Chapter 8

loosens the moral no less than the intellectual fibre, and which is as fatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of reasoning power, would make a different choice."

You see also, by this interesting and most memorable passage, how completely the question is admitted to be one of ethics--the only real point at issue being, whether this face or that is developed on the truer moral principle.

140. I assume, however, for the present, that this Apolline type is the kind of form you wish to reach and to represent. And now observe, instantly, the whole question of manner of imitation is altered for us. The fins of the fish, the plumes of the swan, and the flowing of the Sun-God's hair are all represented by incisions--but the incisions do sufficiently represent the fin and feather,--they _in_sufficiently represent the hair. If I chose, with a little more care and labor, I could absolutely get the surface of the scales and spines of the fish, and the expression of its mouth; but no quantity of labor would obtain the real surface of a tress of Apollo's hair, and the full expression of his mouth. So that we are compelled at once to call the imagination to help us, and say to it, _You_ know what the Apollo Chrysocomes must be like; finish all this for yourself. Now, the law under which imagination works, is just that of other good workers. "You must give me clear orders; show me what I have to do, and where I am to begin, and let me alone." And the orders can be given, quite clearly, up to a certain point, in form; but they cannot be given clearly in color, now that the subject is subtle. All beauty of this high kind depends on harmony; let but the slightest discord come into it, and the finer the thing is, the more fatal will be the flaw. Now, on a flat surface, I can command my color to be precisely what and where I mean it to be; on a round one I cannot. For all harmony depends, first, on the fixed proportion of the color of the light to that of the relative shadow; and therefore if I fasten my color, I must fasten my shade. But on a round surface the shadow changes at every hour of the day; and therefore all coloring which is expressive of form, is impossible; and if the form is fine, (and here there is nothing but what is fine,) you may bid farewell to color.

141. Farewell to color; that is to say, if the thing is to be seen distinctly, and you have only wise people to show it to; but if it is to be seen indistinctly, at a distance, color may become explanatory; and if you have simple people to show it to, color may be necessary to excite _their_ imaginations, though not to excite yours. And the art is great always by meeting its conditions in the straightest way; and if it is to please a multitude of innocent and bluntly-minded persons, must express itself in the terms that will touch them; else it is not good. And I have to trace for you through the history of the past, and possibilities of the future, the expedients used by great sculptors to obtain clearness, impressiveness, or splendor; and the manner of their appeal to the people, under various light and shadow, and with reference to different degrees of public intelligence: such investigation resolving itself again and again, as we proceed, into questions absolutely ethical; as, for instance, whether color is to be bright or dull,--that is to say, for a populace cheerful or heartless;--whether it is to be delicate or strong,--that is to say, for a populace attentive or careless; whether it is to be a background like the sky, for a procession of young men and maidens, because your populace revere life--or the shadow of the vault behind a corpse stained with drops of blackened blood, for a populace taught to worship Death. Every critical determination of rightness depends on the obedience to some ethic law, by the most rational and, therefore, simplest means. And you see how it depends most, of all things, on whether you are working for chosen persons, or for the mob; for the joy of the boudoir, or of the Borgo. And if for the mob, whether the mob of Olympia, or of St. Antoine. Phidias, showing his Jupiter for the first time, hides behind the temple door to listen, resolved afterwards "[Greek: rhythmizein to agalma pros to tois pleistois dokoun, ou gar hegeito mikran einai symboulen demou tosoutou]," and truly, as your people is, in judgment, and in multitude, so must your sculpture be, in glory. An elementary principle which has been too long out of mind.

142. I leave you to consider it, since, for some time, we shall not again be able to take up the inquiries to which it leads. But, ultimately, I do not doubt that you will rest satisfied in these following conclusions:

1. Not only sculpture, but all the other fine arts, must be for the people.

2. They must be didactic to the people, and that as their chief end. The structural arts, didactic in their manner; the graphic arts, in their matter also.

3. And chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts--that is to say, the drama and sculpture--are to teach what is noble in past history, and lovely in existing human and organic life.

4. And the test of right manner of execution in these arts, is that they strike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of popular minds to which they are addressed.

5. And the test of utmost fineness in execution in these arts, is that they make themselves be forgotten in what they represent; and so fulfil the words of their greatest Master,

"THE BEST, IN THIS KIND, ARE BUT SHADOWS."

FOOTNOTES:

[123] See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girl of eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire.

[124] In Durer's "Melencholia."

[125] Turner's, in the Hakewill series.

LECTURE V.

STRUCTURE.

_December, 1870._

143. On previous occasions of addressing you, I have endeavoured to show you, first, how sculpture is distinguished from other arts; then its proper subjects, then its proper method in the realization of these subjects. To-day, we must, in the fourth place, consider the means at its command for the accomplishment of these ends; the nature of its materials; and the mechanical or other difficulties of their treatment.

And however doubtful we may have remained, as to the justice of Greek ideals, or propriety of Greek methods of representing them, we may be certain that the example of the Greeks will be instructive in all practical matters relating to this great art, peculiarly their own. I think even the evidence I have already laid before you is enough to convince you, that it was by rightness and reality, not by idealism or delightfulness only, that their minds were finally guided; and I am sure that, before closing the present course, I shall be able so far to complete that evidence, as to prove to you that the commonly received notions of classic art are, not only unfounded, but even in many respects, directly contrary to the truth. You are constantly told that Greece idealized whatever she contemplated. She did the exact contrary: she realized and verified it. You are constantly told she sought only the beautiful. She sought, indeed, with all her heart; but she found, because she never doubted that the search was to be consistent with propriety and common sense. And the first thing you will always discern in Greek work is the first which you _ought_ to discern in all work; namely, that the object of it has been rational, and has been obtained by simple and unostentatious means.

144. "That the object of the work has been rational!" Consider how much that implies. That it should be by all means seen to have been determined upon, and carried through, with sense and discretion; these being gifts of intellect far more precious than any knowledge of mathematics, or of the mechanical resources of art. Therefore, also, that it should be a modest and temperate work, a structure fitted to the actual state of men; proportioned to their actual size, as animals,--to their average strength,--to their true necessities,--and to the degree of easy command they have over the forces and substances of nature.

145. You see how much this law excludes! All that is fondly magnificent, insolently ambitious, or vainly difficult. There is, indeed, such a thing as Magnanimity in design, but never unless it be joined also with modesty and _Equ_animity. Nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, or singular, can be structurally beautiful. No towers of Babel envious of the skies; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth; no streets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that make pigmies of the worshippers.

It is one of the primal merits and decencies of Greek work that it was, on the whole, singularly small in scale, and wholly within reach of sight, to its finest details. And, indeed, the best buildings that I know are thus modest; and some of the best are minute jewel cases for sweet sculpture. The Parthenon would hardly attract notice, if it were set by the Charing Cross Railway Station: the Church of the Miracoli, at Venice, the Chapel of the Rose, at Lucca, and the Chapel of the Thorn, at Pisa, would not, I suppose, all three together, fill the tenth part, cube, of a transept of the Crystal Palace. And they are better so.

146. In the chapter on Power in the "Seven Lamps of Architecture," I have stated what seems, at first, the reverse of what I am saying now; namely, that it is better to have one grand building than any number of mean ones. And that is true, but you cannot command grandeur by size till you can command grace in minuteness; and least of all, remember, will you so command it to-day, when magnitude has become the chief exponent of folly and misery, co-ordinate in the fraternal enormities of the Factory and Poorhouse,--the Barracks and Hospital. And the final law in this matter is, that if you require edifices only for the grace and health of mankind, and build them without pretence and without chicanery, they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely with little decoration.

147. From these principles of simplicity and temperance, two very severely fixed laws of construction follow; namely, first, that our structure, to be beautiful, must be produced with tools of men; and secondly, that it must be composed of natural substances. First, I say, produced with tools of men. All fine art requires the application of the whole strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is not possible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of a strong man's arm from the shoulder, as well as the delicatest touch of his finger: and it is the evidence that this full and fine strength has been spent on it which makes the art executively noble; so that no instrument must be used, habitually, which is either too heavy to be delicately restrained, or too small and weak to transmit a vigorous impulse; much less any mechanical aid, such as would render the sensibility of the fingers ineffectual.[126]

148. Of course, any kind of work in glass, or in metal, on a large scale, involves some painful endurance of heat; and working in clay, some habitual endurance of cold; but the point beyond which the effort must not be carried is marked by loss of power of manipulation. As long as the eyes and fingers have complete command of the material (as a glass blower has, for instance, in doing fine ornamental work)--the law is not violated; but all our great engine and furnace work, in gun-making and the like, is degrading to the intellect; and no nation can long persist in it without losing many of its human faculties. Nay, even the use of machinery, other than the common rope and pully, for the lifting of weights, is degrading to architecture; the invention of expedients for the raising of enormous stones has always been a characteristic of partly savage or corrupted races. A block of marble not larger than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and a cross-beam, with a couple of pulleys, raise, is as large as should generally be used in any building. The employment of large masses is sure to lead to vulgar exhibitions of geometrical arrangement,[127] and to draw away the attention from the sculpture. In general, rocks naturally break into such pieces as the human beings that have to build with them can easily lift, and no larger should be sought for.

149. In this respect, and in many other subtle ways, the law that the work is to be with tools of men is connected with the farther condition of its modesty, that it is to be wrought in substance provided by Nature, and to have a faithful respect to all the essential qualities of such substance.

And here I must ask your attention to the idea, and, more than idea,--the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term, "Providentia," when applied to the Divine Power. In its truest sense and scholarly use, it is a human virtue, [Greek: Prometheia]; the personal type of it is in Prometheus, and all the first power of [Greek: techne], is from him, as compared to the weakness of days when men without foresight "[Greek: ephyron eike panta]." But, so far as we use the word "Providence" as an attribute of the Maker and Giver of all things, it does not mean that in a shipwreck He takes care of the passengers who are to be saved and takes none of those who are to be drowned; but it _does_ mean that every race of creatures is born into the world under circumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities; and, beyond all others, the ingenious and observant race of man is surrounded with elements naturally good for his food, pleasant to his sight, and suitable for the subjects of his ingenuity;--the stone, metal, and clay of the earth he walks upon lending themselves at once to his hand, for all manner of workmanship.

150. Thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire creation is shown by his making the most of what he can get most easily; and there is no virtue of art, nor application of common sense, more sacredly necessary than this respect to the beauty of natural substance, and the ease of local use; neither are there any other precepts of construction so vital as these--that you show all the strength of your material, tempt none of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply and permanently done.

151. Thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, or burnt clay, but with no artificial compound; all good painting, with common oils and pigments on common canvas, paper, plaster, or wood,--admitting, sometimes for precious work, precious things, but all applied in a simple and visible way. The highest imitative art should not, indeed, at first sight, call attention to the means of it; but even that, at length, should do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take pleasure in seeing how completely the workman is master of the particular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting its unctious quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rugged walls. In a marble country one should be always more and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of marble; in a slate country one should feel as if every rock cleft itself only for the sake of being built with conveniently.

152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials--Clay, and Stone; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and brittle as it cools, and metal a clay that gets opaque and tough as it cools. Indeed, the true use of gold in this world is only as a very pretty and very ductile clay, which you can spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you like, and which will neither crack, nor tarnish.

All the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under the word "Plastic," and all of those in stone, under the word "Glyptic."

153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast brick-work, pottery, and tile-work[128]--a somewhat important branch of human skill. Next to the potter's work, you have all the arts in porcelain, glass, enamel, and metal; everything, that is to say, playful and familiar in design, much of what is most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or gold, most precious and permanent.

154. Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while we accurately use the general term "glyptic" for it, may be thought of with, perhaps, the most clear force under the English word "engraving." For, from the mere angular incision which the Greek consecrated in the triglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts of bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected with each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, the arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves.

155. Over all this vast field of human skill the laws which I have enunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embracing the greatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion; strong to repress the ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, but gentle to approve the efforts of children, made in accordance with the visible intention of the Maker of all flesh, and the Giver of all Intelligence. These laws, therefore, I now repeat, and beg of you to observe them as irrefragable.

1. That the work is to be with tools of men.

2. That it is to be in natural materials.

3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at no quality inconsistent with them.

4. That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony with common needs, and in consent to common intelligence.

We will now observe the bearing of these laws on the elementary conditions of the art at present under discussion.

156. There is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts as it dries, and is very easily frangible. Then you must put no work into it requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elaborate that it would be a great loss if it were broken, but as the clay yields at once to the hand, and the sculptor can do anything with it he likes, it is a material for him to sketch with and play with,--to record his fancies in, before they escape him--and to express roughly, for people who can enjoy such sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. The clay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line; being easily frangible, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, so that a blunt and massive rendering of graceful gesture will be its natural function; but as it can be pinched, or pulled, or thrust in a moment into projection which it would take hours of chiselling to get in stone, it will also properly be used for all fantastic and grotesque form, not involving sharp edges. Therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal, for painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors; they are all most precious materials for true masters, but tempt the false ones into fatal license; and to judge rightly of terra-cotta work is a far higher reach of skill in sculpture-criticism than to distinguish the merits of a finished statue.

157. We have, secondly, work in bronze, iron, gold, and other metals; in which the laws of structure are still more definite.

All kinds of twisted and wreathen work on every scale become delightful when wrought in ductile or tenacious metal, but metal which is to be _hammered_ into form separates itself into two great divisions--solid, and flat.

(A.) In solid metal work, _i. e._, metal cast thick enough to resist bending, whether it be hollow or not, violent and various projection may be admitted, which would be offensive in marble; but no sharp edges, because it is difficult to produce them with the hammer. But since the permanence of the material justifies exquisiteness of workmanship, whatever delicate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces may be advisedly introduced; and since the colour of bronze or any other metal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh as that of marble, a wise sculptor will depend less on flesh contour, and more on picturesque accessories, which, though they would be vulgar if attempted in stone, are rightly entertaining in bronze or silver. Verrochio's statue of Colleone at Venice, Cellini's Perseus at Florence, and Ghiberti's gates at Florence, are models of bronze treatment.

(B.) When metal is beaten thin, it becomes what is technically called "plate," (the _flattened_ thing) and may be treated advisably in two ways; one, by beating it out into bosses, the other by cutting it into strips and ramifications. The vast schools of goldsmith's work and of iron decoration, founded on these two principles, have had the most powerful influences over general taste in all ages and countries. One of the simplest and most interesting elementary examples of the treatment of flat metal by cutting is the common branched iron bar, Fig. 8, used to close small apertures in countries possessing any good primitive style of iron-work, formed by alternate cuts on its sides, and the bending down of the several portions. The ordinary domestic window balcony of Verona is formed by mere ribands of iron, bent into curves as studiously refined as those of a Greek vase, and decorated merely by their own terminations in spiral volutes.

All cast work in metal, unfinished by hand, is inadmissible in any school of living art, since it cannot possess the perfection of form due to a permanent substance; and the continual sight of it is destructive of the faculty of taste: but metal stamped with precision, as in coins, is to sculpture what engraving is to painting.

158. Thirdly. Stone-sculpture divides itself into three schools: one in very hard material; one in very soft, and one in that of centrally useful consistence.

A. The virtue of work in hard material is the expression of form in shallow relief, or in broad contours; deep cutting in hard material is inadmissible, and the art, at once pompous and trivial, of gem engraving, has been in the last degree destructive of the honour and service of sculpture.

B. The virtue of work in soft material is deep cutting, with studiously graceful disposition of the masses of light and shade. The greater number of flamboyant churches of France are cut out of an adhesive chalk; and the fantasy of their latest decoration was, in great part, induced by the facility of obtaining contrast of black space, undercut, with white tracery easily left in sweeping and interwoven rods--the lavish use of wood in domestic architecture materially increasing the habit of delight in branched complexity of line. These points, however, I must reserve for illustration in my lectures on architecture. To-day, I shall limit myself to the illustration of elementary sculptural structure in the best material;--that is to say, in crystalline marble, neither soft enough to encourage the caprice of the workman, nor hard enough to resist his will.

159. C. By the true "Providence" of Nature, the rock which is thus submissive has been in some places stained with the fairest colours, and in others blanched into the fairest absence of colour, that can be found to give harmony to inlaying, or dignity to form. The possession by the Greeks of their [Greek: leukos lithos] was indeed the first circumstance regulating the development of their art; it enabled them at once to express their passion for light by executing the faces, hands, and feet of their dark wooden statues in white marble, so that what we look upon only with pleasure for fineness of texture was to them an imitation of the luminous body of the deity shining from behind its dark robes; and ivory afterwards is employed in their best statues for its yet more soft and flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicate colour--(therefore to this day the favourite ground of miniature painters). In like manner, the existence of quarries of peach-coloured marble within twelve miles of Verona, and of white marble and green serpentine between Pisa and Genoa, defined the manner both of sculpture and architecture for all the Gothic buildings of Italy. No subtlety of education could have formed a high school of art without these materials.

160. Next to the colour, the fineness of substance which will take a perfectly sharp edge, is essential; and this not merely to admit fine delineation in the sculpture itself, but to secure a delightful precision in placing the blocks of which it is composed. For the possession of too fine marble, as far as regards the work itself, is a temptation instead of an advantage to an inferior sculptor; and the abuse of the facility of undercutting, especially of undercutting so as to leave profiles defined by an edge against shadow, is one of the chief causes of decline of style in such encrusted bas-reliefs as those of the Certosa of Pavia and its contemporary monuments. But no undue temptation ever exists as to the fineness of block fitting; nothing contributes to give so pure and healthy a tone to sculpture as the attention of the builder to the jointing of his stones; and his having both the power to make them fit so perfectly as not to admit of the slightest portion of cement showing externally, and the skill to insure, if needful, and to suggest always, their stability in cementless construction. Plate X. represents a piece of entirely fine Lombardic building, the central portion of the arch in the Duomo of Verona, which corresponds to that of the porch of San Zenone, represented in Plate I. In both these pieces of building, the only line that traces the architrave round the arch, is that of the masonry joint; yet this line is drawn with extremest subtlety, with intention of delighting the eye by its relation of varied curvature to the arch itself; and it is just as much considered as the finest pen-line of a Raphael drawing. Every joint of the stone is used, in like manner, as a thin black line, which the slightest sign of cement would spoil like a blot. And so proud is the builder of his fine jointing, and so fearless of any distortion or strain spoiling the adjustment afterwards, that in one place he runs his joint quite gratuitously through a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign of pre-eminence by the minute inlaying of the head of the Lamb, into the stone of the course above.

161. Proceeding from this fine jointing to fine draughtsmanship, you have, in the very outset and earliest stage of sculpture, your flat stone surface given you as a sheet of white paper, on which you are required to produce the utmost effect you can with the simplest means, cutting away as little of the stone as may be, to save both time and trouble; and, above all, leaving the block itself, when shaped, as solid as you can, that its surface may better resist weather, and the carved parts be as much protected as possible by the masses left around them.

162. The first thing to be done is clearly to trace the outline of subject with an incision approximating in section to that of the furrow of a plough, only more equal-sided. A fine sculptor strikes it, as his chisel leans, freely, on marble; an Egyptian, in hard rock, cuts it sharp, as in cuneiform inscriptions. In any case, you have a result somewhat like the upper figure, Plate XI., in which I show you the most elementary indication of form possible, by cutting the outline of the typical archaic Greek head with an incision like that of a Greek triglyph, only not so precise in edge or slope, as it is to be modified afterwards.

163. Now, the simplest thing we can do next, is to round off the flat surface _within_ the incision, and put what form we can get into the feebler projection of it thus obtained. The Egyptians do this, often with exquisite skill, and then, as I showed you in a former lecture, colour the whole--using the incision as an outline. Such a method of treatment is capable of good service in representing, at little cost of pains, subjects in distant effect, and common, or merely picturesque, subjects even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what coloured sculpture would be in its rudest type, I have prepared the coloured relief of the John Dory[129] as a natural history drawing for distant effect. You know, also, that I meant him to be ugly--as ugly as any creature can well be. In time, I hope to show you prettier things--peacocks and kingfishers,--butterflies and flowers, on grounds of gold, and the like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expect you, in right use of your aesthetic faculties, to like those better than what I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method only; and if you will look, after the lecture, first at the mere white relief, and then see how much may be gained by a few dashes of colour, such as a practised workman could lay in a quarter of an hour,--the whole forming, if well done, almost a deceptive image--you will, at least, have the range of power in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you.

164. But for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other methods. If we carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast shadow of the incision will interfere with its outline, so that, for representation of beautiful things, you must clear away the ground about it, at all events for a little distance. As the law of work is to use the least pains possible, you clear it only just as far back as you need, and then for the sake of order and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline. By taking, in this case, the simplest I can,--a circle,--I can clear the head with little labor in the removal of surface round it; (see the lower figure in Plate XI.)

165. Now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed bas-relief. The mass you have to treat consists of a piece of stone, which, however you afterwards carve it, can but, at its most projecting point, reach the level of the external plane surface out of which it was mapped, and defined by a depression round it; that depression being at first a mere trench, then a moat of certain width, of which the outer sloping bank is in contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterally salient portions of sculpture. This, I repeat, is the primal construction of good bas-relief, implying, first, perfect protection to its surface from any transverse blow, and a geometrically limited space to be occupied by the design, into which it shall pleasantly (and as you shall ultimately see, ingeniously,) contract itself: implying, secondly, a determined depth of projection, which it shall rarely reach, and never exceed: and implying, finally, the production of the whole piece with the least possible labor of chisel and loss of stone.

166. And these, which are the first, are very nearly the last constructive laws of sculpture. You will be surprised to find how much they include, and how much of minor propriety in treatment their observance involves.

In a very interesting essay on the architecture of the Parthenon, by the professor of architecture of the Ecole Polytechnique, M. Emile Boutmy, you will find it noticed that the Greeks do not usually weaken, by carving, the constructive masses of their building; but put their chief sculpture in the empty spaces between the triglyphs, or beneath the roof. This is true; but in so doing, they merely build their panel instead of carving it; they accept no less than the Goths, the laws of recess and limitation, as being vital to the safety and dignity of their design; and their noblest recumbent statues are, constructively, the fillings of the acute extremity of a panel in the form of an obtusely summitted triangle.

167. In gradual descent from that severest type, you will find that an immense quantity of sculpture of all times and styles may be generally embraced under the notion of a mass hewn out of, or, at least, placed in, a panel or recess, deepening, it may be, into a niche; the sculpture being always designed with reference to its position in such recess; and, therefore, to the effect of the building out of which the recess is hewn.

But, for the sake of simplifying our inquiry, I will at first suppose no surrounding protective ledge to exist, and that the area of stone we have to deal with is simply a flat slab, extant from a flat surface depressed all round it.

168. A _flat_ slab, observe. The flatness of surface is essential to the problem of bas-relief. The lateral limit of the panel may, or may not, be required; but the vertical limit of surface _must_ be expressed; and the art of bas-relief is to give the effect of true form on that condition. For observe, if nothing more were needed than to make first a cast of a solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to the flat surface;--if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an apple, all I had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole apple in half, and pin it to the wall, any ordinary trained sculptor, or even a mechanical workman, could produce bas-relief; but the business is to carve a _round_ thing out of _flat_ thing; to carve an apple out of a biscuit!--to conquer, as a subtle Florentine has here conquered,[130] his marble, so as not only to get motion into what is most rigidly fixed, but to get boundlessness into what is most narrowly bounded; and carve Madonna and Child, rolling clouds, flying angels, and space of heavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of an inch thick where it is thickest.

169. Carried, however, to such a degree of subtlety as this, and with so ambitious and extravagant aim, bas-relief becomes a tour-de-force; and, you know, I have just told you all tours-de-force are wrong. The true law of bas-relief is to begin with a depth of incision proportioned justly to the distance of the observer and the character of the subject, and out of that rationally determined depth, neither increased for ostentation of effect, nor diminished for ostentation of skill, to do the utmost that will be easily visible to an observer, supposing him to give an average human amount of attention, but not to peer into, or critically scrutinize the work.

170. I cannot arrest you to-day by the statement of any of the laws of sight and distance which determine the proper depth of bas-relief. Suppose that depth fixed; then observe what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying cluster of problems, will be offered to us. You might, at first, imagine that, given what we may call our scale of solidity, or scale of depth, the diminution from nature would be in regular proportion, as for instance, if the real depth of your subject be, suppose a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, then the parts of the real subject which were six inches round the side of it would be carved, you might imagine, at the depth of half-an-inch, and so the whole thing mechanically reduced to scale. But not a bit of it. Here is a Greek bas-relief of a chariot with two horses (upper figure, Plate XXI). Your whole subject has therefore the depth of two horses side by side, say six or eight feet. Your bas-relief has, on the scale,[131] say the depth of the third of an inch. Now, if you gave only the sixth of an inch for the depth of the off horse, and, dividing him again, only the twelfth of an inch for that of each foreleg, you would make him look a mile away from the other, and his own forelegs a mile apart. Actually, the Greek has made the _near leg of the off horse project much beyond the off leg of the near horse_; and has put nearly the whole depth and power of his relief into the breast of the off horse, while for the whole distance from the head of the nearest to the neck of the other, he has allowed himself only a shallow line; knowing that, if he deepened that, he would give the nearest horse the look of having a thick nose; whereas, by keeping that line down, he has not only made the head itself more delicate, but detached it from the other by giving no cast shadow, and left the shadow below to serve for thickness of breast, cutting it as sharp down as he possibly can, to make it bolder.

171. Here is a fine piece of business we have got into!--even supposing that all this selection and adaptation were to be contrived under constant laws, and related only to the expression of given forms. But the Greek sculptor, all this while, is not only debating and deciding how to show what he wants, but, much more, debating and deciding what, as he can't show everything, he will choose to show at all. Thus, being himself interested, and supposing that you will be, in the manner of the driving, he takes great pains to carve the reins, to show you where they are knotted, and how they are fastened round the driver's waist (you recollect how Hippolytus was lost by doing that), but he does not care the least bit about the chariot, and having rather more geometry than he likes in the cross and circle of one wheel of it, entirely omits the other!

172. I think you must see by this time that the sculptor's is not quite a trade which you can teach like brickmaking; nor its produce an article of which you can supply any quantity "demanded" for the next railroad waiting-room. It may perhaps, indeed, seem to you that, in the difficulties thus presented by it, bas-relief involves more direct exertion of intellect than finished solid sculpture. It is not so, however. The questions involved by bas-relief are of a more curious and amusing kind, requiring great variety of expedients; though none except such as a true workmanly instinct delights in inventing and invents easily; but design in solid sculpture involves considerations of weight in mass, of balance, of perspective and opposition, in projecting forms, and of restraint for those which must not project, such as none but the greatest masters have ever completely solved; and they, not always; the difficulty of arranging the composition so as to be agreeable from points of view on all sides of it, being, itself, arduous enough.

173. Thus far, I have been speaking only of the laws of structure relating to the projection of the mass which becomes itself the sculpture. Another most interesting group of constructive laws governs its relation to the line that contains or defines it.

In your Standard Series I have placed a photograph of the south transept of Rouen Cathedral. Strictly speaking, all standards of Gothic are of the thirteenth century; but, in the fourteenth, certain qualities of richness are obtained by the diminution of restraint; out of which we must choose what is best in their kinds. The pedestals of the statues which once occupied the lateral recesses are, as you see, covered with groups of figures, enclosed each in a quatrefoil panel; the spaces between this panel and the enclosing square being filled with sculptures of animals.

You cannot anywhere find a more lovely piece of fancy, or more illustrative of the quantity of result that may be obtained with low and simple chiselling. The figures are all perfectly simple in drapery, the story told by lines of action only in the main group, no accessories being admitted. There is no undercutting anywhere, nor exhibition of technical skill, but the fondest and tenderest appliance of it; and one of the principal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subject to its quaint limit. The tale must be told within the four petals of the quatrefoil, and the wildest and playfullest beasts must never come out of their narrow corners. The attention with which spaces of this kind are filled by the Gothic designers is not merely a beautiful compliance with architectural requirements, but a definite assertion of their delight in the restraint of law; for, in illuminating books, although, if they chose it, they might have designed floral ornaments, as we now usually do, rambling loosely over the leaves, and although, in later works, such license is often taken by them, in all books of the fine time the wandering tendrils are enclosed by limits approximately rectilinear, and in gracefullest branching often detach themselves from the right line only by curvature of extreme severity.

174 Since the darkness and extent of shadow by which the sculpture is relieved necessarily vary with the depth of the recess, there arise a series of problems, in deciding which the wholesome desire for emphasis by means of shadow is too often exaggerated by the ambition of the sculptor to show his skill in undercutting. The extreme of vulgarity is usually reached when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, as in much Indian and Chinese work, so as to relieve its forms against an absolute darkness; but no formal law can ever be given; for exactly the same thing may be beautifully done for a wise purpose, by one person, which is basely done, and to no purpose, or to a bad one, by another. Thus, the desire for emphasis itself may be the craving of a deadened imagination, or the passion of a vigorous one; and relief against shadow may be sought by one man only for sensation, and by another for intelligibility. John of Pisa undercuts fiercely, in order to bring out the vigour of life which no level contour could render; the Lombardi of Venice undercut delicately, in order to obtain beautiful lines, and edges of faultless precision; but the base Indian craftsmen undercut only that people may wonder how the chiselling was done through the holes, or that they may see every monster white against black.

175. Yet, here again we are met by another necessity for discrimination. There may be a true delight in the inlaying of white on dark, as there is a true delight in vigorous rounding. Nevertheless, the general law is always, that, the lighter the incisions, and the broader the surface, the grander, caeteris paribus, will be the work. Of the structural terms of that work you now know enough to understand that the schools of good sculpture, considered in relation to projection, divide themselves into four entirely distinct groups:--

1st. Flat Relief, in which the surface is, in many places, absolutely flat; and the expression depends greatly on the lines of its outer contour, and on fine incisions within them.

2nd. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the sculptured mass projects so as to be capable of complete modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. The formation of a coin by the blow of a die necessitates, of course, the severest obedience to this law.

3rd. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted, so as to throw out the forms against a background of shadow.

4th. Full Relief. The statue completely solid in form, and unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected locally with some definite part of the building, so as to be still dependent on the shadow of its background and direction of protective line.

176. Let me recommend you at once to take what pains may be needful to enable you to distinguish these four kinds of sculpture, for the distinctions between them are not founded on mere differences in gradation of depth. They are truly four species, or orders, of sculpture, separated from each other by determined characters. I have used, you may have noted, hitherto in my Lectures, the word "bas-relief" almost indiscriminately for all, because the degree of lowness or highness of relief is not the question, but the _method_ of relief. Observe again, therefore--

A. If a portion of the surface is absolutely flat, you have the first order--Flat Relief.

B. If every portion of the surface is rounded, but none undercut, you have Round Relief--essentially that of seals and coins.

C. If any part of the edges be undercut, but the general projection of solid form reduced, you have what I think you may conveniently call Foliate Relief,--the parts of the design overlapping each other in places, like edges of leaves.

D. If the undercutting is bold and deep, and the projection of solid form unreduced, you have full relief.

Learn these four names at once by heart:--

Flat Relief. Round Relief. Foliate Relief. Full Relief.

And whenever you look at any piece of sculpture, determine first to which of these classes it belongs; and then consider how the sculptor has treated it with reference to the necessary structure--that reference, remember, being partly to the mechanical conditions of the material, partly to the means of light and shade at his command.

177. To take a single instance. You know, for these many years, I have been telling our architects with all the force of voice I had in me, that they could design nothing until they could carve natural forms rightly. Many imagine that work was easy; but judge for yourselves whether it be or not. In Plate XII., I have drawn, with approximate accuracy, a cluster of Phillyrea leaves as they grow. Now, if we wanted to cut them in bas-relief, the first thing we should have to consider would be the position of their outline on the marble;--here it is, as far down as the spring of the leaves. But do you suppose that is what an ordinary sculptor could either lay for his first sketch, or contemplate as a limit to be worked down to? Then consider how the interlacing and springing of the leaves can be expressed within this outline. It must be done by leaving such projection in the marble as will take the light in the same proportion as the drawing does;--and a Florentine workman could do it, for close sight, without driving one incision deeper, or raising a single surface higher, than the eighth of an inch. Indeed, no sculptor of the finest time would design such a complex cluster of leaves as this, except for bronze or iron work; they would take simpler contours for marble; but the laws of treatment would, under these conditions, remain just as strict: and you may, perhaps, believe me now when I tell you that, in any piece of fine structural sculpture by the great masters, there is more subtlety and noble obedience to lovely laws than could be explained to you if I took twenty lectures to do it in, instead of one.

178. There remains yet a point of mechanical treatment, on which I have not yet touched at all; nor that the least important,--namely, the actual method and style of handling. A great sculptor uses his tools exactly as a painter his pencil, and you may recognize the decision of his thought, and glow of his temper, no less in the workmanship than the design. The modern system of modelling the work in clay, getting it into form by machinery, and by the hands of subordinates, and touching it at last, if indeed the (so called) sculptor touch it at all, only to correct their inefficiencies, renders the production of good work in marble a physical impossibility. The first result of it is that the sculptor thinks in clay instead of marble, and loses his instinctive sense of the proper treatment of a brittle substance. The second is that neither he nor the public recognize the touch of the chisel as expressive of personal feeling or power, and that nothing is looked for except mechanical polish.

179. The perfectly simple piece of Greek relief represented in Plate XIII., will enable you to understand at once,--examination of the original, at your leisure, will prevent you, I trust, from ever forgetting--what is meant by the virtue of handling in sculpture.

The projection of the heads of the four horses, one behind the other, is certainly not more, altogether, than three-quarters of an inch from the flat ground, and the one in front does not in reality project more than the one behind it, yet, by mere drawing,[132] you see the sculptor has got them to appear to recede in due order, and by the soft rounding of the flesh surfaces, and modulation of the veins, he has taken away all look of flatness from the necks. He has drawn the eyes and nostrils with dark incision, careful as the finest touches of a painter's pencil: and then, at last, when he comes to the manes, he has let fly hand and chisel with their full force, and where a base workman, (above all, if he had modelled the thing in clay first,) would have lost himself in laborious imitation of hair, the Greek has struck the tresses out with angular incisions, deep driven, every one in appointed place and deliberate curve, yet flowing so free under his noble hand that you cannot alter, without harm, the bending of any single ridge, nor contract, nor extend, a point of them. And if you will look back to Plate IX. you will see the difference between this sharp incision, used to express horse-hair, and the soft incision with intervening rounded ridge, used to express the hair of Apollo Chrysocomes; and, beneath, the obliquely ridged incision used to express the plumes of his swan; in both these cases the handling being much more slow, because the engraving is in metal; but the structural importance of incision, as the means of effect, never lost sight of. Finally, here are two actual examples of the work in marble of the two great schools of the world; one, a little Fortune, standing tiptoe on the globe of the Earth, its surface traced with lines in hexagons; not chaotic under Fortune's feet; Greek, this, and by a trained workman;--dug up in the temple of Neptune at Corfu;--and here, a Florentine portrait-marble, found in the recent alterations, face downwards, under the pavement of St'a Maria Novella;[133] both of them first-rate of their kind; and both of them, while exquisitely finished at the telling points, showing, on all their unregarded surfaces, the rough furrow of the fast-driven chisel, as distinctly as the edge of a common paving-stone.

180. Let me suggest to you, in conclusion, one most interesting point of mental expression in these necessary aspects of finely executed sculpture. I have already again and again pressed on your attention the beginning of the arts of men in the make and use of the ploughshare. Read more carefully--you might indeed do well to learn at once by heart,--the twenty-seven lines of the Fourth Pythian, which describe the ploughing of Jason. There is nothing grander extant in human fancy, nor set down in human words: but this great mythical expression of the conquest of the earth-clay, and brute-force, by vital human energy, will become yet more interesting to you when you reflect what enchantment has been cut, on whiter clay, by the tracing of finer furrows;--what the delicate and consummate arts of man have done by the ploughing of marble, and granite, and iron. You will learn daily more and more, as you advance in actual practice, how the primary manual art of engraving, in the steadiness, clearness, and irrevocableness of it, is the best art-discipline that can be given either to mind or hand;[134] you will recognize one law of right, pronouncing itself in the well-resolved work of every age; you will see the firmly traced and irrevocable incision determining not only the forms, but, in great part, the moral temper, of all vitally progressive art; you will trace the same principle and power in the furrows which the oblique sun shows on the granite of his own Egyptian city,--in the white scratch of the stylus through the colour on a Greek vase--in the first delineation, on the wet wall, of the groups of an Italian fresco; in the unerring and unalterable touch of the great engraver of Nueremberg,--and in the deep driven and deep bitten ravines of metal by which Turner closed, in embossed limits, the shadows of the Liber Studiorum.

Learn, therefore, in its full extent, the force of the great Greek word, [Greek: charasso];--and, give me pardon--if you think pardon needed, that I ask you also to learn the full meaning of the English word derived from it. Here, at the Ford of the Oxen of Jason, are other furrows to be driven than these in the marble of Pentelicus. The fruitfullest, or the fatallest of all ploughing is that by the thoughts of your youth, on the white field of its imagination. For by these, either down to the disturbed spirit, "[Greek: kekoptai kai charassetai pedon];" or around the quiet spirit, and on all the laws of conduct that hold it, as a fair vase its frankincense, are ordained the pure colours, and engraved the just Characters, of AEonian life.

FOOTNOTES:

[126] Nothing is more wonderful, or more disgraceful among the forms of ignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of gain, than the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentially Athletic. I received a letter from Birmingham, some little time since, inviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, "machinery excelled rude hand work." The writer had not the remotest conception that he might as well have asked me to come and see a mechanical boat-race rowed by automata, and "how much machinery excelled rude arm-work."

[127] Such as the sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance, referred to in the Third Lecture, Sec. 84.

[128] It is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of the Athenian Ceramicus to the French Tile-fields, Tileries, or Tuileries; and how these last may yet become--have already partly become--"the Potter's field," blood-bought (December, 1870.)

[129] This relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in the lower school in the University galleries.

[130] The reference is to a cast from a small and low relief of Florentine work in the Kensington Museum.

[131] The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above the twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for this Lecture, so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch for maximum projection.

[132] This plate has been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, in which he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and preserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph would have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains.

[133] These two marbles will always, henceforward, be sufficiently accessible for reference in my room at Corpus Christi College.

[134] That it was also, in, some cases, the earliest that the Greeks gave, is proved by Lucian's account of his first lesson at his uncle's; the [Greek: enkopeus], literally "in-cutter"--being the first tool put into his hand, and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy pressing too hard, presently breaks;--gets beaten--goes home crying, and becomes, after his dream above quoted, a philosopher instead of a sculptor.

LECTURE VI.

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS.

_December, 1870._

181. It can scarcely be needful for me to tell even the younger members of my present audience, that the conditions necessary for the production of a perfect school of sculpture have only twice been met in the history of the world, and then for a short time; nor for short time only, but also in narrow districts, namely, in the valleys and islands of Ionian Greece, and in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between the Apennine crests and the sea.

All other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens in the fifth century before Christ, and by Florence in the fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect; and the best of them are derivative: these two are consummate in themselves, and the origin of what is best in others.

182. And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools are both of equal rank, as essentially original and independent. The Florentine, being subsequent to the Greek, borrowed much from it; but it would have existed just as strongly--and, perhaps, in some respects, more nobly--had it been the first, instead of the latter of the two. The task set to each of these mightiest of the nations was, indeed, practically the same, and as hard to the one as to the other. The Greeks found Phoenician and Etruscan art monstrous, and had to make them human. The Italians found Byzantine and Norman art monstrous, and had to make them human. The original power in the one case is easily traced; in the other it has partly to be unmasked, because the change at Florence was, in many points, suggested and stimulated by the former school. But we mistake in supposing that Athens taught Florence the laws of design; she taught her, in reality, only the duty of truth.

183. You remember that I told you the highest art could do no more than rightly represent the human form. This is the simple test, then, of a perfect school,--that it has represented the human form, so that it is impossible to conceive of its being better done. And that, I repeat, has been accomplished twice only: once in Athens, once in Florence. And so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, that it cannot be said of either of them that they represented the entire human form. The Greeks perfectly drew, and perfectly moulded the body and limbs; but there is, so far as I am aware, no instance of their representing the face as well as any great Italian. On the other hand, the Italian painted and carved the face insuperably; but I believe there is no instance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, by command of his religion, it became his pride to despise, and his safety to mortify.

184. The general course of your study here renders it desirable that you should be accurately acquainted with the leading principles of Greek sculpture; but I cannot lay these before you without giving undue prominence to some of the special merits of that school, unless I previously indicate the relation it holds to the more advanced, though less disciplined, excellence of Christian art.

In this and the last lecture of the present course,[135] I shall endeavour, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and diagram-like outline as may be possible or intelligible, the main characteristics of the two schools, completing and correcting the details of comparison afterwards; and not answering, observe, at present, for any generalization I give you, except as a ground for subsequent closer and more qualified statements.

And in carrying out this parallel, I shall speak indifferently of works of sculpture, and of the modes of painting which propose to themselves the same objects as sculpture. And this indeed Florentine, as opposed to Venetian, painting, and that of Athens in the fifth century, nearly always did.

185. I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the simplest kind--engravings, or, at least, linear drawings, both; one on clay, one on copper, made in the central periods of each style, and representing the same goddess--Aphrodite. They are now set beside each other in your Rudimentary Series. The first is from a patera lately found at Camirus, authoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his recent catalogue, to the best period of Greek art. The second is from one of the series of engravings executed, probably, by Baccio Baldini, in 1485, out of which I chose your first practical exercise--the Sceptre of Apollo. I cannot, however, make the comparison accurate in all respects, for I am obliged to set the restricted type of the Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks beside the universal Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air, earth, and sea; nevertheless the restriction in the mind of the Greek, and expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both characteristic. The Greek Venus Urania is flying in heaven, her power over the waters symbolized by her being borne by a swan, and her power over the earth by a single flower in her right hand; but the Italian Aphrodite is rising out of the actual sea, and only half risen: her limbs are still in the sea, her merely animal strength filling the waters with their life; but her body to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky; her hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth.

186. The Venus Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to men, has power only over lawful and domestic love; therefore, she is fully dressed, and not only quite dressed, but most daintily and trimly: her feet delicately sandalled, her gown spotted with little stars, her hair brushed exquisitely smooth at the top of her head, trickling in minute waves down her forehead; and though, because there's such a quantity of it, she can't possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she has fastened it in with her broad fillet. Of course she is married, so she must wear a cap with pretty minute pendant jewels at the border; and a very small necklace, all that her husband can properly afford, just enough to go closely round the neck, and no more. On the contrary, the Aphrodite of the Italian, being universal love, is pure-naked; and her long hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea.

These primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are only because the artists are thinking of separate powers: they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in feeling. But the differences I have next to indicate are essential, and characterize the two opposed national modes of mind.

187. First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very pretty person, and the Italian a decidedly plain one. That is because a Greek thought no one could possibly love any but pretty people; but an Italian thought that love could give dignity to the meanest form that it inhabited, and light to the poorest that it looked upon. So his Aphrodite will not condescend to be pretty.

188. Secondly. In the Greek Venus the breasts are broad and full, though perfectly severe in their almost conical profile;--(you are allowed on purpose to see the outline of the right breast, under the chiton:)--also the right arm is left bare, and you can just see the contour of the front of the right limb and knee; both arm and limb pure and firm, but lovely. The plant she holds in her hand is a branching and flowering one, the seed vessel prominent. These signs all mean that her essential function is child-bearing.

On the contrary, in the Italian Venus the breasts are so small as to be scarcely traceable; the body strong, and almost masculine in its angles; the arms meagre and unattractive, and she lays a decorative garland of flowers on the earth. These signs mean that the Italian thought of love as the strength of an eternal spirit, for ever helpful; and for ever crowned with flowers, that neither know seed-time nor harvest, and bloom where there is neither death, nor birth.

189. Thirdly. The Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied; the Italian incapable of rest, she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greeks; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress of it is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, and lifted, in the place where the tongues of fire rest on the brows, in the early Christian pictures of Pentecost, and the waving fires abide upon the heads of Angelico's seraphim.

190. There are almost endless points of interest, great and small, to be noted in these differences of treatment. This binding of the hair by the single fillet marks the straight course of one great system of art method, from that Greek head which I showed you on the archaic coin of the seventh century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth of our own era--nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of the head depends on one lock of hair falling back from the ear, which it does in compliance with the old Greek observance of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her shoulders comes from the Athena of Corinth; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the characteristic difference in every conception of the schools, the Greek never representing expression, the Italian primarily seeking it; but far more, mark for us here the utter change in the conception of love; from the tranquil guide and queen of a happy terrestrial domestic life, accepting its immediate pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of an infinite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love divine in jealousy, crying, "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave."

The vast issues dependent on this change in the conception of the ruling passion of the human soul, I will endeavour to show you, on a future occasion: in my present lecture, I shall limit myself to the definition of the temper of Greek sculpture, and of its distinctions from Florentine in the treatment of any subject whatever, be it love or hatred, hope or despair.

These great differences are mainly the following.

191. 1. A Greek never expresses momentary passion; a Florentine looks to momentary passion as the ultimate object of his skill.

When you are next in London, look carefully in the British Museum at the casts from the statues in the pediment of the Temple of Minerva at AEgina. You have there Greek work of definite date;--about 600 B.C., certainly before 580--of the purest kind; and you have the representation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of the AEacidae at Troy, with Athena herself looking on. But there is no attempt whatever to represent expression in the features, none to give complexity of action or gesture; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visible temporary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, one pulling a lance out of his wound, and others in attitudes of attack and defence; several kneeling to draw their bows. But all inflict and suffer, conquer or expire, with the same smile.

192. Plate XIV. gives you examples, from more advanced art, of true Greek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leading import to the Greek heart--that of Apollo with the Python, and of Hercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa] or agony of contest. No good Greek artist would have you behold the suffering, either of gods, heroes, or men; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue of their contest with evil beasts, or evil spirits. All such lower sources of excitement are to be closed to you; your interest is to be in the thoughts involved by the fact of the war; and in the beauty or rightness of form, whether active or inactive. I have to work out this subject with you afterwards, and to compare with the pure Greek method of thought, that of modern dramatic passion, engrafted on it, as typically in Turner's contest of Apollo and the Python: in the meantime, be content with the statement of this first great principle--that a Greek, as such, never expresses momentary passion.

193. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses personal character, while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate condition of beauty. You are startled, I suppose, at my saying this, having had it often pointed out to you, as a transcendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that you could distinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Diana from Juno by her being slender. That is very true; but those are general distinctions of class, not special distinctions of personal character. Even as general, they are bodily, not mental. They are the distinctions, in fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician,--between a matron and a huntress; but in no wise distinguish the simple-hearted hero from the subtle Master of the Muses, nor the wilful and fitful girl-goddess from the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But judge for yourselves;--In the successive plates, XV.--XVIII., I show you,[136] typically represented as the protectresses of nations, the Argive, Cretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, the Athena of Corinth, the Artemis of Syracuse, the fountain Arethusa of Syracuse, and the Sirem Ligeia of Terina. Now, of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature than the rest, and some softer in expression: in other respects, can you trace any distinction between the Goddesses of Earth and Heaven, or between the Goddess of Wisdom and the Water Nymph of Syracuse? So little can you do so, that it would have remained a disputed question--had not the name luckily been inscribed on some Syracusan coins--whether the head upon them was meant for Arethusa at all; and, continually, it becomes a question respecting finished statues, if without attributes, "Is this Bacchus or Apollo--Zeus or Poseidon?" There is a fact for you; noteworthy, I think! There is no personal character in true Greek art:--abstract ideas of youth and age, strength and swiftness, virtue and vice,--yes: but there is no individuality; and the negative holds down to the revived conventionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you how you are to paint young women, and how old ones; though a Greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age as the Italian is in his canon of it,--"old women should be represented as passionate and hasty, after the manner of Infernal Furies."

194. "But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they give ideal beauty?" So it is said, without contradiction. But will you look again at the series of coins of the best time of Greek art, which I have just set before you? Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful? Certainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren, and Arethusa, have well-formed and regular features; but I am quite sure that if you look at them without prejudice, you will think neither reach even the average standard of pretty English girls. The Venus Urania suggests at first, the idea of a very charming person, but you will find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, looked at closely. And remember, these are chosen examples; the best I can find of art current in Greece at the great time; and if even I were to take the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant, not one of them excels the Venus of Melos; and she, as I have already asserted, in _The Queen of the Air_, has nothing notable in feature except dignity and simplicity. Of Athena I do not know one authentic type of great beauty; but the intense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate in their symbolism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coin represented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three vases of the best time, to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular art, not only unattained, but unattempted; and finally,--and this you may accept as a conclusive proof of the Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty--there is little evidence even in their literature, and none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in infancy, or early childhood.

195. The Greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give character, do not give refined or naive beauty. But you may think that the absence of these is intended to give dignity to the gods and nymphs; and that their calm faces would be found, if you long observed them, instinct with some expression of divine mystery or power.

I will convince you of the narrow range of Greek thought in these respects, by showing you, from the two sides of one and the same coin, images of the most mysterious of their Deities, and the most powerful,--Demeter and Zeus.

Remember, that just as the west coasts of Ireland and England catch first on their hills the rain of the Atlantic, so the western Peloponnese arrests, in the clouds of the first mountain ranges of Arcadia, the moisture of the Mediterranean; and over all the plains of Elis, Pylos, and Messene, the strength and sustenance of men was naturally felt to be granted by Zeus; as, on the east coast of Greece, the greater clearness of the air by the power of Athena. If you will recollect the prayer of Rhea, in the single line of Callimachus--"[Greek: Gaia phile, teke kai su teai d' odines elaphrai]," (compare Pausanias iv. 33, at the beginning,)--it will mark for you the connection, in the Greek mind, of the birth of the mountain springs of Arcadia with the birth of Zeus. And the centres of Greek thought on this western coast are necessarily Elis, and, (after the time of Epaminondas,) Messene.

196. I show you the coin of Messene, because the splendid height and form of Mount Ithome were more expressive of the physical power of Zeus than the lower hills of Olympia; and also because it was struck just at the time of the most finished and delicate Greek art--a little after the main strength of Phidias, but before decadence had generally pronounced itself. The coin is a silver didrachm, bearing on one side a head of Demeter (Plate XVI., at the top); on the other a full figure of Zeus Aietophoros (Plate XIX., at the top); the two together signifying the sustaining strength of the earth and heaven. Look first at the head of Demeter. It is merely meant to personify fulness of harvest; there is no mystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which we should have looked for in any effort to realize the Greek thoughts of the Earth Mother, as we find them spoken by the poets. But take it merely as personified abundance;--the goddess of black furrow and tawny grass--how commonplace it is, and how poor! The hair is grand, and there is one stalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate the goddess who is meant; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it shows that the artist could only inform you that this was Demeter by such a symbol. How easy it would have been for a great designer to have made the hair lovely with fruitful flowers, and the features noble in mystery of gloom, or of tenderness. But here you have nothing to interest you, except the common Greek perfections of a straight nose and a full chin.

197. We pass, on the reverse of the die, to the figure of Zeus Aietophoros. Think of the invocation to Zeus in the Suppliants, (525), "King of Kings, and Happiest of the Happy, Perfectest of the Perfect in strength, abounding in all things, Jove--hear us and be with us;" and then, consider what strange phase of mind it was, which, under the very mountain-home of the god, was content with this symbol of him as a well-fed athlete, holding a diminutive and crouching eagle on his fist. The features and the right hand have been injured in this coin, but the action of the arms shows that it held a thunderbolt, of which, I believe, the twisted rays were triple. In the, presumably earlier, coin engraved by Millingen, however,[137] it is singly pointed only; and the added inscription "[Greek: ITHOM]," in the field, renders the conjecture of Millingen probable, that this is a rude representation of the statue of Zeus Ithomates, made by Ageladas, the master of Phidias; and I think it has, indeed, the aspect of the endeavour, by a workman of more advanced knowledge, and more vulgar temper, to put the softer anatomy of later schools into the simple action of an archaic figure. Be that as it may, here is one of the most refined cities of Greece content with the figure of an athlete as the representative of their own mountain god; marked as a divine power merely by the attributes of the eagle and thunderbolt.

198. Lastly. The Greeks have not, it appears, in any supreme way, given to their statues character, beauty, or divine strength. Can they give divine sadness? Shall we find in their artwork any of that pensiveness and yearning for the dead, which fills the chants of their tragedy? I suppose if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in afterlife is to be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in the stories about the Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the Danube, inhabited by the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax the son of Oileus, and Helen; and in which the pavement of the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds with their wings, dipping them in the sea.

Now it happens that we have actually on a coin of the Locrians the representation of the ghost of the Lesser Ajax. There is nothing in the history of human imagination more lovely, than their leaving always a place for his spirit, vacant in their ranks of battle. But here is their sculptural representation of the phantom; (lower figure, Plate XIX.), and I think you will at once agree with me in feeling that it would be impossible to conceive anything more completely unspiritual. You might more than doubt that it could have been meant for the departed soul, unless you were aware of the meaning of this little circlet between the feet. On other coins you find his name inscribed there, but in this you have his habitation, the haunted Island of Leuce itself, with the waves flowing round it.

199. Again and again, however, I have to remind you, with respect to these apparently frank and simple failures, that the Greek always intends you to think for yourself, and understand, more than he can speak. Take this instance at our hands, the trim little circlet for the Island of Leuce. The workman knows very well it is not like the island, and that he could not make it so; that at its best, his sculpture can be little more than a letter; and yet, in putting this circlet, and its encompassing fretwork of minute waves, he does more than if he had merely given you a letter L, or written "Leuce." If you know anything of beaches and sea, this symbol will set your imagination at work in recalling them; then you will think of the temple service of the novitiate sea-birds, and of the ghosts of Achilles and Patroclus appearing, like the Dioscuri, above the storm-clouds of the Euxine. And the artist, throughout his work, never for an instant loses faith in your sympathy and passion being ready to answer his;--if you have none to give, he does not care to take you into his counsel; on the whole, would rather that you should not look at his work.

200. But if you have this sympathy to give, you may be sure that whatever he does for you will be right, as far as he can render it so. It may not be sublime, nor beautiful, nor amusing; but it will be full of meaning, and faithful in guidance. He will give you clue to myriads of things that he cannot literally teach; and, so far as he does teach, you may trust him. Is not this saying much?

And as he strove only to teach what was true, so, in his sculptured symbol, he strove only to carve what was--Right. He rules over the arts to this day, and will for ever, because he sought not first for beauty, nor first for passion, or for invention, but for Rightness; striving to display, neither himself nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with, in its simplicity. That is his specific character as a Greek. Of course, every nation's character is connected with that of others surrounding or preceding it; and in the best Greek work you will find some things that are still false, or fanciful; but whatever in it is false or fanciful, is not the Greek part of it--it is the Phoenician, or Egyptian, or Pelasgian part. The essential Hellenic stamp is veracity:--Eastern nations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with two;--Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the Greeks drew them with men's; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing and exalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable truth.

201. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which encumbered our thoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek school into some clearness of its position for you, with respect to the art of the world. That relation is strangely duplicate; for on one side, Greek art is the root of all simplicity; and on the other, of all complexity.

On one side I say, it is the root of all simplicity. If you were for some prolonged period to study Greek sculpture exclusively in the Elgin Room of the British Museum, and were then suddenly transported to the Hotel de Cluny, or any other museum of Gothic and barbarian workmanship, you would imagine the Greeks were the masters of all that was grand, simple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pettiness of the toys of the rest of mankind.

202. On one side of their work they are so. From all vain and mean decoration--all weak and monstrous error, the Greeks rescue the forms of man and beast, and sculpture them in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the fire of their living soul. Distinctively from other races, as I have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the work of the Greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastisement to what was untrue. So far as this is found in any other school, hereafter, it belongs to them by inheritance from the Greeks, or invests them with the brotherhood of the Greek. And this is the deep meaning of the myth of Daedalus as the giver of motion to statues. The literal change from the binding together of the feet to their separation, and the other modifications of action which took place, either in progressive skill, or often, as the mere consequence of the transition from wood to stone, (a figure carved out of one wooden log must have necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its sides), these literal changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable, compared to the bestowing of apparent life. The figures of monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs separate enough; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude figures at Branchidae sitting with their hands on their knees. And, briefly, the work of Daedalus is the giving of deceptive life, as that of Prometheus the giving of real life; and I can put the relation of Greek to all other art, in this function, before you in easily compared and remembered examples.

203. Here, on the right, in Plate XX., is an Indian bull, colossal, and elaborately carved, which you may take as a sufficient type of the bad art of all the earth. False in form, dead in heart, and loaded with wealth, externally. We will not ask the date of this; it may rest in the eternal obscurity of evil art, everywhere and for ever. Now, besides this colossal bull, here is a bit of Daedalus work, enlarged from a coin not bigger than a shilling: look at the two together, and you ought to know, henceforward, what Greek art means, to the end of your days.

204. In this aspect of it then, I say, it is the simplest and nakedest of lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or rather another pole, for the opposition is diametric. As the simplest, so also it is the most complex of human art. I told you in my fifth Lecture, showing you the spotty picture of Velasquez, that an essential Greek character is a liking for things that are dappled. And you cannot but have noticed how often and how prevalently the idea which gave its name to the Porch of Polygnotus, "[Greek: stoa poikile]," occurs to the Greeks as connected with the finest art. Thus, when the luxurious city is opposed to the simple and healthful one, in the second book of Plato's Polity, you find that, next to perfumes, pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it "[Greek: poikilia]," which observe, both in that place and again in the third book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but the idea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and sound--the "ravishing division to the lute," as in Pindar's "[Greek: poikiloi hymnoi]"--runs through the compass of all Greek art-description; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles you were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, for instance, to Plate IV. here), your impression of it would be, instead of breadth and simplicity, one of universal spottiness and chequeredness, "[Greek: en angeon Herkesin pampoikilois];" and of the artist's delighting in nothing so much as in crossed or starred or spotted things; which, in right places, he and his public both do unlimitedly. Indeed they hold it complimentary even to a trout, to call him a "spotty." Do you recollect the trout in the tributaries of the Ladon, which Pausanias says were spotted, so that they were like thrushes and which, the Arcadians told him, could speak? In this last [Greek: poikilia], however, they disappointed him. "I, indeed, saw some of them caught," he says, "but I did not hear any of them speak, though I waited beside the river till sunset."

205. I must sum roughly now, for I have detained you too long.

The Greeks have been thus the origin not only of all broad, mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is divided, delicate, and tremulous; "variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made." To them, as first leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof--quartering of the Christian shield,--rubric and arabesque of Christian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel of the Thorn.

And in their doing all this, they stand as masters of human order and justice, subduing the animal nature guided by the spiritual one, as you see the Sicilian Charioteer stands, holding his horse-reins, with the wild lion racing beneath him, and the flying angel above, on the beautiful coin of early Syracuse; (lowest in Plate XXI).

And the beginnings of Christian chivalary were in that Greek bridling of the dark and the white horses.

206. Not that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as many as we do ourselves, nearly;--he died of his mistakes at last--as we shall die of them; but so far he was separated from the herd of more mistaken and more wretched nations--so far as he was Greek--it was by his rightness. He lived, and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land, and the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. He became _Graeculus esuriens_, little, and hungry, and every man's errand-boy, by his iniquity, and his competition, and his love of talk. But his Graecism was in having done, at least at one period of his dominion, more than anybody else, what was modest, useful, and eternally true; and as a workman, he verily did, or first suggested the doing of, everything possible to man.

Take Daedalus, his great type of the practically executive craftsman, and the inventor of expedients in craftsmanship, (as distinguished from Prometheus, the institutor of moral order in art). Daedalus invents,--he, or his nephew,--

The potter's wheel, and all work in clay;

The saw, and all work in wood;

The masts and sails of ships, and all modes of motion; (wings only proving too dangerous!)

The entire art of minute ornament;

And the deceptive life of statues.

By his personal toil, he involves the fatal labyrinth for Minos; builds an impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines; adorns healing baths among the wild parsley fields of Selinus; buttresses the precipices of Eryx, under the temple of Aphrodite; and for her temple itself--finishes in exquisiteness the golden honeycomb.

207. Take note of that last piece of his art: it is connected with many things which I must bring before you when we enter on the study of architecture. That study we shall begin at the foot of the Baptistery of Florence, which, of all buildings known to me, unites the most perfect symmetry with the quaintest [Greek: poikilia]. Then, from the tomb of your own Edward the Confessor, to the farthest shrine of the opposite Arabian and Indian world, I must show you how the glittering and iridescent dominion of Daedalus prevails; and his ingenuity in division, interposition, and labyrinthine sequence, more widely still. Only this last summer I found the dark red masses of the rough sandstone of Furness Abbey had been fitted by him, with no less pleasure than he had in carving them, into wedged hexagons--reminiscences of the honeycomb of Venus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the framework of all the noblest things; and yet the brightness of it has a lurid shadow. The spot of the fawn, of the bird, and the moth, may be harmless. But Daedalus reigns no less over the spot of the leopard and snake. That cruel and venomous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, by his invention of the saw from the serpent's tooth; and his seeking refuge, under blood-guiltiness, with Minos, who can judge evil, and measure, or remit, the penalty of it, but not reward good: Rhadamanthus only can measure _that_; but Minos is essentially the recognizer of evil deeds "conoscitor delle peccata," whom, therefore, you find in Dante under the form of the [Greek: erpeton]. "Cignesi con la coda tante volte, quantunque gradi vuol che giu sia messa."

And this peril of the influence of Daedalus is twofold; first in leading us to delight in glitterings and semblances of things, more than in their form, or truth;--admire the harlequin's jacket more than the hero's strength; and love the gilding of the missal more than its words;--but farther, and worse, the ingenuity of Daedalus may even become bestial, an instinct for mechanical labour only, strangely involved with a feverish and ghastly cruelty:--(you will find this distinct in the intensely Daedal work of the Japanese); rebellious, finally, against the laws of nature and honour, and building labyrinths for monsters,--not combs for bees.

208. Gentlemen, we of the rough northern race may never, perhaps, be able to learn from the Greek his reverence for beauty: but we may at least learn his disdain of mechanism:--of all work which he felt to be monstrous and inhuman in its imprudent dexterities.

We hold ourselves, we English, to be good workmen. I do not think I speak with light reference to recent calamity, (for I myself lost a young relation, full of hope and good purpose, in the foundered ship _London_,) when I say that either an AEginetan or Ionian shipwright built ships that could be fought from, though they were under water; and neither of them would have been proud of having built one that would fill and sink helplessly if the sea washed over her deck, or turn upside down if a squall struck her topsail.

Believe me, gentlemen, good workmanship consists in continence and common sense, more than in frantic expatiation of mechanical ingenuity; and if you would be continent and rational, you had better learn more of Art than you do now, and less of Engineering. What is taking place at this very hour,[138] among the streets, once so bright, and avenues once so pleasant, of the fairest city in Europe, may surely lead us all to feel that the skill of Daedalus, set to build impregnable fortresses, is not so wisely applied as in framing the [Greek: treton ponou]--the golden honeycomb.

FOOTNOTES:

[135] The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine, though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in fuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth Lecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the published course on Florentine Sculpture.

[136] These plates of coins are given for future reference and examination, not merely for the use made of them in this place. The Lacinian Hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be very noble; her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape of storms though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes on its altar. (Livy, xxiv. 3.)

[137] Ancient Cities and Kings, Plate IV. No. 20.

[138] The siege of Paris, at the time of the delivery of this Lecture, was in one of its most destructive phases.

_THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND._

(_Delivered at the R. A. Institution, Woolwich, December 14, 1869._)

I would fain have left to the frank expression of the moment, but fear I could not have found clear words--I cannot easily find them, even deliberately,--to tell you how glad I am, and yet how ashamed, to accept your permission to speak to you. Ashamed of appearing to think that I can tell you any truth which you have not more deeply felt than I; but glad in the thought that my less experience, and way of life sheltered from the trials, and free from the responsibilities of yours, may have left me with something of a child's power of help to you; a sureness of hope, which may perhaps be the one thing that can be helpful to men who have done too much not to have often failed in doing all that they desired. And indeed, even the most hopeful of us, cannot but now be in many things apprehensive. For this at least we all know too well, that we are on the eve of a great political crisis, if not of political change. That a struggle is approaching between the newly-risen power of democracy and the apparently departing power of feudalism; and another struggle, no less imminent, and far more dangerous, between wealth and pauperism. These two quarrels are constantly thought of as the same. They are being fought together, and an apparently common interest unites for the most part the millionaire with the noble, in resistance to a multitude, crying, part of it for bread and part of it for liberty.

And yet no two quarrels can be more distinct. Riches--so far from being necessary to noblesse--are adverse to it. So utterly adverse, that the first character of all the Nobilities which have founded great dynasties in the world is to be poor;--often poor by oath--always poor by generosity. And of every true knight in the chivalric ages, the first thing history tells you is, that he never kept treasure for himself.

Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse are not the same; but opposite. On the other hand, the causes of anarchy and of the poor are not the same, but opposite. Side by side, in the same rank, are now indeed set the pride that revolts against authority, and the misery that appeals against avarice. But, so far from being a common cause, all anarchy is the forerunner of poverty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. So that thus, it has become impossible to give due support to the cause of order, without seeming to countenance injury; and impossible to plead justly the claims of sorrow, without seeming to plead also for those of license.

Let me try, then, to put in very brief terms, the real plan of this various quarrel, and the truth of the cause on each side. Let us face that full truth, whatever it may be, and decide what part, according to our power, we should take in the quarrel.

First. For eleven hundred years, all but five, since Charlemagne set on his head the Lombard crown, the body of European people have submitted patiently to be governed; generally by kings--always by single leaders of some kind. But for the last fifty years they have begun to suspect, and of late they have many of them concluded, that they have been on the whole ill-governed, or misgoverned, by their kings. Whereupon they say, more and more widely, "Let us henceforth have no kings; and no government at all."

Now we said, we must face the full truth of the matter, in order to see what we are to do. And the truth is that the people _have_ been misgoverned;--that very little is to be said, hitherto, for most of their masters--and that certainly in many places they will try their new system of "no masters:"--and as that arrangement will be delightful to all foolish persons, and, at first, profitable to all wicked ones,--and as these classes are not wanting or unimportant in any human society,--the experiment is likely to be tried extensively. And the world may be quite content to endure much suffering with this fresh hope, and retain its faith in anarchy, whatever comes of it, till it can endure no more.

Then, secondly. The people have begun to suspect that one particular form of this past misgovernment has been, that their masters have set them to do all the work, and have themselves taken all the wages. In a word, that what was called governing them, meant only wearing fine clothes, and living on good fare at their expense. And I am sorry to say, the people are quite right in this opinion also. If you inquire into the vital fact of the matter, this you will find to be the constant structure of European society for the thousand years of the feudal system; it was divided into peasants who lived by working; priests who lived by begging; and knights who lived by pillaging; and as the luminous public mind becomes gradually cognizant of these facts, it will assuredly not suffer things to be altogether arranged that way any more; and the devising of other ways will be an agitating business; especially because the first impression of the intelligent populace is, that whereas, in the dark ages, half the nation lived idle, in the bright ages to come, the whole of it may.

Now, thirdly--and here is much the worst phase of the crisis. This past system of misgovernment, especially during the last three hundred years, has prepared, by its neglect, a class among the lower orders which it is now peculiarly difficult to govern. It deservedly lost their respect--but that was the least part of the mischief. The deadly part of it was, that the lower orders lost their habit, and at last their faculty, of respect;--lost the very capability of reverence, which is the most precious part of the human soul. Exactly in the degree in which you can find creatures greater than yourself, to look up to, in that degree, you are ennobled yourself, and, in that degree, happy. If you could live always in the presence of archangels, you would be happier than in that of men; but even if only in the company of admirable knights and beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright they were, and the more you could reverence their virtue the happier you would be. On the contrary, if you were condemned to live among a multitude of idiots, dumb, distorted and malicious, you would not be happy in the constant sense of your own superiority. Thus all real joy and power of progress in humanity depend on finding something to reverence; and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain. Now, by general misgovernment, I repeat, we have created in Europe a vast populace, and out of Europe a still vaster one, which has lost even the power and conception of reverence;[139]--which exists only in the worship of itself--which can neither see anything beautiful around it, nor conceive anything virtuous above it; which has, towards all goodness and greatness, no other feelings than those of the lowest creatures--fear, hatred, or hunger a populace which has sunk below your appeal in their nature, as it has risen beyond your power in their multitude;--whom you can now no more charm than you can the adder, nor discipline, than you can the summer fly.

It is a crisis, gentlemen; and time to think of it. I have roughly and broadly put it before you in its darkness. Let us look what we may find of light.

Only the other day, in a journal which is a fairly representative exponent of the Conservatism of our day, and for the most part not at all in favor of strikes or other popular proceedings; only about three weeks since, there was a leader, with this, or a similar, title--"What is to become of the House of Lords?" It startled me, for it seemed as if we were going even faster than I had thought, when such a question was put as a subject of quite open debate, in a journal meant chiefly for the reading of the middle and upper classes. Open or not--the debate is near. What _is_ to become of them? And the answer to such question depends first on their being able to answer another question--"What is the _use_ of them!" For some time back, I think the theory of the nation has been, that they are useful as impediments to business, so as to give time for second thoughts. But the nation is getting impatient of impediments to business; and certainly, sooner or later, will think it needless to maintain these expensive obstacles to its humors. And I have not heard, either in public, or from any of themselves, a clear expression of their own conception of their use. So that it seems thus to become needful for all men to tell them, as our one quite clear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us for many a year, that the use of the Lords of a country is to _govern_ the country. If they answer that use, the country will rejoice in keeping them; if not, that will become of them which must of all things found to have lost their serviceableness.

Here, therefore, is the one question, at this crisis, for them, and for us. Will they be lords indeed, and give us laws--dukes indeed, and give us guiding--princes indeed, and give us beginning, of truer dynasty, which shall not be soiled by covetousness, nor disordered by iniquity? Have they themselves sunk so far as not to hope this? Are there yet any among them who can stand forward with open English brows, and say,--So far as in me lies, I will govern with my might, not for Dieu et _mon_ Droit, but for the first grand reading of the war cry, from which that was corrupted, "Dieu et Droit?" Among them I know there are some--among you, soldiers of England, I know there are many, who can do this; and in you is our trust. I, one of the lower people of your country, ask of you in their name--you whom I will not any more call soldiers, but by the truer name of Knights;--Equites of England. How many yet of you are there, knights errant now beyond all former fields of danger--knights patient now beyond all former endurance; who still retain the ancient and eternal purpose of knighthood, to subdue the wicked, and aid the weak? To them, be they few or many, we English people call for help to the wretchedness, and for rule over the baseness, of multitudes desolate and deceived, shrieking to one another this new gospel of their new religion. "Let the weak do as they can, and the wicked as they will."

I can hear you saying in your hearts, even the bravest of you, "The time is past for all that." Gentlemen, it is not so. The time has come for _more_ than all that. Hitherto, soldiers have given their lives for false fame, and for cruel power. The day is now when they must give their lives for true fame, and for beneficent power: and the work is near every one of you--close beside you--the means of it even thrust into your hands. The people are crying to you for command, and you stand there at pause, and silent. You think they don't want to be commanded; try them; determine what is needful for them--honorable for them; show it them, promise to bring them to it, and they will follow you through fire. "Govern us," they cry with one heart, though many minds. They _can_ be governed still, these English; they are men still; not gnats, nor serpents. They love their old ways yet, and their old masters, and their old land. They would fain live in it, as many as may stay there, if you will show them how, there, to live;--or show them even, how, there, like Englishmen, to die.

"To live in it, as many as may!" How many do you think may? How many _can_? How many do you want to live there? As masters, your first object must be to increase your power; and in what does the power of a country consist? Will you have dominion over its stones, or over its clouds, or over its souls? What do you mean by a great nation, but a great multitude of men who are true to each other, and strong, and of worth? Now you can increase the multitude only definitely--your island has only so much standing room--but you can increase the _worth in_definitely. It is but a little island;--suppose, little as it is, you were to fill it with friends? You may, and that easily. You must, and that speedily; or there will be an end to this England of ours, and to all its loves and enmities.

To fill this little island with true friends--men brave, wise, and happy! Is it so impossible, think you, after the world's eighteen hundred years of Christianity, and our own thousand years of toil, to fill only this little white gleaming crag with happy creatures, helpful to each other? Africa, and India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain, are these not wide enough for the ignorance of our race? have they not space enough for its pain? Must we remain _here_ also savage,--_here_ at enmity with each other,--_here_ foodless, houseless, in rags, in dust, and without hope, as thousands and tens of thousands of us are lying? Do not think it, gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable is the last infidelity; infidelity not to God only, but to every creature and every law that He has made. Are we to think that the earth was only shaped to be a globe of torture; and that there cannot be one spot of it where peace can rest, or justice reign? Where are men ever to be happy, if not in England? by whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if not by you? Are we not of a race first among the strong ones of the earth; the blood in us incapable of weariness, unconquerable by grief? Have we not a history of which we can hardly think without becoming insolent in our just pride of it? Can we dare, without passing every limit of courtesy to other nations, to say how much more we have to be proud of in our ancestors than they? Among our ancient monarchs, great crimes stand out as monstrous and strange. But their valor, and, according to their understanding, their benevolence, are constant. The Wars of the Roses, which are as a fearful crimson shadow on our land, represent the normal condition of other nations; while from the days of the Heptarchy downwards we have had examples given us, in all ranks, of the most varied and exalted virtue; a heap of treasure that no moth can corrupt, and which even our traitorship, if we are to become traitors to it, cannot sully.

And this is the race, then, that we know not any more how to govern! and this the history which we are to behold broken off by sedition! and this is the country, of all others, where life is to become difficult to the honest, and ridiculous to the wise! And the catastrophe, forsooth, is to come just when we have been making swiftest progress beyond the wisdom and wealth of the past. Our cities are a wilderness of spinning wheels instead of palaces; yet the people have not clothes. We have blackened every leaf of English greenwood with ashes, and the people die of cold; our harbors are a forest of merchant ships, and the people die of hunger.

Whose fault is it? Yours, gentlemen; yours only. You alone can feed them, and clothe, and bring into their right minds, for you only can govern--that is to say, you only can educate them.

Educate, or govern, they are one and the same word. Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. And the true "compulsory education" which the people now ask of you is not catechism, but drill. It is not teaching the youth of England the shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers; and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic to roguery, and their literature to lust. It is, on the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and souls. It is a painful, continual, and difficult work; to be done by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise,--but above all--by example.

Compulsory! Yes, by all means! "Go ye out into the highways and hedges, and _compel_ them to come in." Compulsory! Yes, and gratis also. _Dei Gratia_, they must be taught, as, _Dei Gratia_, you are set to teach them. I hear strange talk continually, "how difficult it is to make people pay for being educated!" Why, I should think so! Do you make your children pay for their education, or do you give it them compulsorily, and gratis? You do not expect _them_ to pay you for their teaching, except by becoming good children. Why should you expect a peasant to pay for his, except by becoming a good man?--payment enough, I think, if we knew it. Payment enough to himself, as to us. For that is another of our grand popular mistakes--people are always thinking of education as a means of livelihood. Education is not a profitable business, but a costly one; nay, even the best attainments of it are always unprofitable, in any terms of coin. No nation ever made its bread either by its great arts, or its great wisdoms. By its minor arts or manufactures, by its practical knowledges, yes: but its noble scholarship, its noble philosophy, and its noble art, are always to be bought as a treasure, not sold for a livelihood. You do not learn that you may live--you live that you may learn. You are to spend on National Education, and to be spent for it, and to make by it, not more money, but better men;--to get into this British Island the greatest possible number of good and brave Englishmen. _They_ are to be your "money's worth."

But where is the money to come from? Yes, that is to be asked. Let us, as quite the first business in this our national crisis, look not only into our affairs, but into our accounts, and obtain some general notion how we annually spend our money, and what we are getting for it. Observe, I do not mean to inquire into the public revenue only; of that some account is rendered already. But let us do the best we can to set down the items of the national _private_ expenditure; and know what we spend altogether, and how.

To begin with this matter of education. You probably have nearly all seen the admirable lecture lately given by Captain Maxse, at Southampton. It contains a clear statement of the facts at present ascertained as to our expenditure in that respect. It appears that of our public moneys, for every pound that we spend on education we spend twelve either in charity or punishment;--ten millions a year in pauperism and crime, and eight hundred thousand in instruction. Now Captain Maxse adds to this estimate of ten millions public money spent on crime and want, a more or less conjectural sum of eight millions for private charities. My impression is that this is much beneath the truth, but at all events it leaves out of consideration much the heaviest and saddest form of charity--the maintenance, by the working members of families, of the unfortunate or ill-conducted persons whom the general course of misrule now leaves helpless to be the burden of the rest.

Now I want to get first at some, I do not say approximate, but at all events some suggestive, estimate of the quantity of real distress and misguided life in this country. Then next, I want some fairly representative estimate of our private expenditure in luxuries. We won't spend more, publicly, it appears, than eight hundred thousand a year, on educating men gratis. I want to know, as nearly as possible, what we spend privately a year, in educating horses gratis. Let us, at least, quit ourselves in this from the taunt of Rabshakeh, and see that for every horse we train also a horseman; and that the rider be at least as high-bred as the horse, not jockey, but chevalier. Again, we spend eight hundred thousand, which is certainly a great deal of money, in making rough _minds_ bright. I want to know how much we spend annually in making rough _stones_ bright; that is to say, what may be the united annual sum, or near it, of our jewellers' bills. So much we pay for educating children gratis;--how much for educating diamonds gratis? and which pays best for brightening, the spirit or the charcoal? Let us get those two items set down with some sincerity, and a few more of the same kind. _Publicly_ set down. We must not be ashamed of the way we spend our money. If our right hand is not to know what our left does, it must not be because it would be ashamed if it did.

That is, therefore, quite the first practical thing to be done. Let every man who wishes well to his country, render it yearly an account of his income, and of the main heads of his expenditure; or, if he is ashamed to do so, let him no more impute to the poor their poverty as a crime, nor set them to break stones in order to frighten them from committing it. To lose money ill is indeed often a crime; but to get it ill is a worse one, and to spend it ill, worst of all. You object, Lords of England, to increase, to the poor, the wages you give them, because they spend them, you say, unadvisedly. Render them, therefore, an account of the wages which _they_ give _you_; and show them, by your example, how to spend theirs, to the last farthing advisedly.

It is indeed time to make this an acknowledged subject of instruction, to the workingman,--how to spend his wages. For, gentlemen, we _must_ give that instruction, whether we will or no, one way or the other. We have given it in years gone by; and now we find fault with our peasantry for having been too docile, and profited too shrewdly by our tuition. Only a few days since I had a letter from the wife of a village rector, a man of common sense and kindness, who was greatly troubled in his mind because it was precisely the men who got highest wages in summer that came destitute to his door in the winter. Destitute, and of riotous temper--for their method of spending wages in their period of prosperity was by sitting two days a week in the tavern parlor, ladling port wine, not out of bowls, but out of buckets. Well, gentlemen, who taught them that method of festivity? Thirty years ago, I, a most inexperienced freshman, went to my first college supper; at the head of the table sat a nobleman of high promise and of admirable powers, since dead of palsy; there also we had in the midst of us, not buckets, indeed, but bowls as large as buckets; there also, we helped ourselves with ladles. There (for this beginning of college education was compulsory), I choosing ladlefuls of punch instead of claret, because I was then able, unperceived to pour them into my waistcoat instead of down my throat, stood it out to the end, and helped to carry four of my fellow-students, one of them the son of the head of a college, head foremost, down stairs and home.

Such things are no more; but the fruit of them remains, and will for many a day to come. The laborers whom you cannot now shut out of the ale-house are only the too faithful disciples of the gentlemen who were wont to shut themselves into the dining-room. The gentlemen have not thought it necessary, in order to correct their own habits, to diminish their incomes; and, believe me, the way to deal with your drunken workman is not to lower his wages,--but to mend his wits.[140]

And if indeed we do not yet see quite clearly how to deal with the sins of our poor brother, it is possible that our dimness of sight may still have other causes that can be cast out. There are two opposite cries of the great liberal and conservative parties, which are both most right, and worthy to be rallying cries. On their side "let every man have his chance;" on yours "let every man stand in his place." Yes, indeed, let that be so, every man in his place, and every man fit for it. See that he holds that place from Heaven's Providence; and not from his family's Providence. Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, we laymen will look after the heretics for them. Let the Lords Temporal quit themselves of nepotism, and we will take care of their authority for them. Publish for us, you soldiers, an army gazette, in which the one subject of daily intelligence shall be the grounds of promotion; a gazette which shall simply tell us, what there certainly can be no detriment to the service in our knowing, when any officer is appointed to a new command,--what his former services and successes have been,--whom he has superseded,--and on what ground. It will be always a satisfaction to us; it may sometimes be an advantage to you: and then, when there is really necessary debate respecting reduction of wages, let us always begin not with the wages of the industrious classes, but with those of the idle ones. Let there be honorary titles, if people like them; but let there be no honorary incomes.

So much for the master's motto, "Every man in his place." Next for the laborer's motto, "Every man his chance." Let us mend that for them a little, and say, "Every man his certainty"--certainty, that if he does well, he will be honored, and aided, and advanced in such degree as may be fitting for his faculty and consistent with his peace; and equal certainty that if he does ill, he will by sure justice be judged, and by sure punishment be chastised; if it may be, corrected; and if that may not be, condemned. That is the right reading of the Republican motto, "Every man his chance." And then, with such a system of government, pure, watchful and just, you may approach your great problem of national education, or in other words, of national employment. For all education begins in work. What we think, or what we know; or what we believe, is in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we _do;_ and for man, woman, or child, the first point of education is to make them do their best. It is the law of good economy to make the best of everything. How much more to make the best of every creature! Therefore, when your pauper comes to you and asks for bread, ask of him instantly--What faculty have you? What can you do best? Can you drive a nail into wood? Go and mend the parish fences. Can you lay a brick? Mend the walls of the cottages where the wind comes in. Can you lift a spadeful of earth? Turn this field up three feet deep all over. Can you only drag a weight with your shoulders? Stand at the bottom of this hill and help up the overladen horses. Can you weld iron and chisel stone? Fortify this wreck-strewn coast into a harbor; and change these shifting sands into fruitful ground. Wherever death was, bring life; that is to be your work; that your parish refuge; that your education. So and no otherwise can we meet existent distress. But for the continual education of the whole people, and for their future happiness, they must have such consistent employment as shall develop all the powers of the fingers, and the limbs, and the brain: and that development is only to be obtained by hand-labor, of which you have these four great divisions--hand-labor on the earth, hand-labor on the sea, hand-labor in art, hand-labor in war. Of the last two of these I cannot speak to-night, and of the first two only with extreme brevity.

I. Hand-labor on the earth, the work of the husbandman and of the shepherd;--to dress the earth and to keep the flocks of it--the first task of man, and the final one--the education always of noblest lawgivers, kings and teachers; the education of Hesiod, of Moses, of David, of all the true strength of Rome; and all its tenderness: the pride of Cincinnatus, and the inspiration of Virgil. Hand-labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with singing:--not steam-piston labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with steam-whistling. You will have no prophet's voice accompanied by that shepherd's pipe, and pastoral symphony. Do you know that lately, in Cumberland, in the chief pastoral district of England--in Wordsworth's own home--a procession of villagers on their festa day provided for themselves, by way of music, a steam-plough whistling at the head of them.

Give me patience while I put the principle of machine labor before you, as clearly and in as short compass as possible; it is one that should be known at this juncture. Suppose a farming proprietor needs to employ a hundred men on his estate, and that the labor of these hundred men is enough, but not more than enough, to till all his land, and to raise from it food for his own family, and for the hundred laborers. He is obliged, under such circumstances, to maintain all the men in moderate comfort, and can only by economy accumulate much for himself. But, suppose he contrive a machine that will easily do the work of fifty men, with only one man to watch it. This sounds like a great advance in civilization. The farmer of course gets his machine made, turns off the fifty men, who may starve or emigrate at their choice, and now he can keep half of the produce of his estate, which formerly went to feed them, all to himself. That is the essential and constant operation of machinery among us at this moment.

Nay, it is at first answered; no man can in reality keep half the produce of an estate to himself, nor can he in the end keep more than his own human share of anything; his riches must diffuse themselves at some time; he must maintain somebody else with them, however he spends them. That is mainly true (not altogether so), for food and fuel are in ordinary circumstances personally wasted by rich people, in quantities which would save many lives. One of my own great luxuries, for instance, is candlelight--and I probably burn, for myself alone, as many candles during the winter, as would comfort the old eyes, or spare the young ones, of a whole rushlighted country village. Still, it is mainly true, that it is not by their personal waste that rich people prevent the lives of the poor. This is the way they do it. Let me go back to my farmer. He has got his machine made, which goes creaking, screaming, and occasionally exploding, about modern Arcadia. He has turned off his fifty men to starve. Now, at some distance from his own farm, there is another on which the laborers were working for their bread in the same way, by tilling the land. The machinist sends over to these, saying--"I have got food enough for you without your digging or ploughing any more. I can maintain you in other occupations instead of ploughing that land; if you rake in its gravel you will find some hard stones--you shall grind those on mills till they glitter; then, my wife shall wear a necklace of them. Also, if you turn up the meadows below you will find some fine white clay, of which you shall make a porcelain service for me: and the rest of the farm I want for pasture for horses for my carriage--and you shall groom them, and some of you ride behind the carriage with staves in your hands, and I will keep you much fatter for doing that than you can keep yourselves by digging."

Well--but it is answered, are we to have no diamonds, nor china, nor pictures, nor footmen, then--but all to be farmers? I am not saying what we ought to do, I want only to show you with perfect clearness first what we _are doing_; and that, I repeat, is the upshot of machine-contriving in this country. And observe its effect on the national strength. Without machines, you have a hundred and fifty yeomen ready to join for defence of the land. You get your machine, starve fifty of them, make diamond-cutters or footmen of as many more, and for your national defence against an enemy, you have now, and _can_ have, only fifty men, instead of a hundred and fifty; these also now with minds much alienated from you as their chief,[141] and the rest, lapidaries or footmen; and a steam plough.

That is one effect of machinery; but at all events, if we have thus lost in men, we have gained in riches; instead of happy human souls, we have at least got pictures, china, horses, and are ourselves better off than we were before. But very often, and in much of our machine-contriving, even _that_ result does not follow. We are not one whit the richer for the machine, we only employ it for our amusement. For observe, our gaining in riches depends on the men who are out of employment consenting to be starved, or sent out of the country. But suppose they do not consent passively to be starved, but some of them become criminals, and have to be taken charge of and fed at a much greater cost than if they were at work, and, others, paupers, rioters, and the like, then you attain the real outcome of modern wisdom and ingenuity. You have your hundred men honestly at country work; but you don't like the sight of human beings in your fields; you like better to see a smoking kettle. You pay, as an amateur, for that pleasure, and you employ your fifty men in picking oakum, or begging, rioting, and thieving.

By hand-labor, therefore, and that alone, we are to till the ground. By hand-labor also to plough the sea; both for food, and in commerce, and in war: not with floating kettles there neither, but with hempen bridle, and the winds of heaven in harness. That is the way the power of Greece rose on her Egean, the power of Venice on her Adria, of Amalfi in her blue bay, of the Norman sea-riders from the North Cape to Sicily:--so, your own dominion also of the past. Of the past mind you. On the Baltic and the Nile, your power is already departed. By machinery you would advance to discovery; by machinery you would carry your commerce;--you would be engineers instead of sailors; and instantly in the North seas you are beaten among the ice, and before the very Gods of Nile, beaten among the sand. Agriculture, then, by the hand or by the plough drawn only by animals; and shepherd and pastoral husbandry, are to be the chief schools of Englishmen. And this most royal academy of all academies you have to open over all the land, purifying your heaths and hills, and waters, and keeping them full of every kind of lovely natural organism, in tree, herb, and living creature. All land that is waste and ugly, you must redeem into ordered fruitfulness; all ruin, desolateness, imperfectness of hut or habitation, you must do away with; and throughout every village and city of your English dominion there must not be a hand that cannot find a helper, nor a heart that cannot find a comforter.

"How impossible!" I know, you are thinking. Ah! So far from impossible, it is easy, it is natural, it is necessary, and I declare to you that, sooner or later, it _must be done_, at our peril. If now our English lords of land will fix this idea steadily before them; take the people to their hearts, trust to their loyalty, lead their labor;--then indeed there will be princes again in the midst of us, worthy of the island throne,

"This royal throne of kings--this sceptred isle-- This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection, and the hand of war; This precious stone set in the silver sea; This happy breed of men--this little world: This other Eden--Demi-Paradise."

But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and equivocate, clutching through the confused catastrophe of all things only at what they can still keep stealthily for themselves--their doom is nearer than even their adversaries hope, and it will be deeper than even their despisers dream.

That, believe me, is the work you have to do in England; and out of England you have room for everything else you care to do. Are her dominions in the world so narrow that she can find no place to spin cotton in but Yorkshire? We may organize emigration into an infinite power. We may assemble troops of the more adventurous and ambitious of our youth; we may send them on truest foreign service, founding new seats of authority, and centres of thought, in uncultivated and unconquered lands; retaining the full affection to the native country no less in our colonists than in our armies, teaching them to maintain allegiance to their fatherland in labor no less than in battle; aiding them with free hand in the prosecution of discovery, and the victory over adverse natural powers; establishing seats of every manufacture in the climates and places best fitted for it, and bringing ourselves into due alliance and harmony of skill with the dexterities of every race, and the wisdoms of every tradition and every tongue.

And then you may make England itself the centre of the learning, of the arts, of the courtesies and felicities of the world. Yon may cover her mountains with pasture; her plains with corn, her valleys with the lily, and her gardens with the rose. You may bring together there in peace the wise and the pure, and the gentle of the earth, and by their word, command through its farthest darkness the birth of "God's first creature, which was Light." You know whose words those are; the words of the wisest of Englishmen. He, and with him the wisest of all other great nations, have spoken always to men of this hope, and they would not hear. Plato, in the dialogue of Critias, his last, broken off at his death--Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortunate islands--Virgil, in the prophetic tenth eclogue--Bacon, in his fable of the New Atlantis--More, in the book which, too impatiently wise, became the bye-word of fools--these, all, have told us with one voice what we should strive to attain; _they_ not hopeless of it, but for our follies forced, as it seems, by heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables, lest we should hear them and obey.

Shall we never listen to the words of these wisest of men? Then listen at least to the words of your children--let us in the lips of babes and sucklings find our strength; and see that we do not make them mock instead of pray, when we teach them, night and morning, to ask for what we believe never can be granted;--that the will of the Father,--which is, that His creatures may be righteous and happy--should be done, _on earth_, as it is in Heaven.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] Compare _Time and Tide_, Sec. 169, _and Fors Clavigera_, Letter XIV, page 9.

[140] See Appendix, "Modern Education," and compare Sec. 70 of _Time and Tide_.

[141] [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this year, 1873, at the rate of a regiment a week.]

_NOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA._

I am often accused of inconsistency; but believe myself defensible against the charge with respect to what I have said on nearly every subject except that of war. It is impossible for me to write consistently of war, for the groups of facts I have gathered about it lead me to two precisely opposite conclusions.

When I find this the case, in other matters, I am silent, till I can choose my conclusion: but, with respect to war, I am forced to speak, by the necessities of the time; and forced to act, one way or another. The conviction on which I act is, that it causes an incalculable amount of avoidable human suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian nations; and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be soldiers, I try my utmost to bring them into what I conceive to be a better mind. But, on the other hand, I know certainly that the most beautiful characters yet developed among men have been formed in war;--that all great nations have been warrior nations, and that the only kinds of peace which we are likely to get in the present age are ruinous alike to the intellect, and the heart.

The lecture on "War," in this volume, addressed to young soldiers, had for its object to strengthen their trust in the virtue of their profession. It is inconsistent with itself, in its closing appeal to women, praying them to use their influence to bring wars to an end. And I have been hindered from completing my long intended notes on the economy of the Kings of Prussia by continually increasing doubt how far the machinery and discipline of war, under which they learned the art of government, was essential for such lesson; and what the honesty and sagacity of the Friedrich who so nobly repaired his ruined Prussia, might have done for the happiness of his Prussia, unruined.

In war, however, or in peace, the character which Carlyle chiefly loves him for, and in which Carlyle has shown him to differ from all kings up to this time succeeding him, is his constant purpose to use every power entrusted to him for the good of his people; and be, not in name only, but in heart and hand, their king.

Not in ambition, but in natural instinct of duty. Friedrich, born to govern, determines to govern to the best of his faculty. That "best" may sometimes be unwise; and self-will, or love of glory, may have their oblique hold on his mind, and warp it this way or that; but they are never principal with him. He believes that war is necessary, and maintains it; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly persists in the work of it to the day of his death, not claiming therein more praise than the head of any ordinary household, who rules it simply because it is his place, and he must not yield the mastery of it to another.

How far, in the future, it may be possible for men to gain the strength necessary for kingship without either fronting death, or inflicting it, seems to me not at present determinable. The historical facts are that, broadly speaking, none but soldiers, or persons with a soldierly faculty, have ever yet shown themselves fit to be kings; and that no other men are so gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth's character of the happy warrior cannot be reached in the height of it _but by_ a warrior; nay, so much is it beyond common strength that I had supposed the entire meaning of it to be metaphorical, until one of the best soldiers of England himself read me the poem,[142] and taught me, what I might have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was entirely literal. There is nothing of so high reach distinctly demonstrable in Friedrich: but I see more and more, as I grow older, that the things which are the most worth, encumbered among the errors and faults of every man's nature, are never clearly demonstrable; and are often most forcible when they are scarcely distinct to his own conscience,--how much less, clamorous for recognition by others!

Nothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle's showing of this, to any careful reader of Friedrich. But careful readers are but one in the thousand; and by the careless, the masses of detail with which the historian must deal are insurmountable.

My own notes, made for the special purpose of hunting down the one point of economy, though they cruelly spoil Carlyle's own current and method of thought, may yet be useful in enabling readers, unaccustomed to books involving so vast a range of conception, to discern what, on this one subject only, may be gathered from that history. On any other subject of importance, similar gatherings might be made of other passages. The historian has to deal with all at once.

I therefore have determined to print here, as a sequel to the Essay on War, my notes from the first volume of Friedrich, on the economies of Brandenburg, up to the date of the establishment of the Prussian monarchy. The economies of the first three Kings of Prussia I shall then take up in _Fors Clavigera_, finding them fitter for examination in connection with the subject of that book than of this.

I assume, that the reader will take down his first volume of Carlyle, and read attentively the passages to which I refer him. I give the reference first to the largest edition, in six volumes (1858-1865); then, in parenthesis, to the smallest or "people's edition" (1872-1873). The pieces which I have quoted in my own text are for the use of readers who may not have ready access to the book; and are enough for the explanation of the points to which I wish them to direct their thoughts in reading such histories of soldiers or soldier-kingdoms.

I.

_Year_ 928 to 936.--_Dawn of Order in Christian Germany._