Chapter 21

estimate of precipice outline, and to make him dwell, not on the immediately pathetic or impressive aspect of cliffs, which all men feel readily enough, but on their internal structure. For he may rest assured that, as the Matterhorn is built of mica flakes, so every great pictorial impression in scenery of this kind is to be reached by little and little; the cliff must be built in the picture as it was probably in reality--inch by inch; and the work will, in the end, have most power which was begun with most patience. No man is fit to paint Swiss scenery until he can place himself front to front with one of those mighty crags, in broad daylight, with no "effect" to aid him, and work it out, boss by boss, only with such conventionality as its infinitude renders unavoidable. We have seen that a literal facsimile is impossible, just as a literal facsimile of the carving of an entire cathedral front is impossible. But it is as vain to endeavor to give any conception of an Alpine cliff without minuteness of detail, and by mere breadth of effect, as it would be to give a conception of the façades of Rouen or Rheims, without indicating any statues or foliation. When the statues and foliation are once got, as much blue mist and thundercloud as you choose, but not before.

§ 43. I commend, therefore, in conclusion, the precipice to the artist's _patience_; to which there is this farther and final encouragement, that, though one of the most difficult of subjects, it is one of the kindest of sitters. A group of trees changes the color of its leafage from week to week, and its position from day to day; it is sometimes languid with heat, and sometimes heavy with rain; the torrent swells or falls in shower or sun; the best leaves of the foreground may be dined upon by cattle, or trampled by unwelcome investigators of the chosen scene. But the cliff can neither be eaten nor trampled down; neither bowed by the shower nor withered by the heat: it is always ready for us when we are inclined to labor; will always wait for us when we would rest; and, what is best of all, will always talk to us when we are inclined to converse. With its own patient and victorious presence, cleaving daily through cloud after cloud, and reappearing still through the tempest drift, lofty and serene amidst the passing rents of blue, it seems partly to rebuke, and partly to guard, and partly to calm and chasten, the agitations of the feeble human soul that watches it; and that must be indeed a dark perplexity, or a grievous pain, which will not be in some degree enlightened or relieved by the vision of it, when the evening shadows are blue on its foundation, and the last rays of the sunset resting in the fair height of its golden Fortitude.

FOOTNOTES

[80] Distinguished from a _crest_ by being the _face_ of a large contiguous bed of rock, not the end of a ridge.

[81] The contour of the whole cliff, seen from near its foot as it rises above the shoulder of the Breven, is as at Fig. 76 opposite. The part measured is _a d_; but the precipice recedes to the summit _b_, on which a human figure is discernible to the naked eye merely as a point. The bank from which the cliff rises, _c_, _recedes_ as it falls to the left; so that five hundred feet may perhaps be an under-estimate of the height below the summit. The straight sloping lines are cleavages, across the beds. Finally, Fig. 4, Plate 25, gives the look of the whole summit as seen from the village of Chamouni beneath it, at a distance of about two miles, and some four or five thousand feet above the spectator. It appears, then, like a not very formidable projection of crag overhanging the great slopes of the mountain's foundation.

[82] At an angle of 79° with the horizon. See the Table of angles, p. 181. The line _a e_ in Fig. 33, is too steep, as well as in the plate here; but the other slopes are approximately accurate. I would have made them quite so, but did not like to alter the sketch made on the spot.

[83] Professor Forbes gives the bearing of the Cervin from the top of the Riffelhorn as 351°, or N. 9° W., supposing local attraction to have caused an error of 65° to the northward, which would make the true bearing N. 74° W. From the point just under the Riffelhorn summit, _e_, in Fig. 78, at which my drawing was made, I found the Cervin bear N. 79° W. without any allowance for attraction; the disturbing influence would seem therefore confined, or nearly so, to the summit _a_. I did not know at the time that there was any such influence traceable, and took no bearing from the summit. For the rest, I cannot vouch for bearings as I can for angles, as their accuracy was of no importance to my work, and I merely noted them with a common pocket compass and in the sailor's way (S. by W. and ½ W. & C.), which involves the probability of error of from two to three degrees on either side of the true bearing. The other drawing in Plate +38+ was made from a point only a degree or two to the westward of the village of Zermatt. I have no note of the bearing; but it must be about S. 60° or 65° W.

[84] Independent travellers may perhaps be glad to know the way to the top of the Riffelhorn. I believe there is only one path; which ascends (from the ridge of the Riffel) on its eastern slope, until, near the summit, the low but perfectly smooth cliff, extending from side to side of the ridge, seems, as on the western slope, to bar all farther advance. This cliff may, however, by a good climber, be mastered even at the southern extremity; but it is dangerous there: at the opposite or northern side of it, just at its base, is a little cornice, about a foot broad, which does not look promising at first, but widens presently; and when once it is past, there is no more difficulty in reaching the summit.

[85] I ought before to have mentioned Madame de Genlis as one of the few writers whose influence was always exerted to restore to truthful feelings, and persuade to simple enjoyments and pursuits, the persons accessible to reason in the frivolous world of her times.

[86] Veillées du Château, vol. ii.

[87] The actual extent of the projection remaining the same throughout, the angle of suspended slope, for that reason, diminishes as the cliff increases in height.