LETTER VII. |fection of aristocracy-this ideal of the age of fine gentlemen, with all the gifts of nature TO A YOUNG MAN OF BRILLIANT ABILITY, WHQ helped by all the inventions of art? HAD JUST TAKEN HIS DEGREE. A domestic picture-Thoughts suggested by it--Importance of the senses in intellectual pursuits-Importance of hearing to Madame de Stael-Importance of seeing to Mr. Ruskin-Mr. Prescott, the historian-How blindness retarded his work--Value of all the five senses Self-government indispensable to their perfection-Great value of longevity to the intellectual life. It is always a great pleasure to me to pass an evening at your father's house; but on the last occasion that pleasure was very much enhanced because you were once more with us. I watched your mother's eyes as she sat in her place in the drawing-room. They followed you almost without ceasing, and there was the sweetest, happiest expression on her dear face, that betrayed her tender maternal love for you and her legitimate maternal pride. Your father was equally happy in his own way; he was much more gay and talkative than I have seen him for two or three anxious years; he told amusing stories; he entered playfully into the jests of others; he had pleasant projects for the future, and spoke of them with facetious exaggeration. I sat quietly in my corner, slyly observing my old friends, and amusing myself by discovering (it did not need much perspicacity for that) the hidden sources of the happiness that was so clearly visible. They were gladdened by the first successes of your manhood; by the evidence of your strength; by the realization of hopes long cherished. Then I thought farther: "That splendid young nobleman in the picture will look just as young as he does now when we shall be either superannuated or dead." And I looked at you and your mother again and thought: "It is just five minutes since I saw these two living beings, and in this little space of time they have both of them aged a little, though no human observer has enough delicacy of perception to detect so inappreciable an alteration." I went gradually on and on into the future, trying to imagine the changes which would come over yourself more especially (for it was you who were the centre of my reverie), till at last I imagined pretty accurately what you might be at sixty; but there it became necessary to stop, because it was too difficult to conceive the processes of decay. After this, one thought grew upon me and became dominant. I thought, at present he has all the senses in their perfection, and they serve him without a hitch. He is an intelli. gence served by organs, and the organs are all doing their duty as faithfully as a postman who brings letters. When the postman becomes too infirm to do his work he will retire on his little pension, and another will take his place and bring the letters just as regularly; but when the human organs become infirm they cannot be taken out and replaced by new ones, so that we must content ourselves, to the end, with their service, such as it may be. Then I reflected how useful the senses are to the high intellectual life, and how wise it is, even for intellectual purposes, to preserve them as long as possible in their perfection. Watching this charming picture with a perfect sympathy, I began to have certain thoughts of my own which it is my present purpose to communicate to you without disguise. I thought, first, how agreeable it was to be the spectator of so pretty a picture; but To be able to see and hear well-to feel then my eyes wandered to a painting that hung upon the walls, in which also there were a mother and her son, and this led me a long way. The painting was a hundred years old; but although the colors were not quite so fresh as when they left the palette of the artist, the beautiful youth who stood radiant like a young Apollo in the centre of the composition had not lost one of the great gifts with which his cunning human creator had endowed him. The fire of his eye had not been quenched by time; the bloom of his cheek still flushed with faint vermilion; his lip was full and imperious; his limbs athletic; his bearing haughty and dauntless. All life seemed spread before him like a beautiful rich estate of which every acre was his own. How easily will he conquer fame! how easily kindle passion. Who shall withstand this pink and per. healthy sensations-even to taste and smell properly, are most important qualifications for the pursuit of literature, and art, and science. If you read attentively the work of any truly illustrious poet, you will find that the whole of the imagery which gives power and splendor to his verse is derived from nature through one or other of these ordinary channels. Some philosophers have gone much farther than this, and have affirmed that the entire intellectual life is based ultimately upon remembered physical sensations; that we have no mental conception that is really independent of sensuous experience; and that the most abstract thought is only removed from sensation by successive processes of substitution, I have not space to enter into so great and mysterious a subject as this; but I desire to draw your attention to a truth very com ness, the degrees of perfection in this sense vary to infinity. Suppose that Mr. Ruskin (to our great misfortune) had been endowed with no better eyes than many persons who see fairly well in the ordinary sense, his enjoyment and use of sight would have been so much diminished that he would have had little enthusiasm about seeing, and yet that kind of enthusiasm was quite essential to his work. monly overlooked by intellectual people, | rate or defective sight of others. His methwhich is the enormous importance of the od of study, by drawing and taking written organs of sense in the highest intellectual memoranda of what he has seen, is entirely pursuits. I will couple together two names different from Madame de Stael's method, but which have owed their celebrity, one chiefly refers always, as hers did, to the testimony to the use of her ears, the other to the use of of the predominant sense. Every one whose his eyes. Madame de Stael obtained her lit-attention has been attracted to the subject is erary material almost exclusively by means aware that, amongst people who are comof conversation. She directed, systematic-monly supposed to see equally well, and who ally, the talk of the learned and brilliant are not suspected of any tendency to blindmen amongst whom she lived to the subject which for the moment happened to occupy her thoughts. Her literary process (which is known to us in detail through the revelations of her friends) was purposely invented to catch everything that she heard, as a net catches fish in a river. First, she threw down on paper a very brief rough draft of the intended literary project. This she showed to few, but from it she made a second "state" (as an engraver would say), which she exhib- The well-known instance of Mr. Prescott, ited to some of her trusted friends, profiting the historian, is no doubt a striking proof by their hints and suggestions. Her secre- what may be accomplished by a man of retary copied the corrected manuscript, incor-markable intellectual ability without the help porating the new matter, on paper with a of sight, or rather helped by the sight of very broad margin for farther additions. During all the time that it took to carry her work through these successive states, that ingenious woman made the best possible use of her ears, which were her natural providers. She made everybody talk who was likely to be of any use to her, and then immediately added what she had caught on the wide margin reserved for that purpose. She used her eyes so little that she might almost as well have been blind. We have it on her own author-use it again for years. "I well remember," ity, that were it not out of respect to custom, she would not open her window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whereas she would travel five hundred leagues to talk with a clever man whom she had never met. others. We have also heard of a blind traveller, and even of a blind entomologist; but in all cases of this kind they are executive difficulties to be overcome, such that only the most resolute natures would ever dream of encountering them. When the materials for the "Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella " arrived in Prescott's house from Europe, his remaining eye had just suffered from overexertion to such a degree that he could not he wrote in a letter to a friend, "the blank despair which I felt when my literary treasures arrived, and I saw the mine of wealth lying around me which I was forbidden to explore." And although, by a most tedious process, which would have worn out the paNow since Madame de Stael's genius fed it-tience of any other author, Mr. Prescott did self exclusively through the faculty of hearing, what an enormous difference it would have made to her if she had been deaf! It is probable that the whole of her literary reputation was dependent on the condition of her ears. Even a very moderate degree of deaf- Although, of the five senses which God has ness (just enough to make listening irk-given us, sight and hearing are the most necsome) might have kept her in perpetual obscurity. The next instance I intend to give is that of a distinguished contemporary, Mr. Ruskin. His peculiar position in literature is due to his being able to see as cultivated artists see. Everything that is best and most original in his writings is invariably either an account of what he has seen in his own independent inimitable way, or else a criticism of the accu at last arrive at the conclusion of his work, it cost him ten years of labor-probably thrice as much time as would have been needed by an author of equal intellectual ability without any infirmity of sight. essary to the intellectual life, it may easily be demonstrated that the lower ones are not without their intellectual uses. Perfect literature and art can only be produced by men who are perfect in all their natural faculties. The great creative intellects have never been ascetics; they have been rightly and healthily sensitive to every kind of pleasure. The taste of fruits and wines, the perfume of flowers are a part of the means by which the spirit of Nature influences our most secret thoughts, and conveys to us suggestions, or carries us into states of feeling which have an enormous effect upon our thinking, though the manner in which the effect is produced is one of the deepest mysteries of our mysterious being. When the Caliph Vathek added five wings to the palace of Alkoremmi, on the hill of Pied Horses, for the particular gratification of each of his five senses, he only did on a uselessly large scale what every properly-endowed human being does, when he can afford it, on a small one. NOTE-One of the most painful cases of interruption caused by death is that of Cuvier. His paralysis came upon him whilst he was still in full activity, and death prevented him from arranging a great accumulation of scientific material. He said to M. Pasquier, "I had great things still to do; all search, there remained but to write, and now the hands fail, was ready in my head. After thirty years of labor and reand carry with them the head." But the most lamentable instances of this kind of interruption are, from the nature of things, unknown to us. Even the friends of the deceased neighbors are generally the very last persons to become aware of the nature of his powers or the value of his acquirements. cannot estimate the extent of the loss, for a man's immediate PART II. THE MORAL BASIS. You will not suspect me of preaching unlimited indulgence. The very object of this letter is to recommend, for intellectual purposes, the careful preservation of the senses in the freshness of their perfection, and this is altogether incompatible with every species of excess. If you are to see clearly all your life, you must not sacrifice eyesight by over- TO A MORALIST WHO HAD SAID THAT THERE LETTER I. WAS A WANT OF MORAL FIBRE IN THE IN- The love of intellectual pleasure-The seeking for a stimulus straining it; and the same law of moderation is the condition of preserving every other faculty. I want you to know the exquisite taste of common dry bread; to enjoy the perfùme of a larch wood at a distance; to feel delight when a sea-wave dashes over you. I want your eye to be so sensitive that it shall discern the faintest tones of a gray cloud, and yet so strong that it shall bear to gaze on a white one in the dazzling glory of sunshine. I would have your hearing sharp enough to detect the music of the spheres, if it were but audible, and yet your nervous system robust You told me the other day that you believed enough to endure the shock of the guns on an the inducement to what I called intellectual ironclad. To have and keep these powers we living to be merely the love of pleasure— need a firmness of self-government that is rare. pleasure of a higher kind, no doubt, than Young men are careless of longevity; but that which, we derive from wine, yet fairly how precious are added years to the fulness comparable to it. You went on to say that of the intellectual life! There are lives, such you could not, from the moral point of view, as that of Major Pendennis, which only dimin- discern any appreciable difference between ish in value as they advance-when the man intoxicating oneself by means of literature or of fashion is no longer fashionable, and the art and getting tipsy on port wine or brandy sportsman can no longer stride over the that the reading of poetry, most especially, ploughed fields. The old age of the Major was clearly self-intoxication-a service of Ve Pendennises is assuredly not to be envied: nus and Bacchus, in which the suggestions of but how rich is the age of the Hunboldts! I artfully-ordered words were used as substi compare the life of the intellectual to a long tutes for the harem and the wine-flask. Comwedge of gold-the thin end of it begins at pleting the expression of this idea, you said birth, and the depth and value of it go on in- that the excitement produced by oratory was definitely increasing till at last comes Death (a exactly of the same nature as the excitement personage for whom Nathaniel Hawthorne produced by gin, so that Mr. Bright and M. had a peculiar dislike, for his unmannerly Gambetta-nay, even a gentleman so respect habit of interruption), who stops the aurifer-able as the late Lord Derby-belonged strictly ous processes. Oh, the mystery of the name to the same profession as the publicans, being less ones who have died when the wedge was dealers in stimulants, and no more. The thin and looked so poor and light! Oh, the habitual student was, in your view, nothing happiness of the fortunate old men whose better than the helpless victim of unresisted thoughts went deeper and deeper like a wall appetite, to whom intellectual intoxication, that runs out into the sea! having been at first a pleasure, had finally become a necessity. You added that any ra- | divine drunkenness was given to them for tional person who found himself sinking into their encouragement, surpassing the gift of such a deplorable condition as this, would the grape. have recourse to some severe discipline as a preservative—a discipline requiring close attention to common things, and rigorously excluding every variety of thought which could possibly be considered intellectual. But now that I have acknowledged, not ungratefully, the necessity of that noble excitement which is the life of life, it is time for me to add that, in the daily labor of all intellectual workers, much has to be done which requires a robustness of the moral constitution beyond what you appear to be aware of. It is not long since the present Bishop of Exeter truly affirmed, in an address to a body of students, that if there were not weariness in work, that work was not so thorough-going as it ought It is strictly true that the three intellectual pursuits-literature, science, and the fine arts -are all of them strong stimulants, and that men are attracted to them by the stimulus they give. But these occupations are morally much nearer to the common level of other occupations than you suppose. There is no to be. "Of all work," the Bishop said, “that doubt a certain intoxication in poetry and produces results, nine-tenths must be drudgpainting; but I have seen a tradesman find a ery. There is no work, from the highest to fully equivalent intoxication in an addition the lowest, which can be done well by any of figures showing a delightful balance at his man who is unwilling to make that sacrifice. banker's. I have seen a young poet intoxicat- Part of the very nobility of the devotion of ed with the love of poetry; but I have also the true workman to his work consists in the seen a young mechanical genius on whom the fact that a man is not daunted by finding sight of a locomotive acted exactly like a bot- that drudgery must be done; and no man tle of champagne. Everything that is capa- can really succeed in any walk of life withble of exciting or moving man, everything out a good deal of what in ordinary English that fires him with enthusiasm, everything is called pluck. That is the condition of all that sustains his energies above the dead work whatever, and it is the condition of all level of merely animal existence, may be success. There is nothing which so truly recompared, and not very untruly, to the action pays itself as perseverance against weariness." of generous wine. The two most powerful You understand, no doubt, that there is mental stimulants-since they overcome even drudgery in the work of a lawyer or an acthe fear of death-are unquestionably re- countant, but you imagine that there is no ligion and patriotism: ardent states of feeling drudgery in that of an artist, or author, or both of them when they are genuine; yet this man of science. In these cases you fancy ardor has a great utility. It enables men to that there is nothing but a pleasant intoxicabear much, to perform much which would be tion, like the puffing of tobacco or the sipping beyond their natural force if it were not sus- of claret after dinner. The Bishop sees more tained by powerful mental stimulants. And accurately. He knows that "of all work so it is in the intellectual life. It is because that produces results nine-tenths must be its labors are so severe that its pleasures are drudgery." He makes no exceptions in favor so glorious. The Creator of intellectual man of the arts and sciences; if he had made any set him the most arduous tasks-tasks that re- such exceptions, they would have proved the quired the utmost possible patience, courage, absence of culture in himself. Real work of self-discipline, and which at the same time all descriptions, even including the composiwere for the most part, from their very na- tion of poetry (the most intoxicating of all ture, likely to receive only the most meagre human pursuits), contains drudgery in so and precarious pecuniary reward. There large a proportion that considerable moral fore, in order that so poor and weak a creat-courage is necessary to carry it to a successure might execute its gigantic works with ful issue. Some of the most popular writers the energy necessary to their permanence, of verse have dreaded the labor of composithe labor itself was made intensely attractive tion. Wordsworth shrank from it much and interesting to the few who were fitted for more sensitively than he did from his prosaic it by their constitution. Since their courage labors as a distributor of stamps. He had could not be maintained by any of the com- that horreur de la plume which is a frequent mon motives which carry men through or- malady amongst literary men. But we feel, in dinary drudgery-since neither wealth nor reading Wordsworth, that composition was a worldly position was in their prospects, the serious toil to him--the drudgery is often drudgery they had to go through was to be visible. Let me take, then, the case of a rewarded by the triumphs of scientific discovwriter of verse distinguished especially for ery, by the felicities of artistic expression.. A fluency and ease the lightest, gayest, appar ently most thoughtless of modern minstrels-upon people's minds that the French and the author of The Irish Melodies" and Belgian schools of painting had a certain su"Lalla Rookh." Moore said-I quote from periority over the rest-a superiority of quite memory and may not give the precise words, a peculiar sort; and when the critics applied but they were to this effect-that although themselves to discover the hidden causes of the first shadowy imagining of a new poem this generally perceived superiority, they was a delicious fool's paradise, the labor of found out that it was due in great measure to actual composition was something altogether the patient drudgery submitted to by those different. He did not, I believe, exactly use foreign artists in their youth. English paintthe word "drudgery," but his expression im-ers who have attained distinction have gone plied that there was painful drudgery in the through a like drudgery, if not in the public work. When he began to write "Lalla atelier at least in secrecy and solitude. Mr. Rookh" the task was anything but easy to John Lewis, in reply to an application for a him. He said that he was 66 at all times a far drawing to be reproduced by the autotype more slow and painstaking workman than process, and published in the Portfolio, said would ever be guessed from the result." For that his sketches and studies were all in a long time after the conclusion of the agree- color, but if we liked to examine them we ment with Messrs. Longman, "though gener- were welcome to select anything that might ally at work with a view to this task, he made be successfully photographed. Not being in but very little real progress in it." After London at the time, I charged an experienced many unsatisfactory attempts, finding that friend to go and see if there were anything his subjects were so slow in kindling his own that would answer our purpose. Soon aftersympathies, he began to despair of their ever ward he wrote: "I have just been to see John touching the hearts of others. "Had this se- Lewis, and have come away astounded." He ries of disheartening experiments been carried had seen the vast foundations of private inon much further, I must have thrown aside dustry on which the artist's public work had the work in despair.' He took the greatest been erected,-innumerable studies in color, pains in long and laboriously preparing him- wrought with the most perfect care and finself by reading. To form a storehouse, as ish, and all for self-education merely, not for it were, of illustrations purely Oriental, and any direct reward in fame. We have all adso familiarize myself with its various treas-mired the extraordinary power of representaures that, quick as Fancy required the aid of tion in the little pictures of Meissonier; that fact in her spiritings, the memory was ready power was acquired by painting studies lifeto furnish materials for the spell-work; such size for self-instruction, and the artist has was, for a long while, the sole object of my sustained his knowledge by persistence in that studies." After quoting some opinions favor-practice. Mulready, between the conception able to the truth of his Oriental coloring, he of a new picture and the execution of it, used says: "Whatever of vanity there may be in citing such tributes, they show, at least, of what great value, even in poetry, is that prosaic quality, industry, since it was in a slow and laborious collection of small facts that the first foundations of this fanciful romance were laid." to give himself a special training for the intended work by painting a study in color of every separate thing that was to form part of the composition. It is useless to go on multiplying these examples, since all grea: artists, without exception, have been distin guished for their firm faith in steady well-di rected labor. This faith was so strong in Reynolds that it limited his reasoning powers, and prevented him from assigning their due im Other fine arts make equally large claims upon the industry of their professors. We see the charming result, which looks as if it were nothing but pleasure the mere sensu-portance to the inborn natural gifts. ous gratification of an appetite for melody or Not only in their preparations for work, color; but no one ever eminently succeeded but even in the work itself, do artists underin music or painting without patient submission to a discipline far from attractive or entertaining. An idea was very prevalent amongst the upper classes in England, be tween twenty and thirty years ago, that art was not a serious pursuit, and that Frenchmen were too frivolous to apply themselves seriously to anything. When, however, the different schools of art in Europe came to be exhibited together, the truth began to dawn go drudgery. It is the peculiarity of their work that, more than any other human work, it displays whatever there may be in it of pleasure and felicity, putting the drudgery as much out of sight as possible; but all who know the secrets of the studio are aware of the ceaseless struggles against technical difficulty which are the price of the charms that pleasantly deceive us. The amateur tries to paint in water-color, and finds that the gra |