Chapter VII: Part 7

Small of stature, square of figure, rough of manner, devoid of distinction, Ingres's personality afforded a great contrast to the refinement of his taste and the charm of his feminine figures. I can hardly conceive how a man thus built could show such delicacy in the choice of his subjects; how those short, thick fingers could draw such lovely, graceful forms.

Ingres hated academic conventionality; he mingled the Florentine and Greek schools; he sought the ideal not outside of reality but in its very essence, in the reconciliation of style with nature. Color he considered of secondary importance; he not only subordinated it voluntarily to drawing, but he did not have a natural gift for it. Ingres is the artist who has best expressed the voluptuousness not of flesh but of form; who has felt feminine beauty most profoundly and chastely.

CALAMATTA'S STUDIO

From 'Contemporary Artists'

I can still see Lamennais, with his worn-out coat, his round back, his yellow, parchment-like face, his eyes sparkling beneath a forehead imprinted with genius, and resembling somewhat Hoffmann's heroes. George Sand sometimes visited us, and it seemed to me that her presence lighted up the whole studio. She always spoke to me, for she knew that I was the brother of a distinguished writer, and when she looked over my plate I trembled like a leaf.

Thus our calm sedentary life was enlivened by an occasional sunbeam; and when I was hard at work with my graver, my mind was nourished by the minds of others. Giannone, the poet, read his commentaries on Shakespeare to us, and Mercure always had a witty retort in that faulty French which is so amusing in an Italian mouth. Calamatta would listen in silence, his eyes glued to his drawing of the 'Joconde,' at which he worked on his good days.

BLANC'S DÉBUT AS ART CRITIC

From 'Contemporary Artists'

In those days things happened just as they do now; the criticism is almost invariably the work of beginners. A youth who has acquired a smattering of learning, who has caught up the slang of the studios, and pretends to have a system or to defend a paradox, is chosen to write an account of the Salon. I was that youth, that novice. And after all, how become a workman unless you work? how become expert if you do not study, recognize your mistakes and repair them? Beneath our mistakes truth lies hidden.

So I arrived at Brussels to exercise the trade of critic, and found myself in the presence of two men who were then making a brilliant debut as painters: De Keyser and Henri Leys. I hope I shall be forgiven if I reproduce my criticism of the latter's 'Massacre of the Magistrates of Louvain.'

"Imagine to yourself a small public square, such as might
have existed in Louvain in the fourteenth century; this
square filled with angry people demanding satisfaction for
the death of their chief, Gautier de Lendes, assassinated by
the nobles; the approach to the palace of justice crowded
with men armed to the teeth; at the top of the stairs the
city magistrates on their way to execution, some as calm as
if about to administer justice, others bewailing that the
people know not what they do; peasants awaiting them at the
foot of the stairs, dagger in hand, a smile upon their lips;
here and there fainting women, dead bodies being stripped,
dying men being tortured, and an inextricable confusion of
monks, burghers, soldiers, children and horses. Then if you
fancy this scene painted with the warmth and impetuosity of a
Tintoretto, or as Hugo would have written it, you will have
an idea of Leys's picture. It may not be prudent to trust an
enthusiastic criticism; but my opinion is shared by every
one. I may be rash in praising a young man whose wings may
melt in the sun; but when, as is the case with M. Leys, the
artist possesses exact knowledge of the times and manners,
when he has verve, dash, and deep feeling, he needs only to
moderate ardor by reflection, and to ripen inspiration by
study, in order to become great."

One must admit that the above was not a bad beginning for an apprentice-connoisseur, and that I was fortunate in praising an unknown artist destined to make a great reputation.... There is something more real than reality in what passes in the soul of a great artist!

* * * * *

DELACROIX'S 'BARK OF DANTE'

From 'Contemporary Artists'

An admirable and altogether new quality is the weird harmony of color which makes the painting vibrate like a drama; or in other words, that sombre harmony itself is the foundation of the tragedy. Lyricism is expressed by mere difference in tones, which, heightened by their contrasts and softened by their analogy, become harmonious while clashing with each other. A new poetry was born of the French school, until then so sober of color, so little inclined to avail itself of the material resources of painting. And yet the expression thus achieved by Delacroix appeals to the soul as much as to the eyes. It is not merely optical beauty, but spiritual beauty of the highest order, that is produced by his superb coloring. In this picture the young painter's genius was revealed unto himself. He then knew that he had guessed the secret of an art which he was to carry to a perfection undreamed of before,--the orchestration of color....

Delacroix was the hero of Romanticism. His life was one long revolt in the name of color against drawing, of flesh against marble, of freedom of attitude against traditionary precision. He is an essentially modern genius inflamed by the poetry of Christianity, and he added tumultuous passions and feverish emotions to the antique serenity of art.

In those days youth was entirely given up to noble aspirations, to dreams of glory, to enthusiasm for beauty of expression and feeling, to an ardent love of liberty. Men were indifferent to stock quotations, but they rated spiritual values high. Mere theories inspired passion; quarrels on the subject of style and painting were common; men became enthusiastic over poetry and beauty--the ideal!

GENESIS OF THE 'GRAMMAR'

At dinner one day with the dignitaries of one of the largest cities of France, conversation turned upon the arts. All of the guests spoke of them, and well; but each intrenched himself behind his own personal views, in virtue of the adage "One cannot argue about tastes." I protested in vain against this false principle, saying that it was inadmissible, and that the classic Brillat-Savarin would have been shocked at such blasphemy. Even his name had no weight, and the guests separated gayly, after uttering heresies that made you shiver. Among the eminent men present there was one, however, who seemed somewhat mortified that he had not the most elementary idea of art; and he asked me if there was not some book in which its principles were presented in a clear and brief form. I replied that no such book existed, and that on leaving college I should have been only too happy to find such a work; and thereupon determined to write one.

MORAL INFLUENCE OF ART

From 'Grammar of Painting and Engraving'

Painting purifies people by its mute eloquence. The philosopher writes his thoughts for those who can think and read. The painter shows his thought to all who have eyes to see. That hidden and naked virgin, Truth, the artist finds without seeking. He throws a veil over her, encourages her to please, proves to her that she is beautiful, and when he has reproduced her image he makes us take her, and takes her himself, for Beauty.

In communicating to us what has been seen and felt by others, the painter gives new strength and compass to the soul. Who can say of how many apparently fugitive impressions a man's morality is composed, and upon what depends the gentleness of his manners, the correctness of his habits, the elevation of his thoughts? If the painter represents acts of cruelty or injustice, he inspires us with horror. The 'Unhappy Family' of Proudhon moves the fibres of charity better than the homilies of a preacher.... Examples of the sublime are rare in painting, as the painter is compelled to imprison every idea in a form. It may happen, nevertheless, that moved by thoughts to which he has given no form, the artist strikes the soul as a thunderbolt would the ear. It is then by virtue of the thought perceived, but not formulated, that the picture becomes sublime.

POUSSIN'S 'SHEPHERDS OF ARCADIA'

From 'Grammar of Painting and Engraving'

In a wide, heavily wooded country, the sojourning-place of that happiness sung by the poets, some peasants have discovered a tomb hidden by a thicket of trees, and bearing this brief inscription: "Et in Arcadia ego" (I too lived in Arcadia). These words, issuing from the tomb, sadden their faces, and the smiles die upon their lips. A young girl, carelessly leaning upon the shoulder of her lover, seems to listen, mute and pensive, to this salutation from the dead. The thought of death has also plunged into reverie a youth who leans over the tomb with bowed head, while the oldest shepherd points out the inscription he has just discovered. The landscape that completes this quiet picture shows reddened leaves upon arid rocks; hillocks that melt in the vague horizon, and in the distance, something ill-defined that resembles the sea. The sublime in this painting is that which we cannot see; it is the thought that hovers over it, the unexpected emotion that fills the soul of the spectator, transported suddenly beyond the tomb into the infinite unknown.

* * * * *

LANDSCAPE

From 'Grammar of Painting and Engraving'

The poetry of the fields and forests is inseparable from truth. But the painter must idealize this truth by making it express some sentiment; faithfulness of imitation alone would not suffice. The artist, master of reality, enlightens it with his eyes, transfigures it according to his heart, and makes it utter what is not in it--sentiment; and that which it neither possesses nor understands--thought.

* * * * *

STYLE

From 'Grammar of Painting and Engraving'

Drawing is a work of the mind; every drawing is the expression of a thought or sentiment, and is charged with showing us something superior to the apparent truth when that reveals neither sentiment nor thought. But what is this superior truth? It is sometimes the character of the object drawn, sometimes the character of the designer, and in high art is what we call style.

The artist sees in the creations of nature what he himself carries in the depth of his soul, tints them with the colors of his imagination, lends them the witchery of his genius. The temperament of the artist modifies the character of objects, and even that of living figures. But this power of taking possession is the appanage of great hearts, of great artists, of those whom we call masters,--who, instead of being the slaves of reality, dominate it. These have a style; their imitators have only a manner.

Aside from the style peculiar to every great master, there is in art something still superior and impersonal, which is style proper. Style is truth aggrandized, simplified, freed from all insignificant details, restored to its original essence, its typical aspect. This "style" _par excellence_, in which instead of recognizing the soul of an artist we feel the breath of the universal soul, was realized in the Greek sculpture of the time of Pericles.

THE LAW OF PROPORTION IN ARCHITECTURE

From 'Grammar of Painting and Engraving'

Man, from the fact that he is the only intelligent being in creation, desires to show his intelligence in his works. In order to do so he makes them resemble himself in a measure, by impressing upon them the characteristic of his intelligence, which is logic, and that of his body, which is proportion. Architecture employs inorganic matter alone--stone, marble, brick, iron, wood, when the sap has been dried out of it and it ceases to be an organic substance; and yet, under the hand of the architect, this inert matter expresses sentiments and feelings. By subjecting it to the laws of order, symmetry, and proportion, in a manner which appeals to the eye, he lends them a semblance of life and an organism conceived after his own image. By this artificial proportion, inert matter is raised to the dignity of the animal kingdom; it is rendered eloquent and capable of expressing the soul of the artist, and often that of a race.

But human monuments have still another point in common with the body. Order, symmetry, and proportion are needed rigorously only on the exterior. Within, general beauty no longer dominates, but individual life. If we look at the interior of the human body we find no symmetry, no arrangement but that demanded by the function of the organs. The brain, it is true, has two symmetrical lobes, because the brain is destined to a life of relation, to the life of intelligence. But in their individual functions the life of the internal organs presents another aspect. The stomach is a shapeless bag; the heart is a single muscle which is not even placed in the centre; the left lung is longer and narrower than the right; the spleen is a ganglion placed on the left side without any corresponding organ; but all this mechanism, which scientists consider wonderful in its irregularity, is hidden beneath a layer of similar members which repeat each other and correspond at equal distances from a central line, and constitute symmetry in animals, beauty in man. Similar in this respect to the human body, architectural monuments have a double life and a double aspect.

On the exterior, it is meet that they should be regular, symmetrical--but symmetrical from left to right like man, not from top to bottom nor from face to back. Their resemblance to man is further shown by openings, which are as the eyes and ears of the persons who inhabit them; their entrance occupies the centre of the edifice, as the mouth is placed on the central line of the face; they have rounded or angular forms according as they have been built to express strength, a virile idea, or grace, a feminine one; lastly, they have proportion, for there is a harmonious relation between their apparent members, and a mutual dependence which subordinates the variety of the parts to the unity of the whole, and which constitutes the necessary conditions of the beautiful in art.

The interior is not subjected to the necessity for duplicate members, to regularity of façade, nor to unity of appearance. Thus when the artist who has designed the monument performs its autopsy,--so to say,--we see, as in the human body, unequal dimensions, irregular shapes, disparities which resemble disorder to the eye, but which constitute the individuality of the edifice. Within reigns relative beauty, free, with fixed rule; without reigns a necessary beauty subjected to its own laws.

In man, character is the soul's expression. In architecture, character is the moral physiognomy o£ a building. As a portrait without character is but a vain shadow of the person represented, so a monument which does not appeal to the intelligence, which evokes no thought, is merely a pile of stones, a body without a soul. The soul of architecture is the thought it expresses.

Character tends towards beauty in man as well as in his works. If we glance at human society, we see faces which appear to be nothing more than a sketch. Parsimonious nature has given them only sufficient life to move in a narrow circle; they are mere individuals; they represent nothing but themselves. However, in the midst of the crowd, some men are noticeable for an abundance of vitality, whom favorable events have developed along their natural tendencies: they impersonate many individuals in one; their unity is equal to numbers; for good or evil, they have a character. In proportion as an individuality becomes more enriched, more pronounced, it attains character; in proportion as character loses its roughness it becomes beauty. This is also true of architecture.

STEEN STEENSEN BLICHER

(1782-1848)

Among the men nearest to the heart of the Danish people is Steen Steensen Blicher, who was born in 1782 on the border of the Jutland heath with which his name is so inseparably linked. The descendant of a line of country parsons, he was destined like them to the ministry, and while awaiting his appointment he supported his family by teaching and by farming.

When after years of hardship he finally obtained a parish on the Jutland heath, the salary was too small to support his large family. It was only during the very last years of his life that he was freed from harassing cares by the generosity of three friends, who, grateful for his literary work, paid off his debts.

While he was in college at Copenhagen he heard the lectures of the Norwegian Henrik Steffens, an interpreter of the German philosophic and romantic school. Steffens aroused a reaction against the formalism of the eighteenth century, and introduced romanticism into the North by his powerful influence over men like Oehlenschläger, Grundtvig, and Mynster in Denmark, and Ling and the "Phosphorists" in Sweden. Through these lectures Blicher became much interested in the Ossianic poems, of which he made an. Excellent Danish translation.

The poems and dramas with which he followed this work were of no great importance. It was not until he began to look into the old Danish traditions that he found his true sphere. The study of these quaint and simple legends led him to write those national peasant stories which he began to publish in 1826. They are not only the best of their kind in Danish, but they bear favorable comparison with the same kind of work in other literatures. They are not written as a study of social problems, or of any philosophy of life or moods of nature as they are reflected in human existence; they are merely a reproduction of what the country parson's own eyes beheld--the comedy and tragedy of the commonplace. What a less sensitive observer might have passed in silence--the brown heath, the breakers of the North Sea, the simple heart and life of the peasant--revealed to him the poesy, now merry, now sad, which he renders with so much art and so delicate a sympathy. Behind the believer in romanticism stands the lover of nature and of humanity.

Among his works the best known are 'E Bindstouw' (The Knitting-room), a collection of stories and poems, full of humor, simple and naive, told by the peasants themselves in their own homely Jutland dialect. These, as well as some of his later poems, especially 'Sneklokken' (The Snowbell), and 'Trækfuglene' (Birds of Passage), possess a clear, true, and national lyric quality.

Dying in 1848, Blicher was buried in Jutland, near the heath on which he spent whole days and nights of happy solitude. On one side of the stone above his grave is engraved a golden plover, on the other a pair of heath-larks, and around the foot a garland of heather, in memory of that intimate life with nature which, through his own great love for it, he endeared to all his readers.

* * * * *

A PICTURE

From the 'Poems'

I lay on my heathery hills alone;
The storm-winds rushed o'er me in turbulence loud;
My head rested lone on the gray moorland stone;
My eyes wandered skyward from cloud unto cloud.

There wandered my eyes, but my thoughts onward passed,
Far beyond cloud-track or tempest's career;
At times I hummed songs, and the desolate waste
Was the first the sad chimes of my spirit to hear.

Gloomy and gray are the moorlands where rest
My fathers, yet there doth the wild heather bloom,
And amid the old cairns the lark buildeth her nest,
And sings in the desert, o'er hill-top and tomb.

From Hewitt's 'Literature of Northern Europe.'

* * * * *

THE KNITTING-ROOM

It was the eve before Christmas Eve--no, stop! I am lying--it was the eve before that, come to think of it, that there was a knitting-bee going on at the schoolmaster's, Kristen Kornstrup's,--you know him? There were plenty that knew him, for in the winter he was schoolmaster, and in the summer he was mason, and he was alike clever at both. And he could do more than that, for he could stop the flow of blood, and discover stolen goods, and make the wind turn, and read prayers over felons, and much more too. But at this exorcising he was not so good as the parson, for he had not been through the black school.

So we had gathered there from the whole town,--oh, well, Lysgaard town is not so mighty big: there are only six farms and some houses, but then they were there too from Katballe and Testrup, and I think the lads from Knakkeborg had drifted over too--but that doesn't matter. We had got it measured off at last, and all of us had got our yarn over the hook in the ceiling above the table, and had begun to let the five needles work. Then the schoolmaster says, "Isn't there one of you that will sing something or tell something? then it will go so nicely with the work here." Then she began to speak, Kirsten Pedersdatter from Paps,--for she is always forward about speaking:--"I could sing you a little ditty if you cared to hear it--" "That we do," said I, "rattle it off!"--And she sang a ditty--I had never heard it before, but I remember it well enough, and it ran this way:--

* * * * *

But now I will tell you a story about a Poorman [gipsy] and what happened to him.

"If," said he--Mads Ur--"if you have been in Herning or thereabout, you know that there is a great marsh south of it. That same marsh is not so very nice to cross for those that don't know it well.

"It was the summer I was working for Kristens that a cow sank down out there, and it was one of those I was watching. I took her by the horns and I took her by the tail, but she would not help herself at all, and when one won't do a little bit, what is going to become of one? As I stand there pulling at that same refractory cow, up comes a Poorman from over at Rind, one of those they call knackers. 'I'll have to help you,' said he: 'you take hold of the horns, and I'll lift the tail.' That worked, for he pricked her under the tail with his pikestaff, and she was of a mind to help herself too. 'What do you give me for that now?' said he. 'I have nothing to give you,' said I, 'nothing but thanks.' 'I won't have them,' answered he, 'but if ever I should sink down on one road or another, will you lend me a hand if you are near by?' 'That I will do, indeed,' answered I; and then he tramped up to town, and that was all.

"How was it now that I came to work in Sund's parsonage?--well, that doesn't matter--I could swing a scythe, but how old I was I don't remember, for I don't rightly know how old I am now. The parson was a mighty good man, but God help us for the wife he had! She was as bad to him as any woman could be, and he hadn't a dog's chance with her. I have saved him twice from her grip, for he was a little scared mite of a thing, and she was big and strong, but I was stronger still, and I could get the better of her. Once she chased him around the yard with a knife in her hand, and cried that she would be even with him. I did not like that, so I took the knife from her and warned her to behave herself,--but that wasn't what I meant to say. Well, once while I was working there I stood near the pond looking at the aftermath. And up comes this same customer--this Poorman--drifting along the road toward me, and he had two women following him, and they each had a cradle on their backs and a child in each cradle. 'Good day to you,' said I. 'Same to you,' said he; 'how is your cow? Have you let her get into the marsh since?' 'Oh, no,' said I, 'and here is another thank-ye to you.' 'Are you working in this here bit of a parsonage?' said he. 'That I am,' said I. 'Well, now listen,' said he; 'couldn't you hide me these two with their little ones a day or so? for to-morrow there is to be a raid on our people, and I wouldn't like to have these in Viborghouse; I can stow myself away easy enough.' 'I'll see what I can do,' answered I; 'let them come, say a little after bedtime, to the West house there, and I'll get a ladder ready and help them up on the hayloft,--but have you food and drink yourself?' 'Oh, I shall do well enough,' said he, 'and now farewell to you until the sun is down.' So then they drifted along the road to a one-horse farm, and that evening they came, sure enough, and I hid the two women and the children until the second night; then they slipped away again. Before I parted with them, the Poorman said, 'I'd like to repay you this piece of work: isn't there something you want very much?' 'Yes,' said I.--'What might it be?'--'Hm! The only thing is Morten's Ane Kirstine at the farm where you went last night. But her parents won't let me have her; they say I have too little, and that is true too.' 'Hm, man,' says he, 'you look as if you had a pair of strong arms of your own; that is a good heirloom, and she has some pennies,--in a couple of days you might go and see what the old man's mind is. I'll help along the best I know how.' I listened to that, for evil upon them, those gipsies--they are not such fools. They can tell fortunes and discover stolen goods, and they can do both good and evil as it may happen.

"I thought over this thing a couple of days and some of the nights too, and then the third day I drifted over to Morten's. Ane Kirstine stood alone outside the gate with her back turned, for she was busy whitewashing a wall, so I came upon her before she knew it. 'Mercy on us! is that you?' she cried, 'where have you been all these many days?'--'I have been at home, and in the field, and on the heath, as it happened, and now I come to take a look at you.'--'I am not worth looking at,' said she, and thrust her clay-covered hands down into the pail to rinse off the clay. 'I don't care,' says I, 'whether you are yellow or gray, for you are the best friend I've got in this world; but I suppose I shall never be worthy of taking you in my arms in all honor and virtue.'--'It would be bad if that couldn't be,' said she, 'but it may happen we have got to wait awhile.'--'I can't wait over-long,' said I, 'for my mother will have no roof over her head, and either I shall have to take the farm or else a sister; that is how it stands, and it cannot be otherwise.'--Then she began to sniffle, and dried her eyes and sighed, but said nothing. I felt sorry for her, but what was there for one to do?

"Well, some one came who could tell us what to do, and it was none other than that same Poorman. Along he tramps with one of his women, and had his glass case on his back and wanted to get into the farm." Then he turned toward us and said:--'Well, well! what are you two doing there? Come along in with me, little girl, and I'll see if I can't manage it for you; but you stay out here, my little man! then we'll see what may come of it.'--They went, and I sat down on a stone that was lying there and folded my hands. I was not over-happy. I don't know how long I sat there, for I had fallen asleep; but then I was waked by some one kissing me, and it was no other than Ane Kirstine. 'Are you sitting there sleeping?' said she; 'come along in now, it is as it ought to be. The knacker has spoken a good word for us to mother, and when nothing could change her he said, "There is a black cock sitting on the perch: maybe a red one will crow over you if you don't do as I say." At this she got a little bit scared, and said, "Then let it be! but this I tell you, Ane Kirstine, I'll keep the black-headed cow for milking, and I'll have all the hay that is my share."--"That is no more than reasonable," said I, "and now we have no more to quarrel about, I suppose." Now you can let them publish the banns when you please.' 'And now, Ane Kirstine,' said I, 'this tramp here, he must have a reward, and I'll give it with a good will; and if we can get hold of him when we have our feast, he shall have a pot of soup and a hen to himself and those women and children.'--'That is right enough,' said she; 'and I will give them a rag or so, or a few more of my half-worn clothes.'

"Well, then my mother-in-law made a splendid feast, and there was plenty of everything. The Poorman was there, too, with all his following; but they had theirs by themselves, as you might know, seeing that they were of the knacker kind. Him I gave a coat, and Ane Kirstine gave the women each a cap and a kerchief and a piece of homespun for a petticoat for each of the young ones, and they were mighty well pleased.

"I and Ane Kirstine had lived happily together for about four years, as we do still, and all that time we had seen nothing of that Poorman, although we had spoken of him now and again. Sometimes we thought he had perished, and sometimes that they had put him into Viborghouse. Well, then it was that we were to have our second boy christened, him we called Sören, and I went to the parson to get this thing fixed up. As I came on the marsh to the selfsame place where I saw that Poor-customer the first time, there was somebody lying at one edge of the bog, on his back in the heather and with his legs in the ditch. I knew him well enough. 'Why are you lying here alone?' said I: 'is anything the matter with you?' 'I think I am dying,' said he, but he gasped so I could hardly understand him. 'Where are those women,' said I, 'that you used to have with you? Have they left you to lie here by the road?' He nodded his head and whispered, 'A drop of water.' 'That I will give you,' said I, and then I took some of the rainwater that stood in the ditch, in the hollow of my hat, and held it to his mouth. But that was of no use, for he could drink no longer, but drew up his legs and opened his mouth wide, and then the spirit left him. I felt so sorry for him that when I came to the parson's I begged that his poor ghost might be sheltered in the churchyard. That he gave me leave to do, and then I fetched him on my own wagon and nailed a couple of boards together and laid him down in the northwestern corner, and there he lies."

"Well now, that was it," said Kristen Katballe, "but why do you sit there so still, Marie Kjölvroe? Can you neither sing nor tell us something?" "That is not impossible," said she, and heaved a sigh, and sang so sadly that one might almost think it had happened to her.

THE HOSIER

"The greatest sorrow of all down here,
Is to lose the one we hold most dear."

Sometimes, when I have wandered far out on the wide heath, where I have had nothing but the brown heather around me and the blue sky above me; when I walked far away from mankind and the monuments of its busy doings here below,--which after all are only molehills to be leveled by time or by some restless Tamerlane;--when I drifted, light-hearted, free, and proud, like the Bedouin, whom no house, no narrowly bounded field chains to the spot, but who owns, possesses, all he sees,--who does not dwell, but who goes wherever he pleases; when my far-hovering eye caught a glimpse of a house in the horizon, and was thus disagreeably arrested in its airy flight, sometimes there came (God forgive me this passing thought, it was no more than that) the wish--would that this dwelling of man were not! there too is trouble and sorrow; there too they quarrel and fight about mine and thine!--Oh! the happy desert is mine, is thine, is everybody's, is nobody's.--It is said that a forester has proposed to disturb the settlements, to plant forests on the fields of the peasants and in place of their torn-down villages; the far more inhuman thought has taken possession of me at times--what if the heather-grown heath were still here the same as it was centuries ago, undisturbed, untouched by the hand of man! But as I have said, I did not mean it seriously. For when tired and weary, suffering from hunger and thirst, I thought longingly of the Arab's tent and coffee-pot, I thanked God that a heather-thatched roof--be it even miles away--promised me shelter and refreshment.

On a still, warm September day, several years ago, I found myself walking on this same heath, which, Arabically speaking, I call mine. No wind stirred the blushing heather; the air was heavy and misty with heat. The far-off hills that limited the horizon seemed to hover like clouds around the immense plain, and took many wonderful shapes: houses, towers, castles, men and animals; but all of dark uncertain outline, changing like dream pictures; now a cottage grew into a church, and that in turn into a pyramid; here a spire arose, there another sank; a man became a horse, and this in turn an elephant; here floated a boat, there a ship with all sails set.

My eye found its pleasure for quite a while in watching these fantastic figures--a panorama which only the sailor and the desert-dweller have occasion to enjoy--when finally I began to look for a real house among the many false ones; I wanted right ardently to exchange all my beautiful fairy palaces for a single human cottage.

Success was mine; I soon discovered a real farm without spires and towers, whose outlines became distincter and sharper the nearer I came to it, and which, flanked by peat-stacks, looked much larger than it really was. Its inmates were unknown to me. Their clothes were poor, their furniture simple, but I knew that the heath-dweller often hides noble rental in an unpainted box or in a miserable wardrobe, and a fat pocketbook inside a patched coat; when therefore my eyes fell on an alcove packed full of stockings, I concluded, and quite rightly, that I was in the house of a rich hosier. (In parenthesis it may be said that I do not know any poor ones.)

A middle-aged, gray-haired, but still strong man rose from his slice and offered me his hand with these words: "Welcome!--with permission to ask, where does the good friend come from?"

Do not jeer at so ill-mannered and straightforward a question! the heath peasant is quite as hospitable as the Scotch laird, and but a little more curious; after all, he cannot be blamed for wanting to know who his guest is.

When I had told him who I was and whence I came, he called his wife, who immediately put all the delicacies of the house before me and begged me insistently, with good-hearted kindness, to eat and drink, although my hunger and thirst made all insistence unnecessary.

I was in the midst of the repast and a political talk with my host, when a young and exceedingly beautiful peasant girl came in, whom I should undoubtedly have declared a lady who had fled from cruel parents and an unwished-for marriage, had not her red hands and unadulterated peasant dialect convinced me that no disguise had taken place. She nodded in a friendly way, cast a passing glance under the table, went out and came in soon again with a dish of milk and water, which she put down on the floor with the words, "Your dog may need something too."

I thanked her for her attention; but this was fully given to the big dog, whose greediness soon made the dish empty, and who now in his way thanked the giver by rubbing himself up against her; and when she raised her arms, a little intimidated, Chasseur misunderstood the movement, put himself on the alert, and forced the screaming girl backwards toward the alcove. I called the dog back and explained his good intentions.

I would not have invited the reader's attention to so trivial a matter, but to remark that everything is becoming to the beautiful; for indeed this peasant girl showed, in everything she said and did, a certain natural grace which could not be called coquetry unless you will so call an innate unconscious instinct.

When she had left the room I asked the parents if this was their daughter. They answered in the affirmative, adding that she was an only child.

"You won't keep her very long," I said.

"Dear me, what do you mean by that?" asked the father; but a pleased smile showed that he understood my meaning.

"I think," I answered, "that she will hardly lack suitors."

"Hm!" grumbled he, "of suitors we can get a plenty; but if they are worth anything, that is the question. To go a-wooing with a watch and a silver-mounted pipe does not set the matter straight; it takes more to ride than to say 'Get up!' Sure as I live," he went on, putting both clenched hands on the table and bending to look out of the low window, "if there is not one of them--a shepherd's boy just out of the heather--oh yes, one of these customers' who run about with a couple of dozen hose in a wallet--stupid dog! wooes our daughter with two oxen and two cows and a half--yes, I am on to him!--Beggar!"

All this was not addressed to me, but to the new-comer, on whom he fastened his darkened eyes as the other came along the heather path toward the house. The lad was still far enough away to allow me time to ask my host about him, and I learned that he was the son of the nearest neighbor--who, by the way,

MATHILDE BLIND

(1847-1896)

Mathilde Blind was born at Mannheim, Germany, March 21st, 1847. She was educated principally in London, and subsequently in Zurich. Since her early school days, with the exception of this interval of study abroad, and numerous journeys to the south of Europe and the East, she has lived in London. Upon her return from Zurich she was thrown much into contact with Mazzini, in London, and her first essay in literature was a volume of poems (which she published in 1867 under the pseudonym Claude Lake) dedicated to him. She was also in close personal relationship with Madox Brown, W.M. Rossetti, and Swinburne. Her first literary work to appear under her own name was a critical essay on the poetical works of Shelley in the Westminster Review in 1870, based upon W.M. Rossetti's edition of the poet. In 1872 she wrote an account of the life and writings of Shelley, to serve as an introduction to a selection of his poems in the Tauchnitz edition. She afterwards edited a selection of the letters of Lord Byron with an introduction, and a selection of his poems with a memoir. A translation of Strauss's 'The Old Faith and the New' appeared in 1873, which contained in a subsequent edition a biography of the author. In 1883, Miss Blind wrote the initial volume, 'George Eliot,' for the 'Eminent Women Series,' which she followed in 1886 in the same series with 'Madame Roland.' Her first novel, 'Tarantella,' appeared in 1885. Besides these prose works, she has made frequent contributions of literary criticism to the Athenaeum and other reviews, and of papers and essays to the magazines; among them translations of Goethe's 'Maxims and Reflections' in Fraser's Magazine, and 'Personal Recollections of Mazzin' in the Fortnightly Review.

Her principal claim to literary fame is however based upon her verse. This is from all periods of her productivity. In addition to the book of poems already noticed, she has written 'The Prophecy of St. Oran, and other Poems,' 1882; 'The Heather on Fire,' a protest against the wrongs of the Highland crofters, 1886; 'The Ascent of Man,' her most ambitious work, 1889; 'Dramas in Miniature' 1892; 'Songs and Sonnets,' 1893; and 'Birds of Passage: Songs of the Orient and Occident,' 1895.

'The Ascent of Man' is a poetical treatment of the modern idea of evolution, and traces the progress of man from his primitive condition in a state of savagery to his present development. Miss Blind has been an ardent advocate of the betterment of the position of woman in society and the State. To this end she has worked and written for an improved education, and against a one-sided morality for the sexes. In her verse she shows characteristically a keen appreciation of nature. Her minor poems particularly, many of which are strong in feeling and admirable in form, entitle her to a distinguished place among the lyric poets of England.

She died in London near the end of November, 1896.

FROM 'LOVE IN EXILE'

I charge you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the
dove,
That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I
sicken for love.

I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
That ye fall at the feet of my Love with the sound of one weeping
forlorn.

I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,
That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my
breast.

I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most
fair,
That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels, consumed by
despair.

O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of
love's fire,
Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its
desire.

I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,
That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with
its woe.

I go like one in a dream; unbidden my feet know the way
To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white
hawthorn of May.

The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its
core;
The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed
into sleep.

The moon returns, and the spring; birds warble, trees burst into
leaf;
But Love, once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the
grief.

* * * * *

SEEKING

In many a shape and fleeting apparition,
Sublime in age or with clear morning eyes,
Ever I seek thee, tantalizing Vision,
Which beckoning flies.

Ever I seek Thee, O evasive Presence,
Which on the far horizon's utmost verge,
Like some wild star in luminous evanescence,
Shoots o'er the surge.

Ever I seek Thy features ever flying,
Which, ne'er beheld, I never can forget:
Lightning which flames through love, and mimics dying
In souls that set.

Ever I seek Thee through all clouds of error;
As when the moon behind earth's shadow slips,
She wears a momentary mask of terror
In brief eclipse.

Ever I seek Thee, passionately yearning;
Like altar fire on some forgotten fane,
My life flames up irrevocably burning,
And burnt in vain.

THE SONGS OF SUMMER

The songs of summer are over and past!
The swallow's forsaken the dripping eaves;
Ruined and black 'mid the sodden leaves
The nests are rudely swung in the blast:
And ever the wind like a soul in pain
Knocks and knocks at the window-pane.

The songs of summer are over and past!
Woe's me for a music sweeter than theirs--
The quick, light bound of a step on the stairs,
The greeting of lovers too sweet to last:
And ever the wind like a soul in pain
Knocks and knocks at the window-pane.

A PARABLE

Between the sandhills and the sea
A narrow strip of silver sand,
Whereon a little maid doth stand,
Who picks up shells continually,
Between the sandhills and the sea.

Far as her wondering eyes can reach,
A vastness heaving gray in gray
To the frayed edges of the day
Furls his red standard on the breach
Between the sky-line and the beach.

The waters of the flowing tide
Cast up the sea-pink shells and weed;
She toys with shells, and doth not heed
The ocean, which on every side
Is closing round her vast and wide.

It creeps her way as if in play,
Pink shells at her pink feet to cast;
But now the wild waves hold her fast,
And bear her off and melt away,
A vastness heaving gray in gray.

LOVE'S SOMNAMBULIST

Like some wild sleeper who alone, at night
Walks with unseeing eyes along a height,
With death below and only stars above,
I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep
Along the edges of life's perilous steep,
The lost somnambulist of love.

I, in broad day, go walking in a dream,
Led on in safety by the starry gleam
Of thy blue eyes that hold my heart in thrall;
Let no one wake me rudely, lest one day,
Startled to find how far I've gone astray,
I dash my life out in my fall.

THE MYSTIC'S VISION

Ah! I shall kill myself with dreams!
These dreams that softly lap me round
Through trance-like hours, in which meseems
That I am swallowed up and drowned;
Drowned in your love, which flows o'er me
As o'er the seaweed flows the sea.

In watches of the middle night,
'Twixt vesper and 'twixt matin bell,
With rigid arms and straining sight,
I wait within my narrow cell;
With muttered prayers, suspended will,
I wait your advent--statue-still.

Across the convent garden walls
The wind blows from the silver seas;
Black shadow of the cypress falls
Between the moon-meshed olive-trees;
Sleep-walking from their golden bowers,
Flit disembodied orange flowers.

And in God's consecrated house,
All motionless from head to feet,
My heart awaits her heavenly Spouse,
As white I lie on my white sheet;
With body lulled and soul awake,
I watch in anguish for your sake.

And suddenly, across the gloom,
The naked moonlight sharply swings;
A Presence stirs within the room,
A breath of flowers and hovering wings:
Your presence without form and void,
Beyond all earthly joys enjoyed.

My heart is hushed, my tongue is mute,
My life is centred in your will;
You play upon me like a lute
Which answers to its master's skill,
Till passionately vibrating,
Each nerve becomes a throbbing string.

Oh, incommunicably sweet!
No longer aching and apart,
As rain upon the tender wheat,
You pour upon my thirsty heart;
As scent is bound up in the rose,
Your love within my bosom glows.

* * * * *

FROM 'TARANTELLA'

Sounds of human mirth and laughter from somewhere among them were borne from time to time to the desolate spot I had reached. It was a Festa day, and a number of young people were apparently enjoying their games and dances, to judge by the shouts and laughter which woke echoes of ghostly mirth in the vaults and galleries that looked as though they had lain dumb under the pressure of centuries.

There was I know not what of weird contrast between this gaping ruin, with its fragments confusedly scattered about like the bleaching bones of some antediluvian monster, and the clear youthful ring of those joyous voices.

I had sat down on some fragment of wall directly overhanging the sea. In my present mood it afforded me a singular kind of pleasure to take up stones or pieces of marble and throw them down the precipice. From time to time I could hear them striking against the sharp projections of the rocks as they leaped down the giddy height. Should I let my violin follow in their wake?

I was in a mood of savage despair; a mood in which my heart turned at bay on what I had best loved. Hither it had led me, this art I had worshiped! After years of patient toil, after sacrificing to it hearth and home, and the security of a settled profession, I was not a tittle further advanced than at the commencement of my career. For requital of my devoted service, starvation stared me in the face. My miserable subsistence was barely earned by giving lessons to females, young and old, who, while inflicting prolonged tortures on their victim, still exacted the tribute of smiles and compliments.

Weakened and ill, I shuddered to think of returning and bowing my neck once more to that detested yoke.

"No! I'll never go back to that!" I cried, jumping up. "I'll sooner earn a precarious livelihood by turning fisherman in this island! Any labor will be preferable to that daily renewing torture." I seized my violin in a desperate clutch, and feverishly leant over the wall, where I could hear the dirge-like boom of the breakers in the hollow caves.

Only he who is familiar with the violin knows the love one may bear it--a love keen as that felt for some frail human creature of exquisitely delicate mold. Caressingly I passed my fingers over its ever-responsive strings, thinking, feeling rather, that I could endure no hand to handle it save mine!

No! rather than that it should belong to another, its strings should for ever render up the ghost of music in one prolonged wail, as it plunged shivering from this fearful height.

For the last time, I thought, my fingers erred over its familiar chords. A thrill of horrid exultation possessed me, such as the fell Tiberius may have experienced when he bade his men hurl the shrinking form of a soft-limbed favorite from this precipice.

Possibly my shaken nerves were affected by the hideous memories clinging to these unhallowed ruins; possibly also by the oppressive heat of the day.

Sea and sky, indeed, looked in harmony with unnatural sensations; as though some dread burst of passion were gathering intensity under their apparently sluggish calm.

Though the sky overhead was of a sultry blue, yet above the coast-line of Naples, standing out with preternatural distinctness, uncouth, livid clouds straggled chaotically to the upper sky, here and there reaching lank, shadowy films, like gigantic arms, far into the zenith. Flocks of sea-birds were uneasily flying landward; screaming, they wheeled round the sphinx-like rocks, and disappeared by degrees in their red clefts and fissures.

All at once I was startled in my fitful, half-mechanical playing by a piercing scream; this was almost immediately followed by a confused noise of sobs and cries, and a running of people to and fro, which seemed, however, to be approaching nearer. I was just going to hurry to the spot whence the noise proceeded, when some dozen of girls came rushing towards me.

But before I had time to inquire into the cause of their excitement, or to observe them more closely, a gray-haired woman, with a pale, terror-stricken face, seized hold of my hand, crying:

"The Madonna be praised, he has a violin! Hasten, hasten! Follow us or she will die!"

And then the girls, beckoning and gesticulating, laid hold of my arm, my coat, my hand, some pulling, some pushing me along, all jabbering and crying together, and repeating more and more urgently the only words that I could make out--"Musica! Musica!"