Modern Painters, Volume 5 (of 5)
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Title: Modern Painters, Volume 5 (of 5)
Author: John Ruskin
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN PAINTERS, VOLUME 5 (OF 5) ***
Library Edition
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
MODERN PAINTERS
VOLUME IV--OF MOUNTAIN BEAUTY
/ OF LEAF BEAUTY
VOLUME V < OF CLOUD BEAUTY
\ OF IDEAS OF RELATION
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
MODERN PAINTERS.
VOLUME V.,
COMPLETING THE WORK AND CONTAINING
PARTS
VI. OF LEAF BEAUTY.--VII. OF CLOUD BEAUTY.
VIII. OF IDEAS OF RELATION.
1. OF INVENTION FORMAL.
IX. OF IDEAS OF RELATION.
2. OF INVENTION SPIRITUAL.
PREFACE.
The disproportion, between the length of time occupied in the
preparation of this volume, and the slightness of apparent result, is so
vexatious to me, and must seem so strange to the reader, that he will
perhaps bear with my stating some of the matters which have employed or
interrupted me between 1855 and 1860. I needed rest after finishing the
fourth volume, and did little in the following summer. The winter of
1856 was spent in writing the "Elements of Drawing," for which I thought
there was immediate need; and in examining with more attention than they
deserved some of the modern theories of political economy, to which
there was necessarily reference in my addresses at Manchester. The
Manchester Exhibition then gave me some work, chiefly in its magnificent
Reynolds' constellation; and thence I went on into Scotland, to look at
Dumblane and Jedburgh, and some other favorite sites of Turner's; which
I had not all seen, when I received notice from Mr. Wornum that he had
obtained for me permission, from the Trustees of the National Gallery,
to arrange, as I thought best, the Turner drawings belonging to the
nation; on which I returned to London immediately.
In seven tin boxes in the lower room of the National Gallery I found
upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of paper, drawn upon by Turner in
one way or another. Many on both sides; some with four, five, or six
subjects on each side (the pencil point digging spiritedly through from
the foregrounds of the front into the tender pieces of sky on the back);
some in chalk, which the touch of the finger would sweep away;[1] others
in ink, rotted into holes; others (some splendid colored drawings among
them) long eaten away by damp and mildew, and falling into dust at the
edges, in capes and bays of fragile decay; others worm-eaten, some
mouse-eaten, many torn half-way through; numbers doubled (quadrupled, I
should say) up into four, being Turner's favorite mode of packing for
travelling; nearly all rudely flattened out from the bundles in which
Turner had finally rolled them up and squeezed them into his drawers in
Queen Anne Street. Dust of thirty years' accumulation, black, dense, and
sooty, lay in the rents of the crushed and crumpled edges of these
flattened bundles, looking like a jagged black frame, and producing
altogether unexpected effects in brilliant portions of skies, whence an
accidental or experimental finger mark of the first bundle-unfolder had
swept it away.
About half, or rather more, of the entire number consisted of pencil
sketches, in flat oblong pocket-books, dropping to pieces at the back,
tearing laterally whenever opened, and every drawing rubbing itself into
the one opposite. These first I paged with my own hand; then unbound;
and laid every leaf separately in a clean sheet of perfectly smooth
writing paper, so that it might receive no farther injury. Then,
enclosing the contents and boards of each book (usually ninety-two
leaves, more or less drawn on both sides, with two sketches on the
boards at the beginning and end) in a separate sealed packet, I returned
it to its tin box. The loose sketches needed more trouble. The dust had
first to be got off them (from the chalk ones it could only be blown
off); then they had to be variously flattened; the torn ones to be laid
down, the loveliest guarded, so as to prevent all future friction; and
four hundred of the most characteristic framed and glazed, and cabinets
constructed for them which would admit of their free use by the public.
With two assistants, I was at work all the autumn and winter of 1857,
every day, all day long, and often far into the night.
The manual labor would not have hurt me; but the excitement involved in
seeing unfolded the whole career of Turner's mind during his life,
joined with much sorrow at the state in which nearly all his most
precious work had been left, and with great anxiety, and heavy sense of
responsibility besides, were very trying; and I have never in my life
felt so much exhausted as when I locked the last box, and gave the keys
to Mr. Wornum, in May, 1858. Among the later colored sketches, there was
one magnificent series, which appeared to be of some towns along the
course of the Rhine on the north of Switzerland. Knowing that these
towns were peculiarly liable to be injured by modern railroad works, I
thought I might rest myself by hunting down these Turner subjects, and
sketching what I could of them, in order to illustrate his compositions.
As I expected, the subjects in question were all on, or near, that east
and west reach of the Rhine between Constance and Basle. Most of them
are of Rheinfelden, Seckingen, Lauffenbourg, Schaffhausen, and the Swiss
Baden.
Having made what notes were possible to me of these subjects in the
summer (one or two are used in this volume), I was crossing Lombardy in
order to examine some points of the shepherd character in the Vaudois
valleys, thinking to get my book finished next spring; when I
unexpectedly found some good Paul Veroneses at Turin. There were several
questions respecting the real motives of Venetian work that still
troubled me not a little, and which I had intended to work out in the
Louvre; but seeing that Turin was a good place wherein to keep out of
people's way, I settled there instead, and began with Veronese's Queen
of Sheba;--when, with much consternation, but more delight, I found that
I had never got to the roots of the moral power of the Venetians, and
that they needed still another and a very stern course of study. There
was nothing for it but to give up the book for that year. The winter was
spent mainly in trying to get at the mind of Titian; not a light
winter's task; of which the issue, being in many ways very unexpected to
me (the reader will find it partly told towards the close of this
volume), necessitated my going in the spring to Berlin, to see Titian's
portrait of Lavinia there, and to Dresden to see the Tribute Money, the
elder Lavinia, and girl in white, with the flag fan. Another portrait,
at Dresden, of a lady in a dress of rose and gold, by me unheard of
before, and one of an admiral, at Munich, had like to have kept me in
Germany all summer.
Getting home at last, and having put myself to arrange materials of
which it was not easy, after so much interruption, to recover the
command;--which also were now not reducible to a single volume--two
questions occurred in the outset, one in the section on vegetation,
respecting the origin of wood; the other in the section on sea,
respecting curves of waves; to neither of which, from botanist or
mathematicians, any sufficient answer seemed obtainable.
In other respects also the section on the sea was wholly unsatisfactory
to me: I knew little of ships, nothing of blue open water. Turner's
pathetic interest in the sea, and his inexhaustible knowledge of
shipping, deserved more complete and accurate illustration than was at
all possible to me; and the mathematical difficulty lay at the beginning
of all demonstration of facts. I determined to do this piece of work
well, or not at all, and threw the proposed section out of this volume.
If I ever am able to do what I want with it (and this is barely
probable), it will be a separate book; which, on other accounts, I do
not regret, since many persons might be interested in studies of the
shipping of the old Nelson times, and of the sea-waves and sailor
character of all times, who would not care to encumber themselves with
five volumes of a work on Art.
The vegetation question had, however, at all cost, to be made out as
best might be; and again lost me much time. Many of the results of this
inquiry, also, can only be given, if ever, in a detached form.
During these various discouragements, the preparation of the Plates
could not go on prosperously. Drawing is difficult enough, undertaken in
quietness: it is impossible to bring it to any point of fine rightness
with half-applied energy.
Many experiments were made in hope of expressing Turner's peculiar
execution and touch by facsimile. They cost time, and strength, and, for
the present, have failed; many elaborate drawings, made during the
winter of 1858, having been at last thrown aside. Some good may
afterwards come of these; but certainly not by reduction to the size of
the page of this book, for which, even of smaller subjects, I have not
prepared the most interesting, for I do not wish the possession of any
effective and valuable engravings from Turner to be contingent on the
purchasing a book of mine.[2]
Feebly and faultfully, therefore, yet as well as I can do it under these
discouragements, the book is at last done; respecting the general course
of which, it will be kind and well if the reader will note these few
points that follow.
The first volume was the expansion of a reply to a magazine article; and
was not begun because I then thought myself qualified to write a
systematic treatise on Art; but because I at least knew, and knew it to
be demonstrable, that Turner was right and true, and that his critics
were wrong, false, and base. At that time I had seen much of nature, and
had been several times in Italy, wintering once in Rome; but had chiefly
delighted in northern art, beginning, when a mere boy, with Rubens and
Rembrandt. It was long before I got quit of a boy's veneration for
Rubens' physical art-power; and the reader will, perhaps, on this ground
forgive the strong expressions of admiration for Rubens, which, to my
great regret, occur in the first volume.
Finding myself, however, engaged seriously in the essay, I went, before
writing the second volume, to study in Italy; where the strong reaction
from the influence of Rubens threw me at first too far under that of
Angelico and Raphael, and, which was the worst harm that came of that
Rubens influence, blinded me long to the deepest qualities of Venetian
art; which, the reader may see by expressions occurring not only in the
second, but even in the third and fourth volumes, I thought, however
powerful, yet partly luxurious and sensual, until I was led into the
final inquiries above related.
These oscillations of temper, and progressions of discovery, extending
over a period of seventeen years, ought not to diminish the reader's
confidence in the book. Let him be assured of this, that unless
important changes are occurring in his opinions continually, all his
life long, not one of those opinions can be on any questionable subject
true. All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable
of nourishment; therefore of change. But their change is that of a
tree--not of a cloud.
In the main aim and principle of the book, there is no variation, from
its first syllable to its last. It declares the perfectness and eternal
beauty of the work of God; and tests all work of man by concurrence
with, or subjection to that. And it differs from most books, and has a
chance of being in some respects better for the difference, in that it
has not been written either for fame, or for money, or for
conscience-sake, but of necessity.
It has not been written for praise. Had I wished to gain present
reputation, by a little flattery adroitly used in some places, a sharp
word or two withheld in others, and the substitution of verbiage
generally for investigation, I could have made the circulation of these
volumes tenfold what it has been in modern society. Had I wished for
future fame, I should have written one volume, not five. Also, it has
not been written for money. In this wealth-producing country, seventeen
years' labor could hardly have been invested with less chance of
equivalent return.
Also, it has not been written for conscience-sake. I had no definite
hope in writing it; still less any sense of its being required of me as
a duty. It seems to me, and seemed always, probable, that I might have
done much more good in some other way. But it has been written of
necessity. I saw an injustice done, and tried to remedy it. I heard
falsehood taught, and was compelled to deny it. Nothing else was
possible to me. I knew not how little or how much might come of the
business, or whether I was fit for it; but here was the lie full set in
front of me, and there was no way round it, but only over it. So that,
as the work changed like a tree, it was also rooted like a tree--not
where it would, but where need was; on which, if any fruit grow such as
you can like, you are welcome to gather it without thanks; and so far as
it is poor or bitter, it will be your justice to refuse it without
reviling.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The best book of studies for his great shipwrecks contained about
a quarter of a pound of chalk débris, black and white, broken off the
crayons with which Turner had drawn furiously on both sides of the
leaves; every leaf, with peculiar foresight and consideration of
difficulties to be met by future mounters, containing half of one
subject on the front of it, and half of another on the back.
[2] To Mr. Armytage, Mr. Cuff, and Mr. Cousen, I have to express my
sincere thanks for the patience, and my sincere admiration of the
skill, with which they have helped me. Their patience, especially,
has been put to severe trial by the rewardless toil required to
produce facsimiles of drawings in which the slightness of subject
could never attract any due notice to the excellence of workmanship.
Aid, just as disinterested, and deserving of as earnest
acknowledgment, has been given me by Miss Byfield, in her faultless
facsimiles of my careless sketches; by Miss O. Hill, who prepared the
copies which I required from portions of the pictures of the old
masters; and by Mr. Robin Allen, in accurate line studies from
nature, of which, though only one is engraved in this volume, many
others have been most serviceable, both to it and to me.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PART VI.
ON LEAF BEAUTY.
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER I.--The Earth-Veil 1
" II.--The Leaf Orders 6
" III.--The Bud 10
" IV.--The Leaf 21
" V.--Leaf Aspects 34
" VI.--The Branch 39
" VII.--The Stem 49
" VIII.--The Leaf Monuments 63
" IX.--The Leaf Shadows 77
" X.--Leaves Motionless 88
PART VII.
OF CLOUD BEAUTY.
CHAPTER I.--The Cloud Balancings 101
" II.--The Cloud-Flocks 108
" III.--The Cloud-Chariots 122
" IV.--The Angel of the Sea 133
PART VIII.
OF IDEAS OF RELATION:--I. OF INVENTION FORMAL.
CHAPTER I.--The Law of Help 153
" II.--The Task of the Least 164
" III.--The Rule of the Greatest 175
" IV.--The Law of Perfectness 180
PART IX.
OF IDEAS OF RELATION:--II. OF INVENTION SPIRITUAL.
CHAPTER I.--The Dark Mirror 193
" II.--The Lance of Pallas 202
" III.--The Wings of the Lion 214
" IV.--Durer and Salvator 230
" V.--Claude and Poussin 241
" VI.--Rubens and Cuyp 249
" VII.--Of Vulgarity 261
" VIII.--Wouvermans and Angelico 277
" IX.--The Two Boyhoods 286
" X.--The Nereid's Guard 298
" XI.--The Hesperid Æglé 314
" XII.--Peace 339
LOCAL INDEX.
INDEX TO PAINTERS AND PICTURES.
TOPICAL INDEX.
LIST OF PLATES TO VOL. V.
Drawn by Engraved by
Frontispiece, Ancilla Domini _Fra Angelico_ WM. HALL
Plate Facing page
51. The Dryad's Toil _J. Ruskin_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 12
52. Spirals of Thorn _R. Allen_ R. P. CUFF 26
53. The Dryad's Crown _J. Ruskin_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 36
54. Dutch Leafage _Cuyp and Hobbima_ J. COUSEN 37
55. By the Way-side _J. M. W. Turner_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 38
56. Sketch by a Clerk of the Works _J. Ruskin_ J. EMSLIE 61
57. Leafage by Durer and Veronese _Durer and Veronese_ R. P. CUFF 65
58. Branch Curvature _R. Allen_ R. P. CUFF 69
59. The Dryad's Waywardness _J. Ruskin_ R. P. CUFF 71
60. The Rending of Leaves _J. Ruskin_ J. COUSEN 94
61. Richmond, from the Moors _J. M. W. Turner_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 98
62. By the Brookside _J. M. W. Turner_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 98
63. The Cloud Flocks _J. Ruskin_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 109
64. Cloud Perspective (Rectilinear) _J. Ruskin_ J. EMSLIE 115
65. " " (Curvilinear) _J. Ruskin_ J. EMSLIE 116
66. Light in the West, Beauvais _J. Ruskin_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 121
67. Clouds _J. M. W. Turner_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 118
68. Monte Rosa _J. Ruskin_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 339
69. Aiguilles and their Friends _J. Ruskin_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 125
70. The Graiæ _J. Ruskin_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 127
71. "Venga Medusa" _J. Ruskin_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 127
72. The Locks of Typhon _J. M. W. Turner_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 142
73. Loire Side _J. M. W. Turner_ J. RUSKIN 165
74. The Mill Stream _J. M. W. Turner_ J. RUSKIN 168
75. The Castle of Lauffen _J. M. W. Turner_ R. P. CUFF 169
76. The Moat of Nuremberg _J. Ruskin_ J. H. LE KEUX 233
78. Quivi Trovammo _J. M. W. Turner_ J. RUSKIN 298
79. Hesperid Æglé _Giorgione_ WM. HALL 314
80. Rocks at Rest / _J. Ruskin, from J. M._ \ J. C. ARMYTAGE 319
\ _W. Turner_ /
81. Rocks in Unrest / _J. Ruskin, from J. M._ \ J. C. ARMYTAGE 320
\ _W. Turner_ /
82. The Nets in the Rapids _J. M. W. Turner_ J. H. LE KEUX 336
83. The Bridge of Rheinfelden _J. Ruskin_ J. H. LE KEUX 337
84. Peace _J. Ruskin_ J. H. LE KEUX 338
SEPARATE ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD.
Figure 56, to face page 65
" 61, " 69
" 75 to 78, " 97
" 85, " 118
" 87, " 127
" 88 to 90, " 128
" 98, " 184
" 100, " 284
[Illustration: Ancilla Domini.]
MODERN PAINTERS.
PART VI.
OF LEAF BEAUTY.
CHAPTER I.
THE EARTH-VEIL.
§ 1. "To dress it and to keep it."
That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what work have we set ourselves
upon instead! How have we ravaged the garden instead of kept it--feeding
our war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees into
spear-shafts!
"And at the East a flaming sword."
Is its flame quenchless? and are those gates that keep the way indeed
passable no more? or is it not rather that we no more desire to enter?
For what can we conceive of that first Eden which we might not yet win
back, if we chose? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well: the
flowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them; and the
fairer, the closer. There may indeed have been a Fall of Flowers, as a
Fall of Man; but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy
nothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow for us side by
side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white and red with them,
if we cared to have it so. And Paradise was full of pleasant shades and
fruitful avenues. Well: what hinders us from covering as much of the
world as we like with pleasant shade and pure blossom, and goodly fruit?
Who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corn, till they laugh
and sing? Who prevents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhabitable,
from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing the hills with
frail-floretted snow, far away to the half-lighted horizon of April, and
flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with glow of clustered food?
But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and all the animals were
gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yet be a place of peace if
we were all peacemakers, and gentle service should we have of its
creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so long as we make sport
of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose to contend rather with
our fellows than with our faults, and make battlefield of our meadows
instead of pasture--so long, truly, the Flaming Sword will still turn
every way, and the gates of Eden remain barred close enough, till we
have sheathed the sharper flame of our own passions, and broken down the
closer gates of our own hearts.
§ 2. I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I considered
the service which the flowers and trees, which man was at first
appointed to keep, were intended to render to him in return for his
care; and the services they still render to him, as far as he allows
their influence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what infinite
wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it is,
as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man--his friend
and his teacher! In the conditions which we have traced in its rocks,
there could only be seen preparation for his existence;--the characters
which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it easily--in
all these it has been inanimate and passive; but vegetation is to it as
an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. The earth in its
depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of slow crystalline
change; but at its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with,
it ministers to them through a veil of strange intermediate being; which
breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place;
passes through life without consciousness, to death without bitterness;
wears the beauty of youth, without its passion; and declines to the
weakness of age, without its regret.
§ 3. And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to
us, with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power
as we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsuffering
creature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external world
are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds of
precious grace and teaching being united in this link between the Earth
and Man: wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, and
discipline; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful
means of life. First a carpet to make it soft for him; then, a colored
fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade
him from sunheat, and shade also the fallen rain, that it may not dry
quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the
moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage: easily to be cut, yet tough and
light, to make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or
plough-handle, according to his temper); useless it had been, if harder;
useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, and
the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth; the
strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds
which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are
made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the
fancy of man, or provision for his service: cold juice, or glowing
spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of
styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm: and all these presented in forms
of endless change. Fragility or force, softness and strength, in all
degrees and aspects; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or
undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances
of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with
faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock,
or binding the transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the
desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far
tossing in entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing with
variegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or
ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest joy
of humanity.
§ 4. Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and
good for food, and for building, and for instruments of our hands, this
race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us,
become, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of
our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be
far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is
assuredly wrong in both, who does not love them, if his life has
brought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do without them, for
the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailors need;
and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn between
dark stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees at all, the
love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a sorrowful
proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country," in the
simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been the
source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words "countryman,"
"rustic," "clown," "paysan," "villager," still signify a rude and
untaught person, as opposed to the words "townsman," and "citizen." We
accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, somewhat too
quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural that country-people
should be rude, and towns-people gentle. Whereas I believe that the
result of each mode of life may, in some stages of the world's progress,
be the exact reverse; and that another use of words may be forced upon
us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may find ourselves saying: "Such
and such a person is very gentle and kind--he is quite rustic; and such
and such another person is very rude and ill-taught--he is quite
urbane."
§ 5. At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their
good report through our evil ways of going on in the world
generally;--chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with
each other. No field, in the middle ages, being safe from devastation,
and every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders,
peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled
themselves in, making as few cross-country roads as possible: while the
men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the servants
or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agricultural pursuits by the
nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kept educated Europe in a
state of mind over which natural phenomena could have no power; body and
intellect being lost in the practice of war without purpose, and the
meditation of words without meaning. Men learned the dexterity with
sword and syllogism, which they mistook for education, within cloister
and tilt-yard; and looked on all the broad space of the world of God
mainly as a place for exercise of horses, or for growth of food.
§ 6. There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the
Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of
Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio,[1] in which the armies
meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red
flowers tossing above the helmets, and glowing between the lowered
lances. For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone hitherto for
man between the tossing of helmet-crests; and sometimes I cannot but
think of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in that
imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves in the
warm spring-time, in vain for men; and all along the dells of England
her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw drew his bow,
and the king rode his careless chase; and by the sweet French rivers
their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only to show the
flames of burning cities, on the horizon, through the tracery of their
stems: amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted
olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on their valley meadows,
day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn were washed with
crimson at sunset.
§ 7. And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, to show what kind of
evidence existed respecting the possible influence of country life on
men; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader would
perceive this to be a grave question, more than most which we contend
about, political or social, and might care to follow it out with me
earnestly.
The day will assuredly come when men will see that it is a grave
question; at which period, also, I doubt not, there will arise persons
able to investigate it. For the present, the movements of the world seem
little likely to be influenced by botanical law; or by any other
considerations respecting trees, than the probable price of timber. I
shall limit myself, therefore, to my own simple woodman's work, and try
to hew this book into its final shape, with the limited and humble aim
that I had in beginning it, namely, to prove how far the idle and
peaceable persons, who have hitherto cared about leaves and clouds, have
rightly seen, or faithfully reported of them.
FOOTNOTE:
[1]: In our own National Gallery. It is quaint and imperfect, but of
great interest.
CHAPTER II.
THE LEAF ORDERS.
§ 1. As in our sketch of the structure of mountains it seemed advisable
to adopt a classification of their forms, which, though inconsistent
with absolute scientific precision, was convenient for order of
successive inquiry, and gave useful largeness of view; so, and with yet
stronger reason, in glancing at the first laws of vegetable life, it
will be best to follow an arrangement easily remembered and broadly
true, however incapable of being carried out into entirely consistent
detail. I say, "with yet stronger reason," because more questions are at
issue among botanists than among geologists; a greater number of
classifications have been suggested for plants than for rocks; nor is it
unlikely that those now accepted may be hereafter modified. I take an
arrangement, therefore, involving no theory; serviceable enough for all
working purposes, and sure to remain thus serviceable, in its rough
generality, whatever views may hereafter be developed among botanists.
§ 2. A child's division of plants is into "trees and flowers." If,
however, we were to take him in spring, after he had gathered his lapful
of daisies, from the lawn into the orchard, and ask him how he would
call those wreaths of richer floret, whose frail petals tossed their
foam of promise between him and the sky, he would at once see the need
of some intermediate name, and call them, perhaps, "tree-flowers." If,
then, we took him to a birch-wood, and showed him that catkins were
flowers, as well as cherry-blossoms, he might, with a little help, reach
so far as to divide all flowers into two classes; one, those that grew
on ground; and another, those that grew on trees. The botanist might
smile at such a division; but an artist would not. To him, as the child,
there is something specific and distinctive in those rough trunks that
carry the higher flowers. To him, it makes the main difference between
one plant and another, whether it is to tell as a light upon the ground,
or as a shade upon the sky. And if, after this, we asked for a little
help from the botanist, and he were to lead us, leaving the blossoms, to
look more carefully at leaves and buds, we should find ourselves able in
some sort to justify, even to him, our childish classification. For our
present purposes, justifiable or not, it is the most suggestive and
convenient. Plants are, indeed, broadly referable to two great classes.
The first we may, perhaps, not inexpediently call TENTED PLANTS. They
live in encampments, on the ground, as lilies; or on surfaces of rock,
or stems of other plants, as lichens and mosses. They live--some for a
year, some for many years, some for myriads of years; but, perishing,
they pass as the tented Arab passes; they leave _no memorials of
themselves_, except the seed, or bulb, or root which is to perpetuate
the race.
§ 3. The other great class of plants we may perhaps best call BUILDING
PLANTS. These will not live on the ground, but eagerly raise edifices
above it. Each works hard with solemn forethought all its life.
Perishing, it leaves its work in the form which will be most useful to
its successors--its own monument, and their inheritance. These
architectural edifices we call "Trees."
It may be thought that this nomenclature already involves a theory. But
I care about neither the nomenclature, nor about anything questionable
in my description of the classes. The reader is welcome to give them
what names he likes, and to render what account of them he thinks
fittest. But to us, as artists, or lovers of art, this is the first and
most vital question concerning a plant: "Has it a fixed form or a
changing one? Shall I find it always as I do to-day--this Parnassia
palustris--with one leaf and one flower? or may it some day have
incalculable pomp of leaves and unmeasured treasure of flowers? Will it
rise only to the height of a man--as an ear of corn--and perish like a
man; or will it spread its boughs to the sea and branches to the river,
and enlarge its circle of shade in heaven for a thousand years?"
§ 4. This, I repeat, is the _first_ question I ask the plant. And as it
answers, I range it on one side or the other, among those that rest or
those that toil: tent-dwellers, who toil not, neither do they spin; or
tree-builders, whose days are as the days of the people. I find again,
on farther questioning these plants who rest, that one group of them
does indeed rest always, contentedly, on the ground, but that those of
another group, more ambitious, emulate the builders; and though they
cannot build rightly, raise for themselves pillars out of the remains of
past generations, on which they themselves, living the life of St.
Simeon Stylites, are called, by courtesy, Trees; being, in fact, many of
them (palms, for instance) quite as stately as real trees.[1]
These two classes we might call earth-plants, and pillar-plants.
§ 5. Again, in questioning the true builders as to their modes of work,
I find that they also are divisible into two great classes. Without in
the least wishing the reader to accept the fanciful nomenclature, I
think he may yet most conveniently remember these as "Builders with the
shield," and "Builders with the sword."
Builders with the shield have expanded leaves, more or less resembling
shields, partly in shape, but still more in office; for under their
lifted shadow the young bud of the next year is kept from harm. These
are the gentlest of the builders, and live in pleasant places, providing
food and shelter for man. Builders with the sword, on the contrary, have
sharp leaves in the shape of swords, and the young buds, instead of
being as numerous as the leaves, crouching each under a leaf-shadow, are
few in number, and grow fearlessly, each in the midst of a sheaf of
swords. These builders live in savage places, are sternly dark in color,
and though they give much help to man by their merely physical strength,
they (with few exceptions) give him no food, and imperfect shelter.
Their mode of building is ruder than that of the shield-builders, and
they in many ways resemble the pillar-plants of the opposite order. We
call them generally "Pines."
§ 6. Our work, in this section, will lie only among the shield-builders,
sword-builders, and plants of rest. The Pillar-plants belong, for the
most part, to other climates. I could not analyze them rightly; and the
labor given to them would be comparatively useless for our present
purposes. The chief mystery of vegetation, so far as respects external
form, is among the fair shield-builders. These, at least, we must
examine fondly and earnestly.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I am not sure that this is a fair account of palms. I have never
had opportunity of studying stems of Endogens, and I cannot
understand the description given of them in books, nor do I know how
far some of their branched conditions approximate to real
tree-structure. If this work, whatever errors it may involve,
provokes the curiosity of the reader so as to lead him to seek for
more and better knowledge, it will do all the service I hope from it.
CHAPTER III.
THE BUD.
§ 1. If you gather in summer time an outer spray of any shield-leaved
tree, you will find it consists of a slender rod, throwing out leaves,
perhaps on every side, perhaps on two sides only, with usually a cluster
of closer leaves at the end. In order to understand its structure, we
must reduce it to a simple general type. Nay, even to a very inaccurate
type. For a tree-branch is essentially a complex thing, and no "simple"
type can, therefore, be a right one.
This type I am going to give you is full of fallacies and inaccuracies;
but out of these fallacies we will bring the truth, by casting them
aside one by one.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
§ 2. Let the tree spray be represented under one of these two types, A
or B, Fig. 1, the cluster at the end being in each case supposed to
consist of three leaves only (a most impertinent supposition, for it
must at least have four, only the fourth would be in a puzzling
perspective in A, and hidden behind the central leaf in B). So, receive
this false type patiently. When leaves are set on the stalk one after
another, as in A, they are called "alternate;" when placed as in B,
"opposite." It is necessary you should remember this not very difficult
piece of nomenclature.
If you examine the branch you have gathered, you will see that for some
little way below the full-leaf cluster at the end, the stalk is smooth,
and the leaves are set regularly on it. But at six, eight, or ten inches
down, there comes an awkward knot; something seems to have gone wrong,
perhaps another spray branches off there; at all events, the stem gets
suddenly thicker, and you may break it there (probably) easier than
anywhere else.
That is the junction of two stories of the building. The smooth piece
has all been done this summer. At the knot the foundation was left
during the winter.
The year's work is called a "shoot." I shall be glad if you will break
it off to look at; as my A and B types are supposed to go no farther
down than the knot.
The alternate form A is more frequent than B, and some botanists think
includes B. We will, therefore, begin with it.
§ 3. If you look close at the figure, you will see small projecting
points at the roots of the leaves. These represent buds, which you may
find, most probably, in the shoot you have in your hand. Whether you
find them or not, they are there--visible, or latent, does not matter.
Every leaf has assuredly an infant bud to take care of, laid tenderly,
as in a cradle, just where the leaf-stalk forms a safe niche between it
and the main stem. The child-bud is thus fondly guarded all summer; but
its protecting leaf dies in the autumn; and then the boy-bud is put out
to rough winter-schooling, by which he is prepared for personal entrance
into public life in the spring.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
Let us suppose autumn to have come, and the leaves to have fallen. Then
our A of Fig. I, the buds only being left, one for each leaf, will
appear as A B, in Fig. 2. We will call the buds grouped at B, terminal
buds, and those at _a_, _b_, and _c_, lateral buds.
This budded rod is the true year's work of the building plant, at that
part of its edifice. You may consider the little spray, if you like, as
one pinnacle of the tree-cathedral, which has taken a year to fashion;
innumerable other pinnacles having been built at the same time on other
branches.
§ 4. Now, every one of these buds, _a_, _b_, and _c_, as well as every
terminal bud, has the power and disposition to raise himself in the
spring, into just such another pinnacle as A B is.
This development is the process we have mainly to study in this chapter;
but, in the outset, let us see clearly what it is to end in.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
Each bud, I said, has the power and disposition to make a pinnacle of
himself, but he has not always the opportunity. What may hinder him we
shall see presently. Meantime, the reader will, perhaps, kindly allow me
to assume that the buds _a_, _b_, and _c_, come to nothing, and only the
three terminal ones build forward. Each of these producing the image of
the first pinnacle, we have the type for our next summer bough of Fig.
3; in which observe the original shoot A B, has become thicker; its
lateral buds having proved abortive, are now only seen as little knobs
on its sides. Its terminal buds have each risen into a new pinnacle. The
central or strongest one B C, has become the very image of what his
parent shoot A B, was last year. The two lateral ones are weaker and
shorter, one probably longer than the other. The joint at B is the knot
or foundation for each shoot above spoken of.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
Knowing now what we are about, we will go into closer detail.
[Illustration: 51. The Dryad's Toil.]
§ 5. Let us return to the type in Fig. 2, of the fully accomplished
summer's work: the rod with its bare buds. Plate 51, opposite,
represents, of about half its real size, an outer spray of oak in
winter. It is not growing strongly, and is as simple as possible in
ramification. You may easily see, in each branch, the continuous piece
of shoot produced last year. The wrinkles which make these shoots look
like old branches are caused by drying, as the stalk of a bunch of
raisins is furrowed (the oak-shoot fresh gathered is round as a
grape-stalk). I draw them thus, because the furrows are important clues
to structure. Fig. 4 is the top of one of these oak sprays magnified for
reference. The little brackets, _x_, _y_, &c., which project beneath
each bud and sustain it, are the remains of the leaf-stalks. Those
stalks were jointed at that place, and the leaves fell without leaving a
scar, only a crescent-shaped, somewhat blank-looking flat space, which
you may study at your ease on a horse-chestnut stem, where these spaces
are very large.
§ 6. Now if you cut your oak spray neatly through, just above a bud, as
at A, Fig. 4, and look at it with a not very powerful magnifier, you
will find it present the pretty section, Fig. 5.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
That is the proper or normal section of an oak spray. Never quite
regular. Sure to have one of the projections a little larger than the
rest, and to have its bark (the black line) not quite regularly put
round it, but exquisitely finished, down to a little white star in the
very centre, which I have not drawn, because it would look in the
woodcut black, not white; and be too conspicuous.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
The oak spray, however, will not keep this form unchanged for an
instant. Cut it through a little way above your first section, and you
will find the largest projection is increasing till, just where it
opens[1] at last into the leaf-stalk, its section is Fig. 6. If,
therefore, you choose to consider every interval between bud and bud as
one story of your tower or pinnacle, you find that there is literally
not a hair's-breadth of the work in which the _plan_ of the tower does
not change. You may see in Plate 51 that every shoot is suffused by a
subtle (in nature an _infinitely_ subtle) change of contour between bud
and bud.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
§ 7. But farther, observe in what succession those buds are put round
the bearing stem. Let the section of the stem be represented by the
small central circle in Fig. 8; and suppose it surrounded by a _nearly_
regular pentagon (in the figure it is quite regular for clearness'
sake). Let the first of any ascending series of buds be represented by
the curved projection filling the nearest angle of the pentagon at 1.
Then the next bud, above, will fill the angle at 2; the next above, at
3, the next at 4, the next at 5. The sixth will come nearly over the
first. That is to say, each projecting portion of the section, Fig. 5,
expands into its bud, not successively, but by leaps, always to the
_next but one;_ the buds being thus placed in a nearly regular spiral
order.
§ 8. I say nearly regular--for there are subtleties of variation in plan
which it would be merely tiresome to enter into. All that we need care
about is the general law, of which the oak spray furnishes a striking
example,--that the buds of the first great group of alternate builders
rise in a spiral order round the stem (I believe, for the most part, the
spiral proceeds from right to left). And this spiral succession very
frequently approximates to the pentagonal order, which it takes with
great accuracy in an oak; for, merely assuming that each ascending bud
places itself as far as it can easily out of the way of the one beneath,
and yet not quite on the opposite side of the stem, we find the interval
between the two must generally approximate to that left between 1 and 2,
or 2 and 3, in Fig. 8.[2]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
§ 9. Should the interval be consistently a little _less_ than that which
brings out the pentagonal structure, the plant seems to get at first
into much difficulty. For, in such case, there is a probability of the
buds falling into a triangle, as at A, Fig. 9; and then the fourth must
come over the first, which would be inadmissible (we shall soon see
why). Nevertheless, the plant seems to like the triangular result for
its outline, and sets itself to get out of the difficulty with much
ingenuity, by methods of succession, which I will examine farther in the
next chapter: it being enough for us to know at present that the
puzzled, but persevering, vegetable _does_ get out of its difficulty and
issues triumphantly, and with a peculiar expression of leafy exultation,
in a hexagonal star, composed of two distinct triangles, normally as at
B, Fig. 9. Why the buds do not like to be one above the other, we shall
see in next chapter. Meantime I must shortly warn the reader of what we
shall then discover, that, though we have spoken of the projections of
our pentagonal tower as if they were first built to sustain each its
leaf, they are themselves chiefly built by the leaf they seem to
sustain. Without troubling ourselves about this yet, let us fix in our
minds broadly the effective aspect of the matter, which is all we want,
by a simple practical illustration.
§ 10. Take a piece of stick half-an-inch thick, and a yard or two long,
and tie large knots, at any _equal_ distances you choose, on a piece of
pack-thread. Then wind the pack-thread round the stick, with any number
of equidistant turns you choose, from one end to the other, and the
knots will take the position of buds in the general type of alternate
vegetation. By varying the number of knots and the turns of the thread,
you may get the system of any tree, with the exception of one character
only--viz., that since the shoot grows faster at one time than another,
the buds run closer together when the growth is slow. You cannot imitate
this structure by closing the coils of your string, for that would alter
the positions of your knots irregularly. The intervals between the buds
are, by this gradual acceleration or retardation of growth, usually
varied in lovely proportions. Fig. 10 shows the elevations of the buds
on five different sprays of oak; A and B being of the real size (short
shoots); C, D, and E, on a reduced scale. I have not traced the cause
of the apparent tendency of the buds to follow in pairs, in these longer
shoots.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
§ 11. Lastly: If the spiral be constructed so as to bring the buds
nearly on opposite sides of the stem, though alternate in succession,
the stem, most probably, will shoot a little away from each bud after
throwing it off, and thus establish the oscillatory form _b_, Fig. 11,
which, when the buds are placed, as in this case, at diminishing
intervals, is very beautiful.[3]
§ 12. I fear this has been a tiresome chapter; but it is necessary to
master the elementary structure, if we are to understand anything of
trees; and the reader will therefore, perhaps, take patience enough to
look at one or two examples of the spray structure of the second great
class of builders, in which the leaves are opposite. Nearly all
opposite-leaved trees grow, normally, like vegetable weathercocks run to
seed, with north and south, and east and west pointers thrown off
alternately one over another, as in Fig. 12.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
This, I say, is the normal condition. Under certain circumstances, north
and south pointers set themselves north-east and south-west; this
concession being acknowledged and imitated by the east and west pointers
at the next opportunity; but, for the present, let us keep to our simple
form.
The first business of the budding stem, is to get every pair of buds set
accurately at right angles to the one below. Here are some examples of
the way it contrives this. A, Fig. 13, is the section of the stem of a
spray of box, magnified eight or nine times, just where it throws off
two of its leaves, suppose on north and south sides. The crescents below
and above are sections through the leaf-stalks thrown off on each side.
Just above this joint, the section of the stem is B, which is the normal
section of a box-stem, as Fig. 5 is of an oak's. This, as it ascends,
becomes C, elongating itself now east and west; and the section next to
C, would be again A turned that way; or, taking the succession
completely through two joints, and of the real size, it would be thus:
Fig. 14.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
The stem of the spotted aucuba is normally hexagonal, as that of the box
is normally square. It is very dexterous and delicate in its mode of
transformation to the two sides. Through the joint it is A, Fig. 15.
Above joint, B, normal, passing on into C, and D for the next joint.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
[Illustration: FIG. 16.]
While in the horse-chestnut, a larger tree, and, as we shall see
hereafter, therefore less regular in conduct, the section, normally
hexagonal, is much rounded and softened into irregularities; A, Fig. 16,
becoming, as it buds, B and C. The dark diamond beside C is a section
through a bud, in which, however small, the quatrefoil disposition is
always seen complete: the four little infant leaves with a queen leaf in
the middle, all laid in their fan-shaped feebleness, safe in a white
cloud of miniature woollen blanket.
§ 13. The elementary structure of all important trees may, I think, thus
be resolved into three principal forms: three-leaved, Fig. 9;
four-leaved, Figs. 13 to 16; and five-leaved, Fig. 8. Or, in well-known
terms, trefoil, quatrefoil, cinqfoil. And these are essential classes,
more complicated forms being usually, it seems to me, resolvable into
these, but these not into each other. The simplest arrangement (Fig.
11), in which the buds are nearly opposite in position, though alternate
in elevation, cannot, I believe, constitute a separate class, being only
an accidental condition of the spiral. If it did, it might be called
difoil; but the important classes are three:--
Trefoil, Fig. 9: Type, Rhododendron.
Quatrefoil, Fig. 13: Type, Horse-chestnut.
Cinqfoil, Fig. 5: Type, Oak.
§ 14. The coincidences between beautiful architecture and the
construction of trees must more and more have become marked in the
reader's mind as we advanced; and if he will now look at what I have
said in other places of the use and meaning of the trefoil, quatrefoil,
and cinqfoil, in Gothic architecture, he will see why I could hardly
help thinking and speaking of all trees as builders. But there is yet
one more subtlety in their way of building which we have not noticed. If
the reader will look carefully at the separate shoots in Plate 51, he
will see that the furrows of the stems fall in almost every case into
continuous spiral curves, carrying the whole system of buds with them.
This superinduced spiral action, of which we shall perhaps presently
discover the cause, often takes place vigorously, producing completely
twisted stems of great thickness. It is nearly always existent slightly,
giving farther grace and change to the whole wonderful structure. And
thus we have, as the final result of one year's vegetative labor on any
single spray, a twisted tower, not similar at any height of its
building: or (for, as we shall see presently, it loses in diameter at
each bud) a twisted spire, correspondent somewhat in principle to the
twisted spire of Dijon, or twisted fountain of Ulm, or twisted shafts of
Verona. Bossed as it ascends with living sculpture, chiselled, not by
diminution but through increase, it rises by one consistent impulse from
its base to its minaret, ready, in spring-time, to throw round it at the
crest at once the radiance of fresh youth and the promise of restoration
after that youth has passed away. A marvellous creation: nay might we
not almost say, a marvellous creature full of prescience in its infancy,
foreboding even, in the earliest gladness of its opening to sunshine,
the hour of fainting strength and falling leaf, and guarding under the
shade of its faithful shields the bud that is to bear its hope through
winter's shieldless sleep?
Men often look to bring about great results by violent and unprepared
effort. But it is only in fair and forecast order, "as the earth
bringeth forth her bud," that righteousness and praise may spring forth
before the nations.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The added portion, surrounding two of the sides of the pentagon,
is the preparation for the stalk of the leaf, which, on detaching
itself from the stem, presents variable sections, of which those
numbered 1 to 4, Fig. 7, are examples. I cannot determine the proper
normal form. The bulb-shaped spot in the heart of the uppermost of
the five projections in Fig. 6 is the root of the bud.
[2] For more accurate information the reader may consult Professor
Lindley's _Introduction to Botany_ (Longman, 1848), vol. i. p. 245,
_et seqq._
[3] Fig. 11 is a shoot of the line, drawn on two sides, to show its
continuous curve in one direction, and alternated curves in another.
The buds, which may be seen to be at equal heights in the two
figures, are exquisitely proportioned in their distances. There is no
end to the refinement of system, if we choose to pursue it.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LEAF.
§ 1. Having now some clear idea of the position of the bud, we have next
to examine the forms and structure of its shield--the leaf which guards
it. You will form the best general idea of the flattened leaf of
shield-builders by thinking of it as you would of a mast and sail. More
consistently with our classification, we might perhaps say, by thinking
always of the arm sustaining the shield; but we should be in danger of
carrying fancy too far, and the likeness of mast and sail is closer, for
the mast tapers as the leaf-rib does, while the hand holding the
uppermost strap of the buckler clenches itself. Whichever figure we use,
it will cure us of the bad habit of imagining a leaf composed of a short
stalk with a broad expansion at the end of it. Whereas we should always
think of the stalk as running right up the leaf to its point, and
carrying the expanded, or foliate part, as the mast of a lugger does its
sail. To some extent, indeed, it has yards also, ribs branching from the
innermost one; only the yards of the leaf will not run up and down,
which is one essential function of a sailyard.
§ 2. The analogy will, however, serve one step more. As the sail must be
on one side of the mast, so the expansion of a leaf is on one side of
its central rib, or of its system of ribs. It is laid over them as if it
were stretched over a frame, so that on the upper surface it is
comparatively smooth; on the lower, barred. The understanding of the
broad relations of these parts is the principal work we have to do in
this chapter.
§ 3. First, then, you may roughly assume that the section of any
leaf-mast will be a crescent, as at _a_, Fig. 17 (compare Fig. 7 above).
The flat side is the uppermost, the round side underneath, and the flat
or upper side caries the leaf. You can at once see the convenience of
this structure for fitting to a central stem. Suppose the central stem
has a little hole in the centre, _b_, Fig. 17, and that you cut it down
through the middle (as terrible knights used to cut their enemies in the
dark ages, so that half the head fell on one side, and half on the
other): Pull the two halves separate, _c_, and they will nearly
represent the shape and position of opposite leaf-ribs. In reality the
leaf-stalks have to fit themselves to the central stem, _a_, and as we
shall see presently, to lap round it: but we must not go too fast.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
§ 4. Now, _a_, Fig. 17, being the general type of a leaf-stalk, Fig. 18
is the general type of the way it expands into and carries its leaf;[1]
this figure being the enlargement of a typical section right across any
leaf, the dotted lines show the under surface foreshortened. You see I
have made one side broader than the other. I mean that. It is typically
so. Nature cannot endure two sides of a leaf to be alike. By encouraging
one side more than the other, either by giving it more air or light, or
perhaps in a chief degree by the mere fact of the moisture necessarily
accumulating on the lower edge when it rains, and the other always
drying first, she contrives it so, that if the essential form or idea of
the leaf be _a_, Fig. 19, the actual form will always be _c_, or an
approximate to it; one half being pushed in advance of the other, as at
_b_, and all reconciled by soft curvature, _c_. The effort of the leaf
to keep itself symmetrical rights it, however, often at the point, so
that the insertion of the stalk only makes the inequality manifest. But
it follows that the sides of a straight section across the leaf are
unequal all the way up, as in my drawing, except at one point.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
§ 5. I have represented the two wings of the leaf as slightly convex on
the upper surface. This is also on the whole a typical character. I use
the expression "wings of the leaf," because supposing we exaggerate the
main rib a little, the section will generally resemble a bad painter's
type of a bird (_a_, Fig. 20). Sometimes the outer edges curl up, _b_,
but an entirely concave form, _c_, is rare. When _b_ is strongly
developed, closing well in, the leaf gets a good deal the look of a boat
with a keel.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
§ 6. If now you take this oblique form of sail, and cut it into any
number of required pieces down to its mast, as in Fig. 21, A, and then
suppose each of the pieces to contract into studding-sails at the side,
you will have whatever type of divided leaf you choose to shape it for.
In Fig. 21, A, B, I have taken the rose as the simplest type. The leaf
is given in separate contour at C; but that of the mountain ash, A,
Fig. 22, suggests the original oval form which encloses all the
subdivisions much more beautifully. Each of the studding-sails in this
ash-leaf looks much at first as if he were himself a mainsail. But you
may know him always to be a subordinate, by observing that the
inequality of the two sides which is brought about by accidental
influences in the mainsail, is an organic law in the studding-sail. The
real leaf tries to set itself evenly on its mast; and the inequality is
only a graceful concession to circumstances. But the subordinate or
studding-sail is always _by law_ larger at one side than the other; and
if he is himself again divided into smaller sails, he will have larger
sails on the lowest side, or one more sail on the lowest side, than he
has on the other. He always wears, therefore, a servant's, or, at least,
subordinate's dress. You may know him anywhere as not the master. Even
in the ash leaflet, of which I have outlined one separately, B, Fig. 22,
this is clearly seen; but it is much more distinct in more finely
divided leaves.[2]
[Illustration: FIG. 22]
§ 7. Observe, then, that leaves are broadly divisible into mainsails and
studding-sails; but that the word _leaf_ is properly to be used only of
the mainsail; leaflet is the best word for minor divisions; and whether
these minor members are only separated by deep cuts, or become complete
stalked leaflets, still they are always to be thought of merely as parts
of a true leaf.
It follows from the mode of their construction that leaflets must always
lie more or less _flat_, or edge to edge, in a continuous plane. This
position distinguishes them from true leaves as much as their oblique
form, and distinguishes them with the same delicate likeness of system;
for as the true leaf takes, accidentally and partially, the oblique
outline which is legally required in the subordinate, so the true leaf
takes accidentally and partially the flat disposition which is legally
required in the subordinate. And this point of position we must now
study. Henceforward, throughout this chapter, the reader will please
note that I speak only of true _leaves_, not of _leaflets_.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
§ 8. LAW I. THE LAW OF DEFLECTION.--The first law, then, respecting
position in true leaves, is that they fall gradually back from the
uppermost one, or uppermost group. They are never set as at _a_, Fig.
23, but always as at _b_. The reader may see at once that they have more
room and comfort by means of the latter arrangement. The law is carried
out with more or less distinctness according to the habit of the plant;
but is always acknowledged.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
In strong-leaved shrubs or trees it is shown with great distinctness and
beauty: the phillyrea shoot, for instance, Fig. 24, is almost in as true
symmetry as a Greek honeysuckle ornament. In the hawthorn shoot,
central in Plate 52, opposite, the law is seen very slightly, yet it
rules all the play and fantasy of the varied leaves, gradually
depressing their lines as they are set lower. In crowded foliage of
large trees the disposition of each separate leaf is not so manifest.
For there is a strange coincidence in this between trees and communities
of men. When the community is small, people fall more easily into their
places, and take, each in his place, a firmer standing than can be
obtained by the individuals of a great nation. The members of a vast
community are separately weaker, as an aspen or elm leaf is thin,
tremulous, and directionless, compared with the spear-like setting and
firm substance of a rhododendron or laurel leaf. The laurel and
rhododendron are like the Athenian or Florentine republics; the aspen
like England--strong-trunked enough when put to proof, and very good for
making cartwheels of, but shaking pale with epidemic panic at every
breeze. Nevertheless, the aspen has the better of the great nation, in
that if you take it bough by bough, you shall find the gentle law of
respect and room for each other truly observed by the leaves in such
broken way as they can manage it; but in the nation you find every one
scrambling for his neighbor's place.
This, then, is our first law, which we may generally call the Law of
Deflection; or, if the position of the leaves with respect to the root
be regarded, of Radiation. The second is more curious, and we must go
back over our ground a little to get at it.
[Illustration: 52. Spirals of Thorn.]
§ 9. LAW II. THE LAW OF SUCCESSION.--From what we saw of the position of
buds, it follows that in every tree the leaves at the end of the spray,
taking the direction given them by the uppermost cycle or spiral of the
buds, will fall naturally into a starry group, expressive of the order
of their growth. In an oak we shall have a cluster of five leaves, in a
horse-chestnut of four, in a rhododendron of six, and so on. But
observe, if we draw the oak-leaves all equal, as at _a_, Fig. 25, or the
chestnut's (_b_), or the rhododendron's (_c_), you instantly will feel,
or ought to feel, that something is wrong; that those are not foliage
forms--not even normally or typically so--but dead forms, like crystals
of snow. Considering this, and looking back to last chapter, you will
see that the buds which throw out these leaves do not grow side by side,
but one above another. In the oak and rhododendron, all five and all
six buds are at different heights; in the chestnut, one couple is above
the other couple.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
§ 10. Now so surely as one bud is above another, it must be stronger or
weaker than that other. The shoot may either be increasing in strength
as it advances, or declining; in either case, the buds must vary in
power, and the leaves in size. At the top of the shoot, the last or
uppermost leaves are mostly the smallest; of course always so in spring
as they develope.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
Let us then apply these conditions to our formal figure above, and
suppose each leaf to be weaker in its order of succession. The oak
becomes as _a_, Fig. 26, the chestnut shoot as _b_, the rhododendron,
_c_. These, I should think, it can hardly be necessary to tell the
reader, are true normal forms;--respecting which one or two points must
be noticed in detail.
§ 11. The magnitude of the leaves in the oak star diminishes, of course,
in alternate order. The largest leaf is the lowest, 1 in Figure 8, p.
14. While the largest leaf forms the bottom, next it, opposite each
other, come the third and fourth, in order and magnitude, and the fifth
and second form the top. An oak star is, therefore, always an oblique
star; but in the chestnut and other quatrefoil trees, though the
uppermost couple of leaves must always be smaller than the lowermost
couple, there appears no geometrical reason why the opposite leaves of
each couple should vary in size. Nevertheless, they always do, so that
the quatrefoil becomes oblique as well as the cinqfoil, as you see it is
in Fig. 26.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
The normal of four-foils is therefore as in Fig. 27, A (maple): with
magnitudes, in order numbered; but it often happens that an opposite
pair agree to become largest and smallest; thus giving the pretty
symmetry, Fig. 27, B (spotted aucuba). Of course the quatrefoil in
reality is always less formal, one pair of leaves more or less hiding or
preceding the other. Fig. 28 is the outline of a young one in the maple.
[Illustration: FIG. 29.]
§ 12. The third form is more complex, and we must take the pains to
follow out what we left unobserved in last chapter respecting the way a
triplicate plant gets out of its difficulties.
Draw a circle as in Fig. 29, and two lines, AB, BC, touching it, equal
to each other, and each divided accurately in half where they touch the
circle, so that AP shall be equal to PB, BQ, and QC. And let the lines
AB and BC be so placed that a dotted line AC, joining their extremities,
would not be much longer than either of them.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.]
Continue to draw lines of the same length all round the circle. Lay five
of them, AB, BC, CD, DE, EF. Then join the points AD, EB, and CF, and
you have Fig. 30, which is a hexagon, with the following curious
properties. It has one side largest, CD, two sides less, but equal to
each other, AE and BF; and three sides less still, and equal to each
other, AD, CF, and BE.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.]
Now put leaves into this hexagon, Fig. 31, and you will see how
charmingly the rhododendron has got out of its difficulties. The next
cycle will put a leaf in at the gap at the top, and begin a new hexagon.
Observe, however, this geometrical figure is only to the rhododendron
what the _a_ in Fig. 25 is to the oak, the icy or dead form. To get the
living normal form we must introduce our law of succession. That is to
say, the five lines A B, B C, &c., must continually diminish, as they
proceed, and therefore continually approach the centre; roughly, as in
Fig. 32.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.]
§ 13. I dread entering into the finer properties of this construction,
but the reader cannot now fail to feel their beautiful result either in
the cluster in Fig. 26, or here in Fig. 33, which is a richer and more
oblique one. The three leaves of the uppermost triad are perfectly seen,
closing over the bud; and the general form is clear, though the lower
triads are confused to the eye by unequal development, as in these
complex arrangements is almost always the case. The more difficulties
are to be encountered the more licence is given to the plant in dealing
with them, and we shall hardly ever find a rhododendron shoot fulfilling
its splendid spiral as an oak does its simple one.
Here, for instance, is the actual order of ascending leaves in four
rhododendron shoots which I gather at random.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.]
Of these, A is the only quite well-conducted one; B takes one short
step, C, one step backwards, and D, two steps back and one, too short,
forward.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.]
§ 14. LAW III. THE LAW OF RESILIENCE.--If you have been gathering any
branches from the trees I have named among quatrefoils (the box is the
best for exemplification), you have perhaps been embarrassed by finding
that the leaves, instead of growing on four sides of the stem, did
practically grow oppositely on two. But if you look closely at the
places of their insertion, you will find they indeed spring on all four
sides; and that in order to take the flattened opposite position, each
leaf twists round on its stalk, as in Fig. 35, which represents a
box-leaf magnified and foreshortened. The leaves do this in order to
avoid growing downwards, where the position of the bough and bud would,
if the leaves regularly kept their places, involve downward growth. The
leaves always rise up on each side from beneath, and form a flattened
group, more or less distinctly in proportion to the horizontality of the
bough, and the contiguity of foliage below and above. I shall not
trouble myself to illustrate this law, as you have only to gather a few
tree-sprays to see its effect. But you must note the resulting
characters on _every_ leaf; namely, that not one leaf in a thousand
grows without a fixed turn in its stalk; warping and varying the whole
of the curve on the two edges, throughout its length, and thus producing
the loveliest conditions of its form. We shall presently trace the law
of resilience farther on a larger scale: meanwhile, in summing the
results of our inquiry thus far, let us remember that every one of these
laws is observed with varying accuracy and gentle equity, according not
only to the strength and fellowship of foliage on the spray itself, but
according to the place and circumstances of its growth.
§ 15. For the leaves, as we shall see immediately, are the feeders of
the plant. Their own orderly habits of succession must not interfere
with their main business of finding food. Where the sun and air are, the
leaf must go, whether it be out of order or not. So, therefore, in any
group, the first consideration with the young leaves is much like that
of young bees, how to keep out of each other's way, that every one may
at once leave its neighbors as much free-air pasture as possible, and
obtain a relative freedom for itself. This would be a quite simple
matter, and produce other simply balanced forms, if each branch, with
open air all round it, had nothing to think of but reconcilement of
interests among its own leaves. But every branch has others to meet or
to cross, sharing with them, in various advantage, what shade, or sun,
or rain is to be had. Hence every single leaf-cluster presents the
general aspect of a little family, entirely at unity among themselves,
but obliged to get their living by various shifts, concessions, and
infringements of the family rules, in order not to invade the privileges
of other people in their neighborhood.
§ 16. And in the arrangement of these concessions there is an exquisite
sensibility among the leaves. They do not grow each to his own liking,
till they run against one another, and then turn back sulkily; but by a
watchful instinct, far apart, they anticipate their companions' courses,
as ships at sea, and in every new unfolding of their edged tissue, guide
themselves by the sense of each other's remote presence, and by a
watchful penetration of leafy purpose in the far future. So that every
shadow which one casts on the next, and every glint of sun which each
reflects to the next, and every touch which in toss of storm each
receives from the next, aid or arrest the development of their advancing
form, and direct, as will be safest and best, the curve of every fold
and the current of every vein.
§ 17. And this peculiar character exists in all the structures thus
developed, that they are always visibly the result of a volition on the
part of the leaf, meeting an external force or fate, to which it is
never passively subjected. Upon it, as on a mineral in the course of
formation, the great merciless influences of the universe, and the
oppressive powers of minor things immediately near it, act continually.
Heat and cold, gravity and the other attractions, windy pressure, or
local and unhealthy restraint, must, in certain inevitable degrees,
affect the whole of its life. But it is _life_ which they affect;--a
life of progress and will,--not a merely passive accumulation of
substance. This may be seen by a single glance. The mineral,--suppose an
agate in the course of formation--shows in every line nothing but a dead
submission to surrounding force. Flowing, or congealing, its substance
is here repelled, there attracted, unresistingly to its place, and its
languid sinuosities follow the clefts of the rock that contains them, in
servile deflexion and compulsory cohesion, impotently calculable, and
cold. But the leaf, full of fears and affections, shrinks and seeks, as
it obeys. Not thrust, but awed into its retiring; not dragged, but won
to its advance; not bent aside, as by a bridle, into new courses of
growth: but persuaded and converted through tender continuance of
voluntary change.
§ 18. The mineral and it differing thus widely in separate being, they
differ no less in modes of companionship. The mineral crystals group
themselves neither in succession, nor in sympathy; but great and small
recklessly strive for place, and deface or distort each other as they
gather into opponent asperities. The confused crowd fills the rock
cavity, hanging together in a glittering, yet sordid heap, in which
nearly every crystal, owing to their vain contention, is imperfect, or
impure. Here and there one, at the cost and in defiance of the rest,
rises into unwarped shape or unstained clearness. But the order of the
leaves is one of soft and subdued concession. Patiently each awaits its
appointed time, accepts its prepared place, yields its required
observance. Under every oppression of external accident, the group yet
follows a law laid down in its own heart; and all the members of it,
whether in sickness or health, in strength or languor, combine to carry
out this first and last heart law; receiving, and seeming to desire for
themselves and for each other, only life which they may communicate, and
loveliness which they may reflect.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I believe the undermost of the two divisions of the leaf
represents vegetable tissue _returning_ from the extremity. See
Lindley's _Introduction to Botany_ (1848), vol. i. p. 253.
[2] For farther notes on this subject, see my _Elements of Drawing_,
p. 286.
CHAPTER V.
LEAF ASPECTS.
§ 1. Before following farther our inquiry into tree structure, it will
rest us, and perhaps forward our work a little, to make some use of what
we know already.
It results generally from what we have seen that any group of four or
five leaves presenting itself in its natural position to the eye,
consists of a series of forms connected by exquisite and complex
symmetries, and that these forms will be not only varied in themselves,
but every one of them seen under a different condition of
foreshortening.
The facility of drawing the group may be judged of by a comparison.
Suppose five or six boats, very beautifully built, and sharp in the
prow, to start all from one point, and the first bearing up into the
wind, the other three or four to fall off from it in succession an equal
number of points,[1] taking each, in consequence, a different slope of
deck from the stem of the sail. Suppose, also, that the bows of these
boats were transparent, so that you could see the under sides of their
decks as well as the upper;--and that it were required of you to draw
all their five decks, the under or upper side, as their curve showed it,
in true foreshortened perspective, indicating the exact distance each
boat had reached at a given moment from the central point they started
from.
If you can do that, you can draw a rose-leaf. Not otherwise.
§ 2. When, some few years ago, the pre-Raphaelites began to lead our
wandering artists back into the eternal paths of all great Art, and
showed that whatever men drew at all, ought to be drawn accurately and
knowingly; not blunderingly nor by guess (leaves of trees among other
things): as ignorant pride on the one hand refused their teaching,
ignorant hope caught at it on the other. "What!" said many a feeble
young student to himself. "Painting is not a matter of science then, nor
of supreme skill, nor of inventive brain. I have only to go and paint
the leaves of the trees as they grow, and I shall produce beautiful
landscapes directly."
Alas! my innocent young friend. "Paint the leaves as they grow!" If you
can paint _one_ leaf, you can paint the world. These pre-Raphaelite
laws, which you think so light, lay stern on the strength of Apelles and
Zeuxis; put Titian to thoughtful trouble; are unrelaxed yet, and
unrelaxable for ever. Paint a leaf indeed! Above-named Titian has done
it: Correggio, moreover, and Giorgione: and Leonardo, very nearly,
trying hard. Holbein, three or four times, in precious pieces, highest
wrought. Raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If
any one else, in later times, we have to consider.
§ 3. At least until recently, the perception of organic leaf form was
absolutely, in all painters whatsoever, proportionate to their power of
drawing the human figure. All the great Italian designers drew leaves
thoroughly well, though none quite so fondly as Correggio. Rubens drew
them coarsely and vigorously, just as he drew limbs. Among the inferior
Dutch painters, the leaf-painting degenerates in proportion to the
diminishing power in figure. Cuyp, Wouvermans, and Paul Potter, paint
better foliage than either Hobbima or Ruysdael.
§ 4. In like manner the power of treating vegetation in sculpture is
absolutely commensurate with nobleness of figure design. The quantity,
richness, or deceptive finish may be greater in third-rate work; but in
true understanding and force of arrangement the leaf and the human
figure show always parallel skill. The leaf-mouldings of Lorenzo
Ghiberti are unrivalled, as his bas-reliefs are, and the severe foliage
of the Cathedral of Chartres is as grand as its queen-statues.
§ 5. The greatest draughtsmen draw leaves, like everything else, of
their full-life size in the nearest part of the picture. They cannot be
rightly drawn on any other terms. It is impossible to reduce a group so
treated without losing much of its character; and more painfully
impossible to represent by engraving any good workman's handling. I
intended to have inserted in this place an engraving of the cluster of
oak-leaves above Correggio's Antiope in the Louvre, but it is too
lovely; and if I am able to engrave it at all, it must be separately,
and of its own size. So I draw, roughly, instead, a group of oak-leaves
on a young shoot, a little curled with autumn frost: Plate 53. I could
not draw them accurately enough if I drew them in spring. They would
droop and lose their relations. Thus roughly drawn, and losing some of
their grace, by withering, they, nevertheless, have enough left to show
how noble leaf-form is; and to prove, it seems to me, that Dutch
draughtsmen do not wholly express it. For instance, Fig. 3, Plate 54, is
a facsimile of a bit of the nearest oak foliage out of Hobbima's Scene
with the Water-mill, No. 131, in the Dulwich Gallery. Compared with the
real forms of oak-leaf, in Plate 53, it may, I hope, at least enable my
readers to understand, if they choose, why, never having ceased to rate
the Dutch painters for their meanness or minuteness, I yet accepted the
leaf-painting of the pre-Raphaelites with reverence and hope.
[Illustration: 53. The Dryad's Crown.]
[Illustration: 54. Dutch Leafage.]
§ 6. No word has been more harmfully misused than that ugly one of
"niggling." I should be glad if it were entirely banished from service
and record. The only essential question about drawing is whether it be
right or wrong; that it be small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of
convenience only. But so far as the word may be legitimately used at
all, it belongs especially to such execution as this of
Hobbima's--execution which substitutes, on whatever scale, a mechanical
trick or habit of hand for true drawing of known or intended forms. So
long as the work is thoughtfully directed, there is no niggling. In a
small Greek coin the muscles of the human body are as grandly treated as
in a colossal statue; and a fine vignette of Turner's will show separate
touches often more extended in intention, and stronger in result, than
those of his largest oil pictures. In the vignette of the picture of
Ginevra, at page 90 of Roger's Italy, the forefinger touching the lip is
entirely and rightly drawn, bent at the two joints, within the length of
the thirtieth of an inch, and the whole hand within the space of one of
those "niggling" touches of Hobbima. But if this work were magnified, it
would be seen to be a strong and simple expression of a hand by thick
black lines.
§ 7. Niggling, therefore, essentially means disorganized and mechanical
work, applied on a scale which may deceive a vulgar or ignorant person
into the idea of its being true:--a definition applicable to the whole
of the leaf-painting of the Dutch landscapists in distant effect, and
for the most part to that of their near subjects also. Cuyp and
Wouvermans, as before stated, and others, in proportion to their power
over the figure, drew leaves better in the foreground, yet never
altogether well; for though Cuyp often draws a single leaf carefully
(weedy ground-vegetation especially, with great truth), he never felt
the connection of leaves, but scattered them on the boughs at random.
Fig. 1 in Plate 54 is nearly a _facsimile_ of part of the branch on the
left side in our National Gallery picture. Its entire want of grace and
organization ought to be felt at a glance, after the work we have gone
through. The average conditions of leafage-painting among the Dutch are
better represented by Fig. 2, Plate 54, which is a piece of the foliage
from the Cuyp in the Dulwich Gallery, No. 163. It is merely wrought with
a mechanical play of brush in a well-trained hand, gradating the color
irregularly and agreeably, but with no more feeling or knowledge of
leafage than a paperstainer shows in graining a pattern. A bit of the
stalk is seen on the left; it might just as well have been on the other
side, for any connection the leaves have with it. As the leafage retires
into distance, the Dutch painters merely diminish their _scale_ of
touch. The touch itself remains the same, but its effect is falser; for
though the separate stains or blots in Fig. 2, do not rightly represent
the forms of leaves, they may not inaccurately represent the number of
leaves on that spray. But in distance, when, instead of one spray, we
have thousands in sight, no human industry, nor possible diminution of
touch can represent their mist of foliage, and the Dutch work becomes
doubly base, by reason of false form, and lost infinity.
§ 8. Hence what I said in our first inquiry about foliage, "A single
dusty roll of Turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinitude
of foliage than the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvas,
if he had worked on it till doomsday." And this brings me to the main
difficulty I have had in preparing this section. That infinitude of
Turner's execution attaches not only to his distant work, but in due
degree to the nearest pieces of his trees. As I have shown in the
chapter on mystery, he perfected the system of art, as applicable to
landscape, by the introduction of this infiniteness. In other qualities
he is often only equal, in some inferior, to great preceding painters;
but in this mystery he stands alone. He could not paint a cluster of
leaves better than Titian; but he could a bough, much more a distant
mass of foliage. No man ever before painted a distant tree rightly, or a
full-leaved branch rightly. All Titian's distant branches are ponderous
flakes, as if covered with seaweed, while Veronese's and Raphael's are
conventional, being exquisitely ornamental arrangements of small perfect
leaves. See the background of the Parnassus in Volpato's plate. It is
very lovely, however.
[Illustration: 55. By the Way-side.]
§ 9. But this peculiar execution of Turner's is entirely uncopiable;
least of all to be copied in engraving. It is at once so dexterous and
so keenly cunning, swiftest play of hand being applied with concentrated
attention on every movement, that no care in facsimile will render it.
The delay in the conclusion of this work has been partly caused by the
failure of repeated attempts to express this execution. I see my way now
to some partial result; but must get the writing done, and give
undivided care to it before I attempt to produce costly plates.
Meanwhile, the little cluster of foliage opposite, from the thicket
which runs up the bank on the right-hand side of the drawing of
Richmond, looking up the river, in the Yorkshire series, will give the
reader some idea of the mingled definiteness and mystery of Turner's
work, as opposed to the mechanism of the Dutch on the one side, and the
conventional severity of the Italians on the other. It should be
compared with the published engraving in the Yorkshire series; for just
as much increase, both in quantity and refinement, would be necessary in
every portion of the picture, before any true conception could be given
of the richness of Turner's designs. A fragment of distant foliage I may
give farther on; but, in order to judge rightly of either example, we
must know one or two points in the structure of branches, requiring yet
some irksome patience of inquiry, which I am compelled to ask the reader
to grant me through another two chapters.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I don't know that this is rightly expressed; but the meaning will
be understood.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BRANCH.
§ 1. We have hitherto spoken of each shoot as either straight or only
warped by its spiral tendency; but no shoot of any length, except those
of the sapling, ever can be straight; for, as the family of leaves which
it bears are forced unanimously to take some given direction in search
of food or light, the stalk necessarily obeys the same impulse, and
bends itself so as to sustain them in their adopted position, with the
greatest ease to itself and comfort for them.
In doing this, it has two main influences to comply or contend with: the
first, the direct action of the leaves in drawing it this way or that,
as they themselves seek particular situations; the second, the pressure
of their absolute weight after they have taken their places, depressing
each bough in a given degree; the leverage increasing as the leaf
extends. To these principal forces may frequently be added that of some
prevalent wind, which, on a majority of days in the year, bends the
bough, leaves and all, for hours together, out of its normal position.
Owing to these three forces, the shoot is nearly sure to be curved in at
least two directions;[1] that is to say, not merely as the rim of a
wine-glass is curved (so that, looking at it horizontally, the circle
becomes a straight line), but as the edge of a lip or an eyebrow is
curved, partly upward, partly forwards, so that in no possible
perspective can it be seen as a straight line. Similarly, no perspective
will usually bring a shoot of a free-growing tree to appear a straight
line.
§ 2. It is evident that the more leaves the stalk has to sustain, the
more strength it requires. It might appear, therefore, not unadvisable,
that every leaf should, as it grew, pay a small tax to the stalk for its
sustenance; so that there might be no fear of any number of leaves being
too oppressive to their bearer. Which, accordingly, is just what the
leaves do. Each, from the moment of his complete majority, pays a stated
tax to the stalk; that is to say, collects for it a certain quantity of
wood, or materials for wood, and sends this wood, or what ultimately
will become wood, _down_ the stalk to add to its thickness.
§ 3. "Down the stalk?" yes, and down a great way farther. For, as the
leaves, if they did not thus contribute to their own support, would soon
be too heavy for the spray, so if the spray, with its family of leaves,
contributed nothing to the thickness of the branch, the leaf-families
would soon break down their sustaining branches. And, similarly, if the
branches gave nothing to the stem, the stem would soon fall under its
boughs. Therefore, by a power of which I believe no sufficient account
exists,[2] as each leaf adds to the thickness of the shoot, so each
shoot to the branch, so each branch to the stem, and that with so
perfect an order and regularity of duty, that from every leaf in all the
countless crowd at the tree's summit, one slender fibre, or at least
fibre's thickness of wood, descends through shoot, through spray,
through branch, and through stem; and having thus added, in its due
proportion, to form the strength of the tree, labors yet farther and
more painfully to provide for its security; and thrusting forward into
the root, loses nothing of its mighty energy, until, mining through the
darkness, it has taken hold in cleft of rock or depth of earth, as
extended as the sweep of its green crest in the free air.
§ 4. Such, at least, is the mechanical aspect of the tree. The work of
its construction, considered as a branch tower, partly propped by
buttresses, partly lashed by cables, is thus shared in by every leaf.
But considering it as a living body to be nourished, it is probably an
inaccurate analogy to speak of the leaves being taxed for the
enlargement of the trunk. Strictly speaking, the trunk enlarges by
sustaining them. For each leaf, however far removed from the ground,
stands in need of nourishment derived from the ground, as well as of
that which it finds in the air; and it simply sends its root down along
the stem of the tree, until it reaches the ground and obtains the
necessary mineral elements. The trunk has been therefore called by some
botanists a "bundle of roots," but I think inaccurately. It is rather a
messenger to the roots.[3] A root, properly so called, is a fibre,
spongy or absorbent at the extremity, which secretes certain elements
from the earth. The stem is by this definition no more a cluster of
roots than a cluster of leaves, but a channel of intercourse between the
roots and the leaves. It can gather no nourishment. It only carries
nourishment, being, in fact, a group of canals for the conveyance of
marketable commodities, with an electric telegraph attached to each,
transmitting messages from leaf to root, and root to leaf, up and down
the tree. But whatever view we take of the operative causes, the
external and visible fact is simply that every leaf does send down from
its stalk a slender thread of woody matter along the sides of the shoot
it grows upon; and that the increase of thickness in stem, proportioned
to the advance of the leaves, corresponds with an increase of thickness
in roots, proportioned to the advance of their outer fibres. How far
interchange of elements takes place between root and leaf, it is not our
work here to examine; the general and broad idea is this, that the whole
tree is fed partly by the earth, partly by the air;--strengthened and
sustained by the one, agitated and educated by the other;--all of it
which is best, in substance, life, and beauty, being drawn more from the
dew of heaven than the fatness of the earth. The results of this
nourishment of the bough by the leaf in external aspect, are the object
of our immediate inquiry.
§ 5. Hitherto we have considered the shoot as an ascending body,
throwing off buds at intervals. This it is indeed; but the part of it
which ascends is not seen externally. Look back to Plate 51. You will
observe that each shoot is furrowed, and that the ridges between the
furrows rise in slightly spiral lines, terminating in the armlets under
the buds which bore last year's leaves. These ridges, which rib the
shoot so distinctly, are not on the ascending part of it. They are the
contributions of each successive leaf thrown out as it ascended. Every
leaf sent down a slender cord, covering and clinging to the shoot
beneath, and increasing its thickness. Each, according to his size and
strength, wove his little strand of cable, as a spider his thread; and
cast it down the side of the springing tower by a marvellous
magic--irresistible! The fall of a granite pyramid from an Alp may
perhaps be stayed; the descending force of that silver thread shall not
be stayed. It will split the rocks themselves at its roots, if need be,
rather than fail in its work.
So many leaves, so many silver cords. Count--for by just the thickness
of one cord, beneath each leaf, let fall in fivefold order round and
round, the shoot increases in thickness to its root:--a spire built
downwards from the heaven.
[Illustration: FIG. 36.]
And now we see why the leaves dislike being above each other. Each seeks
a vacant place, where he may freely let fall the cord. The turning aside
of the cable to avoid the buds beneath, is one of the main causes of
spiral curvature, as the shoot increases. It required all the care I
could give to the drawing, and all Mr. Armytage's skill in engraving
Plate 51, to express, though drawing them nearly of their full size, the
principal courses of curvature in even this least graceful of trees.
§ 6. According to the structure thus ascertained, the body of the shoot
may at any point be considered as formed by a central rod, represented
by the shaded inner circle, _a_, Fig. 36, surrounded by as many rods of
descending external wood as there are leaves above the point where the
section is made. The first five leaves above send down the first dark
rods; and the next above send down those between, which, being from
younger leaves, are less liable to interstices; then the third group
sending down the side, it will be seen at a glance how a spiral action
is produced. It would lead us into too subtile detail, if I traced the
forces of this spiral superimposition. I must be content to let the
reader peruse this part of the subject for himself, if it amuses him,
and lead to larger questions.
§ 7. Broadly and practically, we may consider the whole cluster of woody
material in Fig. 36 as one circle of fibrous substance formed round a
small central rod. The real appearance in most trees is approximately as
in _b_, Fig. 36, the radiating structure becoming more distinct in
proportion to the largeness and compactness of the wood.[4]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.]
Now the next question is, how this descending external coating of wood
will behave itself when it comes to the forking of the shoots. To
simplify the examination of this, let us suppose the original or growing
shoot (whose section is the shaded inner circle in Fig. 36) to have been
in the form of a letter Y, and no thicker than a stout iron wire, as in
Fig. 37. Down the arms of this letter Y, we have two fibrous streams
running in the direction of the arrows. If the depth or thickness of
these streams be such as at _b_ and _c_, what will their thickness be
when they unite at _e_? Evidently, the quantity of wood surrounding the
vertical wire at _e_ must be twice as great as that surrounding the
wires _b_ and _c_.
§ 8. The reader will, perhaps, be good enough to take it on my word (if
he does not know enough of geometry to ascertain), that the large
circle, in Fig. 38, contains twice as much area as either of the two
smaller circles. Putting these circles in position, so as to guide us,
and supposing the trunk to be bounded by straight lines, we have for the
outline of the fork that in Fig. 38. How, then, do the two minor circles
change into one large one? The section of the stem at _a_ is a circle;
and at _b_, is a circle; and at _c_, a circle. But what is it at _e_?
Evidently, if the two circles merely united gradually, without change of
form through a series of figures, such as those at the top of Fig. 39,
the quantity of wood, instead of remaining the same, would diminish from
the contents of two circles to the contents of one. So for every loss
which the circles sustain at this junction, an equal quantity of wood
must be thrust out somehow to the side. Thus, to enable the circles to
run into each other, as far as shown at _b_, in Fig. 39, there must be a
loss between them of as much wood as the shaded space. Therefore, half
of that space must be added, or rather pushed out on each side, and the
section of the uniting branch becomes approximately as in _c_, Fig. 39;
the wood squeezed out encompassing the stem more as the circles close,
until the whole is reconciled into one larger single circle.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.]
[Illustration: FIG. 39.]
§ 9. I fear the reader would have no patience with me, if I asked him to
examine, in longitudinal section, the lines of the descending currents
of wood as they eddy into the increased single river. Of course, it is
just what would take place if two strong streams, filling each a
cylindrical pipe, ran together into one larger cylinder, with a central
rod passing up every tube. But, as this central rod increases, and, at
the same time, the supply of the stream from above, every added leaf
contributing its little current, the eddies of wood about the fork
become intensely curious and interesting; of which thus much the reader
may observe in a moment by gathering a branch of any tree (laburnum
shows it better, I think, than most), that the two meeting currents,
first wrinkling a little, then rise in a low wave in the hollow of the
fork, and flow over at the side, making their way to diffuse themselves
round the stem, as in Fig. 40. Seen laterally, the bough bulges out
below the fork, rather curiously and awkwardly, especially if more than
two boughs meet at the same place, growing in one plane, so as to show
the sudden increase on the profile. If the reader is interested in the
subject, he will find strangely complicated and wonderful arrangements
of stream when smaller boughs meet larger (one example is given in Plate
3, Vol. III., where the current of a smaller bough, entering upwards,
pushes its way into the stronger rivers of the stem). But I cannot, of
course, enter into such detail here.
[Illustration: FIG. 40.]
[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
§ 10. The little ringed accumulation, repelled from the wood of the
larger trunk at the base of small boughs, may be seen at a glance in any
tree, and needs no illustration; but I give one from Salvator, Fig. 41
(from his own etching, _Democritus omnium Derisor_), which is
interesting, because it shows the swelling at the bases of insertion,
which yet, Salvator's eye not being quick enough to detect the law of
descent in the fibres, he, with his usual love of ugliness, fastens on
this swollen character, and exaggerates it into an appearance of
disease. The same bloated aspect may be seen in the example already
given from another etching, Vol. III., Plate 4, Fig. 8.
[Illustration: FIG. 42.]
§ 11. I do not give any more examples from Claude. We have had enough
already in Plate 4, Vol. III., which the reader should examine
carefully. If he will then look forward to Fig. 61 here, he will see how
Turner inserts branches, and with what certain and strange instinct of
fidelity he marks the wrinkled enlargement and sinuous eddies of the
wood rivers where they meet.
And remember always that Turner's greatness and rightness in all these
points successively depend on no scientific knowledge. He was entirely
ignorant of all the laws we have been developing. He had merely
accustomed himself to see impartially, intensely, and fearlessly.
[Illustration: FIG. 43.]
§ 12. It may, perhaps, be interesting to compare, with the rude
fallacies of Claude and Salvator, a little piece of earliest art,
wrought by men who could see and feel. The scroll, Fig. 42, is a portion
of that which surrounds the arch in San Zeno of Verona, above the
pillar engraved in the _Stones of Venice_, Plate 17, Vol. I. It is,
therefore, twelfth, or earliest thirteenth century work. Yet the foliage
is already full of spring and life; and in the part of the stem, which I
have given of its real size in Fig. 43, the reader will perhaps be
surprised to see at the junctions the laws of vegetation, which escaped
the sight of all the degenerate landscape-painters of Italy, expressed
by one of her simple architectural workmen six hundred years ago.
We now know enough, I think, of the internal conditions which regulate
tree-structure to enable us to investigate finally, the great laws of
branch and stem aspect. But they are very beautiful; and we will give
them a separate chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the note on Fig. 11, at page 17, which shows these two
directions in a shoot of lime.
[2] I find that the office and nature of cambium, the causes of the
action of the sap, and the real mode of the formation of buds, are
all still under the investigation of botanists. I do not lose time in
stating the doubts or probabilities which exist on these subjects.
For us, the mechanical fact of the increase of thickness by every
leaf's action is all that needs attention. The reader who wishes for
information as accurate as the present state of science admits, may
consult Lindley's _Introduction to Botany_, and an interesting little
book by Dr. Alexander Harvey on _Trees and their Nature_ (Nisbet &
Co., 1856), to which I owe much help.
[3] In the true sense a "mediator," ([Greek: mesitês]).
[4] The gradual development of this radiating structure, which is
organic and essential, composed of what are called by botanists
medullary rays, is still a great mystery and wonder to me.
CHAPTER VII.
THE STEM.
§ 1. We must be content, in this most complex subject, to advance very
slowly: and our easiest, if not our only way, will be to examine, first,
the conditions under which boughs would form, supposing them all to
divide in one plane, as your hand divides when you lay it flat on the
table, with the fingers as wide apart as you can. And then we will
deduce the laws of ramification which follow on the real structure of
branches, which truly divide, not in one plane, but as your fingers
separate if you hold a large round ball with them.
The reader has, I hope, a clear idea by this time of the main principle
of tree-growth; namely, that the increase is by addition, or
superimposition, not extension. A branch does not stretch itself out as
a leech stretches its body. But it receives additions at its extremity,
and proportional additions to its thickness. For although the actual
living shoot, or growing point, of any year, lengthens itself gradually
until it reaches its terminal bud, after that bud is formed, its length
is fixed. It is thenceforth one joint of the tree, like the joint of a
pillar, on which other joints of marble may be laid to elongate the
pillar, but which will not itself stretch. A tree is thus truly edified,
or built, like a house.
§ 2. I am not sure with what absolute stringency this law is observed,
or what slight lengthening of substance may be traceable by close
measurement among inferior branches. For practical purposes, we may
assume that the law is final, and that if we represent the state of a
plant, or extremity of branch, in any given year under the simplest
possible type, Fig. 44, _a_, of two shoots, with terminal buds,
springing from one stem, its growth next year may be expressed by the
type, Fig. 44, _b_, in which, the original stems not changing or
increasing, the terminal buds have built up each another story of
plant, or repetition of the original form; and, in order to support this
new edifice, have sent down roots all the way to the ground, so as to
enclose and thicken the inferior stem.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.]
But if this is so, how does the original stem, which never lengthens,
ever become the tall trunk of a tree? The arrangement just stated
provides very satisfactorily for making it stout, but not for making it
tall. If the ramification proceeds in this way, the tree must assuredly
become a round compact ball of short sticks, attached to the ground by a
very stout, almost invisible, stem, like a puff-ball.
For if we take the form above, on a small scale, merely to see what
comes of it, and carry its branching three steps farther, we get the
successive conditions in Fig. 45, of which the last comes already round
to the ground.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.]
"But those forms really look something like trees!" Yes, if they were on
a large scale. But each of the little shoots is only six or seven inches
long; the whole cluster would but be three or four feet over, and
touches the ground already at its extremity. It would enlarge if it went
on growing, but never rise from the ground.
§ 3. This is an interesting question: one, also, which, I fear, we must
solve, so far as yet it can be solved, with little help. Perhaps nothing
is more curious in the history of human mind than the way in which the
science of botany has become oppressed by nomenclature. Here is perhaps
the first question which an intelligent child would think of asking
about a tree: "Mamma, how does it make its trunk?" and you may open one
botanical work after another, and good ones too, and by sensible
men,--you shall not find this child's question fairly put, much less
fairly answered. You will be told gravely that a stem has received many
names, such as _culmus_, _stipes_, and _truncus_; that twigs were once
called _flagella_, but are now called _ramuli_; and that Mr. Link calls
a straight stem, with branches on its sides, a _caulis excurrens_; and a
stem, which at a certain distance above the earth breaks out into
irregular ramifications, a _caulis deliquescens_. All thanks and honor
be to Mr. Link! But at this moment, when we want to know _why_ one stem
breaks "at a certain distance," and the other not at all, we find
no great help in those splendid excurrencies and deliquescencies.
"At a certain distance?" Yes: but why not before? or why then? How
was it that, for many and many a year, the young shoots agreed to
construct a vertical tower, or, at least, the nucleus of one, and then,
one merry day, changed their minds, and built about their metropolis in
all directions, nobody knows where, far into the air in free delight?
How is it that yonder larch-stem grows straight and true, while all its
branches, constructed by the same process as the mother trunk, and under
the mother trunk's careful inspection and direction, nevertheless have
lost all their manners, and go forking and flashing about, more like
cracklings of spitefullest lightning than decent branches of trees that
dip green leaves in dew?
§ 4. We have probably, many of us, missed the point of such questions as
these, because we too readily associated the structure of trees with
that of flowers. The flowering part of a plant shoots out or up, in some
given direction, until, at a stated period, it opens or branches into
perfect form by a law just as fixed, and just as inexplicable, as that
which numbers the joints of an animal's skeleton, and puts the head on
its right joint. In many forms of flowers--foxglove, aloe, hemlock, or
blossom of maize--the structure of the flowering part so far assimilates
itself to that of a tree, that we not unnaturally think of a tree only
as a large flower, or large remnant of flower, run to seed. And we
suppose the time and place of its branching to be just as organically
determined as the height of the stalk of straw, or hemlock pipe, and the
fashion of its branching just as fixed as the shape of petals in a pansy
or cowslip.
§ 5. But that is not so; not so in anywise. So far as you can watch a
tree, it is produced throughout by repetitions of the same process,
which repetitions, however, are arbitrarily directed so as to produce
one effect at one time, and another at another time. A young sapling has
his branches as much as the tall tree. He does not shoot up in a long
thin rod, and begin to branch when he is ten or fifteen feet high, as
the hemlock or foxglove does when each has reached its ten or fifteen
inches. The young sapling conducts himself with all the dignity of a
tree from the first;--only he so manages his branches as to form a
support for his future life, in a strong straight trunk, that will hold
him well off the ground. Prudent little sapling!--but how does he manage
this? how keep the young branches from rambling about, till the proper
time, or on what plea dismiss them from his service if they will not
help his provident purpose? So again, there is no difference in mode of
construction between the trunk of a pine and its branch. But external
circumstances so far interfere with the results of this repeated
construction, that a stone pine rises for a hundred feet like a pillar,
and then suddenly bursts into a cloud. It is the knowledge of the mode
in which such change may take place which forms the true natural history
of trees:--or, more accurately, their moral history. An animal is born
with so many limbs, and a head of such a shape. That is, strictly
speaking, not its history, but one fact of its history: a fact of which
no other account can be given than that it was so appointed. But a tree
is born without a head. It has got to make its own head. It is born like
a little family from which a great nation is to spring; and at a certain
time, under peculiar external circumstances, this nation, every
individual of which remains the same in nature and temper, yet gives
itself a new political constitution, and sends out branch colonies,
which enforce forms of law and life entirely different from those of the
parent state. That is the history of the state. It is also the history
of a tree.
§ 6. Of these hidden histories, I know and can tell you as little as I
did of the making of rocks. It will be enough for me if I can put the
difficulty fairly before you, show you clearly such facts as are
necessary to the understanding of great Art, and so leave you to pursue,
at your pleasure, the graceful mystery of this imperfect leafage life.
I took in the outset the type of a _triple_ but as the most general
that could be given of all trees, because it represents a prevalently
upright main tendency, with a capacity of branching on both sides. I
would have shown the power of branching on _all_ sides if I could; but
we must be content at first with the simplest condition. From what we
have seen since of bud structure, we may now make our type more complete
by giving each bud a root proportioned to its size. And our elementary
type of tree plant will be as in Fig. 46.
[Illustration: FIG. 46.]
§ 7. Now these three buds, though differently placed, have all one mind.
No bud has an oblique mind. Every one would like, if he could, to grow
upright, and it is because the midmost one has entirely his own way in
this matter, that he is largest. He is an elder brother;--his birthright
is to grow straight towards the sky. A younger child may perhaps
supplant him, if he does not care for his privilege. In the meantime all
are of one family, and love each other,--so that the two lateral buds do
not stoop aside because they like it, but to let their more favored
brother grow in peace. All the three buds and roots have at heart the
same desire;--which is, the one to grow as straight as he can towards
bright heaven, the other as deep as he can into dark earth. Up to light,
and down to shade;--into air and into rock:--that is their mind and
purpose for ever. So far as they can, in kindness to each other, and by
sufferance of external circumstances, work out that destiny, they will.
But their beauty will not result from their working it out,--only from
their maintained purpose and resolve to do so, if it may be. They will
fail--certainly two, perhaps all three of them: fail
egregiously;--ridiculously;--it may be agonizingly. Instead of growing
up, they may be wholly sacrificed to happier buds above, and have to
grow _down_, sideways, roundabout ways, all sorts of ways. Instead of
getting down quietly into the convent of the earth, they may have to
cling and crawl about hardest and hottest angles of it, full in sight of
man and beast, and roughly trodden under foot by them;--stumbling-blocks
to many.
Yet out of such sacrifice, gracefully made--such misfortune, gloriously
sustained--all their true beauty is to arise. Yes, and from more than
sacrifice--more than misfortune: from _death_. Yes, and more than
death:--from the worst kind of death: not natural, coming to each in
its due time; but premature, oppressed, unnatural, misguided--or so it
would seem--to the poor dying sprays. Yet, without such death, no strong
trunk were ever possible; no grace of glorious limb or glittering leaf;
no companionship with the rest of nature or with man.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.]
§ 8. Let us see how this must be. We return to our poor little threefold
type, Fig. 46, above. Next year he will become as in Fig. 47. The two
lateral buds keeping as much as may be out of their brother's way, and
yet growing upwards with a will, strike diagonal lines, and in moderate
comfort accomplish their year's life and terminal buds. But what is to
be done next? Forming the triple terminal head on this diagonal line, we
find that one of our next year's buds, _c_, will have to grow down
again, which is very hard; and another, _b_, will run right against the
lateral branch of the upper bud, A, which must not be allowed under any
circumstances.
What are we to do?
[Illustration: FIG. 48.]
§ 9. The best we can. Give up our straightness, and some of our length,
and consent to grow short, and crooked. But _b_ shall be ordered to
stoop forward and keep his head out of the great bough's way, as in Fig.
48, and grow as he best may, with the consumptive pain in his chest. To
give him a little more room, the elder brother, _a_, shall stoop a
little forward also, recovering himself when he has got out of _b_'s
way; and bud _c_ shall be encouraged to bend himself bravely round and
up, after his first start in that disagreeable downward direction. Poor
_b_, withdrawn from air and light between _a_ and A, and having to live
stooping besides, cannot make much of himself, and is stunted and
feeble. _c_, having free play for his energies, bends up with a will,
and becomes handsomer, to our minds, than if he had been straight; and
_a_ is none the worse for his concession to unhappy _b_ in early life.
[Illustration: FIG. 49.]
So far well for this year. But how for next? _b_ is already too near the
spray above him, even for his own strength and comfort; much less, with
his weak constitution, will he be able to throw up any strong new
shoots. And if he did, they would only run into those of the bough
above. (If the reader will proceed in the construction of the whole
figure he will see that this is so.) Under these discouragements and
deficiencies, _b_ is probably frostbitten, and drops off. The bough
proceeds, mutilated, and itself somewhat discouraged. But it repeats its
sincere and good-natured compliances, and at the close of the year, new
wood from all the leaves having concealed the stump, and effaced the
memory of poor lost _b_, and perhaps a consolatory bud lower down having
thrown out a tiny spray to make the most of the vacant space near the
main stem, we shall find the bough in some such shape as Fig. 49.
§ 10. Wherein we already see the germ of our irregularly bending branch,
which might ultimately be much the prettier for the loss of _b_. Alas!
the Fates have forbidden even this. While the low bough is making all
these exertions, the boughs of A, above him, higher in air, have made
the same under happier auspices. Every year their thicker leaves more
and more forbid the light; and, after rain, shed their own drops
unwittingly on the unfortunate lower bough, and prevent the air or sun
from drying his bark or checking the chill in his medullary rays. Slowly
a hopeless languor gains upon him. He buds here or there, faintly, in
the spring; but the flow of strong wood from above oppresses him even
about his root, where it joins the trunk. The very sap does not turn
aside to him, but rushes up to the stronger, laughing leaves far above.
Life is no more worth having; and abandoning all effort, the poor bough
drops, and finds consummation of destiny in helping an old woman's
fire.
When he is gone, the one next above is left with greater freedom, and
will shoot now from points of its sprays which were before likely to
perish. Hence another condition of irregularity in form. But that bough
also will fall in its turn, though after longer persistence. Gradually
thus the central trunk is built, and the branches by whose help it was
formed cast off, leaving here and there scars, which are all effaced by
years, or lost sight of among the roughnesses and furrows of the aged
surface. The work is continually advancing, and thus the head of foliage
on any tree is not an expansion at a given height, like a flower-bell,
but the collective group of boughs, or workmen, who have got up so far,
and will get up higher next year, still losing one or two of their
number underneath.
§ 11. So far well. But this only accounts for the formation of a
vertical trunk. How is it that at a certain height this vertical trunk
ceases to be built; and irregular branches spread in all directions?
First: In a great number of trees, the vertical trunk never ceases to be
built. It is confused, at the top of the tree, among other radiating
branches, being at first, of course, just as slender as they, and only
prevailing over them in time. It shows at the top the same degree of
irregularity and undulation as a sapling; and is transformed gradually
into straightness lower down (see Fig. 50). The reader has only to take
an hour's ramble, to see for himself how many trees are thus
constructed, if circumstances are favorable to their growth. Again, the
mystery of blossoming has great influence in increasing the tendency to
dispersion among the upper boughs: but this part of vegetative structure
I cannot enter into; it is too subtle, and has, besides, no absolute
bearing on our subject; the principal conditions which produce the
varied play of branches being purely mechanical. The point at which they
show a determined tendency to spread is generally to be conceived as a
place of _rest_ for the tree, where it has reached the height from the
ground at which ground-mist, imperfect circulation of air, &c., have
ceased to operate injuriously on it, and where it has free room, and
air, and light for its growth.
[Illustration: FIG. 50.]
§ 12. I find there is quite an infinite interest in watching the
different ways in which trees part their sprays at this resting-place,
and the sometimes abrupt, sometimes gentle and undiscoverable, severing
of the upright stem into the wandering and wilful branches; but a
volume, instead of a chapter or two, and quite a little gallery of
plates, would be needed to illustrate the various grace of this
division, associated as it is with an exquisitely subtle effacing of
undulation in the thicker stems, by the flowing down of the wood from
above; the curves which are too violent in the branches being filled up,
so that what was at _a_, Fig. 50, becomes as at _b_, and when the main
stem is old, passes at last into straightness by almost imperceptible
curves, a continually gradated emphasis of curvature being carried to
the branch extremities.
[Illustration: FIG. 51.]
§ 13. Hitherto we have confined ourselves entirely to examination of
stems in one plane. We must glance--though only to ascertain how
impossible it is to do more than glance--at the conditions of form which
result from the throwing out of branches, not in one plane, but on all
sides. "As your fingers divide when they hold a ball," I said: or,
better, a large cup, without a handle. Consider how such ramification
will appear in one of the bud groups, that of our old friend the oak. We
saw it opened usually into five shoots. Imagine, then (Fig. 51), a
five-sided cup or funnel with a stout rod running through the centre of
it. In the figure it is seen from above, so as partly to show the
inside, and a little obliquely, that the central rod may not hide any of
the angles. Then let us suppose that, where the angles of this cup were,
we have, instead, five rods, as in Fig. 52, A, like the ribs of a
pentagonal umbrella turned inside out by the wind. I dot the pentagon
which connects their extremities, to keep their positions clear. Then
these five rods, with the central one, will represent the five shoots,
and the leader, from a vigorous young oak-spray. Put the leaves on each;
the five-foiled star at its extremity, and the others, now not quite
formally, but still on the whole as in Fig. 3 above, and we have the
result, Fig. 52, B--rather a pretty one.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.]
§ 14. By considering the various aspects which the five rods would take
in Fig. 52, as the entire group was seen from below or above, and at
different angles and distances, the reader may find out for himself what
changes of aspect are possible in even so regular a structure as this.
But the branchings soon take more complex symmetry. We know that next
year each of these five subordinate rods is to enter into life on its
own account, and to repeat the branching of the first. Thus, we shall
have five pentagonal cups surrounding a large central pentagonal cup.
This figure, if the reader likes a pretty perspective problem, he may
construct for his own pleasure:--which having done, or conceived, he is
then to apply the great principles of subjection and resilience, not to
three branches only, as in Fig. 49, but to the five of each cup;--by
which the cups get flattened out and bent up, as you may have seen
vessels of Venetian glass, so that every cup actually takes something
the shape of a thick aloe or artichoke leaf; and they surround the
central one, not as a bunch of grapes surrounds a grape at the end of
it, but as the petals grow round the centre of a rose. So that any one
of these lateral branches--though, seen from above, it would present a
symmetrical figure, as if it were not flattened (A, Fig. 53)--seen
sideways, or in profile, will show itself to be at least as much
flattened as at B.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.]
§ 15. You may thus regard the whole tree as composed of a series of such
thick, flat, branch-leaves; only incomparably more varied and enriched
in framework as they spread; and arranged more or less in spirals round
the trunk. Gather a cone of a Scotch fir; begin at the bottom of it, and
pull off the seeds, so as to show one of the spiral rows of them
continuously, from the bottom to the top, leaving enough seeds above
them to support the row. Then the gradual lengthening of the seeds from
the root, their spiral arrangement, and their limitation within a
curved, convex form, furnish the best _severe_ type you can have of the
branch system of all stemmed trees; and each seed of the cone
represents, not badly, the sort of flattened solid leaf-shape which all
complete branches have. Also, if you will try to draw the spiral of the
fir-cone, you will understand something about tree-perspective, which
may be generally useful. Finally, if you note the way in which the seeds
of the cone slip each farther and farther over each other, so as to
change sides in the middle of the cone, and obtain a reversed action of
spiral lines in the upper half, you may imagine what a piece of work it
would be for both of us, if we were to try to follow the complexities of
branch order in trees of irregular growth, such as the rhododendron. I
tried to do it, at least, for the pine, in section, but saw I was
getting into a perfect maelström of spirals, from which no efforts would
have freed me, in any imaginable time, and the only safe way was to keep
wholly out of the stream.
[Illustration: FIG. 54.]
§ 16. The alternate system, leading especially to the formation of
forked trees, is more manageable; and if the reader is master of
perspective, he may proceed some distance in the examination of that for
himself. But I do not care to frighten the general reader by many
diagrams: the book is always sure to open at them when he takes it up. I
will venture on one which has perhaps something a little amusing about
it, and is really of importance.
[Illustration: FIG. 55.]
[Illustration: J. Ruskin J. Emslie
56. Sketch by a Clerk of the Works.]
§ 17. Let X, Fig. 54, represent a shoot of any opposite-leaved tree. The
mode in which it will grow into a tree depends, mainly, on its
disposition to lose the leader or a lateral shoot. If it keeps the
leader, but drops the lateral, it takes the form A, and next year by a
repetition of the process, B. But if it keeps the laterals, and drops
the leader, it becomes first, C and next year, D. The form A is almost
universal in spiral or alternate trees; and it is especially to be noted
as bringing about this result, that in any given forking, one bough
always goes on in its own direct course, and the other leaves it softly;
they do not separate as if one was repelled from the other. Thus in Fig.
55, a perfect and nearly symmetrical piece of ramification, by Turner
(lowest bough but one in the tree on the left in the "Château of La
belle Gabrielle"), the leading bough, going on in its own curve, throws
off, first, a bough to the right, then one to the left, then two small
ones to the right, and proceeds itself, hidden by leaves, to form the
farthest upper point of the branch.
The lower secondary bough--the first thrown off--proceeds in its own
curve, branching first to the left, then to the right.
The upper bough proceeds in the same way, throwing off first to left,
then to right. And this is the commonest and most graceful structure.
But if the tree loses the leader, as at C, Fig. 54 (and many opposite
trees have a trick of doing so), a very curious result is arrived at,
which I will give in a geometrical form.
§ 18. The number of branches which die, so as to leave the main stem
bare, is always greatest low down, or near the interior of the tree. It
follows that the lengths of stem which do not fork diminish gradually to
the extremities, in a fixed proportion. This is a general law. Assume,
for example's sake, the stem to separate always into two branches, at an
equal angle, and that each branch is three quarters of the length of the
preceding one. Diminish their thickness in proportion, and carry out the
figure any extent you like. In Plate 56, opposite, Fig. 1, you have it
at its ninth branch; in which I wish you to notice, first, the delicate
curve formed by every complete line of the branches (compare Vol. IV.
Fig. 91); and, secondly, the very curious result of the top of the tree
being a broad flat line, which passes at an angle into lateral shorter
lines, and so down to the extremities. It is this property which renders
the contours of tops of trees so intensely difficult to draw rightly,
without making their curves too smooth and insipid.
Observe, also, that the great weight of the foliage being thrown on the
outside of each main fork, the tendency of forked trees is very often to
droop and diminish the bough on one side, and erect the other into a
principal mass.[1]
§ 19. But the form in a perfect tree is dependent on the revolution of
this sectional profile, so as to produce a mushroom-shaped or
cauliflower-shaped mass, of which I leave the reader to enjoy the
perspective drawing by himself, adding, after he has completed it, the
effect of the law of resilience to the extremities. Only, he must note
this: that in real trees, as the branches rise from the ground, the open
spaces underneath are partly filled by subsequent branchings, so that a
real tree has not so much the shape of a mushroom, as of an apple, or,
if elongated, a pear.
§ 20. And now you may just begin to understand a little of Turner's
meaning in those odd pear-shaped trees of his, in the "Mercury and
Argus," and other such compositions: which, however, before we can do
completely, we must gather our evidence together, and see what general
results will come of it respecting the hearts and fancies of trees, no
less than their forms.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This is Harding's favorite form of tree. You will find it much
insisted on in his works on foliage. I intended to have given a
figure to show the results of the pressure of the weight of all the
leafage on a great lateral bough, in modifying its curves, the
strength of timber being greatest where the leverage of the mass
tells most. But I find nobody ever reads things which it takes any
trouble to understand, so that it is of no use to write them.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LEAF MONUMENTS.
§ 1. And now, having ascertained in its main points the system on which
the leaf-workers build, let us see, finally, what results in aspect, and
appeal to human mind, their building must present. In some sort it
resembles that of the coral animal, differing, however, in two points.
First, the animal which forms branched coral, builds, I believe, in calm
water, and has few accidents of current, light, or heat to contend with.
He builds in monotonous ramification, untormented, therefore
unbeautiful. Secondly, each coral animal builds for himself, adding his
cell to what has been before constructed, as a bee adds another cell to
the comb. He obtains no essential connection with the root and
foundation of the whole structure. That foundation is thickened
clumsily, by a fused and encumbering aggregation, as a stalactite
increases;--not by threads proceeding from the extremities to the root.
§ 2. The leaf, as we have seen, builds in both respects under opposite
conditions. It leads a life of endurance, effort, and various success,
issuing in various beauty; and it connects itself with the whole
previous edifice by one sustaining thread, continuing its appointed
piece of work all the way from top to root. Whence result three great
conditions in branch aspect, for which I cannot find good names, but
must use the imperfect ones of "Spring," "Caprice," "Fellowship."
§ 3. I. SPRING: or the appearance of elastic and progressive power, as
opposed to that look of a bent piece of cord.--This follows partly on
the poise of the bough, partly on its action in seeking or shunning.
Every branch-line expresses both these. It takes a curve accurately
showing the relations between the strength of the sprays in that
position (growing downward, upward, or laterally), and the weight of
leaves they carry; and again, it takes a curve expressive of the will
or aim of those sprays, during all their life, and handed down from sire
to son, in steady inheritance of resolution to reach forward in a given
direction, or bend away from some given evil influence.
And all these proportionate strengths and measured efforts of the bough
produce its loveliness, and ought to be felt, in looking at it, not by
any mathematical evidence, but by the same fine instinct which enables
us to perceive, when a girl dances rightly, that she moves easily, and
with delight to herself; that her limbs are strong enough, and her body
tender enough, to move precisely as she wills them to move. You cannot
say of any bend of arm or foot what precise relations of their curves to
the whole figure manifest, in their changeful melodies, that ease of
motion; yet you feel that they do so, and you feel it by a true
instinct. And if you reason on the matter farther, you may know, though
you cannot see, that an absolute mathematical necessity proportions
every bend of the body to the rate and direction of its motion; and that
the momentary fancy and fire of the will measure themselves, even in
their gaily-fancied freedom, by stern laws of nervous life, and material
attraction, which regulate eternally every pulse of the strength of man,
and every sweep of the stars of heaven.
§ 4. Observe, also, the balance of the bough of a tree is quite as
subtle as that of a figure in motion. It is a balance between the
elasticity of the bough and the weight of leaves, affected in curvature,
literally, by the growth of _every_ leaf; and besides this, when it
moves, it is partly supported by the resistance of the air, greater or
less, according to the shape of leaf;--so that branches float on the
wind more than they yield to it; and in their tossing do not so much
bend under a force, as rise on a wave, which penetrates in liquid
threads through all their sprays.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: 57. Leafage by Durer and Veronese.]
[Illustration: FIG. 56. _To face page 65._]
§ 5. I am not sure how far, by any illustration, I can exemplify these
subtle conditions of form. All my plans have been shortened, and I have
learned to content myself with yet more contracted issues of them after
the shortening, because I know that nearly all in such matters must be
said or shown, unavailably. No saying will teach the truth. Nothing but
doing. If the reader will draw boughs of trees long and faithfully,
giving previous pains to gain the power (how rare!) of drawing
_anything_ faithfully, he will come to see what Turner's work is,
or any other right work, but not by reading, nor thinking, nor idly
looking. However, in some degree, even our ordinary instinctive
perception of grace and balance may serve us, if we choose to pay any
accurate attention to the matter.
§ 6. Look back to Fig. 55. That bough of Turner's is exactly and
exquisitely poised, leaves and all, for its present horizontal position.
Turn the book so as to put the spray upright, with the leaves at the
top. You ought to see they would then be wrong;--that they must, in that
position, have adjusted themselves more directly above the main stem,
and more firmly, the curves of the lighter sprays being a deflection
caused by their weight in the horizontal position. Again, Fig. 56
represents, enlarged to four times the size of the original, the two
Scotch firs in Turner's etching of Inverary.[1] These are both in
perfect poise, representing a double action: the warping of the trees
away from the sea-wind, and the continual growing out of the boughs on
the right-hand side, to recover the balance.
Turn the page so as to be horizontal, and you ought to feel that,
considered now as branches, both would be out of balance. If you turn
the heads of the trees to your right, they are wrong, because gravity
would have bent them more downwards; if to your left, wrong, because the
law of resilience would have raised them more at the extremities.
§ 7. Now take two branches of Salvator's, Figs. 57 and 58.[2] You ought
to feel that these have neither poise nor spring: their leaves are
incoherent, ragged, hanging together in decay.
[Illustration: FIG. 57.]
[Illustration: FIG. 58.]
Immediately after these, turn to Plate 57, opposite. The branch at the
top is facsimiled from that in the hand of Adam, in Durer's Adam and
Eve.[3] It is full of the most exquisite vitality and spring in every
line. Look at it for five minutes carefully. Then turn back to
Salvator's, Fig. 57. Are you as well satisfied with it? You ought to
feel that it is not strong enough at the origin to sustain the leaves;
and that if it were, those leaves themselves are in broken or forced
relations with each other. Such relations might, indeed, exist in a
partially withered tree, and one of these branches is intended to be
partially withered, but the other is not; and if it were, Salvator's
choice of the withered tree is precisely the sign of his preferring
ugliness to beauty, decrepitude and disorganization to life and youth.
The leaves on the spray, by Durer, hold themselves as the girl holds
herself in dancing; those on Salvator's as an old man, partially
palsied, totters along with broken motion, and loose deflection of limb.
§ 8. Next, let us take a spray by Paul Veronese[4]--the lower figure in
Plate 57. It is just as if we had gathered one out of the garden. Though
every line and leaf in the quadruple group is necessary to join with
other parts of the composition of the noble picture, every line and leaf
is also as free and true as if it were growing. None are confused, yet
none are loose; all are individual, yet none separate, in tender poise
of pliant strength and fair order of accomplished grace, each, by due
force of the indulgent bough, set and sustained.
§ 9. Observe, however, that in all these instances from earlier masters,
the expression of the universal botanical law of poise is independent of
accuracy in rendering of species. As before noticed, the neglect of
specific distinction long restrained the advance of landscape, and even
hindered Turner himself in many respects. The sprays of Veronese are a
conventional type of laurel; Albert Durer's an imaginary branch of
paradisaical vegetation; Salvator's, a rude reminiscence of sweet
chestnut; Turner's only is a faithful rendering of the Scotch fir.
[Illustration: 58. Branch Curvature.]
[Illustration: FIG. 59.]
[Illustration: FIG. 60.]
[Illustration: FIG. 61 _To face page 69._]
§ 10. To show how the principle of balance is carried out by Nature
herself, here is a little terminal upright spray of willow, the most
graceful of English trees (Fig. 59). I have drawn it carefully; and if
the reader will study its curves, or, better, trace and pencil them with
a perfectly fine point, he will feel, I think, without difficulty, their
finished relation to the leaves they sustain. Then if we turn suddenly
to a piece of Dutch branch-drawing (Fig. 60), facsimiled from No. 160,
Dulwich Gallery (Berghem), he will understand, I believe, also the
qualities of that, without comment of mine. It is of course not so dark
in the original, being drawn with the chance dashes of a brush loaded
with brown, but the contours are absolutely as in the woodcut. This
Dutch design is a very characteristic example of two faults in
tree-drawing; namely, the loss not only of grace and spring, but of
woodiness. A branch is not elastic as steel is, neither as a carter's
whip is. It is a combination, wholly peculiar, of elasticity with
half-dead and sapless stubbornness, and of continuous curve with pauses
of knottiness, every bough having its blunted, affronted, fatigued,
or repentant moments of existence, and mingling crabbed rugosities
and fretful changes of mind with the main tendencies of its growth. The
piece of pollard willow opposite (Fig. 61), facsimiled from Turner's
etching of "Young Anglers," in the Liber Studiorum, has all these
characters in perfectness, and may serve for sufficient study of them.
It is impossible to explain in what the expression of the woody strength
consists, unless it be felt. One very obvious condition is the excessive
fineness of curvature, approximating continually to a straight line. In
order to get a piece of branch curvature given as accurately as I could
by an unprejudiced person, I set one of my pupils at the Working Men's
College (a joiner by trade) to draw, last spring, a lilac branch of its
real size, as it grew, before it budded. It was about six feet long, and
before he could get it quite right, the buds came out and interrupted
him; but the fragment he got drawn is engraved in flat profile, in Plate
58. It has suffered much by reduction, one or two of its finest curves
having become lost in the mere thickness of the lines. Nevertheless, if
the reader will compare it carefully with the Dutch work, it will teach
him something about trees.
§ 11. II. CAPRICE.--The next character we had to note of the
leaf-builders was their capriciousness, noted, partly, in Vol. III.
chap. ix. § 14. It is a character connected with the ruggedness and
ill-temperedness just spoken of, and an essential source of branch
beauty: being in reality the written story of all the branch's life,--of
the theories it formed, the accidents it suffered, the fits of
enthusiasm to which it yielded in certain delicious warm springs; the
disgusts at weeks of east wind, the mortifications of itself for its
friends' sakes; or the sudden and successful inventions of new ways of
getting out to the sun. The reader will understand this character in a
moment, by merely comparing Fig. 62, which is a branch of Salvator's,[5]
with Fig. 63, which I have traced from the engraving, in the Yorkshire
series, of Turner's "Aske Hall." You cannot but feel at once, not only
the wrongness of Salvator's, but its dulness. It is not now a question
either of poise, or grace, or gravity; only of wit. That bough has got
no sense; it has not been struck by a single new idea from the beginning
of it to the end; dares not even cross itself with one of its own
sprays. You will be amazed, in taking up any of these old engravings, to
see how seldom the boughs _do_ cross each other. Whereas, in nature, not
only is the intersection of extremities a mathematical necessity (see
Plate 56), but out of this intersection and crossing of curve by curve,
and the opposition of line it involves, the best part of their
composition arises. Look at the way the boughs are interwoven in that
piece of lilac stem (Plate 58).
[Illustration: FIG. 62.]
[Illustration: FIG. 63.]
[Illustration: 59. The Dryad's Waywardness.]
§ 12. Again: As it seldom struck the old painters that boughs must cross
each other, so it never seems to have occurred to them that they must be
sometimes foreshortened. I chose this bit from "Aske Hall," that you
might see at once, both how Turner foreshortens the main stem, and how,
in doing so, he shows the turning aside, and outwards, of the one next
to it, to the left, to get more air.[6] Indeed, this foreshortening lies
at the core of the business; for unless it be well understood, no
branch-form can ever be rightly drawn. I placed the oak spray in Plate
51 so as to be seen as nearly straight on its flank as possible. It is
the most uninteresting position in which a bough can be drawn; but it
shows the first simple action of the law of resilience. I will now turn
the bough with its extremity towards us, and foreshorten it (Plate 59),
which being done, you perceive another tendency in the whole branch, not
seen at all in the first Plate, to throw its sprays to its own right (or
to your left), which it does to avoid the branch next it, while the
_forward_ action is in a sweeping curve round to your right, or to the
branch's left: a curve which it takes to recover position after its
first concession. The lines of the nearer and smaller shoots are very
nearly--thus foreshortened--those of a boat's bow. Here is a piece of
Dutch foreshortening for you to compare with it, Fig. 64.[7]
[Illustration: FIG. 64.]
§ 13. In this final perfection of bough-drawing, Turner stands _wholly
alone_. Even Titian does not foreshorten his boughs rightly. Of course
he could, if he had cared to do so; for if you can foreshorten a limb or
a hand, much more a tree branch. But either he had never looked at a
tree carefully enough to feel that it was necessary, or, which is more
likely, he disliked to introduce in a background elements of vigorous
projection. Be the reason what it may, if you take Lefèvre's plates of
the Peter Martyr and St. Jerome--the only ones I know which give any
idea of Titian's tree-drawing, you will observe at once that the boughs
lie in flakes, artificially set to the right and left, and are not
intricate or varied, even where the foliage indicates some
foreshortening;--completing thus the evidence for my statement long ago
given, that no man but Turner had ever drawn the stem of a tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 65.]
[Illustration: FIG. 66.]
§ 14. It may be well also to note, for the advantage of the general
student of design, that, in foliage and bough drawing, all the final
grace and general utility of the study depend on its being well
foreshortened; and that, till the power of doing so quite accurately is
obtained, no landscape-drawing is of the least value; nor can the
character of any tree be known at all until not only its branches, but
its minutest extremities, have been drawn in the severest
foreshortening, with little accompanying plans of the arrangements of
the leaves or buds, or thorns, on the stem. Thus Fig. 65 is the
extremity of a single shoot of spruce foreshortened, showing the
resilience of its swords from beneath, and Fig. 66 is a little
ground-plan, showing the position of the three lowest triple groups of
thorn on a shoot of gooseberry.[8] The fir shoot is carelessly drawn;
but it is not worth while to do it better, unless I engraved it on
steel, so as to show the fine relations of shade.
§ 15. III. FELLOWSHIP.--The compactness of mass presented by this little
sheaf of pine-swords may lead us to the consideration of the last
character I have to note of boughs; namely, the mode of their
association in masses. It follows, of course, from all the laws of
growth we have ascertained, that the terminal outline of any tree or
branch must be a simple one, containing within it, at a given height or
level, the series of leaves of the year; only we have not yet noticed
the kind of form which results, in each branch, from the part it has to
take in forming the mass of the tree. The systems of branching are
indeed infinite, and could not be exemplified by any number of types;
but here are two common types, in section, which will enough explain
what I mean.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.]
§ 16. If a tree branches with a concave tendency, it is apt to carry its
boughs to the outer curve of limitation, as at A, Fig. 67, and if with a
convex tendency, as at B. In either case the vertical section, or
profile, of a bough will give a triangular mass, terminated by curves,
and elongated at one extremity. These triangular masses you may see at a
glance, prevailing in the branch system of any tree in winter. They may,
of course, be mathematically reduced to the four types _a_, _b_, _c_,
and _d_, Fig. 67, but are capable of endless variety of expression in
action, and in the adjustment of their weights to the bearing stem.
§ 17. To conclude, then, we find that the beauty of these buildings of
the leaves consists, from the first step of it to the last, in its
showing their perfect fellowship; and a single aim uniting them under
circumstances of various distress, trial, and pleasure. Without the
fellowship, no beauty; without the steady purpose, no beauty; without
trouble, and death, no beauty; without individual pleasure, freedom, and
caprice, so far as may be consistent with the universal good, no beauty.
[Illustration: FIG. 68.]
[Illustration: FIG. 69.]
§ 18. Tree-loveliness might be thus lost or killed in many ways.
Discordance would kill it--of one leaf with another; disobedience would
kill it--of any leaf to the ruling law; indulgence would kill it, and
the doing away with pain; or slavish symmetry would kill it, and the
doing away with delight. And this is so, down to the smallest atom and
beginning of life: so soon as there is life at all, there are these four
conditions of it;--harmony, obedience, distress, and delightsome
inequality. Here is the magnified section of an oak-bud, not the size of
a wheat grain (Fig. 68). Already its nascent leaves are seen arranged
under the perfect law of resilience, preparing for stoutest work on the
right side. Here is a dogwood bud just opening into life (Fig. 69). Its
ruling law is to be four square, but see how the uppermost leaf takes
the lead, and the lower bends up, already a little distressed by the
effort. Here is a birch-bud, farther advanced, Fig. 70. Who shall say
how many humors the little thing has in its mind already; or how many
adventures it has passed through? And so to the end. Help, submission,
sorrow, dissimilarity, are the sources of all good;--war, disobedience,
luxury, equality, the sources of all evil.
[Illustration: FIG. 70.]
§ 19. There is yet another and a deeply laid lesson to be received from
the leaf-builders, which I hope the reader has already perceived. Every
leaf, we have seen, connects its work with the entire and accumulated
result of the work of its predecessors. Their previous construction
served it during its life, raised it towards the light, gave it more
free sway and motion in the wind, and removed it from the noxiousness of
earth exhalation. Dying, it leaves its own small but well-labored
thread, adding, though imperceptibly, yet essentially, to the strength,
from root to crest, of the trunk on which it had lived, and fitting that
trunk for better service to succeeding races of leaves.
We men, sometimes, in what we presume to be humility, compare ourselves
with leaves; but we have as yet no right to do so. The leaves may well
scorn the comparison. We who live for ourselves, and neither know how
to use nor keep the work of past time, may humbly learn,--as from the
ant, foresight,--from the leaf, reverence. The power of every great
people, as of every living tree, depends on its not effacing, but
confirming and concluding, the labors of its ancestors. Looking back to
the history of nations, we may date the beginning of their decline from
the moment when they ceased to be reverent in heart, and accumulative in
hand and brain; from the moment when the redundant fruit of age hid in
them the hollowness of heart, whence the simplicities of custom and
sinews of tradition had withered away. Had men but guarded the righteous
laws, and protected the precious works of their fathers, with half the
industry they have given to change and to ravage, they would not now
have been seeking vainly, in millennial visions and mechanic servitudes,
the accomplishment of the promise made to them so long ago: "As the days
of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the
work of their hands; they shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for
trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their
offspring with them."
§ 20. This lesson we have to take from the leaf's life. One more we may
receive from its death. If ever in autumn a pensiveness falls upon us as
the leaves drift by in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope
to their mighty monuments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged, in arch
and aisle, the avenues of the valleys; the fringes of the hills! So
stately,--so eternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living
creatures, the glory of the earth,--they are but the monuments of those
poor leaves that flit faintly past us to die. Let them not pass, without
our understanding their last counsel and example: that we also, careless
of monument by the grave, may build it in the world--monument by which
men may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] They are enlarged, partly in order to show the care and
minuteness of Turner's drawing on the smallest scale, partly to save
the reader the trouble of using a magnifying glass, partly because
this woodcut will print safely; while if I had facsimiled the fine
Turner etching, the block might have been spoiled after a hundred
impressions.
[2] Magnified to twice the size of the original, but otherwise
facsimiled from his own etching of Oedipus, and the School of Plato.
[3] The parrot perched on it is removed, which may be done without
altering the curve, as the bird is set where its weight would not
have bent the wood.
[4] The largest laurel spray in the background of the "Susanna,"
Louvre--reduced to about a fifth of the original. The drawing was
made for me by M. Hippolyte Dubois, and I am glad it is not one of my
own, lest I should be charged with exaggerating Veronese's accuracy.
This group of leaves is, in the original, of the life-size; the
circle which interferes with the spray on the right being the outline
of the head and of one of the elders; and, as painted for distant
effect, there is no care in completing the stems:--they are struck
with a few broken touches of the brush, which cannot be imitated in
the engraving, and much of their spirit is lost in consequence.
[5] The longest in "Apollo and the Sibyl," engraved by Boydell.
(Reduced one-half.)
[6] The foreshortening of the bough to the right is a piece of great
audacity; it comes towards us two or three feet sharply, after
forking, so as to look half as thick again as at the fork;--then
bends back again, and outwards.
[7] Hobbima. Dulwich Gallery, No. 131. Turn the book with its inner
edge up.
[8] Their change from groups of three to groups of two, and then to
single thorns at the end of the spray, will be found very beautiful
in a real shoot. The figure on the left in Plate 52 is a branch of
blackthorn with its spines (which are a peculiar condition of branch,
and can bud like branches, while thorns have no root nor power of
development). Such a branch gives good practice without too much
difficulty.
CHAPTER IX.
THE LEAF SHADOWS.
[Illustration: FIG. 71.]
§ 1. It may be judged, by the time which it has taken to arrive at any
clear idea of the structure of shield-builders, what a task would open
to us if we endeavored to trace the more wonderful forms of the wild
builders with the sword. Not that they are more complex; but they are
more definite, and cannot be so easily generalized. The conditions which
produce the spire of the cypress, and flaked breadth of the cedar, the
rounded head of the stone pine, and perfect pyramid of the black spruce,
are far more distinct, and would require more accurate and curious
diagrams to illustrate them, than the graceful, but in some degree
monotonous branching of leaf-builders. In broad principle they are,
however, alike. The leaves construct the sprays in the same accumulative
way: the only essential difference being that in the sword-builders the
leaves are all set close, and at equal intervals. Instead of admitting
extended and variable spaces between them, the whole spray is one tower
of leaf-roots, set in a perfect spiral. Thus, Fig. 71, at A, represents
a fragment of spray of Scotch fir of its real size. B is the same piece
magnified, the diamond-like spaces being the points on which the leaves
grew. The dotted lines show the regularity of the spiral. As the minor
stems join in boughs, the scars left by the leaves are gradually
effaced, and a thick but broken and scaly bark forms instead.
§ 2. A sword-builder may therefore be generally considered as a
shield-builder put under the severest military restraint. The graceful
and thin leaf is concentrated into a strong, narrow, pointed rod; and
the insertion of these rods on them is in a close and perfectly timed
order. In some ambiguous trees connected with the tribe (as the arbor
vitæ) there is no proper stem to the outer leaves, but all the
extremities form a kind of coralline leaf, flat and fern-like, but
articulated like a crustacean animal, which gradually concentrates and
embrowns itself into the stem. The thicker branches of these trees are
exquisitely fantastic; and the mode in which the flat system of leaf
first produces an irregular branch, and then adapts itself to the
symmetrical cone of the whole tree, is one of the most interesting
processes of form which I know in vegetation.
§ 3. Neither this, however, nor any other of the pine formations, have
we space here to examine in detail; while without detail, all discussion
of them is in vain. I shall only permit myself to note a few points
respecting my favorite tree, the black spruce, not with any view to art
criticism (though we might get at some curious results by a comparison
of popular pine-drawing in Germany, America, and other dark-wooded
countries, with the true natural forms), but because I think the
expression of this tree has not been rightly understood by travellers in
Switzerland, and that, with a little watching of it, they might easily
obtain a juster feeling.
§ 4. Of the many marked adaptations of nature to the mind of man, it
seems one of the most singular, that trees intended especially for the
adornment of the wildest mountains should be in broad outline the most
formal of trees. The vine, which is to be the companion of man, is
waywardly docile in its growth, falling into festoons beside his
cornfields, or roofing his garden-walks, or casting its shadow all
summer upon his door. Associated always with the trimness of
cultivation, it introduces all possible elements of sweet wildness. The
pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, brings
into them all possible elements of order and precision. Lowland trees
may lean to this side and that, though it is but a meadow breeze that
bends them, or a bank of cowslips from which their trunks lean aslope.
But let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a
ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow
straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem;--it shall
point to the centre of the earth as long as the tree lives.
§ 5. Also it may be well for lowland branches to reach hither and
thither for what they need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape and
extension. But the pine is trained to need nothing, and to endure
everything. It is resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring nothing but
rightness, content with restricted completion. Tall or short, it will be
straight. Small or large, it will be round. It may be permitted also to
these soft lowland trees that they should make themselves gay with show
of blossom, and glad with pretty charities of fruitfulness. We builders
with the sword have harder work to do for man, and must do it in
close-set troops. To stay the sliding of the mountain snows, which would
bury him; to hold in divided drops, at our sword-points, the rain, which
would sweep away him and his treasure-fields; to nurse in shade among
our brown fallen leaves the tricklings that feed the brooks in drought;
to give massive shield against the winter wind, which shrieks through
the bare branches of the plain:--such service must we do him steadfastly
while we live. Our bodies, also, are at his service: softer than the
bodies of other trees, though our toil is harder than theirs. Let him
take them as pleases him, for his houses and ships. So also it may be
well for these timid lowland trees to tremble with all their leaves, or
turn their paleness to the sky, if but a rush of rain passes by them; or
to let fall their leaves at last, sick and sere. But we pines must live
carelessly amidst the wrath of clouds. We only wave our branches to and
fro when the storm pleads with us, as men toss their arms in a dream.
And finally, these weak lowland trees may struggle fondly for the last
remnants of life, and send up feeble saplings again from their roots
when they are cut down. But we builders with the sword perish boldly;
our dying shall be perfect and solemn, as our warring: we give up our
lives without reluctance, and for ever.[1]
§ 6. I wish the reader to fix his attention for a moment on these two
great characters of the pine, its straightness and rounded perfectness;
both wonderful, and in their issue lovely, though they have hitherto
prevented the tree from being drawn. I say, first, its straightness.
Because we constantly see it in the wildest scenery, we are apt to
remember only as characteristic examples of it those which have been
disturbed by violent accident or disease. Of course such instances are
frequent. The soil of the pine is subject to continual change; perhaps
the rock in which it is rooted splits in frost and falls forward,
throwing the young stems aslope, or the whole mass of earth around it is
undermined by rain, or a huge boulder falls on its stem from above, and
forces it for twenty years to grow with weight of a couple of tons
leaning on its side. Hence, especially at edges of loose cliffs, about
waterfalls, or at glacier banks, and in other places liable to
disturbance, the pine may be seen distorted and oblique; and in Turner's
"Source of the Arveron," he has, with his usual unerring perception of
the main point in any matter, fastened on this means of relating the
glacier's history. The glacier cannot explain its own motion; and
ordinary observers saw in it only its rigidity; but Turner saw that the
wonderful thing was its non-rigidity. Other ice is fixed, only this ice
stirs. All the banks are staggering beneath its waves, crumbling and
withered as by the blast of a perpetual storm. He made the rocks of his
foreground loose--rolling and tottering down together; the pines,
smitten aside by them, their tops dead, bared by the ice wind.
§ 7. Nevertheless, this is not the truest or universal expression of the
pine's character. I said long ago, even of Turner: "Into the spirit of
the pine he cannot enter." He understood the glacier at once; he had
seen the force of sea on shore too often to miss the action of those
crystal-crested waves. But the pine was strange to him, adverse to his
delight in broad and flowing line; he refused its magnificent erectness.
Magnificent!--nay, sometimes, almost terrible. Other trees, tufting crag
or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it with soft
compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly its
comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self-contained; nor
can I ever without awe stay long under a great Alpine cliff, far from
all house or work of men, looking up to its companies of pine, as they
stand on the inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the enormous wall,
in quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the one beside it--upright,
fixed, spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not
knowing each other--dumb for ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to
them;--those trees never heard human voice; they are far above all sound
but of the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All
comfortless they stand, between the two eternities of the Vacancy and
the Rock: yet with such iron will, that the rock itself looks bent and
shattered beside them--fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared to their
dark energy of delicate life, and monotony of enchanted
pride:--unnumbered, unconquerable.
§ 8. Then note, farther, their perfectness. The impression on most
people's minds must have been received more from pictures than reality,
so far as I can judge;--so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief
character in health is green and full roundness. It stands compact, like
one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and quaint
as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; and instead of being wild
in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery; for other trees
show their trunks and twisting boughs: but the pine, growing either in
luxuriant mass or in happy isolation, allows no branch to be seen.
Summit behind summit rise its pyramidal ranges, or down to the very
grass sweep the circlets of its boughs; so that there is nothing but
green cone and green carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one sense
more cheerful than other foliage; for it casts only a pyramidal shadow.
Lowland forest arches overhead, and chequers the ground with darkness;
but the pine, growing in scattered groups, leaves the glades between
emerald-bright. Its gloom is all its own; narrowing into the sky, it
lets the sunshine strike down to the dew. And if ever a superstitious
feeling comes over me among the pine-glades, it is never tainted with
the old German forest fear; but is only a more solemn tone of the fairy
enchantment that haunts our English meadows; so that I have always
called the prettiest pine glade in Chamouni, "Fairies' Hollow." It is in
the glen beneath the steep ascent above Pont Pelissier, and may be
reached by a little winding path which goes down from the top of the
hill; being, indeed, not truly a glen, but a broad ledge of moss and
turf, leaning in a formidable precipice (which, however, the gentle
branches hide) over the Arve. An almost isolated rock promontory,
many-colored, rises at the end of it. On the other sides it is bordered
by cliffs, from which a little cascade falls, literally down among the
pines, for it is so light, shaking itself into mere showers of seed
pearl in the sun, that the pines don't know it from mist, and grow
through it without minding. Underneath, there is only the mossy silence,
and above, for ever, the snow of the nameless Aiguille.
§ 9. And then the third character which I want you to notice in the pine
is its exquisite fineness. Other trees rise against the sky in dots and
knots, but this in fringes.[2] You never see the edges of it, so subtle
are they; and for this reason, it alone of trees, so far as I know, is
capable of the fiery change which we saw before had been noticed by
Shakespeare. When the sun rises behind a ridge crested with pine,
provided the ridge be at a distance of about two miles, and seen clear,
all the trees, for about three or four degrees on each side of the sun,
become trees of light, seen in clear flame against the darker sky, and
dazzling as the sun itself. I thought at first this was owing to the
actual lustre of the leaves; but I believe now it is caused by the
cloud-dew upon them,--every minutest leaf carrying its diamond. It seems
as if these trees, living always among the clouds, had caught part of
their glory from them; and themselves the darkest of vegetation, could
yet add splendor to the sun itself.
§ 10. Yet I have been more struck by their character of finished
delicacy at a distance from the central Alps, among the pastoral hills
of the Emmenthal, or lowland districts of Berne, where they are set in
groups between the cottages, whose shingle roofs (they also of pine) of
deep gray blue, and lightly carved fronts, golden and orange in the
autumn sunshine,[3] gleam on the banks and lawns of hill-side,--endless
lawns, mounded, and studded, and bossed all over with deeper green
hay-heaps, orderly set, like jewellery (the mountain hay, when the
pastures are full of springs, being strangely dark and fresh in verdure
for a whole day after it is cut). And amidst this delicate delight of
cottage and field, the young pines stand delicatest of all, scented as
with frankincense, their slender stems straight as arrows, and crystal
white, looking as if they would break with a touch, like needles; and
their arabesques of dark leaf pierced through and through by the pale
radiance of clear sky, opal blue, where they follow each other along the
soft hill-ridges, up and down.
§ 11. I have watched them in such scenes with the deeper interest,
because of all trees they have hitherto had most influence on human
character. The effect of other vegetation, however great, has been
divided by mingled species; elm and oak in England, poplar in France,
birch in Scotland, olive in Italy and Spain, share their power with
inferior trees, and with all the changing charm of successive
agriculture. But the tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and moulds the
life of a race. The pine shadows rest upon a nation. The Northern
peoples, century after century, lived under one or other of the two
great powers of the Pine and the Sea, both infinite. They dwelt amidst
the forests, as they wandered on the waves, and saw no end, nor any
other horizon;--still the dark green trees, or the dark green waters,
jagged the dawn with their fringe, or their foam. And whatever elements
of imagination, or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice, were
brought down by the Norwegian and the Goth against the dissoluteness or
degradation of the South of Europe, were taught them under the green
roofs and wild penetralia of the pine.
§ 12. I do not attempt, delightful as the task would be, to trace this
influence (mixed with superstition) in Scandinavia, or North Germany;
but let us at least note it in the instance which we speak of so
frequently, yet so seldom take to heart. There has been much dispute
respecting the character of the Swiss, arising out of the difficulty
which other nations had to understand their simplicity. They were
assumed to be either romantically virtuous, or basely mercenary, when in
fact they were neither heroic nor base, but were true-hearted men,
stubborn with more than any recorded stubbornness; not much regarding
their lives, yet not casting them causelessly away; forming no high
ideal of improvement, but never relaxing their grasp of a good they had
once gained; devoid of all romantic sentiment, yet loving with a
practical and patient love that neither wearied nor forsook; little
given to enthusiasm in religion, but maintaining their faith in a purity
which no worldliness deadened and no hypocrisy soiled; neither
chivalrously generous nor pathetically humane, yet never pursuing their
defeated enemies, nor suffering their poor to perish: proud, yet not
allowing their pride to prick them into unwary or unworthy quarrel;
avaricious, yet contentedly rendering to their neighbor his due; dull,
but clear-sighted to all the principles of justice; and patient, without
ever allowing delay to be prolonged by sloth, or forbearance by fear.
§ 13. This temper of Swiss mind, while it animated the whole
confederacy, was rooted chiefly in one small district which formed the
heart of their country, yet lay not among its highest mountains. Beneath
the glaciers of Zermatt and Evolena, and on the scorching slopes of the
Valais, the peasants remained in an aimless torpor, unheard of but as
the obedient vassals of the great Bishopric of Sion. But where the lower
ledges of calcareous rock were broken by the inlets of the Lake Lucerne,
and bracing winds penetrating from the north forbade the growth of the
vine, compelling the peasantry to adopt an entirely pastoral life, was
reared another race of men. Their narrow domain should be marked by a
small green spot on every map of Europe. It is about forty miles from
east to west; as many from north to south: yet on that shred of rugged
ground, while every kingdom of the world around it rose or fell in fatal
change, and every multitudinous race mingled or wasted itself in various
dispersion and decline, the simple shepherd dynasty remained changeless.
There is no record of their origin. They are neither Goths, Burgundians,
Romans, nor Germans. They have been for ever Helvetii, and for ever
free. Voluntarily placing themselves under the protection of the House
of Hapsburg, they acknowledged its supremacy, but resisted its
oppression; and rose against the unjust governors it appointed over
them, not to gain, but to redeem, their liberties. Victorious in the
struggle by the Lake of Egeri, they stood the foremost standard-bearers
among the nations of Europe in the cause of loyalty and life--loyalty in
its highest sense, to the laws of God's helpful justice, and of man's
faithful and brotherly fortitude.
§ 14. You will find among them, as I said, no subtle wit nor high
enthusiasm, only an undeceivable common sense, and an obstinate
rectitude. They cannot be persuaded into their duties, but they feel
them; they use no phrases of friendship, but do not fail you at your
need. Questions of creed, which other nations sought to solve by logic
or reverie, these shepherds brought to practical tests: sustained with
tranquillity the excommunication of abbots who wanted to feed their
cattle on other people's fields, and, halbert in hand, struck down the
Swiss Reformation, because the Evangelicals of Zurich refused to send
them their due supplies of salt. Not readily yielding to the demands of
superstition, they were patient under those of economy; they would
purchase the remission of taxes, but not of sins; and while the sale of
indulgences was arrested in the church of Ensiedlen as boldly as at the
gates of Wittenberg, the inhabitants of the valley of Frütigen[4] ate no
meat for seven years, in order peacefully to free themselves and their
descendants from the seigniorial claims of the Baron of Thurm.
§ 15. What praise may be justly due to this modest and rational virtue,
we have perhaps no sufficient grounds for defining. It must long remain
questionable how far the vices of superior civilization may be atoned
for by its achievements, and the errors of more transcendental devotion
forgiven to its rapture. But, take it for what we may, the character of
this peasantry is, at least, serviceable to others and sufficient for
their own peace; and in its consistency and simplicity, it stands alone
in the history of the human heart. How far it was developed by
circumstances of natural phenomena may also be disputed; nor should I
enter into such dispute with any strongly held conviction. The Swiss
have certainly no feelings respecting their mountains in anywise
correspondent to ours. It was rather as fortresses of defence, than as
spectacles of splendor, that the cliffs of the Rothstock bare rule over
the destinies of those who dwelt at their feet; and the training for
which the mountain children had to thank the slopes of the Muotta-Thal,
was in soundness of breath, and steadiness of limb, far more than in
elevation of idea. But the point which I desire the reader to note is,
that the character of the scene which, if any, appears to have been
impressive to the inhabitant, is not that which we ourselves feel when
we enter the district. It was not from their lakes, nor their cliffs,
nor their glaciers--though these were all peculiarly their possession,
that the three venerable cantons or states received their name. They
were not called the States of the Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but
the States of the _Forest_. And the one of the three which contains the
most touching record of the spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the
name of the convent of the "Hill of Angels," has, for its own, none but
the sweet childish name of "Under the Woods."
§ 16. And indeed you may pass under them if, leaving the most sacred
spot in Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the
boatman row southward a little way by the shore of the Bay of Uri.
Steepest there on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to
heaven. Far, in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral pavement,
lies the lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of
innumerable falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff, like
the voices of a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time
the beat of a wave, slow lifted, where the rocks lean over the black
depth, dies heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with
steep grass, and set with chalet villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one
solemn glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds
of twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the
shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.[5]
I have seen that it is possible for the stranger to pass through this
great chapel, with its font of waters, and mountain pillars, and vaults
of cloud, without being touched by one noble thought, or stirred by any
sacred passion; but for those who received from its waves the baptism of
their youth, and learned beneath its rocks the fidelity of their
manhood, and watched amidst its clouds the likeness of the dream of
life, with the eyes of age--for these I will not believe that the
mountain shrine was built, or the calm of its forest-shadows guarded by
their God, in vain.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Croesus, therefore, having heard these things, sent word to the
people of Lampsacus that they should let Miltiades go; and, if not,
he would cut them down like a pine-tree."--_Herod._ vi. 37.
[2] Keats (as is his way) puts nearly all that may be said of the
pine into one verse, though they are only figurative pines of which
he is speaking. I have come to that pass of admiration for him now,
that I dare not read him, so discontented he makes me with my own
work: but others must not leave unread, in considering the influence
of trees upon the human soul, that marvellous ode to Psyche. Here is
the piece about pines:--
"Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchéd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees
_Fledge the wild-ridged mountains_, steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the Gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who, breeding flowers, will never breed the same.
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win;
A bright torch, and a casement ope, at night,
To let the warm Love in."
[3] There has been much cottage-building about the hills lately, with
very pretty carving, the skill in which has been encouraged by
travellers; and the fresh-cut larch is splendid in color under rosy
sunlight.
[4] This valley is on the pass of the Gemmi in Canton Berne, but the
people are the same in temper as those of the Waldstetten.
[5] The cliff immediately bordering the lake is in Canton Uri: the
green hills of Unterwalden rise above. This is the grandest piece of
the shore of Lake Lucerne; the rocks near Tell's Chapel are neither
so lofty nor so precipitous.
CHAPTER X.
LEAVES MOTIONLESS.
§ 1. It will be remembered that our final inquiry was to be into the
sources of beauty in the tented plants, or flowers of the field; which
the reader may perhaps suppose one of no great difficulty, the beauty of
flowers being somewhat generally admitted and comprehended.
Admitted? yes. Comprehended? no; and, which is worse, in all its highest
characters, for many a day yet, incomprehensible: though with a little
steady application, I suppose we might soon know more than we do now
about the colors of flowers,--being tangible enough, and staying longer
than those of clouds. We have discovered something definite about colors
of opal and of peacock's plume; perhaps, also, in due time we may give
some account of that true gold (the only gold of intrinsic value) which
gilds buttercups; and understand how the spots are laid, in painting a
pansy.
Art is of interest, when we may win any of its secrets; but to such
knowledge the road lies not up brick streets. And howsoever that
flower-painting may be done, one thing is certain, it is not by
machinery.
§ 2. Perhaps, it may be thought, if we understood flowers better, we
might love them less.
We do not love them much, as it is. Few people care about flowers. Many,
indeed, are fond of finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a
child cares about a kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of
flowers in the greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many
are scientifically interested in them, though even these in the
nomenclature rather than the flowers. And a few enjoy their gardens; but
I have never heard of a piece of land, which would let well on a
building lease, remaining unlet because it was a flowery piece. I have
never heard of parks being kept for wild hyacinths, though often of
their being kept for wild beasts. And the blossoming time of the year
being principally spring, I perceive it to be the mind of most people,
during that period, to stay in towns.
§ 3. A year or two ago, a keen-sighted and eccentrically-minded friend
of mine, having taken it into his head to violate this national custom,
and go to the Tyrol in spring, was passing through a valley near
Landech, with several similarly headstrong companions. A strange
mountain appeared in the distance, belted about its breast with a zone
of blue, like our English Queen. Was it a blue cloud? A blue horizontal
bar of the air that Titian breathed in youth, seen now far away, which
mortal might never breathe again? Was it a mirage--a meteor? Would it
stay to be approached? (ten miles of winding road yet between them and
the foot of its mountain.) Such questioning had they concerning it. My
keen-sighted friend alone maintained it to be substantial: whatever it
might be, it was not air, and would not vanish. The ten miles of road
were overpassed, the carriage left, the mountain climbed. It stayed
patiently, expanding still into richer breadth and heavenlier glow--a
belt of gentians. Such things may verily be seen among the Alps in
spring, and in spring only. Which being so, I observe most people prefer
going in autumn.
§ 4. Nevertheless, without any special affection for them, most of us,
at least, languidly consent to the beauty of flowers, and occasionally
gather them, and prefer them from among other forms of vegetation. This,
strange to say, is precisely what great painters do _not_.
Every other kind of object they paint, in its due place and office, with
respect;--but, except compulsorily and imperfectly, never flowers. A
curious fact, this! Here are men whose lives are spent in the study of
color, and the one thing they will not paint is a flower! Anything but
that. A furred mantle, a jewelled zone, a silken gown, a brazen corslet,
nay, an old leathern chair, or a wall-paper if you will, with utmost
care and delight;--but a flower by no manner of means, if avoidable.
When the thing has perforce to be done, the great painters of course do
it rightly. Titian, in his early work, sometimes carries a blossom or
two out with affection, as the columbines in our Bacchus and Ariadne.
So also Holbein. But in his later and mightier work, Titian will only
paint a fan or a wristband intensely, never a flower. In his portrait of
Lavinia, at Berlin, the roses are just touched finely enough to fill
their place, with no affection whatever, and with the most subdued red
possible; while in the later portrait of her, at Dresden, there are no
roses at all, but a belt of chased golden balls, on every stud of which
Titian has concentrated his strength, and I verily believe forgot the
face a little, so much has his mind been set on them.
§ 5. In Paul Veronese's Europa, at Dresden, the entire foreground is
covered with flowers, but they are executed with sharp and crude touches
like those of a decorative painter. In Correggio's paintings, at
Dresden, and in the Antiope of the Louvre, there are lovely pieces of
foliage, but no flowers. A large garland of oranges and lemons, with
their leaves, above the St. George, at Dresden, is connected
traditionally with the garlanded backgrounds of Ghirlandajo and
Mantegna, but the studious absence of flowers renders it almost
disagreeably ponderous. I do not remember any painted by Velasquez, or
by Tintoret, except compulsory Annunciation lilies. The flowers of
Rubens are gross and rude; those of Vandyck vague, slight, and subdued
in color, so as not to contend with the flesh. In his portraits of King
Charles's children, at Turin, an enchanting picture, there is a
rose-thicket, in which the roses seem to be enchanted the wrong way, for
their leaves are all gray, and the flowers dull brick-red. Yet it is
right.
§ 6. One reason for this is that all great men like their inferior forms
to follow and obey contours of large surfaces, or group themselves in
connected masses. Patterns do the first, leaves the last; but flowers
stand separately.
Another reason is that the beauty of flower-petals and texture can only
be seen by looking at it close; but flat patterns can be seen far off,
as well as gleaming of metal-work. All the great men calculate their
work for effect at some distance, and with that object, know it to be
lost time to complete the drawing of flowers. Farther, the forms of
flowers being determined, require a painful attention, and restrain the
fancy; whereas, in painting fur, jewels, or bronze, the color and touch
may be varied almost at pleasure, and without effort.
Again, much of what is best in flowers is inimitable in painting; and a
thoroughly good workman feels the feebleness of his means when he
matches them fairly with Nature, and gives up the attempt
frankly--painting the rose dull red, rather than trying to rival its
flush in sunshine.
And, lastly, in nearly all good landscape-painting, the breadth of
foreground included implies such a distance of the spectator from the
nearest object as must entirely prevent his seeing flower detail.
§ 7. There is, however, a deeper reason than all these; namely, that
flowers have no sublimity. We shall have to examine the nature of
sublimity in our following and last section, among other ideas of
relation. Here I only note the fact briefly, that impressions of awe and
sorrow being at the root of the sensation of sublimity, and the beauty
of separate flowers not being of the kind which connects itself with
such sensation, there is a wide distinction, in general, between
flower-loving minds and minds of the highest order. Flowers seem
intended for the solace of ordinary humanity: children love them; quiet,
tender, contented ordinary people love them as they grow; luxurious and
disorderly people rejoice in them gathered: They are the cottager's
treasure; and in the crowded town, mark, as with a little broken
fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers in whose heart rests the
covenant of peace. Passionate or religious minds contemplate them with
fond, feverish intensity; the affection is seen severely calm in the
works of many old religious painters, and mixed with more open and true
country sentiment in those of our own pre-Raphaelites. To the child and
the girl, the peasant and the manufacturing operative, to the grisette
and the nun, the lover and monk, they are precious always. But to the
men of supreme power and thoughtfulness, precious only at times;
symbolically and pathetically often to the poets, but rarely for their
own sake. They fall forgotten from the great workmen's and soldiers'
hands. Such men will take, in thankfulness, crowns of leaves, or crowns
of thorns--not crowns of flowers.
§ 8. Some beautiful things have been done lately, and more beautiful are
likely to be done, by our younger painters, in representing blossoms of
the orchard and the field in mass and extent. I have had something to do
with the encouragement of this impulse; and truly, if pictures are to
be essentially imitative rather than inventive, it is better to spend
care in painting hyacinths than dead leaves, and roses rather than
stubble. Such work, however, as I stated in my first essay on this
subject, in the year 1851,[1] can only connect itself with the great
schools by becoming inventive instead of copyist; and for the most part,
I believe these young painters would do well to remember that the best
beauty of flowers being wholly inimitable, and their sweetest service
unrenderable by art, the picture involves some approach to an
unsatisfying mockery, in the cold imagery of what Nature has given to be
breathed with the profuse winds of spring, and touched by the happy
footsteps of youth.
§ 9. Among the greater masters, as I have said, there is little
laborious or affectionate flower-painting. The utmost that Turner ever
allows in his foregrounds is a water-lily or two, a cluster of heath or
foxglove, a thistle sometimes, a violet or daisy, or a bindweed-bell;
just enough to lead the eye into the understanding of the rich mystery
of his more distant leafage. Rich mystery, indeed, respecting which
these following facts about the foliage of tented plants must be noted
carefully.
§ 10. Two characters seem especially aimed at by Nature in the
earth-plants: first, that they should be characteristic and interesting;
secondly, that they should not be very visibly injured by crushing.
I say, first, characteristic. The leaves of large trees take
approximately simple forms, slightly monotonous. They are intended to be
seen in mass. But the leaves of the herbage at our feet take all kinds
of strange shapes, as if to invite us to examine them. Star-shaped,
heart-shaped, spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, cleft,
furrowed, serrated, sinuated; in whorls, in tufts, in spires, in wreaths
endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from
footstalk to blossom; they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness,
and take delight in outstripping our wonder.
§ 11. Secondly, observe, their forms are such as will not be visibly
injured by crushing. Their complexity is already disordered: jags and
rents are their laws of being; rent by the footstep they betray no
harm. Here, for instance (Fig. 72), is the mere outline of a
buttercup-leaf in full free growth; which, perhaps, may be taken as a
good common type of earth foliage. Fig. 73 is a less advanced one,
placed so as to show its symmetrical bounding form. But both, how
various;--how delicately rent into beauty! As in the aiguilles of the
great Alps, so in this lowest field-herb, where rending is the law of
being, it is the law of loveliness.
[Illustration: FIG. 72.]
§ 12. One class, however, of these torn leaves, peculiar to the tented
plants, has, it seems to me, a strange expressional function. I mean the
group of leaves rent into _alternate_ gaps, typically represented by the
thistle. The alternation of the rent, if not absolutely, is
effectively, peculiar to the earth-plants. Leaves of the builders are
rent symmetrically, so as to form radiating groups, as in the
horse-chestnut, or they are irregularly sinuous, as in the oak; but the
earth-plants continually present forms such as those in the opposite
Plate: a kind of web-footed leaf, so to speak; a continuous tissue,
enlarged alternately on each side of the stalk. Leaves of this form have
necessarily a kind of limping gait, as if they grew not all at once, but
first a little bit on one side, and then a little bit on the other, and
wherever they occur in quantity, give the expression to foreground
vegetation which we feel and call "ragged."
[Illustration: FIG. 73.]
[Illustration: 60. The Rending of Leaves.]
§ 13. It is strange that the mere alternation of the rent should give
this effect; the more so, because alternate leaves, completely separate
from each other, produce one of the most graceful types of building
plants. Yet the fact is indeed so, that the alternate rent in the
earth-leaf is the principal cause of its ragged effect. However deeply
it may be rent symmetrically, as in the alchemilla, or buttercup, just
instanced, and however finely divided, as in the parsleys, the result is
always a delicate richness, unless the jags are alternate, and the
leaf-tissue continuous at the stem; and the moment these conditions
appear, so does the raggedness.
§ 14. It is yet more worthy of note that the proper duty of these
leaves, which catch the eye so clearly and powerfully, would appear to
be to draw the attention of man to spots where his work is needed, for
they nearly all habitually grow on ruins or neglected ground: not noble
ruins, or on _wild_ ground, but on heaps of rubbish, or pieces of land
which have been indolently cultivated or much disturbed. The leaf on the
right of the three in the Plate, which is the most characteristic of the
class, is that of the Sisymbrium Irio, which grows, by choice, always on
ruins left by fire. The plant, which, as far as I have observed, grows
first on earth that has been moved, is the colts-foot: its broad
covering leaf is much jagged, but only irregular, not alternate in the
rent; but the weeds that mark habitual neglect, such as the thistle,
give clear alternation.
§ 15. The aspects of complexity and carelessness of injury are farther
increased in the herb of the field, because it is "herb yielding seed;"
that is to say, a seed different in character from that which trees form
in their fruit.
I am somewhat alarmed in reading over the above sentence, lest a
botanist, or other scientific person, should open the book at it. For of
course the essential character of either fruit or seed being only that
in the smallest compass the vital principle of the plant is rendered
portable, and for some time, preservable, we ought to call every such
vegetable dormitory a "fruit" or a "seed" indifferently. But with
respect to man there is a notable difference between them.
A seed is what we "sow."
A fruit, what we "enjoy."
Fruit is seed prepared especially for the sight and taste of man and
animals; and in this sense we have true fruit and traitorous fruit
(poisonous); but it is perhaps the best available distinction,[2] that
seed being the part necessary for the renewed birth of the plant, a
fruit is such seed enclosed or sustained by some extraneous substance,
which is soft and juicy, and beautifully colored, pleasing and useful to
animals and men.
§ 16. I find it convenient in this volume, and wish I had thought of the
expedient before, whenever I get into a difficulty, to leave the reader
to work it out. He will perhaps, therefore, be so good as to define
fruit for himself. Having defined it, he will find that the sentence
about which I was alarmed above is, in the main, true, and that tented
plants principally are herb yielding seed, while building plants give
fruit. The berried shrubs of rock and wood, however dwarfed in stature,
are true builders. The strawberry-plant is the only important
exception--a tender Bedouin.
§ 17. Of course the principal reason for this is the plain, practical
one, that fruit should not be trampled on, and had better perhaps be put
a little out of easy reach than too near the hand, so that it may not be
gathered wantonly or without some little trouble, and may be waited for
until it is properly ripe: while the plants meant to be trampled on have
small and multitudinous seed, hard and wooden, which may be shaken and
scattered about without harm.
Also, fine fruit is often only to be brought forth with patience; not by
young and hurried trees--but in due time, after much suffering; and the
best fruit is often to be an adornment of old age, so as to supply the
want of other grace. While the plants which will not work, but only
bloom and wander, do not (except the grasses) bring forth fruit of high
service, but only the seed that prolongs their race, the grasses alone
having great honor put on them for their humility, as we saw in our
first account of them.
[Illustration: FIG. 74.]
[Illustration: FIG. 75.]
[Illustration: FIG. 76.]
[Illustration: FIG. 77.]
[Illustration: FIG. 78. _To face page 97._]
§ 18. This being so, we find another element of very complex effect
added to the others which exist in tented plants, namely, that of
minute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown
punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of the
nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness and softness of plumy
mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, not only with
dew in the morning or mirage at noon, but with the shaking threads of
fine arborescence, each a little belfry of grain-bells, all a-chime.
§ 19. I feel sorely tempted to draw one of these same spires of the fine
grasses, with its sweet changing proportions of pendent grain, but it
would be a useless piece of finesse, as such form of course never enters
into general foreground effect.[3] I have, however, engraved, at the top
of the group of woodcuts opposite (Fig. 74), a single leaf cluster of
Durer's foreground in the St. Hu
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