The Pleasures of Life Part 24

"If indeed thy heart were right, then would every creature be to thee a mirror of lifer and a book of holy doctrine." [3]

The study of Natural History has the special advantage of carrying us into the country and the open air.

Not but what towns are beautiful too. They teem with human interest and historical a.s.sociations.

Wordsworth was an intense lover of nature; yet does he not tell us, in lines which every Londoner will appreciate, that he knew nothing in nature more fair, no calm more deep, than the city of London at early dawn?

"Earth has not anything to show more fair; Dull would he be of soul who could pa.s.s by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at its own sweet will: Dear G.o.d! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!"

Milton also described London as

"Too blest abode, no loveliness we see In all the earth, but it abounds in thee."

But after being some time in a great city, one feels a longing for the country.

"The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are opening paradise." [4]

Here Gray justly places flowers in the first place, for when in any great town we think of the country, flowers seem first to suggest themselves.

"Flowers," says Ruskin, "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 rest the covenant of peace." But in the crowded street, or even in the formal garden, flowers always seem, to me at least, as if they were pining for the freedom of the woods and fields, where they can live and grow as they please.

There are flowers for almost all seasons and all places. Flowers for spring, summer, and autumn, while even in the very depth of winter here and there one makes its appearance. There are flowers of the fields and woods and hedgerows, of the seash.o.r.e and the lake's margin, of the mountain-side up to the very edge of the eternal snow.

And what an infinite variety they present.

"Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one." [5]

Nor are they mere delights to the eye; they are full of mystery and suggestions. They almost seem like enchanted princesses waiting for some princely deliverer. Wordsworth tells us that

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

Every color again, every variety of form, has some purpose and explanation.

And yet, lovely as Flowers are, Leaves add even more to the Beauty of Nature. Trees in our northern lat.i.tudes seldom own large flowers; and though of course there are notable exceptions, such as the Horse-chestnut, still even in these cases the flowers live only a few days, while the leaves last for months. Every tree indeed is a picture in itself: The gnarled and rugged Oak, the symbol and source of our navy, sacred to the memory of the Druids, the type of strength, the sovereign of British trees; the Chestnut, with its beautiful, tapering, and rich green, glossy leaves, its delicious fruit, and to the durability of which we owe the grand and historic roof of Westminster Abbey.

The Birch is the queen of trees, with her feathery foliage, scarcely visible in spring but turning to leaves of gold in autumn; the pendulous twigs tinged with purple, and silver stems so brilliantly marked with black and white.

The Elm forms grand ma.s.ses of foliage which turn a beautiful golden yellow in autumn; and the Black Poplar with its perpendicular leaves, rustling and trembling with every breath of wind, towers over most other forest trees.

The Beech enlivens the country by its tender green in spring, rich green in summer, and glorious gold and orange in autumn, set off by the graceful gray stems; and has moreover, such a wealth of leaves that in autumn there are enough not only to clothe the tree itself but to cover the gra.s.s underneath.

If the Beech owes much to its delicate gray stem, even more beautiful is the reddish crimson of the Scotch Pines, in such charming contrast with the rich green of the foliage, by which it is shown off rather than hidden; and, with the green spires of the Firs, they keep the woods warm in winter.

Nor must I overlook the smaller trees: the Yew with its thick green foliage; the wild Guelder rose, which lights up the woods in autumn with translucent glossy berries and many-tinted leaves; or the Bryonies, the Briar, the Traveler's Joy, and many another plant, even humbler perhaps, and yet each with some exquisite beauty and grace of its own, so that we must all have sometimes felt our hearts overflowing with gladness and grat.i.tude, as if the woods were full of music--as if

"The woods were filled so full with song There seemed no room for sense of wrong." [6]

On the whole no doubt, woodlands are less beautiful in the winter: yet even then the delicate tracery of the branches, which cannot be so well seen when they are clothed with leaves, has a special beauty of its own; while every now and then h.o.a.r frost or snow settles like silver on every branch and twig, lighting up the forest as if by enchantment in preparation for some fairy festival.

I feel with Jefferies that "by day or by night, summer or winter, beneath trees the heart feels nearer to that depth of life which the far sky means. The rest of spirit found only in beauty, ideal and pure, comes there because the distance seems within touch of thought."

The general effect of forests in tropical regions must be very different from that of those in our lat.i.tudes. Kingsley describes it as one of helplessness, confusion, awe, all but terror. The trunks are very lofty and straight, and rising to a great height without a branch, so that the wood seems at first comparatively open. In Brazilian forests, for instance, the trees struggle upward, and the foliage forms an unbroken canopy, perhaps a hundred feet overhead. Here, indeed, high up in the air is the real life of the forest. Everything seems to climb, to the light.

The quadrupeds climb, birds climb, reptiles climb, and the variety of climbing plants is far greater than anything to which we are accustomed.

Many savage nations worship trees, and I really think my first feeling would be one of delight and interest rather than of surprise, if some day when I am alone in a wood one of the trees were to speak to me. Even by day there is something mysterious in a forest, and this is much more the case at night.

With wood, water seems to be naturally a.s.sociated. Without water no landscape is complete, while overhead the clouds add beauty to the heavens themselves. The spring and the rivulet, the brook, the river, and the lake, seem to give life to Nature, and were indeed regarded by our ancestors as living ent.i.ties themselves. Water is beautiful in the morning mist, in the broad lake, in the glancing stream or the river pool, in the wide ocean, beautiful in all its varied moods. Water nourishes vegetation; it clothes the lowlands with green and the mountains with snow. It sculptures the rocks and excavates the valleys, in most cases acting mainly through the soft rain, though our harder rocks are still grooved by the ice-chisel of bygone ages.

The refreshing pour of water upon the earth is scarcely greater than that which it exercises on the mind of man. After a long spell of work how delightful it is to sit by a lake or river, or on the seash.o.r.e, and enjoy

"A little murmur in mine ear, A little ripple at my feet." [7]

Every Englishman loves the sight of the Sea We feel that it is to us a second home. It seems to vivify the very atmosphere, so that Sea air is proverbial as a tonic, and makes the blood dance in our veins. The Ocean gives an impression of freedom and grandeur more intense perhaps than the aspect of the heavens themselves. A poor woman from Manchester, on being taken to the seaside, is said to have expressed her delight on seeing for the first time something of which there was enough for everybody. The sea coast is always interesting. When we think of the cliff sections with their histories of bygone ages; the sh.o.r.e itself teeming with seaweeds and animals, waiting for the return of the tide, or thrown up from deeper water by the waves; the weird cries of seabirds; the delightful feeling that with every breath we are laying in a store of fresh life, and health, and energy, it is impossible to over-estimate all we owe to the sea.

It is, moreover, always changing. We went for our holiday this year to Lyme Regis. Let me attempt to describe the changes in the view from our windows during a single day. Our sitting-room opened on to a little lawn, beyond which the ground drops suddenly to the sea, while over about two miles of water were the hills of the Dorsetshire coast--Golden Cap, with its bright crest of yellow sand, and the dark blue Lias Cliff of Black Ven. When I came early down in the morning the sun was rising opposite, shining into the room over a calm sea, along an avenue of light; by degrees, as it rose, the whole sea was gilt with light, and the hills bathed in a violet mist. By breakfast-time all color had faded from the sea--it was like silver pa.s.sing on each side into gray; the sky was blue, flecked with fleecy clouds; while, on the gentler slopes of the coast opposite, fields and woods, and quarries and lines of stratification begin to show themselves, though the cliffs are still in shadow, and the more distant headlands still a mere succession of ghosts, each one fainter than the one before it. As the morning advances the sea becomes blue, the dark woods, green meadows, and golden cornfields of the opposite coast more distinct, and the details of the cliffs come gradually into view, and fishing-boats with dark sails begin to appear.

Gradually the sun rises higher, a yellow line of sh.o.r.e appears under the opposite cliffs, and the sea changes its color, mapping itself out as it were, the shallower parts turquoise blue, almost green; the deeper ones deep violet.

This does not last long--a thunderstorm comes up. The wind mutters overhead, the rain patters on the leaves, the coast opposite seems to shrink into itself, as if it would fly from the storm. The sea grows dark and rough, and white horses appear here and there.

But the storm is soon over. The clouds break, the rain stops, the sun shines once more, the hills opposite come out again. They are divided now not only into fields and woods, but into sunshine and shadow. The sky clears, and as the sun begins to descend westwards the sea becomes one beautiful clear uniform azure, changing again soon to pale blue in front and dark violet beyond: and once more as clouds begin to gather again, into an archipelago of bright blue sea and deep islands of ultramarine. As the sun travels westward, the opposite hills change again. They scarcely seem like the same country. What was in sun is now in shade, and what was in shade now lies bright in the sunshine. The sea once more becomes a uniform solid blue, only flecked in places by scuds of wind, and becoming paler towards evening as the sun sinks, the cliffs which catch his setting rays losing their deep color and in some places looking almost as white as chalk, while at sunset they light up again for a moment with a golden glow, the sea at the same time sinking to a cold gray. But soon the hills grow cold too, Golden Cap holding out bravely to the last, and the shades of evening settle over cliff and wood, cornfield and meadow.

These are but a part, and a very small part, of the changes of a single day. And scarce any two days are alike. At times a sea-fog covers everything. Again the sea which sleeps to-day so peacefully sometimes rages, and the very existence of the bay itself bears witness to its force.

The night, again, varies like the day. Sometimes shrouded by a canopy of darkness, sometimes lit up by millions of brilliant worlds, sometimes bathed in the light of a moon, which never retains the same form for two nights together.

If Lakes are less grand than the sea, they are in some respects even more lovely. The seash.o.r.e is comparatively bare. The banks of Lakes are often richly clothed with vegetation which comes close down to the water's edge, sometimes hanging even into the water itself. They are often studded with well-wooded islands. They are sometimes fringed with green meadows, sometimes bounded by rocky promontories rising directly from comparatively deep water, while the calm bright surface is often fretted by a delicate pattern of interlacing ripples, or reflects a second, softened, and inverted landscape.

To water again we owe the marvellous spectacle of the rainbow--"G.o.d's bow in the clouds." It is indeed truly a heavenly messenger, and so unlike anything else that it scarcely seems to belong to this world.

Many things are colored, but the rainbow seems to be color itself.

"First the flaming red Sprang vivid forth; the tawny orange next, And next delicious yellow; by whose side Fell the kind beams of all-refreshing green.

Then the pure blue that swells autumnal skies, Ethereal play'd; and then, of sadder hue Emerged the deeper indigo (as when The heavy-skirted evening droops with frost), While the last gleamings of refracted light Died in the fainting violet away." [8]

We do not, I think, sufficiently realize how wonderful is the blessing of color. It would have been possible, it would even seem more probable, that though light might have enabled us to perceive objects, this could only have been by shade and form. How we perceive color it is very difficult to comprehend, and yet when we speak of beauty, among the ideas which come to us most naturally are those of birds and b.u.t.terflies, flowers and sh.e.l.ls, precious stones, skies, and rainbows.

Our minds might have been const.i.tuted exactly as they are, we might have been capable of comprehending the highest and sublimest truths, and yet, but for a small organ in the head, the world of sound would have been shut out from us; we should have lost the sounds of nature, the charms of music, the conversation of friends, and have been condemned to perpetual silence: and yet a slight alteration in the retina, which is not thicker than a sheet of paper, not larger than a finger nail,--and the glorious spectacle of this beautiful world, the exquisite variety of form, the glory and play of color, the variety of scenery, of woods and fields, and lakes and hills, seas and mountains, the glory of the sky alike by day and night, would all have been lost to us.

Mountains, again, "seem to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated ma.n.u.script for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons for the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper. And of these great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars." [9]

All these beauties are comprised in Tennyson's exquisite description of Oenone's vale--the city, flowers, trees, river, and mountains.

"There is a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.

The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea.

Behind the valley topmost Gargarus Stands up and takes the morning; but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, The crown of Troas."