Chapter V: Part 5

"Here! take this! I like to. It's yours now, Mr. Starke, d' y' understand? Yours. But you'll take care of it, won't you?"

"I do not need anything, my good boy. Let me go."

But Andy held on desperately to his coat.

"Come home. _She's_ there. Maybe I ought not to say it. It's Jane. For God's sake, come to Jane!"

It was so dark that Andy could not see the expression of the man's face when he heard this. Starke did not speak for some minutes; when he did, his voice was firm and conscious, as it had not been before to-night.

"Let go my coat, Andrew; I feel choking. You know my wife, then?"

"Yes, this many a year. She's waited for you. Come home. Come!"

But Starke drew his arm away.

"Tell her I would have gone, if I had succeeded. But not now. I'm tired, I'm going to rest."

With both hands he pushed the lank, wet hair off his face. Somehow, all his tired life showed itself in the gesture.

"I don't think I ever did care as much for her as I do to-night. Is she always well, Andrew?"

"Yes, well. Come!"

"No; good night. Bid her good night."

As he turned away, he stopped and looked back.

"Ask her if she ever thinks of our Rob. I do." And so was gone.

As he went down the street, turning into an alley, something black jumped over the low gate beside Andy and followed him.

"It's the dog! Well, dumb creatures _are_ curious, beyond me. Now for Jane"; and with his head muddled and aching, he went to find an express-stand.

The examination of the model took place on Tuesday. On the Saturday following, Dr. Bowdler was summoned to his back parlor to see a man and woman who had called. Going in, he found Andy, clad as before in his dress-suit of blue coat and marvellously plaid trousers, balancing himself uneasily on the edge of his chair, and a woman in Quaker dress beside him. Her face and presence attracted the Doctor at once, strongly, though they were evidently those of an uneducated working-woman. The quietude in her motions and expression, the repressed power, the delicacy, had worked out, from within, to carve her sad face into those fine lines he saw. No outside culture could do that. She spoke, too, with that simple directness that belongs to people who are sure of what they have to do in the world.

"I came to see if thee knew anything of my husband: thee was so kind to him some days ago. I am Jane Starke."

The Doctor comprehended in a moment. He watched the deserted wife curiously, as he answered her.

"No, my dear Madam. Is it possible he is not with you? I went to his lodging twice with my niece, and, finding it vacant, concluded that he had returned to you, or gone with our young friend Andrew here."

"He is not with me."

She rose, her fingers twitching nervously at her bonnet-strings.

"She was so dead sure you would know," said Andy, rising also. "We've been on the search for four days. We thought you would know. Where will you go now, Jane?"

The woman lost every trace of color when Dr. Bowdler answered her, but she showed no other sign of her disappointment.

"We will find him somewhere, Andrew."

"Stop, stop," interrupted the Doctor. "Tell me what you have done. You must not go in this way."

The woman began to answer, but Andy took the word from her.

"You keep yerself quiet, Jane. She's dreadful worn out, Sir. There's not much to tell. Jane had come into town that night to meet him,--gone to his lodgins--she was so sure he'd come home. She's been waitin' these ten years,"--in a whisper. "But he didn't come. Nor the next day, nor any day since. An' the last I saw of him was goin' down the street in the rain, with the dog followin'. We've been lookin' every way we could, but I don't know the town much, out of my streets for milk, an' Jane knows nothin' of it at all, so"--

"It is as I told you!" broke in Miss Defourchet, who had entered, unperceived, with a blaze of enthusiasm that made Jane start, bewildered. "He is at work,--some new effort. Madam, you have reason to thank God for making you the wife of such a man. It makes my blood glow," turning to her uncle, "to find this dauntless heroism in the rank and file of the people."

She was sincere in her own heroic sympathy for the rank and file: her slender form dilated, her eyes flashed, and there was a rich color mounting to her fine aquiline features.

"I like a man to fight fate to the death as this one,--never to give up,--to sacrifice life to his idea."

"If thee means the engine by the idea," said Jane, dully, "we've given up a good deal to it. He has. It don't matter for me."

Miss Defourchet glanced indignantly at the lumbering figure, the big slow eyes, following her with a puzzled pain in them. For all mischances or sinister fates in the world she had compassion, except for one,--stupidity.

"I knew," to Dr. Bowdler, "he would not be content with the decision the other day. It is his destiny to help the world. And if this woman will come between him and his work, I hope she may never find him."

Jane put a coarse hand up to her breast as if something hurt her; after a moment, she said, with her heavy, sad face looking full down on the young girl,--

"Thee is young yet. It may be God meant my old man to do this work: it may be not. He knows. Myself, I do not think He keeps the world waitin' for this air-engine. Others'll be found to do it when it's needed; what matter if he fails? An' when a man gives up all little works for himself, an' his child, or--his wife," with a gasp, "for some great work"--

She stopped.

"It's more likely that the Devil is driving him than God leading," said the Doctor, hastily.

"Come, Andrew," said Jane, gravely. "We have no time to lose."

She moved to the door,--unsteadily, however.

"_She_'s fagged out," said Andy, lingering behind her. "Since Tuesday night I've followed her through streets an' alleys, night an' day. Jest as prim an' sober as you see. Cryin' softly to herself at times. It's a sore heart-break, Sir. Waitin' these ten years"--

Dr. Bowdler offered his help, earnestly, as did his niece, with a certain reserve. The dog Thor had disappeared with Starke, and they hoped that would afford some clue.

"But the woman is a mere clog," said Miss Defourchet, impatiently, after they were gone. "Her eyes are as sad, unreasonable as Thor's. Nothing in them but instinct. But it is so with most women,"--with a sigh.

"But somehow, Mary, those women never mistake their errand in the world any more than Thor, and do it as unconsciously and completely as he," said the Doctor, with a quizzical smile. "If Starke had followed, his 'instincts,' he would have been a snug farmer to-day in the Jerseys."

Miss Defourchet vouchsafed no answer.

Dr. Bowdler gave his help, as he had promised, but to no purpose. A week passed in the search without success, until at last Thor brought it. The dog was discovered one night in the kitchen, waiting for his supper, as he had been used to do: his affection for his new master, I suppose, not having overcome his recollection of the flesh-pots of Egypt. They followed him (Jane, the Doctor, and Andy) out to that maze of narrow streets, near Fairmount, called, I think, Francisville. He stopped at a low house, used in front as a cake-shop, the usual young girl with high cheek-bones and oily curls waiting within.

"The dog's owner?" the trading look going out of her eyes suddenly, "Oh, are you his friends? He's low to-night: mother's up with him since supper; mother's kept him since last Tuesday,"--fussing out from behind the counter. "Take chairs, Ma'am. I'll call her. Go out, you Stevy,"--driving out two or three urchins in their bed-gowns who were jamming up the door-way.

Miserably poor the whole place was; the woman, when she came down, a hard skinflint--in Andy's phrase--in the face: just home from her day's washing, her gown pinned up, her arms flabby and red.

"Good evenin', Sir! evenin', Ma'am! See the man? Of course, Ma'am; but you'd best be keerful,"--standing between Jane and the door. "He's very poorly."

"What ails him?"

"Well, I'll say it out,--if you're his friends, as you say," stammering. "I'd not like to accuse any one rashly, but--I think he'd a notion of starvin' to death, an' got himself so low. Come to me las' week, an' pawned his coat for my back room to sleep in. He eat nothin' then: I seen that. An' he used to go out an' look at the dam for hours: but he never throwed himself in. Since he took to bed, we keep him up with broth and sech as we have,--Sally an' me. Sir? Afford it? Hum! We're not as well off as we have been," dryly; "but I'm not a beast to see a man starvin' under my roof. Oh, certingly, Ma'am; go up."

And while Jane mounted the rickety back-stairs, she turned to the door to meet two or three women with shawls pinned about their heads.

"He's very poorly, Mis' Crawford, thank ye, Mem. No, you can't do nothing'," in a sepulchral whisper, which continued in a lower tone, with a nod back to the Doctor and Andy.

Starke's affair was a godsend to the neighborhood, Dr. Bowdler saw. Untrained people enjoy a sickness with more keenness and hearty good-feeling than you do the opera. The Doctor had providently brought a flask of brandy in his pocket. He went on tiptoe up the creaking stairs and gave it to Jane. She was standing, holding the handle of the door, not turning it.

"What is it, Jane?" cheerfully. "What do you tremble for, eh?"

"Nothin'",--chewing her lips and opening the door. "It's ten years since,"--to herself, as she went in.

Not when she was a shy girl had he been to her what these ten years of desertion had made him.

It was half an hour before the Doctor and Andy went up softly into the upper room and sat quietly down out of sight in the corner. Jane was sitting on the low cot-bed, holding Starke's head on her breast. They could not see her face in the feeble light. She had some brandy and water in a glass, and gave him a spoonful of it now and then; and when she had done that, smoothed the yellow face incessantly with her hard fingers. The Doctor fancied that such dumb pain and affection as there was in even that little action ought to bring him to life, if he were dead. There was some color on his cheeks, and occasionally he opened his eyes and tried to speak, but closed them wearily. They watched by him until midnight; his pulse grew stronger by that time, and he lay wistfully looking at his wife like one who had wakened out of a long death, and tried to collect his thought. She did not speak nor stir, knowing on how slight a thread his sense hung.

"Jane!" he said, at last.

They bent forward eagerly.

"Jane, I wish thee'd take me home."'

"To be sure, Joseph," cheerfully. "In the morning. It is too chilly to-night. Is thee comfortable?" drawing his head closer to her breast. "O God! He'll live!" silently clutching at the bed-rail until her hand ached. "Go to sleep, dear."

Whatever sobs or tears choked her voice just then, she forced them back: they might disturb him. He closed his eyes a moment.

"I have something to say to thee, Jane."

"No. Thee must rest."

"I'd sleep better, if I tell thee first."

There was a moment's silence. The woman's face was pale, her eyes burning, but she only smiled softly, holding him steadily.

"It has been so long!"--passing his hand over his forehead vaguely.

"Yes."

She could not command a smile now.

"It was all wasted. I've been worth nothing."

How close she held him then to her breast! How tender the touches grew on his face!

"I was not strong enough to kill myself even, the other day, when I was so tired. So cowardly! Not worth much, Jane!"

She bent forward over him, to keep the others from hearing this.

"Thee's tired too, Jane?" looking up dully.

"A little, Joseph."

Another silence.

"To-morrow, did thee say, we would go home?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

He shut his eyes to sleep.

"Kiss him," said the Doctor to her. "It will make him more certain."

Her face grew crimson.

"He has not asked me yet," she said.

Sometime early in the summer, nearly four years after, Miss Defourchet came down to make her uncle another visit,--a little thinned and jaded with her winter's work, and glad of the daily ride into the fresh country-air. One morning, the Doctor, jumping into the barouche beside her, said,--

"We'll make a day of it, Mary,--spend it with some old friends of ours. They are such wholesome, natural people, it refreshes me to be with them when I am tired."

"Starke and his wife?" she asked, arranging her scarf. "I never desire to be with him, or with any man recreant to his work."

"Recreant, eh? Starke? Well, no; he works hard, digs and ditches, and is happy. I think he takes his work more humbly and healthily than any man I know."

Miss Defourchet looked absently out at the gleaming river. Her interest had always been languid in the man since he had declined either to fight fate or drown himself. The Doctor jerked his hat down into the bottom of the carriage and pulled open his cravat.

"Hah! do you catch that river-breeze? Don't that expand your lungs? And the whiff of the fresh clover-blossoms? I come out here to study my sermons, did you know? Nature is so simple and grand here, a man could not well say a mean or unbrotherly thing while he stays. It forces you to be 'a faithful witness' to the eternal truth. There is good fishing hereabouts, eh, Jim?"--calling to the driver. "Do you see that black pool under the sycamore?"

"_I_ could not call it 'faithful witnessing' to delight in taking even a fish's life," dryly said his niece.

The Doctor winced.

"It's the old Adam in me, I suppose. You'll have to be charitable to the different making-up of people, Mary."

However, he was silent for a while after that, with rather an extinguished feeling, bursting out again when they reached the gate of a little snug place by the road-side.

"Here is where my little friend Ann lives. There's a wife for you! 'And though she rules him, never shows she rules.' They've a dairy-farm, you know, back of the hills; but they live here because it was her father's toll-house then, and they won't give up the old place. I like such notions. Andy's full of them. There he is! Hillo, Fawcett!"

Andy came out from the kitchen-garden, his freckled face redder than his hair, his eyes showing his welcome. Dr. Bowdler was an old tried friend now of his and Ann's. "He took a heap of nonsense out of me," he used to say.

"No, no, we'll not stop now," said the Doctor; "we are going on to Starke's, and Ann is not in, I see. I will stop in the evening for my glass of buttermilk, though, and a bunch of country-grown flowers."

But they waited long enough to discuss the price of poultry, etc., in market, before they drove on. Miss Defourchet looked wearied.

"Such things seem so paltry while the country is in the state it is," she said.

"Well, my dear, so it is. But it's 'the work by which Andy thrives,' you know. And I like it, somehow."

The lady had worked nobly in the hospitals last winter, and naturally she wanted to see every head and hand at work on some noble scheme or task for the world's good. The hearty, comfortable quiet of the Starkes' little farm-house tired her. It was such a sluggish life of nothings, she thought,--even when Jane had brought her chair close to the window where the sunshine came in broadest and clearest through the buttonwood-leaves. Jane saw the look, and it troubled her. She was not much of a talker, only when with her husband, so there was no use of trying that. She put a little table beside the window and a white cloth on it, and then brought a saucer of crimson strawberries and yellow cream; but the lady was no eater, she was sorry to see. She stood a moment timidly, but Miss Defourchet did not put her at her ease. It was the hungry poor she cared for, with stifled brains and souring feeling. This woman was at ease, stupidly at peace with God and herself.

"Perhaps thee'd be amused to look over Joseph's case of books?" handing her the key, and then sitting down with her knitting, contented in having finished her duty. "After a while thee'll have a pleasant time,"--smiling consciously. "Richard'll be awake. Richard's our boy, thee knows? I wish he was awake, but it is his mornin' nap, an' I never disturb him in his mornin' nap."

"You lead a very quiet life, apparently," said Miss Defourchet; for she meant to see what was in all these dull trifles.

"Yes, thee might call it so. My old man farms; he has more skill that way than me. He bought land in Iowa, an' has been out seein' it, an' that freshened him up this spring. But we'll never leave the old place."

"So he farms, and you"--

"Well, I oversee the house," glancing at the word into the kitchen to see how Bessy was getting on with the state dinner in progress. "It keeps me busy, an' Bessy, (she's an orphan we've taken to raise,) an' the dairy, an' Richard most of all. I let nobody touch Richard but myself. That's my work."

"You have little time for reading?"

Jane colored.

"I'm not fond of it. A book always put me to sleep quicker than a hop pillow. But lately I read some things," hesitating,--"the first books Richard'll have to know. I want to keep him with ourselves as long as I can. I'd like,"--her eyes with a new outlook in them, as she raised them, something beyond Miss Defourchet's experience,--"I'd like to make my boy a good, healthy, honest boy before _I_'m done with him. I wish I could teach him his Latin an' th' others. But there's no use to try for that."

"How goes it, Mary?" said the Doctor heartily, coming in, all in a heat, and sun-burnt, with Starke.

Both men were past the prime of life, thin, and stooped, but Starke's frame was tough and weather-cured. He was good for ten years longer in the world than Dr. Bowdler.

"I've just been looking at the stock. Full and plenty, in every corner, as I say to Joseph. It warms me up to come here, Starke. I don't know a healthier, more cheerful farm on these hills than just this one."

Starke's face brightened.

"The ground's not overly rich, Sir. Tough work, tough work; but I like it. I'm saving off it, too. We put by a hundred or two last year; same next, God willing. For Richard, Dr. Bowdler. We want enough to give him a thorough education, and then let him rough it with the others. That will be the best way to bring out the stuff that's in him. It's good stuff," in an under-tone.

"How old is he?" said Miss Defourchet.

"Two years last February," said Jane, eagerly.

"Two years; yes. He's my namesake, Mary, did you know? Where is the young lion?"

"Why, yes, mother. Why isn't Richard down? Morning nap? Hoot, toot! bring the boy down!"

Miss Defourchet, while Jane went for the boy, noticed how heavy the scent of the syringas grew, how the bees droned down into a luxurious delight in the hot noon. One might dream out life very pleasantly there, she thought. The two men talked politics, but glanced constantly at the stairs. She did not wonder that Starke's worn, yellow face should grow so curiously bright at the sight of his boy; but her uncle did not care for children,--unless, indeed, there was something in them. Jane came down and put the boy on the floor.

"He has pulled all my hair down," she said, trying to look grave, to hide the proud smile in her face.

Miss Defourchet had taken Richard up with an involuntary kiss, which he resisted, looking her full in the face. There _was_ something in this child.

"He won't kiss you, unless he likes you," said Starke, chafing his hands delightedly.

"What do you think of that fellow, Mary?" said the Doctor, coming over. "He's my young lion, Richard is. Look at this square forehead. You don't believe in Phrenology, eh? Well, I do. Feel his jaws. Look at that lady, Sir! Do you see the big, brave eyes of him?"

"His mouth is like his mother's," said Starke, jealously.

"Oh, yes, yes! So. You think that is the best part of his face, I know. It is; as tender as a woman's."

"It is a real hero-face," said the young lady, frankly; "not a mean line in it."

Starke had drawn the boy between his knees, and was playing roughly with him.

"There never shall be one, with God's help," he thought, but said nothing.

Richard was "a hobby" of Dr. Bowdler's, his niece perceived.

"His very hair is like a mane," he said; "he's as uncouth as a young giant that don't feel his strength. I say this, Mary: that the boy will never be goodish and weak: he'll be greatly good or greatly bad."

The young lady noticed how intently Starke listened; she wondered if he had forgotten entirely his own God-sent mission, and turned baby-tender altogether.

"What has become of your model, Mr. Starke?" she asked.

Dr. Bowdler looked up uneasily; it was a subject he never had dared to touch.

"Andrew keeps it," said Starke, with a smile, "for the sake of old times, side by side with his lantern, I believe."

"You never work with it?"

"No; why should I? The principle has since been made practical, as you know, better than I could have done it. My idea was too crude, I can see now. So I just grazed success, as one may say."

"Have you given up all hope of serving your fellows?" persisted the lady. "You seemed to me to be the very man to lead a forlorn hope against ignorance: are you quite content to settle down here and do nothing?"

His color changed, but he said quietly,--

"I've learned to be humbler, maybe. It was hard learning. But," trying to speak lightly, "when I found I was not fit to be an officer, I tried to be as good a private as I could. Your uncle will tell you the cause is the same."

There was a painful silence.

"I think sometimes, though," said Starke, "that God meant Jane and I should not be useless in the world."

He put his hand almost reverently on the boy's head.

"Richard is ours, you know, to make what we will of. He will do a different work in life from any engine. I try to think we have strength enough saved out of our life to make him what we ought."

"You're right, Starke," said the Doctor, emphatically. "Some day, when you and I have done with this long fight, we shall find that as many privates as captains will have earned the cross of the Legion of Honor."

Miss Defourchet said nothing; the day did not please her. Jane, she noticed, when evening came on, slipped up-stairs to brush her hair, and put on a soft white shawl.

"Joseph likes to see me dress a little for the evenings," she said, with quite a flush in her cheek.

And the young lady noticed that Starke smiled tenderly as his wife passed him. It was so weak! in ugly, large-boned people, too.

"It does one good to go there," said the Doctor, drawing a long breath as they drove off in the cool evening, the shadowed red of the sun lighting up the little porch where the machinist stood with his wife and child. "The unity among them is so healthy and beautiful."

"I did not feel it as you do," said Miss Defourchet, drawing her shawl closer, and shivering.

Starke came down on the grass to play with the boy, throwing him down on the heaps of hay there to see him jump and rush back undaunted. Yet in all his rude romps the solemn quiet of the hour was creeping over him. He sat down by Jane on the wooden steps at last, while, the boy, after an impetuous kiss or two, curled up at their feet and went to sleep The question about the model had stirred an old doubt in Jane's heart. She watched her husband keenly. Was he thinking of that old dream? _Would_ he go back to it? the long dull pain of those dead years creeping through her brain. He looked up from the boy, stroking his gray beard,--his eyes, she saw, full of tears.

"I was thinking, Jane, how much of our lives was lost before we found our true work."

"Yes, Joseph."

He gathered up the boy, holding him close to his bony chest.

"I'd like to think," he said. "I could atone for that waste, Jane. It was my fault. I'd like to think I'd earn up yonder that cross of the Legion of Honor--through him."

"God knows," she said.

After that they were silent a long while, They were thinking of Him who had brought the little child to them.

* * * * *

A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO.

No! is my answer from this cold, bleak ridge
Down to your valley: you may rest you there:
The gulf is wide, and none can build a bridge
That your gross weight would safely hither bear.

Pity me, if you will. I look at you
With something that is kinder far than scorn,
And think, "Ah, well! I might have grovelled, too;
I might have walked there, fettered and forsworn."

I am of nature weak as others are;
I might have chosen comfortable ways;
Once from these heights I shrank, beheld afar,
In the soft lap of quiet, easy days.

I might--(I will not hide it)--once I might
Have lost, in the warm whirlpools of your voice,
The sense of Evil, the stern cry of Right;
But Truth has steered me free, and I rejoice:

Not with the triumph that looks back to jeer
At the poor herd that call their misery bliss;
But as a mortal speaks when God is near,
I drop you down my answer; it is this:--

I am not yours, because you seek in me
What is the lowest in my own esteem:
Only my flowery levels can you see,
Nor of my heaven-smit summits do you dream.

I am not yours, because you love yourself:
Your heart has scarcely room for me beside.
I could not be shut in with name and pelf;
I spurn the shelter of your narrow pride!

Not yours,--because you are not man enough
To grasp your country's measure of a man!
If such as you, when Freedom's ways are rough,
Cannot walk in them, learn that women can!

Not yours, because, in this the nation's need,
You stoop to bend her losses to your gain,
And do not feel the meanness of your deed:
I touch no palm defiled with such a stain!

Whether man's thought can find too lofty steeps
For woman's scaling, care not I to know;
But when he falters by her side, or creeps,
She must not clog her soul with him to go.

Who weds me must at least with equal pace
Sometimes move with me at my being's height:
To follow him to his more glorious place,
His purer atmosphere, were keen delight.

You lure me to the valley: men should call
Up to the mountains, where the air is clear.
Win me and help me climbing, if at all!
Beyond these peaks rich harmonies I hear,--

The morning chant of Liberty and Law!
The dawn pours in, to wash out Slavery's blot:
Fairer than aught the bright sun ever saw
Rises a nation without stain or spot.

The men and women mated for that time
Tread not the soothing mosses of the plain;
Their hands are joined in sacrifice sublime;
Their feet firm set in upward paths of pain.

Sleep your thick sleep, and go your drowsy way!
You cannot hear the voices in the air!
Ignoble souls will shrivel in that day:
The brightness of its coming can you bear?

For me, I do not walk these hills alone:
Heroes who poured their blood out for the Truth,
Women whose hearts bled, martyrs all unknown,
Here catch the sunrise of immortal youth

On their pale cheeks and consecrated brows!
It charms me not,--your call to rest below:
I press their hands, my lips pronounce their vows
Take my life's silence for your answer: No!

* * * * *

EUGENE DELACROIX.

The death of Eugene Delacroix cuts the last bond between the great artistic epoch which commenced with the Bellini and that which had its beginning with the nineteenth century, epochs as diverse in character as the Venice of 1400 and the Paris of 1800. In him died the last great painter whose art was moulded by the instincts and traditions that made Titian and Veronese, and the greatest artist whose eyes have opened on the, to him, uncongenial and freezing life of the nineteenth century. In our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher development of intellectual art, and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach farther towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he did no one can now do; the glory of that time has passed away,--its unreasoning faith, its wanton instinct, revelling in Art like children in the sunshine, and rejoicing in childlike perception of the pomp and glory which overlay creation, unconscious of effort, indifferent to science,--all gone with the fairies, the saints, the ecstatic visions which framed their poor lives in gold. Only, still reflecting the glory, as eastern mountains the sunken sun, came a few sympathetic souls kindling into like glow, with faint perception of what had passed from the whole world beside. Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and Delacroix, kept the line of color, now at last utterly extinguished. Now we reason, now we see facts; sentiment is out of joint, and appearances are known to be liars; we have found the greater substance; we kindle with the utilities, and worship with the aspiring spirit of a common humanity; we banish the saints from our souls and the gewgaws from our garments, and walk clothed and in our right minds in what we believe to be the noonday light of reason and science. We are humanitarian, enlightened. We begin to comprehend the great problems of human existence and development; our science touches the infinitely removed, and apprehends the mysteries of macrocosmic organism: but we have lost the art of painting; for, when Eugene Delacroix died, the last painter (visible above the man) who understood Art as Titian understood it, and painted with such eyes as Veronese's, passed away, leaving no pupil or successor. It is as when the last scion of a kingly race dies in some alien land. Greater artists than he we may have in scores; but he was of the Venetians, and, with his _nearly_ rival, Turner, lived to testify that it was not from a degeneracy of the kind that we have no more Tintorets and Veroneses; for both these, if they had lived in the days of those, had been their peers.

Painting, as the Venetians understood it, is a lost art, because the mental conditions which made it possible exist no longer. The race is getting to that mannish stature in which every childlike quality is a shame to it; and the Venetian feeling for and cultivation of color are essentially childlike traits. No shadows of optics, no spectra of the prism clouded their passionate enjoyment of color as it was or as it might be, no uplifted finger of cold decorum frightened them into gray or sable gloom; they garbed themselves in rainbows, and painted with the sunset. Color was to them a rapture and one of the great pursuits of their lives; it was music visible, and they cultivated it as such,--not by rule and measure, by scales and opposites, through theories and canons, with petrific chill of intellect or entangling subtilty of analysis. Their lives developed their instincts, and their instincts their art. They loved color more than everything else; and therefore color made herself known to them in her rarest and noblest beauty. They went to Nature as children, and Nature met them as a loving mother meets her child, with her happiest smile and the richest of her gifts. I do not believe that to any Venetian painter the thought of whether a given tint was true ever came; if only his fine instinct told him it was lovely, he asked no question further,--and if he took a tint from Nature, it was because it was lovely, and not because he found it in Nature. _Our_ painter must see,--_their_ painter could feel; and in this antithesis is told the whole difference between the times, so far as color is concerned.

But while Delacroix worked in the same spirit and must be ranked in the same school, there were differences produced by the action of the so different social and intellectual influences under which he grew up. His nature was intensely imaginative, and so was preserved from the dwarfing effect of French rationalism and materialism: their clay could not hide his light or close his eyes, for imagination sees at all points and through all disguises, and so his spiritual and intellectual nature was kept alive when all Art around him was sinking into mere shapely clay. Classic taste and rationalistic pride had left in his contemporaries little else than cold propriety of form and color, studied negations of spontaneity and imaginative abandon; yet such was the force of his imagination, that these qualities, almost more than any other, characterize his conceptions: but the perpetual contact and presence of elements so uncongenial to his good genius produced their effects in a morbid sadness, in his feeling for subject, and in a gloomy tone of coloring, sometimes only plaintive, but at other times as melancholy as the voice of a lost soul. When healthiest, as in his Harem picture in the Luxembourg Gallery, it is still in the minor key of that lovely Eastern color-work, such as we see in the Persian carpets, and to me always something weird and mysterious and touching, like the tones of an Aeolian harp, or the greetings of certain sad-voiced children touched by the shadow of death before their babyhood is gone. No color has ever affected me like that of Delacroix,--his Dante pictures are the "Commedia" set in color, and palpitating with the woe of the damned.

His intellect was of that nobler kind which cannot leave the questions of the Realities; and conscious kindred with great souls passed away must have given a terrible reality to the great question of the future, the terror of which French philosophy was poorly able to dispel or lead to anything else than this hopeless gloom. His great picture of the _plafond_ of the Salon d'Apollon, in the Louvre, seems like a great ode to light, in the singing of which he felt the gloom break and saw the tones of healthy life lighten in his day for a prophetic moment; but _dispelled_ the gloom _never_ was. What he might have been, bred in the cheerful, unquestioning, and healthy, if unprogressive faith of Venice, we can only conjecture, seeing how great he grew in the cold of Gallic life.

His health was, through his later life, bad; and for my own part, I believe that the same morbid feeling manifested in his art affected injuriously his physical life, aided doubtless by the excessive work which occupied all his available hours. For many years previous to his death he alternated between periods of almost unbroken labor, taking time only to eat and sleep, and intervals of absolute rest for days together. In his working fits, so deranged had his digestion become, he could take only one meal, a late dinner, each day, and saw no visitors except in the hour preceding his dinner.

Having gone to Paris to spend a winter in professional studies, I made an earnest application by letter to Delacroix to be admitted as a pupil to his _atelier_. In reply, he invited me to visit him at his rooms the next day at four, to talk with him about my studies, proffering any counsel in his gift, but assuring me that it was impossible for him to receive me into his studio, as he could not work in the room with another, and his strength and occupations did not permit him to have a school apart, as he once had.

At the appointed time I presented myself, and was received very pleasantly in a little drawing-room at his house in the Latin Quarter. His appearance, to me, was prepossessing; and though I had heard French artists speak of him as morose and bearish, I must say that his whole manner was most kindly and sympathetic, though not demonstrative. He was small, spare, and nervous-looking, with evident ill-health in his face and bearing, and under slight provocation, I should think, might have been disagreeable, but had nothing egoistic in his manner, and, unlike most celebrated artists, didn't seem to care to talk about his own pictures. After personal inquiries of my studies and the masters whom I knew and had studied, and most kindly, but appreciative criticism on all whom we spoke of, "Ah," said he, "I could not have an _atelier_ (i.e. school-_atelier_) now, the spirit in which the young artists approach their work now is so different from that of the time when I was in the school. Then they were earnest, resolute men: there were Delaroche and Vernet," and others he mentioned, whose names I cannot remember, "men who went into their painting with their whole souls and in seriousness; but now the students come into the _atelier_ to laugh and joke and frolic, as if Art were a game; there is an utter want of seriousness in the young men now which would make it impossible for me to teach them. I should be glad to direct your studies, but the work on which I am engaged leaves me no time to dispose of." I asked if I could not sometime see him working; but he replied that it was quite impossible for him to work with any one looking on.

I asked him where, to his mind, was the principal want of the modern schools. He replied, "In execution; there is intellect enough, intention enough, and sometimes great conception, but everywhere a want of executive ability, which enfeebles all they do. They work too much with the crayon, instead of studying with the brush. If they want to be engravers, it is all well enough to work in charcoal; but the execution of an engraver is not that of a painter. I remember an English artist, who was in Paris when I was a young man, who had a wonderful power in using masses of black and white, but he was never able to do anything in painting, much to my surprise at that time; but later I came to know, that, if a man wants to be a painter, he must learn to draw with the brush."

I asked him for advice in my own studies; to which he replied, "You ought to copy a great deal,--copy passages of all the great painters. I have copied a great deal, and of the works of almost everybody"; and as he spoke, he pointed to a line of studies of heads and parts of pictures from various old masters which hung around the room.

I am inclined to think that he carried copying too far; for the principal defect of his later pictures is a kind of hardness and want of thought in the touch, a verging on the mechanical, as if his hand and feeling did not keep perfectly together.

I regret much that I did not immediately after my interview take notes of the conversation, as he said many things which I cannot now recall, and which, as mainly critical of the works of other artists, would have been of interest to the world. I only remember that he spoke in great praise of Turner and Sir Joshua Reynolds. As his dinner-hour drew near, I took my leave, asking for some directions to see pictures of his which I had not seen; in reply to which, he offered to send me notes securing me admission to all the places where were pictures of his not easily accessible,--a promise he fulfilled a day or two after. I left him with as pleasant a personal impression as I have ever received from any great artist, and I have met many.

The works of Delacroix, like those of all geniuses, are very unequal; but those who, not having studied them, attempt to estimate them by any ordinary standard will be far from the truth in their estimate, and will most certainly fail to be impressed by their true excellence. The public has a mistaken habit of measuring greatness by the capacity to give _it_ pleasure; but the public has no more ignorant habit than this. That is no great work which the popular taste can fully appreciate, and no thoroughly educated man can at once grasp the full calibre of a work of great power differing from his own standard. It took Penelope's nights to unweave the web of her days' weaving, and no sudden shears of untaught comprehension will serve to analyze those finer fabrics of a genius like Delacroix. Perhaps, owing to many peculiarities of his nature, showing themselves in unsympathetic forms in his pictures, he may always fall short of complete appreciation by the educated taste even,--and, indeed, to me he seems, of all the great colorists, the one least likely ever to win general favor, but not from want of greatness.

I have often heard his drawing spoken of as bad. It was not the drawing of a _dessinateur_, but there was method in its badness. I remember hearing a friend say, that, going into his studio one day, he found him just in the act of finishing a hand. He said, "It looks very badly drawn, but I have painted it three times before I could get it right Once I had it well drawn, and then it looked very badly; and now it suits me better than when it was well drawn." A neatly drawn figure would have made as bad an appearance in one of his pictures as a dandy in the heat and turmoil of a battle-field; yet, as they came, all the parts were consistent with the whole, reminding one of what Ruskin says of Turner's figures.

For vigor and dash in execution, and the trooping energy of some of his competitions, he reminds me more of Rubens than of any other; but his composition has a more purely imaginative cast than that of Rubens, a purer melody, a far more refined spiritualism. Nothing was coarse or gross, much less sensual. His was the true imaginative fusion from which pictures spring complete, subject to no revision. Between him and Turner there were many points of resemblance, of which the greatest was in a common defect,--an impulsive, unschooled, unsubstantial method of execution, contrasting strongly with the exact, deliberate, and yet, beyond description, masterly touch of Titian and most of his school. Tintoret alone shows something of the same tendency,--attributable, no doubt, to the late time at which he came into the method of his master. If Delacroix has none of the great serenity and cheerfulness of Titian, or the large and manly way of seeing of Veronese, he has an imaginative fervor and intensity we do not see in them, and of which Tintoret and Tiepolo only among the Venetians show any trace. Generations hence, Eugene Delacroix will loom larger above his contemporaries, now hiding him by proximity.

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SYMPATHETIC LYING.

If "all men are liars," and everybody deceives us a little sometimes, so that David's _dictum_ hardly needs his apology of _haste_, it is a comfort to remember that many lies are not downright, but sympathetic; and an understanding of their nature, if it does not palliate them, may put us on our guard. _Sympathetic_ we think a better name than the unfortunate title of _white_, which was given them by Mrs. Opie, because that designation carries a meaning of innocence, if not even of virtue; and instead of protecting our virtue, may even expose us to practise them without remorse. Of laughing over them and making light of them, and calling them by various ludicrous synonymes, as _fibs_, and _telling the thing that is not_, there has been enough. We have a purpose in our essay, than which no preaching could be more sober. Our aim is to give for them no opiate, but to quicken the sense of their guilt, and their exceeding mischief, too; for, if Francis Bacon be right in declaring the lie we swallow down more dangerous than that which only passes through our mind, how seriously the wine-bibbing of this sweet poison of kindly misrepresentation must have weakened the constitution of mankind! Lying for selfish gain or glory, for sensual pleasure, or for exculpation from a criminal charge, is more gross, but it involves at once such condemnation in society, and such inward reproach, as to be far less insidious than lying out of amiable consideration for others, to shield or further kinsfolk or friends, which may pass unrebuked, or stand for an actual merit. Yet, be the motive what it may, there is a certain invariable quantity of essential baseness in all violation of the truth; and it may be feared our affectionate falsehoods often work more evil than our malignant ones, by having free course and meeting with little objection. "Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for Him?" severely asks the old prophet of those who thought to cheat for their own set, as though it were in the cause of religion; and no godly soul can accept as a grateful tribute the least prevarication, however disinterested or devoted in its behalf. Indeed, no smart antithesis has been so hurtful as the overstated distinction between _black_ lies and _white_. They are of different species, but have no generic difference. Charles Reade's novel, of "White Lies," in which the deceptions of love are so glorified, charming story as it is, will sap the character of whoever does not, with a mental protest, countermine its main idea. The very theory of our integrity is gone, if we do not insist on this. God has not so made the world that any perjury or cover of the facts is necessary to serve the cause of goodness. Commend it though English or German critics do, can we not conceive of a speech grander than the untruth which Shakspeare has put into the dying Desdemona's mouth?

Let us, then, examine some of the forms of sympathetic lying.

One of them is that of over-liberal praise. That a person is always ready to extol others, and was never heard to speak ill of anybody under the sun, appears to some the very crown of excellence. But what is the panegyric worth that has no discrimination, that finds any mortal faultless, or bestows on the varying and contradictory behaviors of men an equal meed? To what does universal commendation amount more than universal indifference? What value do we put on the lavish regard which is not _individual_, or founded on any intelligent appreciation of its object, but scattered blindly abroad on all flesh, as once thousands were vaguely baptized in the open air by a general sprinkling, and which any one can appropriate only as he may own a certain indeterminate section of an undivided township or unfenced common? To have a good word for everybody, and take exception to nothing, is to incapacitate one's self for the exquisite delight of real fellowship. We all know persons who seem a sort of social favorites on account of this gracious manner which they afford with such mechanical plenty. But what a dilution and deterioration their external quality of half-artificial courtesy becomes! It is handing round sweetened water, instead of tasting the juice of the grape. It is pouring from a pail, instead of opening a vial of sweet odors. This broadcast and easy approval lacks that very honesty which, in the absence of fineness, is the single grace by which it could be sanctified.

The same vice affects more public concerns. Of what sheer hypocrisy eulogistic resolutions upon officers leaving their posts in Church or State are too frequently composed! The men who are tired and want to get rid of their Representative or minister are so overjoyed at losing sight of him, that they can set no bounds to their thankful exaltation of his name! Truly they speed the parting guest, wish well to the traveller from their latitude, and launch with shouts the ship of his fortunes from their _ways_! They recommend him as a paragon of genius and learning to all communities or societies who want a service in his kind. How happy both sides to this transaction are expected to feel, and how willing people are sometimes to add to the soft words a solid testimonial of gold, if only thus a dismissal can be effected! But are not the reports of the committees and the votes of the meetings false coin, nowhere current in the kingdom of God, circulate as they may in this realm of earth? Nay, does not everybody, save the one that receives the somewhat insincere and left-handed blessing, read the formal and solemn record with a disposition to ridicule or a pitying smile?