nibal habits; and that of the ChineseCeltes, from sell-teas.* 66 The reader will be glad to see a stray letter of his, not "collected," and the like of which is not to be found in any complete letter-writer," under the form of acknowledging books from a publisher. He is writing thanks for the "Maid of Elwar," by Cunningham, and for Barry Cornwall's songs :-† "Thank you for the books. I am ashamed to take tithe thus of your press. I am worse to a publisher than the two universities of the Brit. Mus. A. C.' I will forthwith read. 'B. C.' (I can't get out of the A, B, C) I have more than read. Taken together, 'tis too Lovey. But what delicacies! I like most King Death.' Glorious 'bove all 'The Lady with the Hundred Rings,' 'The Owl,' 'Reply to what's his name' (here, maybe, I'm partial), 'Sit down, sad Soul,' 'The Pauper Jubilee' (but that's old, and yet 'tis never old), 'The Falcon,' 'Felon's wife,' 'Dannu,' 'Mdme. Paisley;' but that is borrowed— Apple pie is very good, O Lord, "tis very naisty but chiefly in Dramatic Fragments, scarce three of which should have escaped my specimens had an antique name been prefixed. They exceed his first so much for the manner of poetry; now to the serious business of life. Up a court (Blandford-court) in Pall-mall, exactly at the back of Marlboro' House, with house-gate in front, and containing two houses, at No. 2 did lately live Leishman, my tailor. He is moved somewhere in the neighborhood-devil knows where. Pray find him out and give him the opposite. I am so much better, though my hand shakes in writing it, that after next Sunday I can see F. and you. Can you throw B. C. in? Why tarry the wheels of my Hogarth ?” He delighted in children, and in telling them strange, wild stories. No doubt, he liked to see their trusting, wondering little faces as he told. A young girl, daughter of a late dramatist, was often taken out by him in a day's junketting; and she has told how they never passed a punch's show, but stopped and sat on the steps, and saw them all in succession. But there were, unhappily, other things. which he could not pass by either; and she was left outside many a gin-palace while he went in. Of this sad weakness there can be no question. It is best in Letters and Recollections of Coleridge. †This letter is from the Athenæum. than his own English names. Lamb's had inhabited the hills of California. life has, indeed, to be written. The ma- What are the precise causes of the actual terials have grown prodigiously. As an difference observed between ancient and instance of unexplored grounds, Cottle modern sentiment in this respect, is, inmentions seeing a Miss Nuitford's "port- deed, a thorny and intricate problem. folios piled up and filled with letters of But it is easy to point out the obvious Lamb, Southey," &c. These, it may be necessity, that some great difference must suspected, have not been used. There exist. are some scraps, and odds and ends of thoughts and speculations-which he called "table-talk"-which found their way to the Athenæum shortly after his death. They are headed dismally and oddly, "By the late Elia." Like everything of his, they have a character. To the same journal he contributed the year of his death some criticisms on the modern English painters, and their want of imagination, leading off with the wild gigrotesque of "M."-Martin-and his tribe of Belshazzar's Feasts" and "Last Judgments." 66 Frazer's Magazine. ON MOUNTAIN BEAUTY. A great number of wonderfully acute remarks upon this subject are due to Mr. Ruskin. Mountaineers will feel grateful to him for the eloquence, which has intensified for them the ancient charms of their favorite haunts. Many of them will regret that they are so disjointed, and mixed up with so much matter that seems wantonly designed to set up the bristles of all ordinary readers, and of all who do not consider the nineteenth century to be a peculiarly degraded epoch. In an eloquent passage, Mr. Ruskin describes how, one afternoon, the "silver flame" of the snows on Mont Blanc, and the "dark glades of pine" around him, gave him no pleasure; how he discovered the cause of this strange insensibility to be that he was thoroughly tired; and how, by limiting himself to the contemplation of single tufts of moss or flakes of foam, he could still enjoy them, though the sublimities of Mont Blanc were too much for him. Every one who has traveled much on mountain scenery will confirm the accuracy of this description. He will know how bodily fatigue can take the very brilliance out of the snow-field, "smirch the sunshine out of the skies," and convert the everlasting hills into misplaced lumps of raw material. If he is not quite up to Mr. Ruskin's prescription of single blades of grass, perhaps the humbler beauty of a snowy table-cloth may still have power to excite his wearied sensibility. But what is the moral to be drawn from this? Mr. Ruskin takes occasion to be down, with special energy, upon his usual bugbear, "a German philosopher." This luckless German would, he thinks, hold that Mont Blanc was nothing, except in so far as he was looking at it, and that he THE question is sometimes asked: How are we to account for the indifference with which our ancestors regarded mountain scenery but a few years ago; whilst we, on the contrary, find ourselves unable to express a due sense of its surpassing beauty, without superlatives piled upon superlatives? How is it that the ancient poets mention mountains not at all, or mention them with obvious disgust? How could Addison cross the Alps, without showing the sensibility expected now from the conductor of a diligence? Why has this anomalous taste sprung up to fill the pockets of the Swiss, and disturb the most secret recesses of rock and snow with scrambling Englishmen? There is generally a tacit assumption underlying these questions, which accounts for their being asked in a tone of astonishment. People apparently think the proposition, that what is beautiful to us must have been beautiful to our ancestors, as simple as the proposition, that if sugar is sweet to our pa--the luckless German-was everything; lates, it must have been sweet to theirs also. They think that our forefathers not having discovered beauty in mountains, is as strange a fact as would have been their not discovering gold, if they or, to use the shibboleth which most stinks in Mr. Ruskin's nostrils, that the mountain was a "subjective" phenomenon. (We may, in passing, deny Mr. Ruskin's fairness towards the wretched an 66 dummy, whom he thus uses for a chopping-block.) Mr. Ruskin draws the more humble inference, that he himself was exceedingly small creature," much tired, and, thereupon, "fraternally associated himself with certain arts." Now, far be it from us to draw invidious comparisons between Mr. Ruskin and Mont Blanc. Mont Blanc is clearly the biggest, and Mr. Ruskin (not to mention his friends, the ants,) has, to all appearances, the most intellect. But we totally object, both to the supposititious German's inference, and to that which Mr. Ruskin seems to imply. They have simply no connection with the problem to be solved. The fact is, that it takes two to produce the sense of beauty. Mr. Ruskin could not feel it without the mountain, and the mountain could certainly not produce it without Mr. Ruskin. If Mont Blanc were unfortunately situated on the wrong side of the moon, where there are no inhabitants, where telescopes can never reach, until telescopes are contrived to see round a corner, he would cease to be beautiful; or, at least, he would be beautiful only in this sense, that if any one should ever see him (which, ex hypothesi, no one ever will), he might still produce the same mental sensation as before. In saying this, we scrupulously avoid the metaphysical problem, whether the Beautiful (with a big B) has an absolute existence -whatever that means. It is some comfort with this, as with other metaphysical questions, that every proposition we can make about it, will remain equally true, whichever way the question is answered. Beauty, in the abstract, is like that 66 wrong in the abstract," which Mr. Biglow tells us, never gets pitied, because it's a crime no one ever committed." The beauty of a stone as much implies the existence of a perceiving mind as the indigestibility of a stone implies the existence of a living stomach. In examining the causes of the beauty of any object, the condition of the observer, at the time, is an equally important consideration with the nature of the thing observed. And yet people persist in asking whether a mountain is beautiful, just as if they were asking whether it contained hornblende or mica-schist. A full answer would have to be in the form of It is 66 beautiful to Mr. Ruskin, whenever he is awake; but it is beautiful to A. B. only after he has finished his breakfast, and soothed his nerves with a cigar. Without asking why mountains are absolutely beautiful, it may be worth while to consider why they produce a sense of beauty in an ordinary concrete Englishman. But even this problem involves, to some extent, the awful question, what is the meaning of the word beauty?-a question not to be asked-far less answered. We will only limit a dark suspicion that its definition is so vague, that it is applied to a great many things, having nothing in common-or, at least, having only this in common, that they give pleasure to the observer. But how the particular class of pleasant things, included in the minor class of beautiful things, is to be discriminated from those things which are pleasant, but not beautiful, it passes our wits to say. It is still more difficult to say whether different members of this class do not differ more amongst themselves, than they do from other pleasant things. We have all heard of beautiful women, of beautiful poems, and of beautiful scenery; but the term is applied to other objects of less general attractiveness. A surgeon will speak of a beautiful operation, or a beautiful case of disease, without a suspicion he is straining the English language. We have heard of a mathematician looking at some horrid conglomeration of abstruse figures, or abstract terms of art, pronounce a problem about tritinear coordinates, or reciprocal polars, to be beautiful. It seems difficult, if not impossible, to classify either the objects exciting, or the emotions which they excite, in such a way as to bring these various cases under one head. Every one would call the rich purple of a glass of claret beautiful. The flavor of the wine would be described, not as "beautiful," but as "delicious." A poem, again, or a statue, excites a complex emotion, beyond the powers of any mental chemistry to analyze; but we should unhesitatingly describe it as beautiful. Yet it seems hard to maintain that there is not more resemblance between the pleasures excited by the rich color and the exquisite taste of the claret, than between those excited by the color of the wine, and the sight of the Dying Gladiator. The reason of the distinction, made in this case, is, that by the use of the term beautiful, we are accustomed to connote a certain intellectual dignity, which we are unwilling to concede to pleasures preeminently sensual. Thus we refrain from applying it to objects that gratify the senses of smell and taste, though we bestow it upon those which please the higher faculties of sight and hearing. Paradise (a distressing prospect for some people), but states the "calculable sum of elements of beauty to be steadily in proportion to the increase of mountainous character." He proceeds to enumerate some of the causes which entitle the hills of Westmoreland (for example) to superiority over the plains of Leicestershire. In the first place, the mountains introduce the shades of "purple, violet, and ultramarine blue." Secondly, he talks of Let us then discuss the question why the "color jewellery in every stone," and the sight of mountains should please us, the variety of flowers-making honorand avoid the more abstruse labyrinths able mention of the "large orange lily, into which we should be drawn by inqui- and narcissus," and "the exquisite oxalis.” rý, why they are beautiful; no doubt Thirdly, he prefers the water of the mounthat most of the pleasures which they tains to that in the plains, and considers, produce, will be those which we should also, that the trees are decidedly superior 1 generally ascribe to our sense of beauty.-being given in mountain districts to It is, of course, impossible to catalogue, dancing, gathering in companies, and even roughly, the different classes of emotion that mountains may produce in us. It is difficult enough to analyze fully the simplest cases of beauty. So many evanescent associations may join to produce the effect, that it is impossible to disentangle them, or even to become distinctly conscious of their separate influence. They affect us like the stars of the lesser magnitudes, which go to make up the impression of vast multitudes, by affecting the remote part of the retina; but which vanish when we look at them directly. To trace them out would require a perception as acute as that of Sancho Panza's respected relatives, one of whom distinguished the taste of leather, and the other of iron, in a full cask of wine-a statement verified against all mockers, by the ultimate discovery of a key with a leather thong, when the cask was drained. To hunt out and discriminate all the sources of pleasure that are combined in the sight of a flower, or the song of a bird, would be an endless labor. We shall only attempt to point out roughly some of the more prominent elements of the power of mountain scenery over our imaginations. To determine in what proportion they are combined, and to analyze them, so that no residue may escape notice, we leave to bolder or more presumptuous chemists. Mr. Ruskin (whose writings we still take as our text), in an enthusiastic passage, not merely says that a great Alp is the best image this world can give of gliding in grave processions, which they don't generally do in parks. Finally, mountains have an unquestionable “supremacy in clouds." We do not quarrel with this statement, except that, as usual with Mr. Ruskin, his rhetoric rather runs away with him-especially when he professes to be making a simple enumeration. We will first observe the mention, in this eloquent passage, of certain effects likely to be produced on every one who has the faculty of sight. The exquisite purple of the distant mountain range, the warm Alpine glow on everlasting snowfields, gives us a pleasure which can be analyzed no further. It must have been the same to ancient Greeks, who looked upon mountains as a simple nuisance-to the keen-eyed chamois-hunter, who thinks of them as a great game preserve; and to the modern tourist, who requires his admiration to be directed and excused by a Murray. The pleasure of looking at these beautiful colors is not, we suspect, very intense to most people. It requires a good deal of education to see what is before our eyes. We know by experience that grass is green-a phrase which means that it is green at a hundred yards' distance. As we actually see it with two miles of intervening haze, it may be a faint purple; but nine people out of ten, knowing that they are looking at grass, will somehow get the impression that they are looking at something green. It is only when they try to represent their impressions on paper, that is, when they come to have something of the painter's education, that they discover their mistake. This (which Mr. Ruskin well points out) is, we submit, a satisfactory proof of the faintness of the impression. No one standing a few feet from a regiment of the guards, would doubt that their uniform was scarlet. The rose, whose hue makes the rash gazer, according to the extremely poetical statement, "wipe his eye," will probably leave no doubt about its color. Now the faintness of the impression must, of necessity, be to some extent a measure of the pleasure. It requires some education even to see, and a careful education properly to appreciate coloring. The observer must be educated up to the pitch of a painter's sensibility before he will derive any pleasure at all. Exquisite as these aerial hues may be, they probably lose more by their faintness than they gain by their delicacy. In a mountain view nothing is more striking than the dim and the dewy nature of a large part of the prospect. The greater part of the visible landscape is at a distance of some miles. A striking illustration of this is the view over the Italian plains from the top of any of the gigantic Alps on its frontier. From the Hochste Spitz of Monte Rosa, for example, the same depth of haze which makes Monte Rosa look " faintly flushed and phantom fair" from Milan, interposed in the inverse direction gives to the solid plains of Lombardy the same shadowy and unsubstantial aspect. You seem first only to be fairly suspended in mid air yourself, but the earth seems burned into cloud beneath your feet. Now, if we look at a view which takes up the same proportion of the visible sphere in England, the coloring, though less perfect, must be more intense. If we stand in one of the miniature valleys of Devonshire, we see the emerald green of the meadows, or the sheets of yellow gorse blossom along every radius of vision. If replaced by the Alpine view, a large proportion of this rich coloring must be changed for distant gray hill sides blended into monotonous tints by leagues of intervening mist. In point of mere color, then, the mountains generally substitute vague though delicate tints, which most people pass unobserved for brilliant NEW SERIES-VOL. I., No. 5. local colors which force themselves even upon a languid attention. The only exceptions are the inexpressibly glorious hues of sunrise and sunset upon the pure white snows. But even these are, to some extent, casual and varying phenomena; they are only seen in their full beauty in the furthest recesses of the mountain labyrinths, where the great snow peaks overhang the valleys, and they are fortunately not quite unrivaled even in the fenny plains of England. The pleasure derived from the noble form of some of the mountain peaks might also be placed in this category. The delicate outline of the snowy cone of the Weisshorn projected against the deep blue of an Alpine sky must have pleased even dull perceptions. But candor must admit, that in a general way mountain forms are apt to be decidedly ungainly. When Mr. Ruskin has once attracted our attention to the graceful curves eroded by mountain torrents we may admit their beauty. But there is a fatal objection to a general spontaneous perception. Every one can recognize, to some extent, the canons which regulate the beauty of the human form. Those limbs are most graceful which are so moulded as to combine the maximum of agility and strength. This is equally true, whether their adaptation to their purpose is, or is not, the cause of their beauty. But the general effect of mountain form is marred by the apparent aimlessness of their huge, unwieldy masses. A cathedral may be beautiful partly because we see the perfect fitness of the columns and arches to sustain the roof in harmonious combination. They produce the impression, the production of which is the test of real grace, that they give sufficient strength without throwing away an unnecessary amount of massiveness. But no human being can tell the purpose of erecting a mountain; no one knows whether its buttresses and pediments are not out of all proportion ; there is an apparent aimlessness and want of purpose about the vast masses thrown in wild confusion together, which prevents us from tracing design or intellect. If any one empties a coal-scuttle at random, the lumps of coal will probably not form any very elegant mass; and the mountains seem, to a casual observer, to 34 |