No More Learning

A few inventories of furni-
ture that still remain exhibit a miserable deficiency.
was incomparably greater in private gentlemen's houses than
among citizens, and especially foreign merchants. We have an
inventory of the goods belonging to Contarini, a rich Venetian
trader, at his house in St. Botolph's Lane, A. D. 1481. There
appear to have been no less than ten beds, and glass windows
are especially noticed as movable furniture. No mention, how-
ever, is made of chairs or looking-glasses. If we compare this
account, however trifling in our estimation, with a similar inven-
tory of furniture in Skipton Castle, the great honor of the earls
of Cumberland, and among the most splendid mansions of the
North, not at the same period - for I have not found any inven-
tory of a nobleman's furniture so ancient - but in 1572, after
almost a century of continual improvement, we shall be astonished
――


## p. 6857 (#237) ###########################################

HENRY HALLAM
6857
at the inferior provision of the baronial residence. There were
not more than seven or eight beds in this great castle; nor had
any of the chambers either chairs, glasses, or carpets. It is in
this sense probably that we must understand Eneas Sylvius,-
if he meant anything more than to express a traveler's discon-
tent, when he declares that the kings of Scotland would rejoice
to be as well lodged as the second class of citizens at Nuremberg.
—
THE MIDDLE AGES AS A PERIOD OF INTELLECTUAL
DARKNESS
From View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages
I'
F WE would listen to some literary historians, we should believe
that the darkest ages contained many individuals not only
distinguished among their contemporaries, but positively emi-
nent for abilities and knowledge. A proneness to extol every
monk of whose production a few letters or a devotional treatise
survives, every bishop of whom it is related that he composed
homilies, runs through the laborious work of The Benedictines
of St. Maur,' 'The Literary History of France,' and in a less
degree is observable even in Tiraboschi and in most books of
this class. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, and a number of
inferior names, become real giants of learning in their uncritical
panegyrics. But one might justly say that ignorance is the
smallest def of the writers of these dark ages. Several of
them were tolerably acquainted with books; but that wherein they
are uniformly deficient is original argument or expression. Almost
every one is a compiler of scraps from the Fathers, or from such
semi-classical authors as Boëtius, Cassiodorus, or Martianus Capella.
Indeed, I am not aware that there appeared more than two
really considerable men in the republic of letters from the sixth.
to the middle of the eleventh century-John, surnamed Scotus
or Erigena, a native of Ireland; and Gerbert, who became pope
by the name of Sylvester II. : the first endowed with a bold and
acute metaphysical genius; the second excellent, for the time.
when he lived, in mathematical science and mechanical inventions.
If it be demanded by what cause it happened that a few
sparks of ancient learning survived throughout this long win-
ter, we can only ascribe their preservation to the establishment
of Christianity. Religion alone made a bridge, as it were, across


## p. 6858 (#238) ###########################################

6858
HENRY HALLAM
the chaos, and has linked the two periods of ancient and mod-
ern civilization. Without this connecting principle, Europe might
indeed have awakened to intellectual pursuits; and the genius of
recent times needed not to be invigorated by the imitation of
antiquity. But the memory of Greece and Rome would have
been feebly preserved by tradition, and the monuments of those
nations might have excited, on the return of civilization, that
vague sentiment of speculation and wonder with which men now
contemplate Persepolis or the Pyramids. It is not, however, from
religion simply that we have derived this advantage, but from
religion as it was modified in the Dark Ages. Such is the com-
plex reciprocation of good and evil in the dispensations of Provi-
dence that we may assert, with only an apparent paradox, that
had religion been more pure it would have been less permanent;
and that Christianity has been preserved by means of its cor-
ruptions. The sole hope for literature depended on the Latin
language; and I do not see why that should not have been lost,
if three circumstances in the prevailing religious system, all of
which we are justly accustomed to disapprove, had not conspired
to maintain it, the papal supremacy, the monastic institutions,
and the use of a Latin liturgy. 1. A continual intercourse was
kept up, in consequence of the first, between Rome and the
several nations of Europe; her laws were received by the bishops,
her legates presided in councils: so that a common language was
as necessary in the Church as it is at present in the diplomatic
relations of kingdoms. 2. Throughout the whole course of the
Middle Ages there was no learning, and very little regularity of
manners, among the parochial clergy. Almost every distinguished
man was either the member of a chapter or a convent. The
monasteries were subjected to strict rules of discipline, and held
out more opportunities for study than the secular clergy possessed,
and fewer for worldly dissipations. But their most important
service was as secure repositories for books. All our manu-
scripts have been preserved in this manner, and could hardly have
descended to us by any other channel; at least, there were inter-
vals when I do not conceive that any royal or private libraries
existed.
In the shadows of this universal ignorance a thousand super-
stitions, like foul animals of night, were propagated and nour-
ished. It would be very unsatisfactory to exhibit a few specimens
of this odious brood, when the real character of those times is
.
-


## p. 6859 (#239) ###########################################

HENRY HALLAM
6859
only to be judged by their accumulated multitude. There are
many books, from which a sufficient number of instances may
be collected to show the absurdity and ignorance of the Middle
Ages in this respect. I shall only mention two, as affording
more general evidence than any local or obscure superstition.
In the tenth century an opinion prevailed everywhere that the
end of the world was approaching. Many charters begin with
these words: "As the world is now drawing to its close. " An
army marching under the Emperor Otho I. was so terrified by
an eclipse of the sun, which it conceived to announce this con-
summation, as to disperse hastily on all sides. As this notion.
seems to have been founded on some confused theory of the
millennium, it naturally died away when the seasons proceeded
in the eleventh century with their usual regularity. A far more
remarkable and permanent superstition was the appeal to Heaven
in judicial controversies, whether through the means of combat
or of ordeal. The principle of these was the same; but in the
former it was mingled with feelings independent of religion, -
the natural dictates of resentment in a brave man unjustly
accused, and the sympathy of a warlike people with the display
of skill and intrepidity. These, in course of time, almost oblit-
erated the primary character of judicial combat, and ultimately
changed it into the modern duel, in which assuredly there is no
mixture of superstition. But in the various tests of innocence
which were called ordeals, this stood undisguised and unqualified.
It is not necessary to describe what is so well known - the cere-
monies of trial by handling hot iron, by plunging the arm into
boiling fluids, by floating or sinking in cold water, or by swallow-
ing a piece of consecrated bread. It is observable that as the
interference of Heaven was relied upon as a matter of course, it
seems to have been reckoned nearly indifferent whether such a
test were adopted as must, humanly considered, absolve all the
guilty, or one that must convict all the innocent. The ordeals of
hot iron or water were however more commonly used; and it
has been a perplexing question by what dexterity these tremen-
dous proofs were eluded. They seem at least to have placed the
decision of all judicial controversies in the hands of the clergy,
who must have known the secret, whatever that might be, of sat-
isfying the spectators that an accused person had held a mass of
burning iron with impunity. For several centuries this mode of
investigation was in great repute, though not without opposition.


## p. 6860 (#240) ###########################################

6860
HENRY HALLAM
from some eminent bishops.
It does discredit to the memory of
Charlemagne that he was one of its warmest advocates. But the
judicial combat, which indeed might be reckoned one species of
ordeal, gradually put an end to the rest; and as the Church
acquired better notions of law and a code of her own, she strenu-
ously exerted herself against all these barbarous superstitions.
At the same time it must be admitted that the evils of super-
stition in the Middle Ages, though separately considered very
serious, are not to be weighed against the benefits of the religion
with which they were so mingled. In the original principles of
monastic orders, and the rules by which they ought at least to
have been governed, there was a character of meekness, self-
denial, and charity that could not wholly be effaced. These vir-
tues, rather than justice and veracity, were inculcated by the
religious ethics of the Middle Ages; and in the relief of indi-
gence, it may upon the whole be asserted that the monks did
not fall short of their profession. This eleemosynary spirit,
indeed, remarkably distinguishes both Christianity and Moham-
medanism from the moral systems of Greece and Rome, which
were very deficient in general humanity and sympathy with suf-
fering. Nor do we find in any single instance during ancient
times, if I mistake not, those public institutions for the alleviation
of human miseries which have long been scattered over every
part of Europe. The virtues of the monks assumed a still higher
character when they stood forward as protectors of the oppressed.
By an established law, founded on very ancient superstition, the
precincts of a church afforded sanctuary to accused persons.
Under a due administration of justice this privilege would have
been simply and constantly mischievous, as we properly consider
it to be in those countries where it still subsists. But in the
rapine and tumult of the Middle Ages, the right of sanctuary
might as often be a shield to innocence as an immunity to crime.
We can hardly regret, in reflecting on the desolating violence
which prevailed, that there should have been some green spots
in the wilderness where the feeble and the persecuted could find
refuge. How must this right have enhanced the veneration for
religious institutions! How gladly must the victims of internal
warfare have turned their eyes from the baronial castle, the dread
and scourge of the neighborhood, to those venerable walls within.
which not even the clamor of arms could be heard to disturb the
chant of holy men and the sacred service of the altar!


## p. 6861 (#241) ###########################################

6861
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
(1790-1867)
ITZ-GREENE HALLECK did his share, as an American poet, in
giving dignity to the native literature during the first half
of the nineteenth century. Like his friend and fellow-
worker Drake, he wrote polished and pleasing verse at a time when
such work was rare and not fostered by the social conditions.
A New-Englander of good Puritan stock, he was born July 8th,
1790, in the old Connecticut coast town of Guilford. He had such
schooling as the place afforded, but at fifteen became a clerk in
his uncle's store, where he remained until
his majority. His bookish ancestry, or the
writing ichor of a man predestined to
letters, led him while yet a school-lad to
scribble verses, practicing a 'prentice hand.
When twenty-one he went to New York,
entering a counting-room and only leaving
it, after twenty years of service, for a sim-
ilar position with John Jacob Astor, held
for sixteen years,- a long life of mercantile
employment. But Halleck's interests lay
in another direction. All his spare money
went for books, and soon after arriving in
the great city he formed the friendship with
Drake which lasted until the latter's death
in 1820, and inspired what is perhaps Halleck's best short lyric.
Halleck and Drake were collaborators in the clever satiric (Croaker'
papers, which, appearing during 1819 in the New York Evening Post,
caught the public fancy, as Irving and Paulding caught it with the
'Salmagundi' papers. The same year Halleck's long satirical poem
'Fanny' was published, and met with success. A European trip at
the age of thirty-two broadened his culture; and in the Poems'
issued in 1827 several pieces show this influence, including the famil-
iar martial lay of Marco Bozzaris. '
In 1849, Mr. Astor having granted him a small annuity, the poet
returned to his native Guilford to live with his sister in one of the
town's old-time houses, and to lead a life of quiet, studious retire-
ment. Between brother and sister, neither of whom had married, a
tender and beautiful friendship existed. Not much literary work was

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK


## p. 6862 (#242) ###########################################

6862
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
done by Halleck during the last twenty years, though his poem 'Con-
necticut' belongs to this period, and reflects his love for his own
State. He died at Guilford, November 19th, 1867, aged seventy-seven.
Full honor has been awarded him since. On the eightieth anniver-
sary of his birth a fine obelisk, erected through the efforts of leading
men of letters, was dedicated with imposing ceremony at Guilford,
and was the first monument to an American poet, as the statue to
Halleck in Central Park, New York, set up in 1877, is the first memo-
rial of its kind. An address by Bayard Taylor and a poem by Dr.
Holmes on this occasion indicated the quality of the respect felt for
the poet. His 'Poetical Writings' have been edited by James Grant
Wilson (1869), who at the same time prepared his biography.
Fitz-Greene Halleck will always have a place in the American
anthology. His verse to-day strikes the ear as somewhat academic
and confined; the body of his work is slender, nor was his range
wide. But as a forerunner of greater singers, and within his limita-
tions, he produced poetry that is felicitous in diction, skillful in the
handling of metres, and possessed of feeling in the lyric vein and of
fire in the heroic. Two or three of his compositions certainly have
vitality enough for a prolonged existence. He cannot be overlooked
in tracing the development of letters in the United States.
Α
MARCO BOZZARIS
T MIDNIGHT, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power.
In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring,
Then pressed that monarch's throne - a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.
At midnight, in the forest shades,
Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band-
True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.
There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood
On old Platæa's day;


## p. 6863 (#243) ###########################################

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
6863
And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arms to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far, as they.
-
An hour passed on- - the Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last:
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,
"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek! "
He woke to die 'midst flame and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain cloud;
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:-
"Strike - till the last armed foe expires;
Strike for your altars and your fires;
Strike for the green graves of your sires,
God and your native land! "
—
—
—
—
They fought like brave men, long and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered-but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;
Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,
Like flowers at set of sun.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm
With banquet song, and dance, and wine:
And thou art terrible - the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony are thine.


## p. 6864 (#244) ###########################################

6864
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come when his task of fame is,wrought;
Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought;
Come in her crowning hour and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight
Of sky and stars to prisoned men
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land wind, from woods of palm
And orange groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
Bozzaris! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral weeds for thee,
Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume
Like torn branch from death's leafless tree,
In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,
The heartless luxury of the tomb.
But she remembers thee as one
Long loved, and for a season gone;
For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday bells;
Of thee her babes' first lisping tells;
For thine her evening prayer is said
At palace couch and cottage bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears.
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,


## p. 6865 (#245) ###########################################

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
6865
XII-430
The memory of her buried joys;
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's-
One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die.
ROBERT BURNS
TH
HERE have been loftier themes than his,
And longer scrolls, and louder lyres,
And lays lit up with Poesy's
Purer and holier fires.
Yet read the names that know not death:
Few nobler ones than Burns are there;
And few have won a greener wreath
Than that which binds his hair.
His is that language of the heart
In which the answering heart would speak;
Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start,
Or the smile light the cheek.
And his that music to whose tone
The common pulse of man keeps time,
In cot or castle's mirth or moan,
In cold or sunny clime.
And who hath heard his song, nor knelt
'Before its spell with willing knee,
And listened, and believed, and felt
The Poet's mastery?
O'er the mind's sea, in calm and storm,
O'er the heart's sunshine and its showers,
O'er Passion's moments, bright and warm,
O'er Reason's dark, cold hours;
On fields where brave men "die or do,"
In halls where rings the banquet's mirth,
Where mourners weep, where lovers woo,
From throne to cottage hearth:


## p. 6866 (#246) ###########################################

6866
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
What sweet tears dim the eyes unshed,
What wild vows falter on the tongue,
When Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,'
Or 'Auld Lang Syne,' is sung!
Pure hopes, that lift the soul above,
Come with the Cotter's hymn of praise;
And dreams of youth, and truth, and love,
With Logan's banks and braes.
And when he breathes his master-lay
Of Alloway's witch-haunted wall,
All passions in our frames of clay
Come thronging at his call.
Imagination's world of air,
And our own world, its gloom and glee,-
Wit, pathos, poetry, are there,
And death's sublimity.
And Burns, though brief the race he ran,
Though rough and dark the path he trod,
Lived, died, in form and soul a Man,
The image of his God.
Through care, and pain, and want, and woe,
With wounds that only death could heal,-
Tortures the poor alone can know,
The proud alone can feel,-
He kept his honesty and truth,
His independent tongue and pen,
And moved, in manhood as in youth,
Pride of his fellow-men.
Strong sense, deep feeling, passions strong,
A hate of tyrant and of knave,
A love of right, a scorn of wrong,
Of coward and of slave;
A kind, true heart, a spirit high,
That could not fear and would not bow,
Were written in his manly eye
And on his manly brow.
Praise to the bard! His words are driven,
Like flower seeds by the far winds sown,


## p. 6867 (#247) ###########################################

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
6867
Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven,
The birds of fame have flown.
Praise to the man! A nation stood
Beside his coffin with wet eyes,-
Her brave, her beautiful, her good,-
As when a loved one dies.
―――
And still, as on his funeral day,
Men stand his cold earth-couch around,
With the mute homage that we pay
To consecrated ground.
And consecrated ground it is,—
The last, the hallowed home of one
Who lives upon all memories,
Though with the buried gone.
Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined;
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.
Sages, with Wisdom's garland wreathed,
Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power,
And warriors with their bright swords sheathed,
The mightiest of the hour;
And lowlier names, whose humble home
Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star,
Are there; o'er wave and mountain come,
From countries near and far,
Pilgrims whose wandering feet have pressed
The Switzer's snow, the Arab's sand,
Or trod the piled leaves of the West-
My own green forest-land:
All ask the cottage of his birth,
Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung,
And gather feelings not of earth
His fields and streams among.
They linger by the Doon's low trees,
And pastoral Nith, and wooded Ayr,
And round thy sepulchres, Dumfries!
The Poet's tomb is there.


## p. 6868 (#248) ###########################################

6868
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
*
But what to them the sculptor's art,
His funeral columns, wreaths, and urns?
Wear they not graven on the heart
The name of Robert Burns?
ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE
REEN be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
GR
Tears fell when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep;
And long, where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.
When hearts whose truth was proven
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth;
And I who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine,-
It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free;
The grief is fixed too deeply
That mourns a man like thee.


## p. 6869 (#249) ###########################################

6869
JEHUDAH HALLEVI
(1080-? )
BY RICHARD GOTTHEIL
N THE sunny lands of Spain, the Jews, outcast from their East-
ern homes, had found a second fatherland. Under the rule of
Arabic caliphs, Orientals as they themselves were, occasion
had been given them to develop that taste for literature which their
continued occupation with the Bible had instilled into them. Cor-
dova, Granada, and Toledo soon became homes of Jewish learning, in
which the glory of the schools of Babylon and Palestine was well-nigh
hidden. Under the influence of a quieter life, the heart of the Jew
expanded and his imagination had freedom to run its own course.
The Hebrew muse, which had almost forgotten the force with which
it had poured forth psalm and song in ancient days, awoke again to
a sense of its power. The harp of David was once more strung to
catch the outpourings of hearts thankful and gay. The priests in the
Temple of God, less grand outwardly now, but more fully the expres-
sion of the feelings of the individual, chanted anew Israel's songs of
praise and of sanctification.
Of the many poets which this new life produced,-lived as it was
among a people to whom poetry was so natural a mode of expres-
sion,-to Abulhasan Jehudah ben Hallevi all unite in giving the crown.
Born in Toledo, Old Castile, in 1080, his songs and verses soon
became so well known and so oft recited that the person of their
author has been almost forgotten in the love shown his productions.
He lived only for his pen, and no deeds are accounted him which
might make the telling of his life more than of a passing interest.
He was learned-as most of the men of his race then were-in all
the sciences of the Arabians; had made himself proficient in the lan-
guage of both Quran and Bible, was learned in the practice of medi-
cine and facile in the discussion of philosophy. His was a thoroughly
religious nature; and in joining together philosophy, and poetry, and
medicine, he was following a custom not unknown in the Jewish
high schools. In philosophy he communed with man about God, in
poetry with God about man; while his service to his fellow-men was
through his power in the healing art. "I occupy myself in the hours
which belong neither to the day nor to the night, with the vanity of
medical science, although I am unable to heal. I physic Babel, but it
continues infirm," are his own words in a letter to a friend. This


## p. 6870 (#250) ###########################################

6870
JEHUDAH HALLEVI
art he practiced in Toledo and Cordova; and in one of these places
he wrote in the Arabic tongue a philosophical work (Kuzari') which,
though perhaps bad philosophy, is a poetical and beautiful defense of
his own faith against the conflicting claims of Christianity and Mo-
hammedanism.
But at the early age of thirteen, his pen had commenced to run
in the cadence of rhyme and metre. His first poems were upon sub-
jects which touch the young,- poems of friendship, of love, and of
wine, in which he made the old sedate and stately language of the
Bible shake with youthful mirth and laughter. And though he never
really forsook such subjects light and gay, these poems were not the
real expression of his inmost being. A strong sense of the Divine
presence, a romantic love for the home of his faith,-in spite of its
second home in Spain,-have made of Jehudah Hallevi the chief of
the national poets of Israel whose love was rooted in the land of the
patriarchs and prophets. Of all his three hundred religious poems-
almost one third of the poet's legacy-
-none bear the stamp of intense
feeling as do these national ones. In verse after verse he bemoans
the ruins of the ancient places, bewails the exile of Israel's children,
and sings the larger hope of her returned glory.
So strong was the love of Zion within him that he could not rest
until he had seen in the flesh that which his spiritual eye had beheld
since his youth. He had already reached the age of sixty when he
set out on his long journey to the Holy Land; alone, because he had
not sufficiently persuaded others up to the pitch of his own faith.
And yet not entirely alone! His muse went with him; and his track
was strewn with the brightest pearls which have fallen from his lips.
He reached Palestine; but our knowledge of his further doings there
is cut off. His body must have been laid in the sacred soil; but
no man knoweth the place of his sepulture. Like Elijah of old, he
went up to heaven. The popular fancy has seized upon so welcome
a figure, and has told how he was cut down by an Arab at the very
walls of Jerusalem, after he had poured forth the 'Ode to Zion,'
which has done more than any of his other pieces to keep his memory
alive; and of which Heine-of the elder poet's race, and inwardly
also of his faith-has said:-
"Tears of pearl, that on the golden
Thread of rhyme are strung together,
From the shining forge of poetry
Have come forth in song celestial.
"And this is the song of Zion
That Jehudah ben Hallevi
Sang when dying on the holy
Ruins of Jerusalem. »


## p. 6871 (#251) ###########################################

JEHUDAH HALLEVI
6871
Jehudah Hallevi has thus become the exponent of suffering Israel,
the teller of its woes, the prophet of its hopes. A depth of pure
feeling is revealed in him; a freedom from artificial constraint, and a
power of description, which we meet with nowhere among the Middle-
Age Hebrew poets. As a true poet, love remains his theme to the
end; but the love of the fair one is exchanged for a love purer and
greater, his people, his faith.
"But a wan and woeful maiden
Was his love: a mournful image
Of despair and desolation,
Who was named Jerusalem.
"Even in his early boyhood
Did he love her, deeply, truly,
And a thrill of passion shook him
At the word Jerusalem.
»
And that people has returned his love a thousandfold.
Richard Gotthril
NOTE. -See Songs of Zion by Hebrew Singers of Medieval Times'; trans-
lated into English verse by Mrs. Henry Lucas. London, 1894.
A
ODE TO ZION
RT thou not, Zion, fain
To send forth greetings from thy sacred rock
Unto thy captive train,
Who greet thee as the remnants of thy flock?
Take thou on every side-
East, West, and South, and North-their greetings multiplied.
Sadly he greets thee still,
The prisoner of hope, who, day and night,
Sheds ceaseless tears, like dew on Hermon's hill
Would that they fell on thy mountain's height!
Harsh is my voice when I bewail thy woes,
But when in fancy's dream
I see thy freedom, forth its cadence flows
Sweet as the harps that hung by Babel's stream.


## p. 6872 (#252) ###########################################

6872
JEHUDAH HALLEVI
My heart is so distressed
For Bethel ever blessed,
For Peniel, and each sacred place.
The Holy Presence there
To thee is present where
Thy Maker opes thy gates, the gates of heaven to face.
Oh! who will lead me on
To seek the spots where, in far distant years,
The angels in their glory dawned upon
Thy messengers and seers ?
Oh! who will give me wings
That I may fly away,
And there, at rest from all my wanderings,
The ruins of my heart among thy ruins lay?
I'll bend my face unto thy soil, and hold
Thy stones as precious gold.
And when in Hebron I have stood beside
My fathers' tomb, then will I pace in turn
Thy plains and forest wide,
Until I stand in Gilead and discern
Mount Hor and Mount Abarim, 'neath whose crest
The luminaries twain, thy guides and beacons, rest.
Thy air is life unto my soul; thy grains
Of dust are myrrh, thy streams with honey flow;
Naked and barefoot, to thy ruined fanes
How gladly would I go!
To where the ark was treasured, and in dim
Recesses dwelt the holy cherubim.
Perfect in beauty, Zion! how in thee
Do love and grace unite!
The souls of thy companions tenderly
Turn unto thee; thy joy was their delight,
And weeping, they lament thy ruin now.
In distant exile, for thy sacred height
They long, and towards thy gates in prayer they bow.
Thy flocks are scattered o'er the barren waste,
Yet do they not forget thy sheltering fold;
Unto thy garments' fringe they cling, and haste
The branches of thy palms to seize and hold.
Shinar and Pathros! come they near to thee?
Naught are they by thy light and right Divine.


## p. 6873 (#253) ###########################################

JEHUDAH HALLEVI
6873
To what can be compared the majesty
Of thy anointed line?
To what the singers, seers, and Levites thine?
The rule of idols fails and is cast down,-
Thy power eternal is, from age to age thy crown.
The Lord desires thee for his dwelling-place
Eternally; and blest
Is he whom God has chosen for the grace
Within thy courts to rest.
Happy is he that watches, drawing near,
Until he sees thy glorious lights arise,
And over whom thy dawn breaks full and clear
Set in the Orient skies.
-
But happiest he who with exultant eyes
The bliss of thy redeemed ones shall behold,
And see thy youth renewed as in the days of old.
SEPARATION
Translation of Alice Lucas.
A
ND so we twain must part! Oh, linger yet,—
Let me still feed my glance upon thine eyes.
Forget not, love, the days of our delight,
And I our nights of bliss shall ever prize.
In dreams thy shadowy image I shall see,-
Oh, even in my dream be kind to me!
-
Though I were dead, I none the less should hear
Thy step, thy garment rustling on the sand.
And if thou waft me greetings from the grave,
I shall drink deep the breath of that cold land.
Take thou my days, command this life of mine,
If it can lengthen out the space of thine.
No voice I hear from lips death-pale and chill,
Yet deep within my heart it echoes still.
My frame remains-my soul to thee yearns forth;
A shadow I must tarry still on earth.
Back to the body dwelling here in pain
Return, my soul; make haste and come again!
Translation of Emma Lazarus. From The Poems of Emma Lazarus. Copy-
right, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , Boston


## p. 6874 (#254) ###########################################

6874
JEHUDAH HALLEVI
THE EARTH IN SPRING
HEN, day by day, her broidered gown
She changes for fresh wonder;
A rich profusion of gay robes
She scatters all around her.
THEN
From day to day her flowers' tints
Change quick, like eyes that brighten;
Now white, like pearl, now ruby red,
Now emerald green they'll lighten.
She turns all pale; from time to time
Red blushes quick o'er-cover;
She's like a fair fond bride that pours
Warm kisses on her lover.
The beauty of her bursting spring
So far exceeds my telling,
Methinks sometimes she pales the stars
That have in heaven their dwelling.
Translation of Edward G. King.
LONGING FOR JERUSALEM
O
CITY of the world, with sacred splendor blest,
My spirit yearns to thee from out the far-off West;
A stream of love wells forth when I recall thy day;
Now is thy temple waste, thy glory passed away.
Had I an eagle's wings, straight would I fly to thee,
Moisten thy holy dust with wet cheeks streaming free.
Oh! how I long for thee! albeit thy King has gone,
Albeit where balm once flowed, the serpent dwells alone.
Could I but kiss thy dust, so would I fain expire,
As sweet as honey then, my passion, my desire!
Translation of Emma Lazarus. From The Poems of Emma Lazarus. ' Copy-
right, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , Boston.


## p. 6875 (#255) ###########################################

6875
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
(1834-1894)
HE sneer of Disraeli, that a critic is a man who has failed
in the branch of work he sets up to judge, is like saying
that a mill-race is a stream which has failed to run in its
own channel: making a definition serve as an insult. The man who
does not fail is too busy with his own creations to spare much time
for shaping judgments on others'. And so far as it implies that
the failure leaves the critic no claim to be heard, it is shallow to the
point of stupidity. On the contrary, the only thing which does give
his verdicts weight is the fact that he has
wrought enough in the given field to know.
its technic and its implications. Experi-
ence without success is the very condition
of most good professional criticism. The
limitations and perversions involved by this
are equally clear, and must be allowed for.
Mr. Hamerton was in this generation the
best literary exponent of art to the public,
and of different classes of art to each other;
- for artists are often as narrow and dis-
torted in their estimates of other branches
than their own as the public is in its esti-
mates of all, and are perhaps even more
acrid and unreasonable. This position he

P. G. HAMERTON
owed precisely to the fact that he was a trained and learned artist,
versed in the technics of a singularly wide range of artistic methods,
but neither a great nor a popular artist; combined of course with
other qualities which marked him out for an efficient interpreter.
His analytic powers, his remarkable freedom from bias or bigotry, his
catholicity of taste and sanity of mind, gave him unusual insight and
foresight; few men have measured work or reputations with more
sobriety of judgment, or made fewer mistakes in prophecy.
The character and purpose of his writing must be borne in mind.
He was not instructing artists but the public, even though a special,
wealthy, and fairly cultivated public; a body which, as he has said,
is at once practically ignorant of art and sorely affronted at being
taxed with such ignorance. He was therefore in the general position


## p. 6876 (#256) ###########################################

6876
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
of a schoolmaster with a voluntary school of jealous and conceited
pupils. His lucid and pleasing literary style, his clearness of analy-
sis, his justness of spirit, and a temper never ruffled even into a tu
quoque, gave him unequaled power of persuasiveness over this audi-
ence; but great depth or originality of exposition would have been
worse than wasted. He says himself that "the vulgarization of rudi-
ments has nothing to do with the advance of science"; nor has it
anything to do with the advance of art, except-and the exception
is of the first importance-by raising the level of the buyers of art
work. Hence it is unreasonable to blame him for the commonplace-
ness which artists fret over in his art writing: it was an indispensable
part of his service and influence; and probably fewer are beyond the
need and scope of his commonplaces than would like to acknowledge
it. Indeed, through his guiding of public taste, he had much more
influence even on the development of art forms themselves than is
generally supposed: it is due mainly to him that etching, the most
individual and expressive of the methods of engraving, has been
raised from an unfamiliar specialty to the foremost place in the favor
of cultivated art lovers.
His literary services to art taken as a whole-his quarter-century
editing of the Portfolio which he founded, with his clear and patient
analysis of current works of art, and his indirect and conciliatory but
all the more effective rebuffs to public ignorance and presumption;
his thorough technical works on Etching, on Landscape, on all the
Graphic Arts; his life of Turner; his 'Thoughts on Art,' steadily read-
able and clarifying; and much other matter-have probably done
more than all other art writing of the age together to put the public
mind into the only state from which anything good can be hoped
for art; to wit, a willing recognition of its ignorance of the primary
laws and limitations of artistic processes, and its lack of any right
to pass on their embodiments till the proper knowledge is acquired.
He has removed some of that ignorance, but in the very process
contrives to explain how vast a body is still left, and how crude,
random, and worthless any judgments based upon that vacuity of
knowledge must be. To do this and yet rouse no irritation in his
pupils, but leave instead a great personal liking, is a signal triumph
of good exposition, good manners, and intrinsic good feeling. Mr
Hamerton never indulges in the acrimony by which critics so often
mar their influence; he assumes that when his readers make mistakes,
they do so from misunderstanding, and would be glad of knowledge
courteously presented: and he is rewarded by being both listened
to and liked. And to the uninstructed who listen teachably, his
incomparably lucid explanations of the principles of artistic values
and sacrifices, the piecemeal attempts of different forms of art to


## p. 6877 (#257) ###########################################

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
6877
interpret nature, and their insuperable boundaries, the technics of
materials, the compulsion to imaginative work by physical limitations,
and other pieces of analysis, form the best of preliminary trainings
in rational judgment of art, and render the worst class of ignorant
misjudgments wholly impossible.
His literary work unconnected with art was of considerable volume,
and equals the other in general repute and appreciation. Best known.
of all his books is The Intellectual Life,' which deserves its fame as
being the chief storehouse of philosophic consolation to the vast class
of literary weaklings developed by a comfortable democracy. It is a
perpetual healing in the hours of despondency that come to every
aspiring but limited worker, when he looks on his petty accomplish-
ment by the light of his ambition. It consists of a set of short con-
versational articles, many of them in the form of letters, developing
the thesis that the intellectual life is not a matter of volume but of
quality and tendency; that it may be lived intensely and satisfyingly
with little actual acquirement and no recognized position; that it
consists not in the amassing of facts or even in power of creation, but
in the constant preference of higher thought to lower, in aspiration
rather than attainment; and that any one mind is in itself as worthy
as another. The single utterance that "It never could have been
intended that everybody should write great books," naïvely obvious
as it is, was worth writing the book for, as an aid to self-content.
It is full of the gentlest, firmest, most sympathetically sensible
advice and suggestion and remonstrance, as to the limitations of
time and strength, the way in which most advantages breed com-
pensating obstacles so that conditions are far more equal than they
appear, the impossibility of achievement without sacrifice, the need of
choice among incompatible ends, and many other aspects of life as
related to study and production. Its teaching of sobriety and attain-
ability of aim, of patient utilization of means, and of contentment in
such goal as our powers can reach, is of inestimable value in an age
of a general half-education which breeds ambitions in far greater
number than can be realized.
'Human Intercourse' is a collection of essays on life and society,
some of them ranking among his best: the admirable chapter on
'The Noble Bohemianism' is really an estray from The Intellectual
Life. ' The book 'French and English,' most of it first published in
the Atlantic Monthly, is a comparison of the two peoples and modes
of life and thought, of great charm and suggestiveness. His double
position, as a loyal Englishman by birth and long residence and a sort
of adoptive Frenchman by marriage and also long residence, made
him solicitous to clear up the misunderstandings each people had of
the other; and he wrote much to this end, with his usual calm sense


## p. 6878 (#258) ###########################################

6878
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
and gentlemanly urbanity. Five Modern Frenchmen is a set of
excellent biographies of French artists and others. Chapters on
Animals' explains itself. He wrote two novels, Wenderholme and
'Marmorne,' deserving of more reading than they receive; and a
number of other works, besides publishing collected volumes of
shorter papers, and at twenty-one a volume of poems.
Mr. Hamerton was born in Laneside, near Shaw, Lancashire, Eng-
land, September 10th, 1834. After preparing for Oxford, he went to
Paris to study art and literature. A few years later he set up a camp
at Loch Awe, Scotland, to paint landscapes; this he described in 'A
Painter's Camp in the Highlands,' and began to gain the note as a
man of letters which he vainly hoped to gain as an artist. From 1866
to 1868 he was art critic for the London Saturday Review. In 1869
he established the Portfolio, a high-grade art review, addressing a
public of supposably cultivated art lovers rather than the miscella-
neous mass; but how little he felt himself dispensed from rudimentary
exposition, and how low an estimate he set on even their connoisseur-
ship, may be learned from the first chapter of the Thoughts on Art. '
He married a French lady of Autun, and spent the latter part of his
life mostly there or in Boulogne; he died in the latter place Novem-
ber 5th, 1894.
Greater geniuses in dying have deprived the world of less service
and less enjoyment. Many of his readers felt a personal bereavement
in his loss, as in that of a companion with a nature at once lofty
and tender, a safe guide and elevating friend, unfailing in charm,
comfort, and instructiveness.
PEACH-BLOOM
From The Sylvan Year'
Τ'
HERE is a corner of a neglected old garden at the Val Ste.
Veronique in which grows a certain plant very abundantly,
that inevitably reminds us of an ancient philosopher.
To-
wards the end of March it is all carpeted with young hemlock,
which at this stage of its existence lies almost perfectly flat upon
the ground, and covers it with one of the most minutely beauti-
ful designs that can possibly be imagined; the delicate division.
of the fresh green leaves making a pattern that would be fit for
some room, if a skillful manufacturer copied it. Our own hem-
lock is believed to be identical with that which caused the death
of Socrates, but its action in northern countries is much feebler
than in the warmer climate of the Mediterranean.


## p. 6879 (#259) ###########################################

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
6879
In the same old abandoned garden where the hemlock grows
on the walls there remain a few fruit-trees, and amongst these
some peaches and apricots. They are in full bloom towards the
end of March; and of all the beautiful sights to be seen at this
time of the year, I know of none to be compared to these old
peach-trees with their wreath of rosy bloom, which would be
beautiful in any situation but is especially in this, because there
happen to be some mellow-tinted walls behind them, the very
background that a painter would delight in. There is some pretty
coloring in the apricot blossoms, on account of the pink calyx
and the pinkish brown of the young twigs, which has an influ-
ence on the effect; but the peach is incomparably richer. And
after the grays of wintry trees and wintry skies, the sight is
gladdened beyond measure by the flush of peach-blossom and the
blue of the clear spring heaven. But to enjoy these two fresh
and pure colors to the utmost we need some quiet coloring in
the picture, and nothing supplies this better than such old walls.
as those of the monastic buildings at the Val Ste. Veronique;
walls that Nature has been painting in her own way for full
four hundred years, with the most delicate changes of gray and
brown and dark gleamings of bronze and gold. There is some-
thing, too, which gratifies other feelings than those of simple
vision in the renewal of the youth of Nature, contrasting with
the steady decay of any ancient human work; and in the con-
trast between her exquisiteness, her delicacy, her freshness, as
exhibited in a thing so perfect as a fresh peach-blossom, with its
rosy color, its almond perfume, its promise of luscious fruit,—and
the roughness of all that man can do, even at his best.
THE FASCINATION OF THE REMOTE
From the Life of J. M. W. Turner'
T HAS been remarked before, that whereas with most men the
maturing of the faculties leads from imagination to reason,
from poetry to prose, this was not the case with Turner, who
became more and more poetical as he advanced in life; and this
might in some measure account for his ever-increasing tendency
to desert the foreground, where objects are too near to have
much enchantment about them, in order to dream, and make
others dream, of distances which seem hardly of this world.


## p. 6880 (#260) ###########################################

6880
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
The fascination of the remote, for minds which have any
imaginative faculty at all, is so universal and so unfailing that it
must be due to some cause in the depths of man's spiritual
nature. It may be due to a religious instinct, which makes him
forget the meanness and triviality of common life in this world,
to look as far beyond it as he can to a mysterious infinity of
glory, where earth itself seems to pass easily into heaven.
It
may be due to a progressive instinct, which draws men to the
future and the unknown, leading them ever to fix their gaze on
the far horizon, like mariners looking for some visionary Atlantis
across the spaces of the wearisome sea. Be this as it may, the
enchantments of landscape distances are certainly due far more
to the imagination of the beholder than to any tangible or expli-
cable beauty of their own. It is probable that minds of a com-
mon order, which see with the bodily eyes only and have no
imaginative perception, receive no impressions of the kind which
affected Turner; but the conditions of modern life have devel-
oped a great sensitiveness to such impressions in minds of a
higher class. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name
any important imaginative work in literature, produced during
the present century, in which there is not some expression prov-
ing the author's sensitiveness to the poetry of distance. I will
not weary the reader with quotations, but here is just one from
Shelley, which owes most of its effect upon the mind to his per-
ception of two elements of sublimity-distance and height; in
which perception, as in many other mental gifts, he strikingly
resembled Turner. The stanza is in the 'Revolt of Islam':
"Upon that rock a mighty column stood,
Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,
Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude
Of distant seas, from ages long gone by,
Had made a landmark; o'er its height to fly,
Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast
Has power; and when the shades of evening lie
On earth and ocean, its carved summits cast
The sunken daylight far through the aerial waste. "
-----
This was written in 1817, just about the time when Turner
was passing from his early manner to the sublimities of his ma-
turity; and there is ample evidence, of which more may be said
later, that Turner and Shelley were as much in sympathy as two


## p. 6881 (#261) ###########################################

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
6881
men can be, when one is cultivated almost exclusively by means
of literature and the other by graphic art. But however great
may have been the similarity of their minds, whatever suscepti-
bility to certain impressions they may have had in common, the
two arts which they pursued differed widely in technical condi-
tions. It may, or it may not, be as easy to write verses as to
paint, when both are to be supremely well done; but it is certain
that poetic description requires less realization than pictorial, so
that less accurate observation will suffice for it, and an inferior
gift of memory. In the whole range of the difficulties which
painters endeavor to overcome, there is not one which tries their
powers more severely than the representation of distant effects.
in landscape. They can never be studied from nature, for they
come and go so rapidly as to permit nothing but the most inade-
quate memoranda; they can never be really imitated, being usu-
ally in such a high key of light and color as to go beyond the
resources of the palette; and the finest of them are so mysteri-
ous that the most piercing eyesight is baffled, perceiving at the
utmost but little of all that they contain. The interpretation
of such effects, however able and intelligent it may be, always
requires a great deal of good-will on the part of the spectator,
who must be content if he can read the painter's work as a sort
of shorthand, without finding in it any of the amusement which
may be derived from the imitation of what is really imitable.
For all these reasons it would be a sufficiently rash enterprise
for an artist to stake his prospects on the painting of distances;
but there is another objection even yet more serious. Such
painting requires not only much good-will in the spectator, but
also great knowledge, freedom from vulgar prejudices, and some
degree of faith in the painter himself. When people see a noble
effect in nature, there is one stock observation which they almost
invariably make; they always say, or nearly always, "Now, if
we were to see that effect in a picture we should not believe it
to be possible. " One would think that after such a reflection on
their own tendency to unbelief in art and to astonishment in the
presence of nature, people would be forewarned against their
own injustice; but it is not so. They will make that observa-
tion every time they see a fine sunset or a remarkable cloud in
the natural world, and remain as unjust as ever to the art which
represents phenomena of the same order. Turner had to contend
against this disposition to deny the truth of everything that is
XII-431


## p. 6882 (#262) ###########################################

6882
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
not commonplace. He was too proud and courageous to allow
it to arrest his development, and would not submit to dictation
from any one as to the subjects of his larger pictures. He knew
the value of money, and would work very hard to earn it, but
no money consideration whatever was permitted to interfere
between him and the higher manifestations of his art.
TREES IN ART
From 'Landscape >
T MAY, however, not be absolutely safe to conclude that the
Greeks had no landscape painting, because we find only con-
ventional and decorative representations of trees on vases.
If it is true that the mural paintings at Herculaneum and Pom-
peii were not always essentially modern at the time when they
were painted upon the wall, but rather in many cases copies and
reminiscences of uch more ancient art, it would seem possible
that the painters of antiquity may have at least gone so far in the
direction of true landscape painting as to have attained the notion
of mass in foliage. Some of the Pompeian pictures give large-
leaved shrubs seen near the figures, with much of the liberty and
naturalness in this disposal of the leaves that were afterwards
fully attained by the Venetians; whilst many of the landscapes
really show foliage in mass, not so learnedly as in modern land-
scape painting, but quite with the knowledge that masses had a
light side, and a dark side, and a roundness that might be painted
without insisting on the form of each leaf. The same observa-
tion of mass is to be seen in the Campanian interpretation of
mountains, which, though extremely simple and primitive, and
without any of the refinements of mountain form that are per-
ceptible to ourselves, exhibit nevertheless the important truth that
the facets of a mountain catch the light.
In mediæval landscape painting, trees were of great import-
ance from the first, on account of the free decorative inventive-
ness of the mediæval mind, that exercised itself in illumination
and tapestry and in patterns for dress, for all of which leaves
and flowers were the best natural materials or suggestions. The
history of tree drawing in the Middle Ages is very like its history
in Greece. As Apollo and Semele were placed on each side the
laurel, of which the leaves were few and distinctly individualized,


## p. 6883 (#263) ###########################################

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
6883
so Adam and Eve were placed on each side the apple-tree, which
was often represented as a bare thin stem branching into a sort
of flat oval at the top that was filled with distinct leaves and
fruit, and sometimes even surrounded by a line. In other draw-
ings or paintings the tree was allowed to develop itself more
freely; but the artist still attended to the individual leaves, and
the tree was usually kept small, like the young trees in our
gardens. Even in hunting scenes where a forest is represented,
as in the manuscript of the hunting-book by Gaston Phoebus,*
the trees have short bare trunks and a few leaves, and are about
the height of a man on horseback, often not so high. They an-
swer, in short, to the trees in boxes of toys for children, except
that they are more prettily designed.
The nearest approach to foliage attained by the mediæval
love of the distinct leaf is in the backgrounds to tapestries, and
decorative paintings designed on the same principles, where the
leaves, although individually perfect, are so multiplied that the
mere numbers make them appear innumerable.
In this way
the distinct designers of the Middle Ages attained a sort of infin-
ity, though it is not the same as the real infinity of nature where
details cannot be counted. One of the best examples of this is
the background to Orcagna's fresco of the Dream of Life' in
the Campo Santo of Pisa, where the orange-trees stand behind the
figures and fill the upper part of the picture from side to side
with their dense foliage studded with fruit, and between their
thin stems every inch of space is filled with a diaper of flat green
leaves to represent the close shrubbery or underwood in the gar-
den. This is still quite mediæval in spirit, because the leaves
are distinctly drawn, and all are countable, however numerous;
they are also decorative, as primitive art was sure to be.
It is difficult to fix with precision the date when the idea of
mass in foliage began to acquire importance, and I know that if
I give a date, some earlier examples may be found which would
seem to throw it farther back in art history; but occasional pre-
cursors do not invalidate the rights of a century in which an
idea first takes effectual root. There is a very remarkable land-
scape background by Giovanni Bellini in his picture of The
Death of Peter Martyr' in our National Gallery, the most elabo-
rate example of tree painting among our older pictures. The
*The book is entitled 'Des Deduitz de la Chasse des Bestes Sauvages,'
and is in the National Library at Paris.


## p. 6884 (#264) ###########################################

6884
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
idea is to show trees in a wood, with stems crossing each other
and supporting an immense quantity of highly wrought foliage.
Well, in this picture the foliage is not flat; there is a sense of
mass; and yet to a modern eye it is easily visible that Bellini
was still hampered by the mediæval interest in the leaf, and
driven by that to bestow prodigious pains upon the individual
leaves that he portrayed by thousands. In the same fifteenth cen-
tury a manuscript of the Epistles of Ovid, now in the National
Library of Paris, was illuminated with subjects that have land-
scape backgrounds of a very advanced kind; and here the foliage
is completely massed, with considerable breadth of shaded parts
and only touches for the lights.
We may remember, then, that classical tree painting began
with the stem and a reduced number of distinct leaves, but
attained masses of foliage in the Campanian paintings or earlier,
and that mediæval painting began in the same way with the leaf
and the stem, but led to masses about the fifteenth century, after
passing through an intermediate stage in which there was a great
multiplicity of distinctly painted leaves.
THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM
From Human Intercourse ›
A
MONGST the common injustices of the world, there have been
few more complete than its reprobation of the state of
mind and manner of life that have been called Bohemian-
ism; and so closely is that reprobation attached to the word, that
I would gladly have substituted some other term for the better
Bohemianism, had the English language provided me with one.
It may, however, be a gain to justice itself that we should be
compelled to use the same expression, qualified only by an ad-
jective, for two states of existence that are the good and the bad
conditions of the same; as it will tend to make us more charita-
ble to those whom we must always blame, and yet may blame
with a more or less perfect understanding of the causes that led
them into error.
The lower forms of Bohemianism are associated with several
kinds of vice, and are therefore justly disliked by people who
know the value of a well-regulated life, and when at the worst,
regarded by them with feelings of positive abhorrence. The vices


## p. 6885 (#265) ###########################################

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
6885
connected with these forms of Bohemianism are idleness, irregu-
larity, extravagance, drunkenness, and immorality; and besides
these vices, the worst Bohemianism is associated with many re-
pulsive faults that may not be exactly vices, and yet are almost
as much disliked by decent people. These faults are slovenli-
ness, dirt, a degree of carelessness in matters of business often
scarcely to be distinguished from dishonesty, and habitual neg-
lect of the decorous observances that are inseparable from a high
state of civilization.
After such an account of the worst Bohemianism, in which,
as the reader perceives, I have extenuated nothing, it may seem
almost an act of temerity to advance the theory that this is only
the bad side of a state of mind and feeling that has its good and
perfectly respectable side also. If this seems difficult to believe,
the reader has only to consider how certain other instincts of
humanity have also their good and bad developments. The
religious and the sexual instincts, in their best action, are on
the side of national and domestic order; but in their worst action
they produce sanguinary quarrels, ferocious persecutions, and the
excesses of the most degrading sensuality.
Again, before going to the raison d'être of Bohemianism, let
me point to one consideration of great importance to us if
we desire to think quite justly. It is, and has always been, a
characteristic of Bohemianism to be extremely careless of appear-
ances, and to live outside the shelter of hypocrisy; so its vices
are far more visible than the same vices when practiced by men
of the world, and incomparably more offensive to persons with a
strong sense of what is called "propriety. " At the time when
the worst form of Bohemianism was more common than it is
now, its most serious vices were also the vices of the best
society. If the Bohemian drank to excess, so did the nobility and
gentry; if the Bohemian had a mistress, so had the most exalted
personages. The Bohemian was not so much blamed for being a
sepulchre as for being an ill-kept sepulchre, and not a whited.
sepulchre like the rest. It was far more his slovenliness and
poverty than his graver vices that made him offensive to a cor-
rupt society with fine clothes and ceremonious manners.