Chapter CVIII (1)

Some weeks now have passed since my return to the Tower: the Castletons are gone, and all Trevanion's gay guests. And since these departures, visits between the two houses have been interchanged often, and the bonds of intimacy are growing close. Twice has my father held long conversations apart with Lady Ulverstone, (my mother is not foolish enough to feel a pang now at such confidences,) and the result has become apparent. Lady Ulverstone has ceased all talk against the world and the public--ceased to fret the galled pride of her husband with irritating sympathy. She has made herself the true partner of his present occupations, as she was of those in the past; she takes interest in farming, and gardens, and flowers, and those philosophical peaches which come from trees academical that Sir William Temple reared in his graceful retirement. She does more--she sits by her husband's side in the library, reads the books he reads, or, if in Latin, coaxes him, into construing them. Insensibly she leads him into studies farther and farther remote from Blue Books and Hansard; and, taking my father's hint,

"Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way."

They are inseparable. Darby-and-Joan-like, you see them together in the library, the garden, or the homely little pony-phaeton, for which Lord Ulverstone has resigned the fast-trotting cob, once identified with the eager looks of the busy Trevanion. It is most touching, most beautiful! And to think what a victory over herself the proud woman must have obtained!--never a thought that seems to murmur, never a word to recall the ambitious man back from the philosophy into which his active mind flies for refuge. And with the effort her brow has become so serene! That careworn expression, which her fine features once wore, is fast vanishing. And what affects me most, is to think that this change (which is already settling into happiness) has been wrought by Austin's counsels and appeals to her sense and affection. "It is to you," he said, "that Trevanion must look for more than comfort--for cheerfulness and satisfaction. Your child is gone from you--the world ebbs away--you two should be all in all to each other. Be so." Thus, after paths so devious, meet those who had parted in youth, now on the verge of age. There, in the same scenes where Austin and Ellinor had first formed acquaintance, he aiding her to soothe the wounds inflicted by the ambition that had separated their lots, and both taking counsel to insure the happiness of the rival she had preferred.

After all this vexed public life of toil, and care, and ambition,--to see Trevanion and Ellinor drawing closer and closer to each other, knowing private life and its charms for the first time,--verily it would have been a theme for an elegiast like Tibullus.

But all this while a younger love, with no blurred leaves to erase from the chronicle, has been keeping sweet account of the summer time. "Very near are two hearts that have no guile between them," saith a proverb, traced back to Confucius. O ye days of still sunshine, reflected back from ourselves--O ye haunts, endeared evermore by a look, tone, or smile, or rapt silence, when more and more with each hour, unfolded before me that nature, so tenderly coy, so cheerful though serious, so attuned by simple cares to affection, yet so filled, from soft musings and solitude, with a poetry that gave grace to duties the homeliest;--setting life's trite things to music. Here nature and fortune concurred alike: equal in birth and pretensions--similar in tastes and in objects,--loving the healthful activity of purpose, but content to find it around us--neither envying the wealthy, nor vying with the great; each framed by temper to look on the bright side of life, and find founts of delight, and green spots fresh with verdure, where eyes but accustomed to cities could see but the sands and the mirage. While afar (as man's duty) I had gone through the travail that, in wrestling with fortune, gives pause to the heart to recover its losses, and know the value of love, in its graver sense of life's earnest realities; heaven had reared, at the thresholds of home, the young tree that should cover the roof with its blossoms, and embalm with its fragrance the daily air of my being.

It had been the joint prayer of those kind ones I left, that such might be my reward; and each had contributed, in his or her several way, to fit that fair life for the ornament and joy of the one that now asked to guard and to cherish it. From Roland came that deep, earnest honour--a man's in its strength, and a woman's in its delicate sense of refinement. From Roland, that quick taste for all things noble in poetry, and lovely in nature--the eye that sparkled to read how Bayard stood alone at the bridge, and saved an army--or wept over the page that told how the dying Sidney put the bowl from his burning lips. Is that too masculine a spirit for some? Let each please himself. Give me the woman who can echo all thoughts that are noblest in man! And that eye, too--like Roland's,--could pause to note each finer mesh in the wonderful webwork of beauty. No landscape to her was the same yesterday and to-day,--a deeper shade from the skies could change the face of the moors--the springing up of fresh wild flowers, the very song of some bird unheard before, lent variety to the broad rugged heath. Is that too simple a source of pleasure for some to prize? Be it so to those who need the keen stimulants that cities afford. But if we were to pass all our hours in those scenes, it was something to have the tastes which own no monotony in Nature.

All this came from Roland; and to this, with thoughtful wisdom, my father had added enough knowledge from books to make those tastes more attractive, and to lend to impulsive perception of beauty and goodness the culture that draws finer essence from beauty, and expands the Good into the Better by heightening the site of the survey: hers, knowledge enough to sympathise with intellectual pursuits, not enough to dispute on man's province--Opinion. Still, whether in nature or in lore, still

"The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the choicest books!"

And yet, thou wise Austin--and thou Roland, poet that never wrote a verse,--yet your work had been incomplete, but then Woman stept in, and the mother gave to her she designed for a daughter the last finish of meek everyday charities--the mild household virtues,--"the soft word that turneth away wrath,"--the angelic pity for man's rougher faults--the patience that bideth its time--and, exacting no "rights of woman," subjugates us, delighted, to the invisible thrall.

Dost thou remember, my Blanche, that soft summer evening when the vows our eyes had long interchanged stole at last from the lip? Wife mine! come to my side,--look over me while I write; there, thy tears--(happy tears, are they not, Blanche?)--have blotted the page! Shall we tell the world more? Right, my Blanche, no words should profane the place where those tears have fallen!

* * * * *

And here I would fain conclude; but alas, and alas! that I cannot associate with our hopes, on this side the grave, him who, we fondly hoped, (even on the bridal-day, that gave his sister to my arms,) would come to the hearth where his place now stood vacant, contented with glory, and fitted at last for the tranquil happiness, which long years of repentance and trial had deserved.

Within the first year of my marriage, and shortly after a gallant share in a desperate action, which had covered his name with new honours, just when we were most elated, in the blinded vanity of human pride--came the fatal news! The brief career was run. He died, as I knew he would have prayed to die, at the close of a day ever memorable in the annals of that marvellous empire, which valour without parallel has annexed to the Throne of the Isles. He died in the arms of Victory, and his last smile met the eyes of the noble chief who, even in that hour, could pause from the tide of triumph by the victim it had cast on its bloody shore. "One favour," faltered the dying man; "I have a father at home--he too is a soldier. In my tent is my will: it gives all I have to him--he can take it without shame. That is not enough! Write to him--you--with your own hand, and tell him how his son fell!" And the hero fulfilled the prayer, and that letter is dearer to Roland than all the long roll of the ancestral dead! Nature has reclaimed her rights, and the forefathers recede before the son.

In a side chapel of the old Gothic church, amidst the mouldering tombs of those who fought at Acre and Agincourt, a fresh tablet records the death of HERBERT DE CAXTON, with the simple inscription--

HE FELL ON THE FIELD:

HIS COUNTRY MOURNED HIM,

AND HIS FATHER IS RESIGNED.

Years have rolled away since that tablet was placed there, and changes have passed on that nook of earth which bounds our little world: fair chambers have sprung up amidst the desolate ruins; far and near, smiling corn-fields replace the bleak, dreary moors. The land supports more retainers than ever thronged to the pennon of its barons of old; and Roland can look from his tower over domains that are reclaimed, year by year, from the waste, till the ploughshare shall win a lordship more opulent than those feudal chiefs ever held by the tenure of the sword. And the hospitable mirth that had fled from the ruin has been renewed in the hall; and rich and poor, great and lowly, have welcomed the rise of an ancient house from the dust of decay. All those dreams of Roland's youth are fulfilled; but they do not gladden his heart as does the thought that his son, at the last, was worthy of his line, and the hope that no gulf shall yawn between the two when the Grand Circle is rounded, and man's past and man's future meet where Time disappears. Never was that lost one forgotten!--never was his name breathed but tears rushed to the eyes; and, each morning, the peasant going to his labour might see Roland steal down the dell to the deep-set door of the chapel. None presume there to follow his steps, or intrude on his solemn thoughts; for there, in sight of that tablet, are his orisons made, and the remembrance of the dead forms a part of the commune with heaven. But the old man's step is still firm, and his brow still erect; and you may see in his face that it was no hollow boast which proclaimed that the "father was resigned:" and ye, who doubt if too Roman a hardness might not be found in that Christian resignation, think what it is to have feared for a son the life of shame, and ask, then, if the sharpest grief to a father is in a son's death of honour.

Years have passed, and two fair daughters play at the knees of Blanche or creep round the footstool of Austin, waiting patiently for the expected kiss when he looks up from the Great Book, now drawing fast to its close; or, if Roland enter the room, forget all their sober demureness, and, unawed by the terrible "Papæ!" run clamorous for the promised swing in the orchard, or the fiftieth recital of "Chevy Chase."

For my part, I take the goods the gods provide me, and am contented with girls that have the eyes of their mother; but Roland, ungrateful man, begins to grumble that we are so neglectful of the rights of heirs-male. He is in doubt whether to lay the fault on Mr Squills or on us: I am not sure that he does not think it a conspiracy of all three to settle the representation of the martial De Caxtons on "the spindle side." Whosoever be the right person to blame, an omission so fatal to the straight line in the pedigree is rectified at last; and Mrs Primmins again rushes, or rather rolls--in the movement natural to forms globular and spheral--into my father's room with--

"Sir, sir--it is a boy!"

Whether my father asked also this time that question so puzzling to metaphysical inquirers, "What is a boy?" I know not; I rather suspect he had not leisure for so abstract a question: for the whole household burst on him, and my mother, in that storm peculiar to the elements of the Mind Feminine--a sort of sunshiny storm between laughter and crying--whirled him off to behold the _Neogilos_.

Now, some months after that date, on a winter's evening, we were all assembled in the hall, which was still our usual apartment, since its size permitted to each his own segregated and peculiar employment. A large screen fenced off from interruption my father's erudite settlement; and quite out of sight, behind that impermeable barrier, he was now calmly winding up that eloquent peroration which will astonish the world whenever, by Heaven's special mercy, the printer's devils have done with "The History of Human Error." In another nook my uncle had ensconced himself--stirring his coffee, (in the cup my mother had presented to him so many years ago, and which had miraculously escaped all the ills the race of crockery is heir to,) a volume of _Ivanhoe_ in the other hand: and, despite the charm of the Northern Wizard, his eye _not_ on the page. On the wall behind him, hangs the picture of Sir Herbert de Caxton, the soldier-comrade of Sidney and Drake; and, at the foot of the picture, Roland has slung his son's sword beside the letter that spoke of his death, which is framed and glazed: sword and letter had become as the last, nor least honoured, Penates of the hall:--the son was grown an ancestor.

Not far from my uncle sat Mr Squills, employed in mapping out phrenological divisions on a cast he had made from the skull of one of the Australian aborigines--a ghastly present which (in compliance with a yearly letter to that effect) I had brought him over, together with a stuffed "wombat" and a large bundle of sarsaparilla. (For the satisfaction of his patients, I may observe, parenthetically, that the skull and the "wombat"--that last is a creature between a miniature pig and a very small badger--were not precisely packed up with the sarsaparilla!) Farther on stood open, but idle, the new pianoforte, at which, before my father had given his preparatory hem, and sat down to the Great Book, Blanche and my mother had been trying hard to teach me to bear the third in the glee of "The Chough and Crow to roost have gone,"--vain task, in spite of all flattering assurances that I have a very fine "bass," if I could but manage to humour it. Fortunately for the ears of the audience, that attempt is now abandoned. My mother is hard at work on her tapestry--the last pattern in fashion--to wit, a rosy-cheeked young troubadour playing the lute under a salmon-coloured balcony: the two little girls look gravely on, prematurely in love, I suspect, with the troubadour; and Blanche and I have stolen away into a corner, which, by some strange delusion, we consider out of sight, and in that corner is the cradle of the _Neogilos_. Indeed it is not our fault that it is there--Roland would have it so; and the baby is so good, too, he never cries--at least so say Blanche and my mother: at all events he does not cry to-night. And indeed, that child is a wonder! He seems to know and respond to what was uppermost at our hearts when he was born; and yet more, when Roland (contrary, I dare say, to all custom) permitted neither mother, nor nurse, nor creature of womankind, to hold him at the baptismal font, but bent over the new Christian his own dark, high-featured face, reminding one of the eagle that hid the infant in its nest, and watched over it with wings that had battled with the storm: and from that moment the child, who took the name of HERBERT, seemed to recognise Roland better than his nurse, or even mother--seemed to know that, in giving him that name, we sought to give Roland his son once more! Never did the old man come near the infant but it smiled and crowed, and stretched out its little arms; and then the mother and I would press each other's hands secretly, and were not jealous. Well, then, Blanche and Pisistratus were seated near the cradle, and talking in low whispers, when my father pushed aside the screen and said--

"There--the work is done! and now it may go to press as soon as you will."

Congratulations poured in--my father bore them with his usual equanimity; and standing on the hearth, his hand in his waistcoat, he said musingly, "Among the last delusions of Human Error, I have had to notice Rousseau's phantasy of Perpetual Peace, and all the like pastoral dreams, which preceded the bloodiest wars that have convulsed the earth for more than a thousand years!"

"And to judge by the newspapers," said I, "the same delusions are renewed again. Benevolent theorists go about, prophesying peace as a positive certainty, deduced from that sibyl-book the ledger; and we are never again to buy cannons, provided only we can exchange cotton for corn."

MR SQUILLS, (_who, having almost wholly retired from general business, has, from want of something better to do, attended sundry "Demonstrations in the North," since which he has talked much about the march of improvement, the spirit of the age, and_ "US _of the nineteenth century."_)--I heartily hope that these benevolent theorists _are_ true prophets. I have found, in the course of my professional practice, that men go out of the world quite fast enough, without hacking them into pieces, or blowing them up into the air. War is a great evil.

BLANCHE, (_passing by Squills, and glancing towards Roland_.)--Hush!

Roland remains silent.

MR CAXTON.--War is a great evil; but evil is admitted by Providence into the agency of creation, physical and moral. The existence of evil has puzzled wiser heads than ours, Squills. But, no doubt, there is One above who has His reasons for it. The combative bump seems as common to the human skull as the philoprogenitive; if it is in our organisation, be sure it is not there without cause. Neither is it just to man, nor wisely submissive to the Disposer of all events, to suppose that war is wholly and wantonly produced by human crimes and follies--that it conduces _only_ to ill, and does not as often arise from the necessities interwoven in the framework of society, and speed the great ends of the human race, conformably with the designs of the Omniscient. Not one great war has ever desolated the earth, but has left behind it seeds that have ripened into blessings incalculable.

MR SQUILLS, (_with the groan of a dissentient at a "Demonstration."_)--Oh! oh! OH!

Luckless Squills! Little could he have foreseen the shower-bath, or rather _douche_, of erudition that fell splash on his head, as he pulled the spring with that impertinent _Oh! oh!_ Down first came the Persian War, with Median myriads disgorging all the rivers they had drunk up in their march through the East--all the arts, all the letters, all the sciences, all the notions of liberty that we inherit from Greece--my father rushed on with them all, sousing Squills with his proofs that, without the Persian War, Greece would never have risen to be the teacher of the world. Before the gasping victim could take breath, down came Hun, Goth, and Vandal, on Italy and Squills.

"What, sir!" cried my father, "don't you see that, from those eruptions on demoralised Rome, came the regeneration of manhood; the re-baptism of earth from the last soils of paganism; and the remote origin of whatever of Christianity yet exists, free from the idolatries with which Rome contaminated the faith?"

Squills held up his hands, and made a splutter. Down came Charlemagne--paladins and all! There my father was grand! What a picture he made of the broken, jarring, savage elements of barbaric society. And the iron hand of the great Frank--settling the nations, and founding existent Europe. Squills was now fast sinking into coma, or stupefaction; but, catching at a straw, as he heard the word "Crusades" he stuttered forth, "Ah! _there_ I defy you!"

"Defy me, there!" cries my father; and one would think the ocean was in the shower-bath, it came down with such a rattle. My father scarcely touched on the smaller points in excuse for the Crusades, though he recited very volubly all the humane arts introduced into Europe by that invasion of the East; and showed how it had served civilisation, by the vent it afforded for the rude energies of chivalry--by the element of destruction to feudal tyranny that it introduced--by its use in the emancipation of burghs, and the disrupture of serfdom. But he showed, in colours vivid as if caught from the skies of the East, the great spread of Mahometanism, and the danger it menaced to Christian Europe--and drew up the Godfreys, and Tancreds, and Richards, as a league of the Age and Necessity, against the terrible progress of the sword and the Koran. "You call them madmen," cried my father, "but the frenzy of nations is the statesmanship of fate! How know you that--but for the terror inspired by the hosts who marched to Jerusalem--how know you that the Crescent had not waved over other realms than those which Roderic lost to the Moor? If Christianity had been less a passion, and the passion had less stirred up all Europe--how know you that the creed of the Arab (which was then, too, a passion) might not have planted its mosques in the forum of Rome, and on the site of Notre Dame? For in the war between creeds--when the creeds are embraced by vast races--think you that the reason of sages can cope with the passion of millions? Enthusiasm must oppose enthusiasm. The crusader fought for the tomb of Christ, but he saved the life of Christendom."

My father paused. Squills was quite passive; he struggled no more--he was drowned.

"So," resumed Mr Caxton, more quietly--"so, if later wars yet perplex us as to the good that the All-wise One draws from their evils, our posterity may read their uses as clearly as we now read the finger of Providence resting on the barrows of Marathon, or guiding Peter the Hermit to the battle-fields of Palestine. Nor, while we admit the evil to the passing generation, can we deny that many of the virtues that make the ornament and vitality of peace sprang up first in the convulsions of war!" Here Squills began to evince faint signs of resuscitation, when my father let fly at him one of those numberless waterworks which his prodigious memory kept in constant supply. "Hence," said he, "hence not unjustly has it been remarked by a philosopher, shrewd at least in worldly experience--(Squills again closed his eyes, and became exanimate)--'It is strange to imagine that war, which of all things appears the most savage, should be the passion of the most heroic spirits. But 'tis in war that the knot of fellowship is closest drawn; It is in war that mutual succour is most given--mutual danger run, and common affection most exerted and employed; for heroism and philanthropy are almost one and the same!'"[12]

My father ceased, and mused a little. Squills, if still living, thought it prudent to feign continued extinction.

"Not," said Mr Caxton, resuming--"not but what I hold it our duty never to foster into a passion what we must rather submit to as an awful necessity. You say truly, Mr Squills--war is an evil; and woe to those who, on slight pretences, open the gates of Janus,

----'The dire abode,
And the fierce issues of the furious god.'"

Mr Squills, after a long pause, (employed in some of the more handy means for the reanimation of submerged bodies, supporting himself close to the fire in a semi-erect posture, with gentle friction, self-applied, to each several limb, and copious recourse to certain steaming stimulants which my compassionate hands prepared for him,) stretches himself, and says feebly, "In short, then, not to provoke further discussion, you would go to war in defence of your country. Stop, sir--stop, for God's sake! I agree with you--I agree with you! But, fortunately, there is little chance now that any new Boney will build boats at Boulogne to invade us."

MR CAXTON.--I am not so sure of that, Mr Squills. (_Squills falls back with a glassy stare of deprecating horror._) I don't read the newspapers very often, but the past helps me to judge of the present.

Therewith my father earnestly recommended to Mr Squills the careful perusal of certain passages in Thucydides, just previous to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, (_Squills hastily nodded the most servile acquiescence_,) and drew an ingenious parallel between the signs and symptoms foreboding that outbreak, and the very apprehension of coming war which was evinced by the recent _Io pæans_ to peace. And, after sundry notable and shrewd remarks, tending to show where elements for war were already ripening, amidst clashing opinions and disorganised states, he wound up with saying,--"So that, all things considered, I think we had better just keep up enough of the bellicose spirit, not to think it a sin if we are called upon to fight for our pestles and mortars, our three per cents, goods, chattels, and liberties. Such a time must come, sooner or later, even though the whole world were spinning cotton, and printing sprigged calicoes. _We_ may not see it, Squills, but that young gentleman in the cradle, whom you have lately brought into light, may."

"And if so," said my uncle abruptly, speaking for the first time--"if indeed it is for altar and hearth!"

My father suddenly drew in and pished a little, for he saw that he was caught in the web of his own eloquence.

Then Roland took down from the wall his son's sword. Stealing to the cradle, he laid it in its sheath by the infant's side, and glanced from my father to us with a beseeching eye. Instinctively Blanche bent over the cradle, as if to protect the _Neogilos_; but the child, waking, turned from her, and, attracted by the glitter of the hilt, laid one hand lustily thereon, and pointed with the other, laughingly, to Roland.

"Only on my father's proviso," said I hesitatingly. "For hearth and altar--nothing less!"

"And even in that case," said my father, "add the shield to the sword!" and on the other side of the infant he placed Roland's well-worn Bible, blistered in many a page with secret tears.

There we all stood, grouping round the young centre of so many hopes and fears--in peace or in war, born alike for the Battle of Life. And he, unconscious of all that made our lips silent, and our eyes dim, had already left that bright bauble of the sword, and thrown both arms round Roland's bended neck.

"_Herbert_," murmured Roland; and Blanche gently drew away the sword,--and left the Bible.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cowley's _Ode to Light_.

[2] Cowley on _Town and Country_. (Discourse on Agriculture.)

[3] How true are the following remarks:--

"Action is the first great requisite of a colonist, (that is, a pastoral or agricultural settler.) With a young man, the tone of his mind is more important than his previous pursuits. I have known men of an active, energetic, contented disposition, with a good flow of animal spirits, who had been bred in luxury and refinement, succeed better than men bred as farmers, who were always hankering after bread and beer, and market ordinaries of Old England.... To be dreaming when you should be looking after your cattle, is a terrible drawback.... There are certain persons who, too lazy and too extravagant to succeed in Europe, sail for Australia under the idea that fortunes are to be made there by a sort of legerdemain, spend or lose their capital in a very short space of time, and return to England to abuse the place, the people, and everything connected with colonisation."--_Sidney's Australian Handbook_--admirable for its wisdom and compactness.

[4] Lest this seem an exaggeration, I venture to annex an extract from a MS. letter to the author from Mr George Blakeston Wilkinson, author of _South Australia_.

"I will instance the case of one person who had been a farmer in England, and emigrated with about £2000 about seven years since. On his arrival, he found that the prices of sheep had fallen from about 30s. to 5s. or 6s. per head, and he bought some well-bred flocks at these prices. He was fortunate in obtaining a good and extensive _run_, and he devoted the whole of his time to improving his flocks, and encouraged his shepherds by rewards; so that, in about four years, his original number of sheep had increased from 2500 (which cost him £700) to 7000; and the breed and wool were also so much improved that he could obtain £1 per head for 2000 fat sheep, and 15s. per head for the other 5000, and this at a time when the general price of sheep was from 10s. to 16s. This alone increased his original capital, invested in sheep, from £700 to £5700. The profits from the wool paid the whole of his expenses and wages for his men."

[5] I felt sure, from the first, that the system called "The Wakefield" could never fairly represent the ideas of Mr Wakefield himself, whose singular breadth of understanding, and various knowledge of mankind, belied the notion that fathered on him the clumsy execution of a theory wholly inapplicable to a social state like Australia. I am glad to see that he has vindicated himself from the discreditable paternity. But I grieve to find that he still clings to one cardinal error of the system, in the discouragement of small holdings, and that he evades, more ingeniously than ingenuously, the important question--"What should be the minimum price of land?"

[6] "The profits of cattle-farming are smaller than those of the sheep-owner, (if the latter have good luck, for much depends upon that,) but cattle-farming is much more safe as a speculation, and less care, knowledge, and management are required. £2000, laid out on 700 head of cattle, if good runs be procured, might increase the capital in five years, from £2000 to £6000, besides enabling the owner to maintain himself, pay wages, &c."--_MS. letter from G. B. Wilkinson._

[7] _Dingoes_--the name given by Australian natives to the wild dogs.

[8] Not having again to advert to Uncle Jack, I may be pardoned for informing the reader, by way of annotation, that he continues to prosper surprisingly in Australia, though the Tibbets' Wheal stands still for want of workmen. Despite of a few ups and downs, I have had no fear of his success until this year, (1849,) when I tremble to think what effect the discovery of the gold mines in California may have on his lively imagination. If thou escapist that snare, Uncle Jack, _res age, tutus eris_,--thou art safe for life!

[9] _Light of Nature--chapter on Judgment._--See the very ingenious illustration of doubt, "whether the part is always greater than the whole"--taken from time, or rather eternity.

[10] Sir Philip Sidney.

[11] Lord Hervey's _Memoirs of George II._

[12] Shaftesbury.

LYNMOUTH REVISITED.

BY THE SKETCHER.

Nearly sixteen years ago, there appeared in the pages of Maga, descriptions of the scenery of Lynmouth, North Devon. As Sketcher, I then proposed to myself to analyse the impressions which landscape scenery makes upon the minds of artists and lovers of nature, and to show that there must be in the artist a higher aim than imitation; and that the pleasure of the unpractising admirer will be in proportion to his power of extracting from the insensitive matter of nature, the poetic life of thought; to rescue both art and nature from the degradation they suffer when disconnected with the higher senses; to show that nature, to be the worthy object of art, should be suggestive. Its charm is to elicit, to draw out finely, and to embellish what is already, in a ruder state, in the mind. If there be poverty within, there is no room for the reception of the riches so profusely surrounding us in the external world. Neither artists nor amateurs are generally sufficiently aware, that a previous education is necessary to make sketching effective and expressive. We find _ourselves_ everywhere. Whatever be the scenery, the sketcher brings little back that he does not take with him. Hence the diversity in the character of sketches--of different sketchers--and the one character that pervades the portfolio of each. I have heard of an artist who visited our lakes, and brought back with him only cottages! Morland would have added, or rather made the principal, the stye and pigs; and even Gainsborough's sketch-book may have shown little more than ragged pollards, and groups of rustic children. To know what is in nature, you must know what is in yourself. If you are ignorant of art, your sketches can only be accidentally good. It is possible to be a very close observer, even of minute beauties, and yet be a very bad sketcher. One of an original genius will convert, and, by a bold dissimilitude in non-essentials, incorporate into his own previous conceptions whatever is before him; and thus, by preserving the great suggestive characteristics, represent nature with a far greater truth, exhibiting her very life and feeling, than they who aim at truth through exact and minute imitation.

Let this be exemplified in Salvator Rosa. Do his wild scenes of rock, and rugged rock-engendered trees, exist to the general eye, exactly in their form, and colour, and composition, as he has represented them? The exact sketcher would have found a less correspondence in branches and foliage--a less marked living feeling between the rocks and trees; he would have found much in the colouring, especially in the green leaves, where they are so few and scattered, of an inconsistent gaiety. These would have been distracting; but his educated eye, toned by a one bold feeling, rejected these, and seized the wilder characteristic, to which he resolutely, under the impulse of his genius, made all the rest subservient and suggestive. He embodied what he saw with what he felt, and marred not the savage freedom by attractive littlenesses, but gave it full play; and with an execution as bold and free, which the minute critic would pronounce not natural, though most natural, as most expressive of that spontaneous out-flung unconstrained-ness of nature's growth, which really pervades all, he harmoniously brought all the parts under the dominion of one poetic feeling. Take his foliage, even in form--to say nothing of its actual unnaturalness of colour in the exact sense--there is a raggedness, as torn and storm-beaten, in the individual leafage, which the untutored sketcher will in vain look for in his beat; but all this stamps one great truth, and that speaks more of nature than many small ones. I do not mean here to give the palm to Salvator Rosa, as if he were "Lord of Landscape;" I mention him as a strong example, as the boldest deviator from that which the unpoetic eye sees, and minds totally uncharmed by poetry can conceive. I think it well here to lay some stress upon these preliminary remarks, because much has been written, with a great fascination of language, recommending, as I believe too strongly, a close observation in detail of the phenomena of nature; overlooking the great phenomenon--the accordance of external nature with the heart, feelings, and very life and soul of man. One writer in particular, with great ability, and audacious confidence, because in his blindness he, uneducated to it, sees not in nature what such great men as Salvator Rosa and Gaspar Poussin, have extracted from it, and yet made it nature's and their own, flings upon their established fame the _brutum fulmen_ of his contempt and abuse. _Damnat quod non intelligit._ He knows not the true principles of art which exist to perfection in their works, nor knows how strictly these principles belong to art and nature only through and by their connexion with the mind of man. You may study meteorology in the _Penny Magazine_, or geology and botany, most scientifically; but it will further you a very little way, while your portfolio is under your arm, and your eye in search of a picturesque which you have not learned to find. Nay, it may happen, for it often does happen, that the more you sketch the farther you are from art. It is possible, also, for the most accomplished artist to sketch too much; and to stay the power of his invention, by referring too constantly to the preciseness and individuality of scenery. He dares not so much trust his palette as his portfolio, as it were his register of nature, to which he has bound himself beyond the usual apprenticeship.

It has been remarked by sketchers, amateurs, and artists by profession, that, upon a sketching expedition, "their hands are not in" for some days. I doubt if the fault be so much in the hand as in the eye; for in most cases the hand had come from the immediate practice of the studio: but the eye is distracted by the many beauties which now force themselves into observation, and which in the home-practice, and in following the mind's bent on the canvass, the memory did not vividly present as not wanted. It is more difficult, therefore, at first to generalise, to escape the fascinations of local form and colour, which keep the eye from the instant acknowledgment of a whole. We are thus at first apt to begin with the detail, instead of leaving it to the last, by which means we have more than we want, or less accurately and accommodatingly what is wanted. When we have learned again to reject, and to see, we are surprised with a facility we at first despaired of. We do, then, because we know what to do.

I would recommend therefore, before setting out on such expeditions, where it be practicable, to visit daily, and all day, during a week or fortnight, the best galleries of pictures, such as contain all schools, that as much as possible there may be no bias, but such as every one must find in himself before he reaches the gallery. I would do this to confirm, and fasten upon the memory, the principles of art,--breadth, greatness, truth, expression, colouring, sentiment, and how obtained. Here will be a grammar without its drudgery; for every lesson will be a delight, if we go to it with no conceited opinions of our own, and no cavilling spirit bringing ourselves down to an admission that these great men of former days had some foundation upon which they built their fame, their acknowledged fame--so searching, we shall see the reasons of their doings--why they, each for their own purpose, adopted this or that style of colour, or of composition, or chiaroscuro. Going then immediately to nature from art, we shall see how very true art is--a secret that, without this immediate comparison, would be very apt to be hidden from us. No man in his senses would begin a science from his own observation alone. It was not the first shepherd who, studying the stars, laid open the study of astronomy. We shall learn nothing by despising all that has been learnt before we were born. So it is in art; some principles have been established, which it is well to know thoroughly; and, the more we know them, the more enthusiastic will be our admiration, the love of art through nature, and of nature through art.

During my former visits to the beautiful scenery of Lynmouth, I had seldom taken any whole view, but chiefly studied parts for use in the detail of compositions; and this I think to be a good practice for the landscape painter, which term I use here in contradistinction to the painter of views, there is so great a pleasure in as it were creating--in being the ®poiêtês®, the maker--that, to one accustomed to and at all skilled in composing, it becomes an irksome task to make a "view." The continued habit of view-painting must necessarily check invention, and limit unworthily the painter's aim. In revisiting Lynmouth, I changed my purpose and this, not under the idea of making pictures of any of the sketches, but for the practice of noting how a picture, framed in from nature, as if it were a work of art, would be brought to its completion; for sketching, with such an object, I cannot but think of as great importance as the other method. We must learn from nature to make a whole, as well as the use of the parts separately. With this purpose the sketcher will look out for subjects, not detail; he will be curious to see how nature composes now, and when it is that scenes are most agreeable--made so by what combination of lines, by what agreement of colours, by what proportions of light, and gradations of shadow: for he will often find, when nature looks her best, that light and shade are employed as substitutes for lines which, in the actual and true drawing of them, would be unfortunate. How often is it that a scene strikes the eye at once for its great beauty, that, when we come to it again, seems entirely to have lost its charm! Now these spots should be visited again and again, till the causes be ascertained of the charm and of the deterioration: for here must lie the principles of art, nature assuming and putting off that which is most agreeable to us, that in which our human sympathies are engaged. Sketchers often pass hastily these spots that are no longer beautiful; but they are wrong, for they can learn best, by accurate observation of the changes presented to them. And they will thus learn to remedy deficiencies, and acquire a better power of selecting scenes, by knowing where the deficiencies lie; the mind's eye will not dwell upon them, or will fill them up, and the composition show itself to them in a manner quite otherwise than it would have appeared, had no such previous observations been made. There are sometimes good lines marred by bad effects, and bad lines remedied by skilful management of effects--of light and shadow. It must be a practised eye that can properly abstract and separate lines from effects, and effects from lines. We play with colour, but our serious business is with light and shade; the real picture is more frequently in black and white, than those who addict themselves to colour will credit. I will here but refer to some passages in the early numbers of _The Sketcher_, on the composition of lines, wherein I showed, and I believe truly explained, the principle of composition upon which many of the old masters worked. And I particularly exemplified the principle in the pictures of Gaspar Poussin, whom Thompson calls learned Poussin, (unless he meant Nicolo, who, though in other respects he may with equal justice be called learned, is, in this art of the composition of lines, in no way to be compared with his brother-in-law.) I showed that there was one simple rule which he invariably adopted. We may likewise go to nature, and find the rule there, when nature, as a composition, looks her best.

I think it will be found that any scene is most pleasing when its variety is in the smallest portion--that is, when the greatest part of the picture is made up of the most simple and pervading lines, and the intricacies, all variety, and alternations, and interchanges of lines and parts, shall be confined to a very small portion; for thus a greatness, a largeness, an importance, is preserved and heightened, and at the same time, monotony is avoided--though there be much in it, the piece is not crowded. There is a print from a picture by Smith of Chichester, who, by the bye, obtained the prize, against Richard Wilson, which attracted my attention the other day at a print-seller's window. It was meant, I presume, as an imitation of Claude, Claude reduced to the then English vulgarity. If multiplicity of parts would make a picture, doubtless Richard Wilson, with his simple, sweeping, free lines, could have no chance in competition with such a painter. Every niche was crowded--and equally so--every niche might have made a picture, such as it was, but all the niches made none, or a bad one. Why, the variety was universal; it should have been confined to the smaller space. The picture is objectionable in other points of view; but this ignorance of the very nature of composition was fatal. Yet this work was evidently an imitation of Claude, whose variety, however, of distance, the modern imitator brought into his very foreground. He could not see the simplicity of Claude. Not that Claude himself was a learned composer; his lines are often incongruous, and there is not unfrequently a poverty of design, scarcely concealed by the magic of his colouring. Now, I find, in looking over my sketches, that I had selected those scenes where the passages of variety lay in the distance, and, it being a narrow valley, they occupied but a small space; but, though small, it was mostly the place of interest--there was the more vivid light or the deeper shade, the change, the life of the picture, and the embellished way of escape out of a defile, that from its closeness would have been otherwise painful. In saying "painful," I seem to point to a defect in this Lynmouth valley. Indeed, it will not suit those who do not love close scenery. That certainly is its character. Yet is it not so close, but that there is room for this kind of variety. I think what I have said upon this point, of interest and variety lying in the smaller portion of the canvass--for I here speak even of nature as a picture--may be applicable generally to light. I imagine those scenes will be found most pleasing, where the light is by far the smallest portion, the half-tone by far the larger, and the dark but to show the power of both. Take, for instance, a garden scene--a broad walk, trees on each side--all is in broad light, but all is in painful glare, monotony, and sameness of endless detail. Let a shadow pass over it, a broad shadow--or rather a half-tone of light, that shall only show the local colour subdued--how, let a gleam pass across it, and just touch here and there the leafage, and seem to escape behind it--how small is the light, but it has given life to the picture. I cannot but think it a fault of our day that half-tone is neglected; light is made a glare, and therefore the very object of light is lost. I believe it was the aim at a mere novelty that first introduced this false principle. It was recommended to Guido, but he failed in it: pictures so painted by him are far from being his best. Rubens erred in it; but modern artists have carried the false principle to the utmost limit; and, in doing so, are liable to a palpable incongruity; an impossibility in nature, which they profess to imitate. For it is the property of light to take away colour; yet in this school, the whitest light, and the most vivid colours, are in the same piece. The old painters, aware of this property of light, in their out-of-door scenes, avoid, not to say a white, but even a light sky--especially the Venetian--so that their great depth and power of colour was rendered natural, by the depth of their skies. Their blues were dark--intensely so--but they were sustained by the general colour. If it be said the Italian skies are notoriously the bluest, Mr Ruskin has, in contradiction, pronounced them to be white, but I believe the fact is, that the great painters considered colour, as a beauty in art, _sui generis_, and that there was no need of a slavish adherence, in this respect, to nature herself. Indeed, they delighted, even when aiming at the richest colouring, to subdue all glare, and to preserve rather a deep half-tone.

I believe they studied nature through coloured glasses; and we learn from Mrs Merrifield that Gaspar Poussin used a black mirror, which had been bequeathed to him by Bamboccio. The works of some of the Flemish painters evidently show that they used such a mirror.

Have I not, then, reached Lynmouth yet? I found it in full leafage, and the little river as clear as amber, and like it in colour. It is always beautiful, and variable too--after rain it assumes more variety of colour, and of great richness. For most part of the time of my visit, it was more shallow than I had ever seen it. I was pleased that it was so, though I heard many complaints on that score. To those who sketch close to the water, it is, in fact, an advantage; for where the scenery is so confined, it is a great thing to be able to reach the large stones in mid-stream, and thus many new views are obtained; and when you are pretty close to water, whether it be a fall, or still, there is really but very little difference whether the river be full or not--the falls still retain sufficient body, and the still pools are sufficiently wide.

There are but two parties who know anything of the painter-scenery of Lynmouth--the sketchers and the anglers. The common road generally taken by tourists shows not half the beauty of the place. Did Lynmouth appear less beautiful?--certainly not. I easily recognised the chosen spots, and was surprised to find what little change had taken place. I knew individual trees perfectly, and, strange to say, they did not seem to have acquired growth. There were apparently the same branches stretching over the stream.

In one spot where large ledges of rock shoot out in mid-stream, down whose grooves the river rushes precipitously, (I had, sixteen years ago, sketched the scene,) there was growing out of the edge of the rock a young ash-tree shoot--to my surprise, there it was still, or the old had decayed, and a similar had sprang up. There is something remarkable in this continued identity, year after year, as if the law of mutability had been suspended. Yet there were changes. I remember sketching by a little fall of the river, where further progress was staid by a large mass of projecting rock. I felt sure there must be fine subjects beyond, and in my attempt to reach it from the opposite side by climbing, and holding by the boughs of a tree, one broke off, and I fell into the cauldron. I found now that the whole mass of this ledge of rock had given way, and opened a passage, and one of no great difficulty. Here, as I suspected, were some very fine studies. The place where I descended is about half a mile, or less, from Lynmouth, where the road turns, near to a little bridge across a watercourse intercepting the road. The view of this little fall from above is singularly beautiful; and, being so much elevated, you see the bed of the river continuous for a long distance, greatly varied. I know no place where there are such fine studies of this kind, though they are rarely taken, being only parts for composition--the whole not making a view.

Was Lynmouth, then, to me as it was?--not quite. The interval of years had not, I trust, been lost. If there was little change in the place, there was a change in the mind's eye and head of the sketcher. Though I recognised nearly all the spots where I had sketched, I found many new--some that might have escaped me, because I had not taken the feeling with me, at least not in the degree, in which I now possessed it. During all the years that had intervened, I had scarcely painted a single view. I could not but observe that the new scenes were those more especially suggestive, leading to the ideal.