1 how naturally might the younger part of us especially 7more naturally than the older7 receive the tidings that there are things to be loved and things to be done which shall never pass away4 ,we feel strong1 we feel active1 we feel full of life2 and these feelings do not altogether deceive us1 for we shall live for ever4 ,we see a long prospect before us1 for which it is worth while to work1 even with much labour2 for we are as yet young1 and the past portion of our lives is but small in comparison of that which probably remains to us4 ,it is most true6 ,the past years of our life are absolutely beyond proportion small in comparison with those which certainly remain to us4 ,in a very different neighbourhood1 here at home1 in a remote ,sussex churchyard1 you may read that ,emerald ,uthwart was born on such a #aii day1 at ,chase ,lodge1 in this parish2 and died there1 on a day in the year #ah--1 aged twenty-six4 ,think1 thereupon1 of the years of a very ,english existence passed without a lost week in that bloomy ,english place1 amid its ,english lawns and flower-beds1 its oldish brick and raftered plaster2 you may see it still1 not far off1 on a clearing of the wooded hill-side sloping gradually to the sea4 ,but you think wrong4 ,emerald ,uthwart1 in almost unbroken absence from his home1 longed greatly for it1 but left it early and came back there only to die1 in disgrace1 as he conceived2 of which it was he died there1 finding the sense of the place all around him at last1 like blessed oil in one's wounds4 ,how they shook their musk from them6--those gardens1 among which the youngest son1 but not the youngest child1 grew up1 little considered till he returned there in those last years4 ,the rippling note of the birds he distinguished so acutely seemed a part of this tree-less place1 open freely to sun and air1 such as rose and carnation loved1 in the midst of the old disafforested chase4 ,brothers and sisters1 all alike were gardeners1 methodically intimate with their flowers4 ,you need words compact rather of perfume than of colour to describe them1 in nice annual order2 terms for perfume1 as immediate and definite as red1 purple1 and yellow4 ,flowers there were which seemed to yield their sweetest in the faint sea-salt1 when the loosening wind #bjj was strong from the south-west2 some which found their way slowly towards the neighbourhood of the old oaks and beech-trees4 ,others consorted most freely with the wall-fruit1 or seemed made for pot-pourri to sweeten the old black mahogany furniture4 ,the sweet- pea stacks loved the broad path through the kitchen garden2 the old- fashioned garden azalea was the making of a nosegay1 with its honey which clung to one's finger4 ,there were flowers all the sweeter for a battle with the rain2 a flower like aromatic medicine2 another like summer lingering into winter2 it ripened as fruit does2 and another was like ,august1 his own birthday time1 dropped into ,march4 ,the very mould here1 rich old black gardener's earth1 was flower- seed2 and beyond1 the fields1 one after another1 through the white gates breaking the well-grown hedge-rows1 were hardly less garden- like2 little velvety fields1 little with the true sweet ,english littleness of our little island1 our land of vignettes4 ,here all was little2 the very church where they went to pray1 to sit1 the ancient ,uthwarts sleeping all around outside under the windows1 deposited there as quietly as fallen trees on their native soil1 and almost unrecorded1 as there had been almost nothing to record2 where however1 ,sunday after ,sunday1 ,emerald ,uthwart reads1 wondering1 the solitary memorial of one soldierly member of his race1 who had1-- well6 who had not died here #bja at home1 in his bed4 ,how wretched6 how fine6 how inconceivably great and difficult6--not for him6 ,and yet1 amid all its littleness1 how large his sense of liberty in the place he1 the cadet doomed to leave it--his birth-place1 where he is also so early to die--had loved better than any one of them6 ,enjoying hitherto all the freedom of the almost grown-up brothers1 the unrepressed noise1 the unchecked hours1 the old rooms1 all their own way1 he is literally without the consciousness of rule4 ,only1 when the long irresponsible day is over1 amid the dew1 the odours1 of summer twilight1 they roll their cricket-field against to-morrow's game4 ,so it had always been with the ,uthwarts2 they never went to school4 ,in the great attic he has chosen for himself ,emerald awakes2--it was a rule1 sanitary1 almost medical1 never to rouse the children--rises to play betimes2 or1 if he choose1 with window flung open to the roses1 the sea1 turns to sleep again1 deliberately1 deliciously1 under the fine old blankets4 ,a rather sensuous boy6 you may suppose1 amid the wholesome1 natural self-indulgence of a very ,english home4 ,his days began there3 it closed again1 after an interval of the larger number of them1 indulgently1 mercifully1 round his end4 ,for awhile he became its centre1 old habits changing1 the old furniture rearranged about him1 for the first time in many generations1 though he left it now with something like #bjb resentment in his heart1 as if thrust harshly away1 sent ablactatus a matre2 made an effort thereon to snap the last thread which bound him to it4 ,yet it would come back upon him sometimes1 amid so different a scene1 as through a suddenly opened door1 or a rent in the wall1 with softer thoughts of his people1-- there1 or not there1--and a sudden1 dutiful effort on his part to rekindle wasting affection4 ,the youngest of four sons1 but not the youngest of the family6--you conceive the sort of negligence that creeps over even the kindest maternities1 in such case2 unless1 perhaps1 sickness1 or the sort of misfortune1 making the last first for the affectionate1 that brought ,emerald back at length to die contentedly1 interferes with the way of nature4 ,little by little he comes to understand that1 while the brothers are indulged with lessons at home1 are some of them free even of these and placed already in the world1 where1 however1 there remains no place for him1 he is to go to school1 chiefly for the convenience of others--they are going to be much away from home6-- that now for the first time1 as he says to himself1 an old-,english ,uthwart is to pass under the yoke4 ,the tutor in the house1 meantime1 aware of some fascination in the lad1 teaches him1 at his own irregularly chosen hours1 more carefully than the others2 exerts all his gifts for the purpose1 winning him on almost insensibly to youthful proficiency in those difficult rudiments4 #bjc ,see him as he stands1 seemingly rooted in the spot where he has come to flower6 ,he departs1 however1 a few days before the departure of the rest--some to foreign parts1 the brothers1 who shut up the old place1 to town4 ,for a moment1 he makes an effort to figure to himself those coming absences as but exceptional intervals in his life here2 he will count the days1 going more quickly so2 find his pleasure in watching the sands fall1 as even the sands of time at school must4 ,in fact1 he was scarcely ever to lie at ease here again1 till he came to take his final leave of it1 lying at his length so4 ,in brief holidays he rejoins his people1 anywhere1 anyhow1 in a sort of hurry and makeshift3--,flos ,parietis6 thus carelessly plucked forth4 ,emerald ,uthwart was born on such a day at ,chase ,lodge1 in this parish1 and died there4 ,see him then as he stands6 counting now the hours that remain1 on the eve of that first emigration1 and look away next at the other place1 which through centuries has been forming to receive him2 from those garden-beds1 now at their richest1 but where all is so winsomely little1 to that place of great matters1 great stones1 great memories out of reach4 ,why6 the ,uthwarts had scarcely had more memories than their woods1 noiselessly deciduous2 or their prehistoric1 entirely unprogressive1 unrecording forefathers1 in or before the days of the ,druids4 ,centuries of almost still life--of birth1 death1 #bjd and the rest1 as merely natural processes--had made them and their home what we find them4 ,centuries of conscious endeavour1 on the other hand1 had builded1 shaped1 and coloured the place1 a small cell1 which ,emerald ,uthwart was now to occupy2 a place such as our most characteristic ,english education has rightly tended to find itself a house in--a place full1 for those who came within its influence1 of a will of its own4 ,here everything1 one's very games1 have gone by rule onwards from the dim old monastic days1 and the ,benedictine school for novices with the wholesome severities which have descended to our own time4 ,like its customs1--there's a book in the cathedral archives with the names1 for centuries ,past1 of the scholars who have missed church at the proper times for going there--like its customs1 well-worn yet well-preserved1 time-stained1 time-engrained1 time-mellowed1 the venerable ,norman or ,english stones of this austere1 beautifully proportioned place look like marble1 to which ,emerald's softly nurtured being1 his careless wild-growth must now adapt itself1 though somewhat painfully recoiling from contact with what seems so hard also1 and bright1 and cold4 ,from his native world of soft garden touches1 carnation and rose 7they had been everywhere in those last weeks71 where every one did just what he liked1 he was passed now to this world of grey stone2 and here it was always the decisive word #bje of command4 ,that old warrior ,uthwart's record in the church at home1 so fine1 yet so wretched1 so unspeakably great and difficult6 seemed written here everywhere around him1 as he stood feeling himself fit only to be taught1 to be drilled into1 his small compartment2 in every movement of his companions1 with their quaint confining little cloth gowns2 in the keen1 clear1 well-authorised dominancy of some1 the instant submission of others4 ,in fact1 by one of our wise ,english compromises1 we still teach our so modern boys the ,classics2 a lesson in attention and patience1 at the least4 ,nay6 by a double compromise1 with delightful physiognomic results sometimes1 we teach them their pagan ,latin and ,greek under the shadow of medieval church- towers1 amid the haunts1 the traditions1 and with something of the discipline1 of monasticism2 for which1 as is noticeable1 the ,english have never wholly lost an early inclination4 ,the ,french and others have swept their scholastic houses empty of it1 with pedantic fidelity to their theories4 ,english pedants may succeed in doing the like4 ,but the result of our older method has had its value so far1 at least1 say6 for the careful aesthetic observer4 ,it is of such diagonal influences1 through complication of influence1 that expression comes1 in life1 in our culture1 in the very faces of men and boys--of these boys4 ,nothing could better harmonise present with past than the sight of them just here1 as they #bjf shout at their games1 or recite their lessons1 over-arched by the work of medieval priors1 or pass to church meekly1 into the seats occupied by the young monks before them4 ,if summer comes reluctantly to our ,english shores1 it is also apt to linger with us2--its flora of red and gold leaves on the branches wellnigh to ,christmas2 the hot days that surprise you1 and persist1 though heralded by white mornings1 hinting that it is but the year's indulgence so to deal with us4 ,to the fanciful1 such days may seem most at home in the places where ,england has thus preferred to locate the somewhat pensive education of its more favoured youth4 ,as ,uthwart passes through the old ecclesiastical city1 upon which any more modern touch1 modern door or window1 seems a thing out of place through negligence1 the diluted sunlight itself seems driven along with a sparing trace of gilded vane or red tile in it1 under the wholesome active wind from the ,east coast4 ,the long1 finely weathered1 leaden roof1 and the great square tower1 gravely magnificent1 emphatic from the first view of it over the grey down above the hop-gardens1 the gently-watered meadows1 dwarf now everything beside2 have the bigness of nature's work1 seated up there so steadily amid the winds1 as rain and fog and heat pass by4 ,more and more persistently1 as he proceeds1 in the ,green ,court at last1 they occupy the outlook4 ,he is shown the narrow #bjg cubicle in which he is to sleep2 and there it still is1 with nothing else1 in the window-pane1 as he lies2--our tower1 the ,angel ,steeple1 noblest of its kind4 ,here1 from morning to night1 everything seems challenged to follow the upward lead of its long1 bold1 perpendicular lines4 ,the very place one is in1 its stone-work1 its empty spaces1 invade you2 invade all who belong to them1 as ,uthwart belongs1 yielding wholly from the first2 seem to question you masterfully as to your purpose in being here at all1 amid the great memories of the past1 of this school2--challenge you1 so to speak1 to make moral philosophy one of your acquirements1 if you can1 and to systematise your vagrant self2 which however will in any case be here systematised for you4 ,in ,uthwart1 then1 is the plain tablet1 for the influences of place to inscribe4 ,say if you will1 that he is under the power of an embodied ideal1 somewhat repellent1 but which he cannot despise4 ,he sits in the schoolroom--ancient1 transformed chapel of the pilgrims2 sits in the sober white and brown place1 at the heavy old desks1 carved this way and that1 crowded as an old churchyard with forgotten names1 side by side with sympathetic or antipathetic competitors1 as it may chance4 ,in a delightful1 exactly measured1 quarter of an hour's rest1 they come about him1 seem to wish to be friends at once1 good and bad alike1 dull and clever2 wonder a little at the name1 and #bjh the owner4 ,a family name--he explains1 good-humouredly2 tries to tell some story no one could ever remember precisely of the ancestor from whom it came1 the one story of the ,uthwarts2 is spared2 nay6 petulantly forbidden to proceed4 ,but the name sticks the faster4 ,nicknames mark1 for the most part1 popularity4 ,emerald6 so every one called ,uthwart1 but shortened to ,aldy4 ,they disperse2 flock out into the court2 acquaint him hastily with the curiosities of the ,precincts1 the dark entry1 the rich heraldries of the blackened and mouldering cloister1 the ruined overgrown spaces where the old monastery stood1 the stones of which furnished material for the rambling prebends houses1 now antediluvian in their turn2 are ready also to climb the scaffold- poles always to be found somewhere about the great church1 or dive along the odd1 secret passages of the old builders1 with quite learned explanations 7being proud of1 and therefore painstaking about1 the place7 of architectural periods1 of ,gothic late and early1 layer upon layer1 down to round-arched ,norman1 like the famous staircase of their school4 ,the reader comprehends that ,uthwart was come where the genius loci was a strong one1 with a claim to mould all who enter it to a perfect1 uninquiring1 willing or unwilling1 conformity to itself4 ,on ,saturday half-holidays the scholars are taken to church in their surplices1 across the #bji court1 under the lime-trees2 emerge at last up the dark winding passages into the melodious1 mellow-lighted space1 always three days behind the temperature outside1 so thick are the walls2--how warm and nice6 how cool and nice6 ,the choir1 to which they glide in order to their places below the clergy1 seems conspicuously cold and sad4 ,but the empty chapels lying beyond it all about into the distance are a trap on sunny mornings for the clouds of yellow effulgence4 ,the ,angel ,steeple is a lantern within1 and sheds down a flood of the like just beyond the gates4 ,you can peep up into it where you sit1 if you dare to gaze about you4 ,if at home there had been nothing great1 here1 to boyish sense1 one seems diminished to nothing at all1 amid the grand waves1 wave upon wave1 of patiently-wrought stone2 the daring height1 the daring severity1 of the innumerable1 long1 upward1 ruled lines1 rigidly bent just at last1 in due place1 into the reserved grace of the perfect ,gothic arch2 the peculiar daylight which seemed to come from further than the light outside4 ,next morning they are here again4 ,in contrast to those irregularly broken hours at home1 the passive length of things impresses ,uthwart now4 ,it develops patience--that tale of hours1 the long chanted ,english service2 our ,english manner of education is a development of patience1 of decorous and mannerly patience4 ,it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in #baj his youth3 he putteth his mouth in the dust1 he keepeth silence1 because he hath borne it upon him4--,they have this for an anthem2 sung however to wonderfully cheerful and sprightly music1 as if one liked the thought4 ,the aim of a veritable community1 says ,plato1 is not that this or that member of it should be disproportionately at ease1 but that the whole should flourish2 though indeed such general welfare might come round again to the loyal unit therein1 and rest with him1 as a privilege of his individual being after all4 ,the social type he preferred1 as we know1 was conservative ,sparta and its youth2 whose unsparing discipline had doubtless something to do with the fact that it was the handsomest and best-formed in all ,greece4 ,a school is not made for one4 ,it would misrepresent ,uthwart's wholly unconscious humility to say that he felt the beauty of the asksis 7we need that ,greek word7 to which he not merely finds himself subject1 but as under a fascination submissively yields himself1 although another might have been aware of the charm of it1 half ethic1 half physical1 as visibly effective in him4 ,its peculiarity would have lain in the expression of a stress upon him and his customary daily existence1 beyond what any definitely proposed issue of it1 at least for the moment1 explained4 ,something of that is involved in the very idea of a classical education1 at least for such as he2 in its seeming indirectness #baa or lack of purpose1 amid so much difficulty1 as contrasted with forms of education more obviously useful or practical4 ,he found himself in a system of fixed rules1 amid which1 it might be1 some of his own tendencies and inclinations would die out of him through disuse4 ,the confident word of command1 the instantaneous obedience expected1 the enforced silence1 the very games that go by rule1 a sort of hardness natural to wholesome ,english youths when they come together1 but here de rigueur as a point of good manners2--he accepts all these without hesitation2 the early hours also1 naturally distasteful to him1 which gave to actual morning1 to all that had passed in it1 when in more self-conscious mood he looked back on the morning of life1 a preponderance1 a disproportionate place there1 adding greatly to the effect of its dreamy distance from him at this later time2--an ideal quality1 he might have said1 had he ever used such words as that4 ,uthwart duly passes his examination2 and1 in their own chapel in the transept of the choir1 lighted up late for evening prayer after the long day of trial1 is received to the full privileges of a ,scholar with the accustomed ,latin words3--,introitum tuum et exitum tuum custodiat ,dominus6 ,he takes them1 not to heart1 but rather to mind1 as few1 if they so much as heard them1 were wont to do2 ponders them for a while4 ,they seem scarcely meant for him--words like those6 #bab increase however his sense of responsibility to the place1 of which he is now more exclusively than before a part--that he belongs to it1 its great memories1 great dim purposes2 deepen the consciousness he had on first coming hither of a demand in the world about him1 whereof the very stones are emphatic1 to which no average human creature could be sufficient2 of reproof1 reproaches1 of this or that in himself4 ,it was reported1 there was a funny belief1 at school1 that ,aldy ,uthwart had no feeling and was incapable of tears4 ,they never came to him certainly1 when1 at nights for the most part1 the very touch of home1 so soft1 yet so indifferent to him1 reached him1 with a sudden opulent rush of garden perfumes2 came at the rattling of the window-pane in the wind1 with anything that expressed distance from the bare white walls around him here4 ,he thrust it from him brusquely1 being of a practical turn1 and1 though somewhat sensuous1 wholly without sentimentality4 ,there is something however in the lad's soldier-like1 impassible self-command1 in his sustained expression of a certain indifference to things1 which awakes suddenly all the sentiment1 the poetry1 latent hitherto in another--,james ,stokes1 the prefect1 his immediate superior2 awakes for the first time into ample flower something of genius in a seemingly plodding scholar1 and therewith also something of the waywardness popularly thought to belong to #bac genius4 ,preceptores1 condiscipuli1 alike1 marvel at a sort of delicacy coming into the habits1 the person1 of that tall1 bashful1 broad-shouldered1 very ,kentish1 lad2 so unaffectedly nevertheless1 that it is understood after all to be but the smartness properly significant of change to early manhood1 like the down on his lip4 ,wistful anticipations of manhood are in fact aroused in him1 thoughts of the future2 his ambition takes effective outline4 ,the well-worn1 perhaps conventional1 beauties of their dead ,greek and ,latin books1 associated directly now with the living companion beside him1 really shine for him at last with their pristine freshness2 seem more than to fulfil their claim upon the patience1 the attention1 of modern youth4 ,he notices as never before minute points of meaning in ,homer1 in ,virgil2 points out thus1 for instance1 to his junior1 one day in the sunshine1 how the ,greeks had a special word for the ,fate which accompanied one who would come to a violent end4 ,the common ,destinies of men1 ,moirai1 ,moerae--they accompanied all men indifferently4 ,but ,kr1 the extraordinary ,destiny1 one's ,doom1 had a scent for distant blood-shedding2 and1 to be in at a sanguinary death1 one of their number came forth to the very cradle1 followed persistently all the way1 over the waves1 through powder and shot1 through the rose-gardens2--where not8 ,looking back1 one might trace the red footsteps all along1 side by #bad side4 7,emerald ,uthwart1 you remember1 was to die there1 of lingering sickness1 in disgrace1 as he fancied1 while the word glory came to be softly whispered of them and of their end47 ,classic felicities1 the choice expressions1 with which ,james ,stokes has so patiently stored his memory1 furnish now a dainty embroidery upon every act1 every change in time or place1 of their daily life in common4 ,he finds the ,greek or the ,latin model of their antique friendship or tries to find it1 in the books they read together4 ,none fits exactly4 ,it is of military glory they are really thinking1 amid those ecclesiastical surroundings1 where however surplices and uniforms are often mingled together2 how they will lie1 in costly glory1 costly to them1 side by side1 7as they work and walk and play now1 side by side7 in the cathedral aisle1 with a tattered flag perhaps above them1 and under a single epitaph1 like that of those two older scholars1 ,ensigns1 ,signiferi1 in their respective regiments1 in hac ecclesi pueri instituti1 with the sapphic stanza in imitation of the ,horace they had learned here1 written by their old master4 ,horace6--he was1 had been always1 the idol of their school2 to know him by heart1 to translate him into effective ,english idiom1 have an apt phrase of his instinctively on one's lips for every occasion4 ,that boys should be made to spout him under penalties1 would have seemed doubtless to that sensitive1 vain1 winsome poet1 #bae even more than to grim ,juvenal1 quite the sorriest of fates2 might have seemed not so bad however1 could he1 from the ashes so persistently in his thoughts1 have peeped on these ,english boys1 row upon row1 with black or golden heads1 repeating him in the fresh morning1 and observed how well for once the thing was done2 how well he was understood by ,english ,james ,stokes1 feeling the old fire really quick still1 under the influence which now in truth quickened1 enlivened1 everything around him4 ,the old heathen's way of looking at things1 his melodious expression of it1 blends1 or contrasts itself oddly with the everyday detail1 with the very stones1 the ,gothic stones1 of a world he could hardly have conceived1 its medieval surroundings1 their half-clerical life here4 ,yet not so inconsistently after all6 ,the builders of these aisles and cloisters had known and valued as much of him as they could come by in their own un-instructed time2 had built up their intellectual edifice more than they were aware of from fragments of pagan thought1 as1 quite consciously1 they constructed their churches of old ,roman bricks and pillars1 or frank imitations of them4 ,one's day1 then1 began with him1 for all alike1 ,sundays of course excepted1--with an ,ode1 learned over-night by the prudent1 who1 observing how readily the words which send us to sleep cling to the brain and seem an inherent part of it next morning1 kept him under #baf their pillows4 ,prefects1 without a book1 heard the repetition of the ,juniors1 must be able to correct their blunders4 ,odes and ,epodes1 thus acquired1 were a score of days and weeks2 alcaic and sapphic verses like a bead-roll for counting off the time that intervened before the holidays4 ,time--that tardy servant of youthful appetite--brought them soon enough to the point where they desired in vain to see one of those days1 erased now so willingly2 and sentimental ,james ,stokes has already a sense that this pause 'twixt cup and lip of life is really worth pausing over1 worth deliberation3--all this poetry1 yes6 poetry1 surely1 of their alternate work and play2 light and shade1 call it6 ,had it been1 after all1 a life in itself less commonplace than theirs--that life1 the trivial details of which their ,horace had touched so daintily1 gilded with real gold words8 ,regular1 submissive1 dutiful to play also1 ,aldy meantime enjoys his triumphs in the ,green ,court2 loves best however to run a paper-chase afar over the marshes1 till you come in sight1 or within scent1 of the sea1 in the autumn twilight2 and his dutifulness to games at least had its full reward4 ,a wonderful hit of his at cricket was long remembered2 right over the lime-trees on to the cathedral roof1 was it8 or over the roof1 and onward into space1 circling there independently1 minutely1 as ,sidus ,cantiorum8 ,a comic poem on it in ,latin1 and a pretty one in ,english1 #bag were penned by ,james ,stokes1 still not so serious but that he forgets time altogether one day1 in a manner the converse of exemplary in a prefect1 whereupon ,uthwart1 his companion as usual1 manages to take all the blame1 and the due penalty next morning4 ,stokes accepted the sacrifice the more readily1 believing--he too--that ,aldy was incapable of pain4 ,what surprised those who were in the secret was that1 when it was over1 he rose1 and facing the head-master--could it be insolence8 or was it the sense of untruthfulness in his friendly action1 or sense of the universal peccancy of all boys and men8--said submissively3 ,and now1 sir1 that ,i have taken my punishment1 ,i hope you will forgive my fault4 ,submissiveness6--,it had the force of genius with ,emerald ,uthwart4 ,in that very matter he had but yielded to a senior against his own inclination4 ,what he felt in ,horace was the sense1 original1 active1 personal1 of things too high for me61 the sense1 not really unpleasing to him1 of an unattainable height here too1 in this royal felicity of utterance1 this literary art1 the minute cares of which had been really designed for the minute carefulness of a disciple such as this--all attention4 ,well6 the sense of authority1 of a large intellectual authority over us1 impressed anew day after day1 of some impenetrable glory round the masters of those who know1 is1 of course1 one of the effects we #bah look for from a classical education3--that1 and a full estimate of the preponderating value of the manner of the doing of it in the thing done2 which again1 for ingenuous youth1 is an encouragement of good manners on its part3--,i behave myself orderly4 ,just at those points1 scholarship attains something of a religious colour4 ,and in that place1 religion1 religious system1 its claim to overpower one1 presented itself in a way of which even the least serious by nature could not be unaware4 ,their great church1 its customs and traditions1 formed an element in that esprit de corps into which the boyish mind throws itself so readily4 ,afterwards1 in very different scenes1 the sentiment of that place would come back upon him1 as if resentfully1 by contrast with the conscious or unconscious profanities of others1 crushed out about him straightway1 by the shadow of awe1 the minatory flash1 felt around his unopened lips1 in the glance1 the changed manner4 ,not to be occupied with great matters recommends in heavenly places1 as we know1 the souls of some4 ,yet there were a few to whom it seemed unfortunate that religion whose flag ,uthwart would have borne in hands so pure1 touched him from first to last1 and till his eyes were finally closed on this world1 only1 again1 as a thing immeasurable1 surely not meant for the like of him2 its high claims1 to which no one could be equal2 its reproaches4 ,he would scarcely have proposed to enter into #bai such matters2 was constitutionally shy of them4 ,his submissiveness1 you see1 was a kind of genius2 made him therefore1 of course1 unlike those around him2 was a secret2 a thing1 you might say1 which no one knoweth1 saving he that receiveth it4 ,thus repressible1 self-restrained1 always concurring with the influence1 the claim upon him1 the rebuke1 of others1 in the bustle of school life he did not count even with those who knew him best1 with those who taught him1 for the intellectual capacity he really had4 ,in every generation of schoolboys there are a few who find out1 almost for themselves1 the beauty and power of good literature1 even in the literature they must read perforce2 and this1 in turn1 is but the handsel of a beauty and power still active in the actual world1 should they have the good fortune1 or rather1 acquire the skill1 to deal with it properly4 ,it has something of the stir and unction-- this intellectual awaking with a leap--of the coming of love4 ,so it was with ,uthwart about his seventeenth year4 ,he felt it1 felt the intellectual passion1 like the pressure outward of wings within him-- h pterou dynamis1 says ,plato1 in the ,phaedrus2 but again1 as some do with everyday love1 withheld1 restrained himself2 the status of a freeman in the world of intellect can hardly be for him4 ,the sense of intellectual ambition1 ambitious thoughts such as sweeten the toil of some of those about him1 #bbj coming to him once in a way1 he is frankly recommended to put them aside1 and acquiesces2 puts them from him once for all1 as he could do with besetting thoughts and feelings1 his preferences1 7as he had put aside soft thoughts of home as a disobedience to rule7 and with a countenance more good-humoured than ever1 an absolute placidity4 ,it is fit he should be treated sparingly in this matter of intellectual enjoyment4 ,he is made to understand that there is at least a score of others as good scholars as he4 ,he will have of course all the pains1 but must not expect the prizes1 of his work2 of his loyal1 incessant1 cheerful industry4 ,but only see him as he goes4 ,it is as if he left music1 delightfully throbbing music1 or flowers1 behind him1 as he passes1 careless of them1 unconsciously1 through the world1 the school1 the precincts1 the old city4 ,strangers' eyes1 resting on him by chance1 are deterred for a while1 even among the rich sights of the venerable place1 as he walks out and in1 in his prim gown and purple-tasselled cap2 goes in1 with the stream of sunlight1 through the black shadows of the mouldering ,gothic gateway1 like youth's very self1 eternal1 immemorial1 eternally renewed1 about those immemorially ancient stones4 ,young ,apollo6 people say--people who have pigeon-holes for their impressions1 watching the slim1 trim figure with the exercise books4 ,his very dress seems touched #bba with ,hellenic fitness to the healthy youthful form4 ,golden-haired1 scholar ,apollo6 they repeat1 foolishly1 ignorantly4 ,he was better2 was more like a real portrait of a real young ,greek1 like ,tryphon1 ,son of ,eutychos1 for instance1 7as friends remembered him with regret1 as you may see him still on his tombstone in the ,british ,museum7 alive among the paler physical and intellectual lights of modern ,england1 under the old monastic stonework of the ,middle ,age4 ,that theatrical old ,greek god never took the expressiveness1 the lines of delicate meaning1 such as were come into the face of the ,english lad1 the physiognomy of his race2 ennobled now1 as if by the writing1 the signature1 there1 of a grave intelligence1 by grave information and a subdued will1 though without a touch of melancholy in this best of playfellows4 ,a musical composer's notes1 we know1 are not themselves till the fit executant comes1 who can put all they may be into them4 ,the somewhat unmeaningly handsome facial type of the ,uthwarts1 moulded to a mere animal or physical perfection through wholesome centuries1 is breathed on now1 informed1 by the touches1 traces1 complex influences from past and present a thousandfold1 crossing each other in this late century1 and yet at unity in the simple law of the system to which he is now subject4 ,coming thus upon an otherwise vigorous and healthy nature1 an untainted #bbb physique1 and limited by it1 those combining mental influences leave the firm unconscious simplicity of the boyish nature still unperplexed4 ,the sisters1 their friends1 when he comes rarely upon them in foreign places1 are proud of the schoolboy's company--to walk at his side2 the brothers1 when he sees them for a day1 more considerate than of old4 ,everywhere he leaves behind him an odd regret for his presence1 as he in turn wonders sometimes at the deference paid to one so unimportant as himself by those he meets by accident perhaps2 at the ease1 for example1 with which he attains to the social privileges denied to others4 ,they tell him1 he knows it already1 he would do for the army4 ,yes6 that would suit you1 people observe at once1 when he tells them what he is to be--undoubtedly suit him1 that dainty1 military1 very ,english kind of pride1 in seeming precisely what one is1 neither more nor less4 ,and the first mention of ,uthwart's purpose defines also the vague outlooks of ,james ,stokes1 who will be a soldier too4 ,uniforms1 their scarlet and white and blue1 spruce leather and steel1 and gold lace1 enlivening the old oak stalls at service time-- uniforms and surplices were always close together here1 where a military garrison had been established in the suburbs for centuries past1 and there were always sons of its officers in the school4 ,if you stole out of an evening1 it was like a stage scene-- #bbc nay6 like the ,middle ,age1 itself1 with this multitude of soldiers mingling in the crowd which filled the unchanged1 gabled streets4 ,a military tradition had been continuous1 from the days of crusading knights who lay humbly on their backs in the ,warriors' ,chapel to the time of the civil wars1 when a certain heroic youth of eighteen was brought to rest there1 onward to ,dutch and ,american wars1 and to ,harry1 and ,geoffrey1 and another ,james also1 in hac ecclesi pueri instituti4 ,it was not so long since one of them sat on those very benches in the sixth form2 had come back and entered the school1 in full uniform1 to say good-bye6 ,then the colours of his regiment had been brought1 to be deposited by ,dean and ,canons in the cathedral2 and a few weeks later they had passed1 scholars and the rest in long procession1 to deposit ,ensign--himself there under his flag1 or what remained of it1 a sorry1 tattered fringe1 along the staff he had borne out of the battle at the cost of his life1 as a little tablet explained4 ,there were others in similar terms4 ,alas6 for that extraordinary1 peculiarly-named1 ,destiny1 or ,doom1 appointed to walk side by side with one or another1 aware from the first1 but never warning him1 till the random or well-considered shot comes4 ,meantime however1 the ,university1 with work in preparation thereto1 fills up the thoughts1 the hours1 of these would-be soldiers1 of ,james #bbd ,stokes1 and therefore of ,emerald ,uthwart1 through the long summer-time1 till the ,green ,court is fragrant with lime-blossom1 and speech-day comes1 on which1 after their flower-service and sermon from an old comrade1 ,emerald surprises masters and companions by the fine quality of a recitation2 still more when ,scholar ,stokes and he are found bracketed together as ,victors of the school1 who will proceed together to ,oxford4 ,his speech in the ,chapter-house was from that place in ,homer1 where the soul of the lad ,elpenor1 killed by accident1 entreats ,ulysses for due burial rites4 ,fix my oar over my grave1 he says1 the oar ,i rowed with when ,i lived1 when ,i went with my companions4 ,and in effect what surprised1 charmed the hearers was the scruple with which those naturally graceful lips dealt with every word1 every syllable1 put upon them4 ,he seemed to be thinking only of his author1 except for just so much of self-consciousness as was involved in the fact that he seemed also to be speaking a little against his will2 like a monk1 it might be said1 who sings in choir with a really fine voice1 but at the bidding of his superior1 and counting the notes all the while till his task be done1 because his whole nature revolts from so much as the bare opportunity for personal display4 ,it was his duty to speak on the occasion4 ,they had always been great in speech-making1 in theatricals1 from before #bbe the days when the ,puritans destroyed the ,dean's ,great ,hall because the ,king's ,scholars had profaned it by acting plays there2 and that peculiar note or accent1 as being conspicuously free from the egotism which vulgarises most of us1 seemed to befit the person of ,emerald1 impressing weary listeners pleasantly as a novelty in that kind4 ,singular6--,the words1 because seemingly forced from him1 had been worth hearing4 ,the cheers1 the ,kentish ,fire1 of their companions might have broken down the crumbling black arches of the old cloister1 or roused the dead under foot1 as the ,victors came out of the ,chapter-house side by side2 side by side also out of that delightful period of their life at school1 to proceed in due course to the ,university4 ,they left it precipitately1 after brief residence there1 taking advantage of a sudden outbreak of war to join the army at once1 regretted--,james ,stokes for his high academic promise1 ,uthwart for a quality1 or group of qualities1 not strictly to be defined4 ,he seemed1 in short1 to harmonise by their combination in himself all the various qualities proper to a large and varied community of youths of nineteen or twenty1 to which1 when actually present there1 he was felt from hour to hour to be indispensable4 ,in fact school habits and standards had survived in a world not so different from that of school for those who are faithful to its type4 ,when he looked back upon #bbf it a little later1 college seemed to him1 seemed indeed at the time1 had he ventured to admit it1 a strange prolongation of boyhood1 in its provisional character1 the narrow limitation of its duties and responsibility1 the very divisions of one's day1 the routine of play and work1 its formal1 perhaps pedantic rules4 ,the veritable plunge from youth into manhood came when one passed finally through those old ,gothic gates1 from a somewhat dreamy or problematic preparation for it1 into the world of peremptory facts4 ,a college1 like a school1 is not made for one2 and as ,uthwart sat there1 still but a scholar1 still reading with care the books prescribed for him by others--,greek and ,latin books--the contrast between his own position and that of the majority of his coevals already at the business of life impressed itself sometimes with an odd sense of unreality in the place around him4 ,yet the schoolboy's sensitive awe for the great things of the intellectual world had but matured itself1 and was at its height here amid this larger competition1 which left him more than ever to find in doing his best submissively the sole reward of so doing4 ,he needs now in fact less repression than encouragement not to be a passman1 as he may if he likes1 acquiescing in a lowly measure of culture which certainly will not manufacture ,miltons1 nor turn serge into silk1 broom-blossom into verbenas1 but only1 perhaps not so faultily1 leave ,emerald ,uthwart and the like of him #bbg essentially what they are4 ,he holds his book in a peculiar way1 notes in manuscript one of his tutors2 holds on to it with both hands2 clings as if from below1 just as his tough little mind clings to the sense of the ,greek words he can ,english so closely1 precisely4 ,again1 as at school1 he had put his neck under the yoke2 though he has now also much reading quite at his own choice2 by preference1 when he can come by such1 about the place where he finds himself1 about the earlier youthful occupants1 if it might be1 of his own quaint rooms on the second floor just below the roof2 of what he can see from his windows in the old black front eastwards1 with its inestimable patina of ancient smoke and weather and natural decay 7when you look close the very stone is a composite of minute dead bodies7 relieving heads like his so effectively on summer mornings4 ,on summer nights the scent of the hay1 the wild- flowers1 comes across the narrow fringe of town to right and left2 seems to come from beyond the ,oxford meadows1 with sensitive1 half- repellent thoughts from the gardens at home4 ,he looks down upon the green square with the slim1 quaint1 black1 young figures that cross it on the way to chapel on yellow ,sunday mornings1 or upwards to the dome1 the spire2 can watch them closely in freakish moonlight1 or flickering softly by an occasional bonfire in the quadrangle behind him4 ,yet how hard1 how forbidding sometimes1 under #bbh a late stormy sky1 the scheme of black1 white1 and grey1 to which the group of ancient buildings could attune itself4 ,and what he reads most readily is of the military life that intruded itself so oddly1 during the ,civil ,war1 into these half-monastic places1 till the timid old academic world scarcely knew itself4 ,he treasures then every incident which connects a soldier's coat with any still recognisable object1 wall1 or tree1 or garden-walk2 that walk1 for instance1 under ,merton garden where young ,colonel ,windebank was shot for a traitor4 ,his body lies in ,saint ,mary ,magdalen's churchyard4 ,unassociated to such incident1 the mere beauties of the place counted at the moment for less than in retrospect4 ,it was almost retrospect even now1 with an anticipation of regret1 in rare moments of solitude perhaps1 when the oars splashed far up the narrow streamlets through the fields on ,may evenings among the fritillaries--does the reader know them8 that strange remnant just here of a richer extinct flora--dry flowers1 though with a drop of dubious honey in each4 ,snakes' heads1 the rude call them1 for their shape1 scale-marked too1 and in colour like rusted blood1 as if they grew from some forgotten battle-field1 the bodies1 the rotten armour--yet delicate1 beautiful1 waving proudly4 ,in truth the memory of ,oxford made almost everything he saw after it seem vulgar4 ,but he feels also nevertheless1 characteristically1 that such local pride 7fastus he terms it7 is proper #bbi only for those whose occupations are wholly congruous with it2 for the gifted1 the freemen who can enter into the genius1 who possess the liberty1 of the place2 that it has a reproach in it for the outsider1 which comes home to him4 ,here again then as he passes through the world1 so delightfully to others1 they tell him1 as if weighing him1 his very self1 against his merely scholastic capacity and effects1 that he would do for the army2 which he is now wholly glad to hear1 for from first to last1 through all his successes there1 the army had still been scholar ,stokes' choice1 and he had no difficulty1 as the reader sees1 in keeping ,uthwart also faithful to first intentions4 ,their names were already entered for commissions2 but the war breaking out afresh1 information reaches them suddenly one morning that they may join their regiment forthwith4 ,bidding good-bye therefore1 gladly1 hastily1 they set out with as little delay as possible for ,flanders2 and passing the old school by their nearest road thither1 stay for an hour1 find an excuse for coming into the hall in uniform1 with which it must be confessed they seem thoroughly satisfied--,uthwart quite perversely at ease in the stiff make of his scarlet jacket with black facings--and so pass onward on their way to ,dover1 ,dunkirk1 they scarcely know whither finally1 among the featureless villages1 the long monotonous lines of the windmills1 the poplars1 blurred with cold fogs1 but marking the #bcj roads through the snow which covers the endless plain1 till they come in sight at last of the army in motion1 like machines moving--how little it looked on that endless plain6--pass on their rapid way to fame1 to unpurchased promotion1 as a matter of course to responsibility also1 till1 their fortune turning upon them1 they miscarry in the latter fatally4 ,they joined in fact a distinguished regiment in a gallant army1 immediately after a victory in those ,flemish regions2 shared its encouragement as fully as if they had had a share in its perils2 the high character of the young officers consolidating itself easily1 pleasantly for them1 till the hour of an act of thoughtless bravery1 almost the sole irregular or undisciplined act of ,uthwart's life1 he still following his senior--criminal however to the military conscience1 under the actual circumstances1 and in an enemy's country4 ,the faulty thing was done1 certainly1 with a scrupulous1 a characteristic completeness on their part2 and with their prize actually in hand1 an old weather-beaten flag such as hung in the cathedral aisle at school1 they bethought them for the first time of its price1 with misgivings now in rapid growth1 as they return to their posts as nearly as may be1 for the division has been ordered forward in their brief absence1 to find themselves under arrest1 with that damning proof of heroism1 of guilt1 in their possession1 relinquished however along with the swords they will never handle #bca again--toys1 idolised toys of our later youth1 we weep at the thought of them as never to be handled again6--as they enter the prison to await summary trial next day on the charge of wantonly deserting their posts while in position of high trust in time of war4 ,the full details of what had happened could have been told only by one or other of themselves2 by ,uthwart best1 in the somewhat matter- of-fact and prosaic journal he had managed to keep from the first1 noting there the incidents of each successive day1 as if in anticipation of its possible service by way of pice justificative1 should such become necessary1 attesting hour by hour their single- hearted devotion to soldierly duty4 ,had a draughtsman equally truthful or equally realistic1 as we say1 accompanied them and made a like use of his pencil1 he might have been mistaken at home for an artist aiming at effect1 by skilful arrangements to tickle people's interest in the spectacle of war--the sudden ruin of a village street1 the heap of bleeding horses in the half-ploughed field1 the gaping bridges1 hand or face of the dead peeping from a hastily made grave at the roadside1 smoke-stained rents in cottage- walls1 ignoble ruin everywhere--ignoble but for its frank expression4 ,but you find in ,uthwart's journal1 side by side with those ugly patches1 very precise and unadorned records of their common gallantry1 the more effective indeed for their simplicity2 #bcb and not of gallantry only1 but of the long-sustained patience also1 the essential monotony of military life1 even on a campaign4 ,peril1 good-luck1 promotion1 the grotesque hardships which leave them smart as ever1 7as if1 so others observe1 dust and mire wouldn't hold on them1 so spick and span they were1 more especially on days of any exceptional risk or effort7 the great confidence reposed in them at last2 all is noted1 till1 with a little quiet pride1 he records a gun-shot wound which keeps him a month alone in hospital wearily2 and at last1 its hasty but seemingly complete healing4 ,following1 leading1 resting sometimes perforce1 amid gun-shots1 putrefying wounds1 green corpses1 they never lacked good spirits1 any more than the birds warbling perennially afresh1 as they will1 over such gangrened places1 or the grass which so soon covers them4 ,and at length fortune1 their misfortune1 perversely determined that heroism should take the form of patience under the walls of an unimportant frontier town1 with old ,vauban fortifications seemingly made only for appearance' sake1 like the work in the trenches-- gardener's work6 round about the walls they are called upon to superintend day after day4 ,it was like a calm at sea1 delaying one's passage1 one's purpose in being on board at all1 a dead calm1 yet with an awful feeling of tension1 intolerable at last for those who were still all athirst for action4 ,how dumb and #bcc stupid the place seemed1 in its useless defiance of conquerors1 anxious1 for reasons not indeed apparent1 but which they were undoubtedly within their rights in holding to1 not to blow it at once into the air--the steeple1 the perky weathercock--to ,james ,stokes in particular1 always eloquent in action1 longing for heroic effort1 and ready to pay its price1 maddened now by the palpable imposture in front of him morning after morning1 as he demonstrates conclusively to ,uthwart1 seduced at last from the clearer sense of duty and discipline1 not by the demonstrated ease1 but rather by the apparent difficulty of what ,stokes proposes to do4 ,they might have been deterred by recent example4 ,colonel --1 who1 as every one knew1 had actually gained a victory by disobeying orders1 had not been suffered to remain in the army of which he was an ornament4 ,it was easy in fact for both1 though it seemed the heroic thing1 to dash through the calm with delightful sense of active powers renewed2 to pass into the beleaguered town with a handful of men1 and no loss1 after a manner the feasibility of which ,stokes had explained acutely but in vain at headquarters4 ,he proved it to ,uthwart at all events1 and a few others4 ,delightful heroism6 delightful self-indulgence6 ,it was delayed for a moment by orders to move forward at last1 with hopes checked almost immediately after by a countermand1 bringing them right round their #bcd stupid dumb enemy to the same wearisome position once again1 to the trenches and the rest1 but with their thirst for action only stimulated the more4 ,how great the disappointment6 encouraging a certain laxity of discipline that had prevailed about them of late4 ,they take advantage however of a vague phrase in their instructions2 determine in haste to proceed on their plan as carefully1 as sparingly of the lives of others as may be2 detach a small company1 hazarding thereby an algebraically certain scheme at headquarters of victory or secure retreat1 which embraced the entire country in its calculations2 detach themselves2 finally pass into the place1 and out again with their prize1 themselves secure4 ,themselves only could have told the details--the intensely pleasant1 the glorious sense of movement renewed once more2 of defiance1 just for once1 of a seemingly stupid control2 their dismay at finding their company led forward by others1 their own posts deserted1 their handful of men--nowhere6 ,in an ordinary trial at law1 the motives1 every detail of so irregular an act might have been weighed1 changing the colour of it4 ,their general character would have told in their favour1 but actually told against them now2 they had but won an exceptional trust to betray it4 ,martial courts exist not for consideration1 but for vivid exemplary effect and prompt punishment4 ,there is a kind of tribunal incidental #bce to service in the field1 writes another diarist1 who may tell in his own words what remains to be told4 ,this court1 he says1 may consist of three staff-officers only1 but has the power of sentencing to death4 ,on the --st two young officers of the --th regiment1 in whom it appears unusual confidence had been placed1 were brought before this court1 on the charge of desertion and wantonly exposing their company to danger4 ,they were found guilty1 and the proper penalty death1 to be inflicted next morning before the regiment marches4 ,the delinquents were understood to have appealed to a general court-martial2 desperately at last1 to 'the judgment of their country'2 but were held to have no locus standi whatever for an appeal under the actual circumstances4 ,as a civilian ,i cannot but doubt the justice1 whatever may be thought of the expediency1 of such a summary process in regard to the capital penalty4 ,the regiment to which the culprits belonged1 with some others1 was quartered for the night in the faubourg of ,saint --1 recently under blockade by a portion of our forces4 ,i was awoke at daybreak by the sound of marching4 ,the morning was a particularly clear one1 though1 as the sun was not yet risen1 it looked grey and sad along the empty street1 up which a party of grey soldiers were passing with steady pace4 ,i knew for what purpose4 ,the whole of the force in garrison here #bcf had already marched to the place of execution1 the immense courtyard of a monastery1 surrounded irregularly by ancient buildings like those of some cathedral precincts ,i have seen in ,england4 ,here the soldiers then formed three sides of a great square1 a grave having been dug on the fourth side4 ,shortly afterwards the funeral procession came up4 ,first came the band of the --th1 playing the ,dead ,march2 next the firing party1 consisting of twelve non-commissioned officers2 then the coffins1 followed immediately by the unfortunate prisoners1 accompanied by a chaplain4 ,slowly and sadly did the mournful procession approach1 when it passed through three sides of the square1 the troops having been previously faced inwards1 and then halted opposite to the grave4 ,the proceedings of the court-martial were then read2 and the elder prisoner having been blindfolded was ordered to kneel down on his coffin1 which had been placed close to the grave1 the firing party taking up a position exactly opposite at a few yards' distance4 ,the poor fellow's face was deadly pale1 but he had marched his last march as steadily as ever ,i saw a man step1 and bore himself throughout most bravely1 though an oddly mixed expression passed over his countenance when he was directed to remove himself from the side of his companion1 shaking his hand first4 ,at this moment there was hardly a dry eye1 and several young soldiers fainted1 numberless as must be #bcg the scenes of horror which even they have witnessed during these last months4 ,at length the chaplain1 who had remained praying with the prisoner1 quietly withdrew1 and at a given signal1 but without word of command1 the muskets were levelled1 a volley was fired1 and the body of the unfortunate man sprang up1 falling again on his back4 ,one shot had purposely been reserved2 and as the presiding officer thought he was not quite dead a musket was placed close to his head and fired4 ,all was now over2 but the troops having been formed into columns were marched close by the body as it lay on the ground1 after which it was placed in one of the coffins and buried4 ,i had almost forgotten his companion1 the younger and more fortunate prisoner1 though ,i could scarcely tell1 as ,i looked at him1 whether his fate was really preferable in leaving his own rough coffin unoccupied behind him there4 ,lieutenant 7,i think ,edward7 ,uthwart1 as being the younger of the two offenders1 'by the mercy of the court' had his sentence commuted to dismissal from the army with disgrace4 ,a colour-sergeant then advanced with the former officer's sword1 a remarkably fine one1 which he thereupon snapped in sunder over the prisoner's head as he knelt4 ,after this the prisoner's regimental coat was handed forward and put upon him1 the epaulettes and buttons being then torn off and flung to a distance4 ,this part of #bch such sentences is almost invariably spared2 but1 ,i suppose through unavoidable haste1 was on the present occasion somewhat rudely carried out4 ,i shall never forget the expression of this man's countenance1 though ,i have seen many sad things in the course of my profession4 ,he had the sort of good looks which always rivet attention1 and in most minds friendly interest2 and now1 amid all his pain and bewilderment1 bore a look of humility and submission as he underwent those extraordinary details of his punishment1 which touched me very oddly with a sort of desire 7,i cannot otherwise express it7 to share his lot1 to be actually in his place for a moment4 ,yet1 alas6 --no6 say rather ,thank ,heaven6 the nearest approach to that look ,i have seen has been on the face of those whom ,i have known from circumstances to be almost incapable at the time of any feeling whatever4 ,i would have offered him pecuniary aid1 supposing he needed it1 but it was impossible4 ,i went on with the regiment1 leaving the poor wretch to shift for himself1 ,heaven knows how1 the state of the country being what it is4 ,he might join the enemy6 ,what money ,uthwart had about him had in fact passed that morning into the hands of his guards4 ,to tell what followed would be to accompany him on a roundabout and really aimless journey1 the details of which he could never afterwards recall4 ,see him lingering for morsels #bci of food at some shattered farmstead1 or assisted by others almost as wretched as himself1 sometimes without his asking4 ,in his worn military dress he seems a part of the ruin under which he creeps for a night's rest as darkness comes on4 ,he actually came round again to the scene of his disgrace1 of the execution2 looked in vain for the precise spot where he had knelt2 then1 almost envying him who lay there1 for the unmarked grave2 passed over it perhaps unrecognised for some change in that terrible place1 or rather in himself2 wept then as never before in his life2 dragged himself on once more1 till suddenly the whole country seems to move under the rumour1 the very thunder1 of the crowning victory1 as he is made to understand4 ,falling in with the tide of its heroes returning to ,english shores1 his vagrant footsteps are at last directed homewards4 ,he finds himself one afternoon at the gate1 turning out of the quiet ,sussex road1 through the fields for whose safety he had fought with so much of undeniable gallantry and approval4 ,on that ,july afternoon the gardens1 the woods1 mounted in flawless sweetness all round him as he stood1 to meet the circle of a flawless sky4 ,not a cloud2 not a motion on the grass6 ,at the first he had intended to return home no more2 and it had been a proof of his great dejection that he sent at last1 as best he could1 for money4 ,they knew his fate already #bdj by report1 and were touched naturally when that had followed on the record of his honours4 ,had it been possible they would have set forth at any risk to meet1 to seek him2 were waiting now for the weary one to come to the gate1 ready with their oil and wine1 to speak metaphorically1 and from this time forth underwent his charm to the utmost--the charm of an exquisite character1 felt in some way to be inseparable from his person1 his characteristic movements1 touched also now with seemingly irreparable sorrow4 ,for his part1 drinking in here the last sweets of the sensible world1 it was as if he1 the lover of roses1 had never before been aware of them at all4 ,the original softness of his temperament1 against which the sense of greater things thrust upon him had successfully reacted1 asserted itself again now as he lay at ease1 the ease well merited by his deeds1 his sorrows4 ,that he was going to die moved those about him to humour this mood1 to soften all things to his touch2 and looking back he might have pronounced those four last years of doom the happiest of his life4 ,the memory of the grave into which he had gazed so steadily on the execution morning1 into which1 as he feels1 one half of himself had then descended1 does not lessen his shrinking from the fate before him1 yet fortifies him to face it manfully1 gives a sort of fraternal familiarity to death2 in a few weeks' time this battle too is fought out2 it is as if the thing were ended4 #bda ,the delightful summer heat1 the freshness it enhances--he contrasts such things no longer with the sort of place to which he is hastening4 ,the possible duration of life for him was indeed uncertain1 the future to some degree indefinite2 but as regarded any fairly distant date1 anything like a term of years1 from the first there had been no doubt at all2 he would be no longer here4 ,meantime it was like a delightful few days' additional holiday from school1 with which perforce one must be content at last2 or as though he had not been pardoned on that terrible morning1 but only reprieved for two or three years4 ,yet how large a proportion they would have seemed in the whole sum of his years4 ,he would have liked to lie finally in the garden among departed pets1 dear dead dogs and horses2 faintly proposes it one day2 but after a while comprehends the churchyard1 with its white spots in the distant flowery view1 as filling harmoniously its own proper place there4 ,the weary soul seemed to be settling deeper into the body and the earth it came of1 into the condition of the flowers1 the grass1 proper creatures of the earth to which he is returning4 ,the saintly vicar visits him considerately2 is repelled with politeness2 goes on his way pondering inwardly what kind of place there might be1 in any possible scheme of another world1 for so absolutely unspiritual a subject4 ,in fact1 as the breath of the infinite world came about him1 he clung all #bdb the faster to the beloved finite things still in contact with him2 he had successfully hidden from his eyes all beside4 ,his reprieve however lasted long enough1 after all1 for a certain change of opinion of immense weight to him--a revision or reversal of judgment4 ,it came about in this way4 ,when peace was arranged1 with question of rewards1 pensions1 and the like1 certain battles or incidents therein were fought over again1 sometimes in the highest places of debate4 ,on such an occasion a certain speaker cites the case of ,lieutenant ,james ,stokes and another1 as being pessimi exempli3 whereupon a second speaker gets up1 prepared with full detail1 insists1 brings that incidental matter to the front for an hour1 tells his unfortunate friend's story so effectively1 pathetically1 that1 as happens with our countrymen1 they repent4 ,the matter gets into the newspapers1 and1 coming thus into sympathetic public view1 something like glory wins from ,emerald ,uthwart his last touch of animation4 ,just not too late he received the offer of a commission2 kept the letter there open within sight4 ,aldy1 who never shed tears and was incapable of pain1 in his great physical weakness1 wept--shall we say for the second time in his life8 ,a less excitement would have been more favorable to any chance there might be of the patient's surviving4 ,in fact the old gun-shot wound1 wrongly thought to be cured1 which had caused #bdc the one illness of his life1 is now drawing out what remains of it1 as he feels with a kind of odd satisfaction and pride--his old glorious wound6 ,and then1 as of old1 an absolute submissiveness comes over him1 as he gazes round at the place1 the relics of his uniform1 the letter lying there4 ,it was as if there was nothing more that could be said4 ,accounts thus settled1 he stretched himself in the bed he had occupied as a boy1 more completely at his ease than since the day when he had left home for the first time4 ,respited from death once1 he was twice believed to be dead before the date actually registered on his tomb4 ,what will it matter a hundred years hence8 they used to ask by way of simple comfort in boyish troubles at school1 overwhelming at the moment4 ,was that in truth part of a certain revelation of the inmost truth of things to babes1 such as we have heard of8 ,what did it matter--the gifts1 the good-fortune1 its terrible withdrawal1 the long agony8 ,emerald ,uthwart would have been all but a centenarian to-day4 ,postscript1 from the ,diary of a ,surgeon1 ,august --th1 #ah--4 ,i was summoned by letter into the country to perform an operation on the dead body of a young man1 formerly an officer in the army4 ,the cause of death is held to have been some #bdd kind of distress of mind1 concurrent with the effects of an old gun-shot wound1 the ball still remaining somewhere in the body4 ,my instructions were to remove this1 at the express desire1 as ,i understood1 of the deceased1 rather than to ascertain the precise cause of death4 ,this however became apparent in the course of my search for the ball1 which had enveloped itself in the muscular substance in the region of the heart1 and was removed with difficulty4 ,i have known cases of this kind1 where anxiety has caused incurable cardiac derangement 7the deceased seems to have been actually sentenced to death for some military offence when on service in ,flanders71 and such mental strain would of course have been aggravated by the presence of a foreign object in that place4 ,on arriving at my destination1 a small village in a remote part of ,sussex1 ,i proceeded through the little orderly churchyard1 where however the monthly roses were blooming all their own way among the formal white marble monuments of the wealthier people of the neighbourhood4 ,at one of these the masons were at work1 picking and chipping in the otherwise absolute stillness of the summer afternoon4 ,they were in fact opening the family burial-place of the people who summoned me hither2 and the workmen pointed out their abode1 conspicuous on the slope beyond1 towards which ,i bent my steps accordingly4 ,i was conducted to a large upper #bde room or attic1 set freely open to sun and air1 and found the body lying in a coffin1 almost hidden under very rich-scented cut flowers1 after a manner ,i have never seen in this country1 except in the case of one or two ,catholics laid out for burial4 ,the mother of the deceased was present1 and actually assisted my operations1 amid such tokens of distress1 though perfectly self-controlled1 as ,i fervently hope ,i may never witness again4 ,deceased was in his twenty-seventh year1 but looked many years younger2 had indeed scarcely yet reached the full condition of manhood4 ,the extreme purity of the outlines1 both of the face and limbs1 was such as is usually found only in quite early youth2 the brow especially1 under an abundance of fair hair1 finely formed1 not high1 but arched and full1 as is said to be the way with those who have the imaginative temper in excess4 ,sad to think that had he lived reason must have deserted that so worthy abode of it6 ,i was struck by the great beauty of the organic developments1 in the strictly anatomic sense2 those of the throat and diaphragm in particular might have been modelled for a teacher of normal physiology1 or a professor of design4 ,the flesh was still almost as firm as that of a living person2 as happens when1 as in this case1 death comes to all intents and purposes as gradually as in old age4 ,this expression of health and life1 under my seemingly merciless doings1 together with the mother's distress1 touched me to a degree very #bdf unusual1 ,i conceive1 in persons of my years and profession4 ,though ,i believed myself to be acting by his express wish1 ,i felt like a criminal4 ,the ball1 a small one1 much corroded with blood1 was at length removed2 and ,i was then directed to wrap it in a partly-printed letter1 or other document1 and place it in the breast-pocket of a faded and much-worn scarlet soldier's coat1 put over the shirt which enveloped the body4 ,the flowers were then hastily replaced1 the hands and the peak of the handsome nose remaining visible among them2 the wind ruffled the fair hair a little2 the lips were still red4 ,i shall not forget it4 ,the lid was then placed on the coffin and screwed down in my presence4 ,there was no plate or other inscription upon it4 ,,notes #aig4 99,published in the ,new ,review1 ,june and ,july #ahib1 and now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors4 #baj4 ,transliteration3 asksis4 ,liddel and ,scott definition3 exercise1 training4 #bac4 ,transliteration3 ,moirai4 ,liddel and ,scott definition3 singular one's portion in life1 lot1 destiny4 #bac4 ,transliteration3 ,kr4 ,brief ,liddel and ,scott definition3 doom1 death1 destruction4 #bad4 ,translation3 in this church established for boys4 #bai4 ,transliteration3 h pterou dynamis4 ,,diaphaneit #bdg ,,there are some unworldly types of character which the world is able to estimate4 ,it recognises certain moral types1 or categories1 and regards whatever falls within them as having a right to exist4 ,the saint1 the artist1 even the speculative thinker1 out of the world's order as they are1 yet work1 so far as they work at all1 in and by means of the main current of the world's energy4 ,often it gives them late1 or scanty1 or mistaken acknowledgment2 still it has room for them in its scheme of life1 a place made ready for them in its affections4 ,it is also patient of doctrinaires of every degree of littleness4 ,as if dimly conscious of some great sickness and weariness of heart in itself1 it turns readily to those who theorise about its unsoundness4 ,to constitute one of these categories1 or types1 a breadth and generality of character is required4 ,there is another type of character1 which is not broad and general1 rare1 precious above all to the artist1 a character which seems to have been the supreme moral charm in the ,beatrice of the #bdh ,commedia4 ,it does not take the eye by breadth of colour2 rather it is that fine edge of light1 where the elements of our moral nature refine themselves to the burning point4 ,it crosses rather than follows the main current of the world's life4 ,the world has no sense fine enough for those evanescent shades1 which fill up the blanks between contrasted types of character--delicate provision in the organisation of the moral world for the transmission to every part of it of the life quickened at single points6 ,for this nature there is no place ready in its affections4 ,this colourless1 unclassified purity of life it can neither use for its service1 nor contemplate as an ideal4 ,sibi unitus et simplificatus esse1 that is the long struggle of the ,imitatio ,christi4 ,the spirit which it forms is the very opposite of that which regards life as a game of skill1 and values things and persons as marks or counters of something to be gained1 or achieved1 beyond them4 ,it seeks to value everything at its eternal worth1 not adding to it1 or taking from it1 the amount of influence it may have for or against its own special scheme of life4 ,it is the spirit that sees external circumstances as they are1 its own power and tendencies as they are1 and realises the given conditions of its life1 not disquieted by the desire for change1 or the preference of one part in life rather than another1 or passion1 or opinion4 ,the character we mean to indicate achieves this #bdi perfect life by a happy gift of nature1 without any struggle at all4 ,not the saint only1 the artist also1 and the speculative thinker1 confused1 jarred1 disintegrated in the world1 as sometimes they inevitably are1 aspire for this simplicity to the last4 ,the struggle of this aspiration with a lower practical aim in the mind of ,savonarola has been subtly traced by the author of ,romola4 ,as language1 expression1 is the function of intellect1 as art1 the supreme expression1 is the highest product of intellect1 so this desire for simplicity is a kind of indirect self- assertion of the intellectual part of such natures4 ,simplicity in purpose and act is a kind of determinate expression in dexterous outline of one's personality4 ,it is a kind of moral expressiveness2 there is an intellectual triumph implied in it4 ,such a simplicity is characteristic of the repose of perfect intellectual culture4 ,the artist and he who has treated life in the spirit of art desires only to be shown to the world as he really is2 as he comes nearer and nearer to perfection1 the veil of an outer life not simply expressive of the inward becomes thinner and thinner4 ,this intellectual throne is rarely won4 ,like the religious life1 it is a paradox in the world1 denying the first conditions of man's ordinary existence1 cutting obliquely the spontaneous order of things4 ,but the character we have before us is a kind of prophecy of this repose and simplicity1 coming as it were in the order of grace1 not of nature1 by #bej some happy gift1 or accident of birth or constitution1 showing that it is indeed within the limits of man's destiny4 ,like all the higher forms of inward life this character is a subtle blending and interpenetration of intellectual1 moral and spiritual elements4 ,but it is as a phase of intellect1 of culture1 that it is most striking and forcible4 ,it is a mind of taste lighted up by some spiritual ray within4 ,what is meant by taste is an imperfect intellectual state2 it is but a sterile kind of culture4 ,it is the mental attitude1 the intellectual manner of perfect culture1 assumed by a happy instinct4 ,its beautiful way of handling everything that appeals to the senses and the intellect is really directed by the laws of the higher intellectual life1 but while culture is able to trace those laws1 mere taste is unaware of them4 ,in the character before us1 taste1 without ceasing to be instructive1 is far more than a mental attitude or manner4 ,a magnificent intellectual force is latent within it4 ,it is like the reminiscence of a forgotten culture that once adorned the mind2 as if the mind of one philosophsas pote met' ertos1 fallen into a new cycle1 were beginning its spiritual progress over again1 but with a certain power of anticipating its stages4 ,it has the freshness without the shallowness of taste1 the range and seriousness of culture without its strain and over- consciousness4 ,such a habit may be described as wistfulness of mind1 the feeling that there is so much to #bea know1 rather as a longing after what is unattainable1 than as a hope to apprehend4 ,its ethical result is an intellectual guilelessness1 or integrity1 that instinctively prefers what is direct and clear1 lest one's own confusion and intransparency should hinder the transmission from without of light that is not yet inward4 ,he who is ever looking for the breaking of a light he knows not whence about him1 notes with a strange heedfulness the faintest paleness in the sky4 ,that truthfulness of temper1 that receptivity1 which professors often strive in vain to form1 is engendered here less by wisdom than by innocence4 ,such a character is like a relic from the classical age1 laid open by accident to our alien modern atmosphere4 ,it has something of the clear ring1 the eternal outline of the antique4 ,perhaps it is nearly always found with a corresponding outward semblance4 ,the veil or mask of such a nature would be the very opposite of the dim blackguardism of ,danton1 the type ,carlyle has made too popular for the true interest of art4 ,it is just this sort of entire transparency of nature that lets through unconsciously all that is really lifegiving in the established order of things2 it detects without difficulty all sorts of affinities between its own elements1 and the nobler elements in that order4 ,but then its wistfulness and a confidence in perfection it has makes it love the lords of change4 ,what makes revolutionists is either self-pity1 or indignation #beb for the sake of others1 or a sympathetic perception of the dominant undercurrent of progress in things4 ,the nature before us is revolutionist from the direct sense of personal worth1 that chlid1 that pride of life1 which to the ,greek was a heavenly grace4 ,how can he value what comes of accident1 or usage1 or convention1 whose individual life nature itself has isolated and perfected8 ,revolution is often impious4 ,they who prosecute revolution have to violate again and again the instinct of reverence4 ,that is inevitable1 since after all progress is a kind of violence4 ,but in this nature revolutionism is softened1 harmonised1 subdued as by distance4 ,it is the revolutionism of one who has slept a hundred years4 ,most of us are neutralised by the play of circumstances4 ,to most of us only one chance is given in the life of the spirit and the intellect1 and circumstances prevent our dexterously seizing that one chance4 ,the one happy spot in our nature has no room to burst into life4 ,our collective life1 pressing equally on every part of every one of us1 reduces nearly all of us to the level of a colourless uninteresting existence4 ,others are neutralised1 not by suppression of gifts1 but by just equipoise among them4 ,in these no single gift1 or virtue1 or idea1 has an unmusical predominance4 ,the world easily confounds these two conditions4 ,it sees in the character before us only indifferentism4 ,doubtless the chief vein of the life of humanity #bec could hardly pass through it4 ,not by it could the progress of the world be achieved4 ,it is not the guise of ,luther or ,spinoza2 rather it is that of ,raphael1 who in the midst of the ,reformation and the ,renaissance1 himself lighted up by them1 yielded himself to neither1 but stood still to live upon himself1 even in outward form a youth1 almost an infant1 yet surprising all the world4 ,the beauty of the ,greek statues was a sexless beauty2 the statues of the gods had the least traces of sex4 ,here there is a moral sexlessness1 a kind of impotence1 an ineffectual wholeness of nature1 yet with a divine beauty and significance of its own4 ,over and over again the world has been surprised by the heroism1 the insight1 the passion1 of this clear crystal nature4 ,poetry and poetical history have dreamed of a crisis1 where it must needs be that some human victim be sent down into the grave4 ,these are they whom in its profound emotion humanity might choose to send4 ,what1 says ,carlyle1 of ,charlotte ,corday1 ,what if she had emerged from her secluded stillness1 suddenly like a star2 cruel-lovely1 with half- angelic1 half-daemonic splendour2 to gleam for a moment1 and in a moment be extinguished2 to be held in memory1 so bright complete was she1 through long centuries6 ,often the presence of this nature is felt like a sweet aroma in early manhood4 ,afterwards1 as the adulterated atmosphere of the world assimilates #bed us to itself1 the savour of it faints away4 ,perhaps there are flushes of it in all of us2 recurring moments of it in every period of life4 ,certainly this is so with every man of genius4 ,it is a thread of pure white light that one might disentwine from the tumultuary richness of ,goethe's nature4 ,it is a natural prophecy of what the next generation will appear1 renerved1 modified by the ideas of this4 ,there is a violence1 an impossibility about men who have ideas1 which makes one suspect that they could never be the type of any widespread life4 ,society could not be conformed to their image but by an unlovely straining from its true order4 ,well1 in this nature the idea appears softened1 harmonised as by distance1 with an engaging naturalness1 without the noise of axe or hammer4 ,people have often tried to find a type of life that might serve as a basement type4 ,the philosopher1 the saint1 the artist1 neither of them can be this type2 the order of nature itself makes them exceptional4 ,it cannot be the pedant1 or the conservative1 or anything rash and irreverent4 ,also the type must be one discontented with society as it is4 ,the nature here indicated alone is worthy to be this type4 ,a majority of such would be the regeneration of the world4 ,july1 #ahfd4 ,,notes #bej4 ,transliteration3 philosophsas pote met' ertos4 #beb4 ,transliteration3 chlid4 ,,the ,,end