The Madonna is colossal. She wears a hood, and holds her child in her arms. There is a strong human, yet spiritualized expression upon the face. The drapery is gracefully arranged, not folded like mummy cloths; and the color is strong and liberally laid on, without any attempt, however, at transparency of shadow. There is little indication of the technical glories of succeeding centuries. Perhaps the best part of the picture is in the lower margin. Here are four heads of saints, painted with a breadth and energy absolutely startling, when one recollects by whom and when they were executed. Dominic Ghirlandaio, two hundred years later, could hardly have put more masculine expression into a quartet of heads.
Giotto's Madonna is the pendant to that of Cimabue; but although painted twenty-five years later, it shows less progress in art than might be expected. Giotto's triumphs are to be found in the frescos of the Santa Croce. In that unequalled series, the art-student recognizes, almost at a glance, the power of the master. Largeness, rhythm, and harmony of composition,—dramatic movement, and individual beauty of expression,—heads which have brains, eyes which can smile, lips which can speak, fluent limbs which can move, or remain in natural repose,—the whole surrounded and inspired by that atmosphere of piety, that effluence of religious ecstasy, which can never be imitated, and which came from the unquestioning faith of the artist;—such wonders were for the first time revealed by Giotto. The shepherd boy, whom Cimabue found drawing pictures upon a stone in the open field, nobly repaid his patron and master, by extending still farther the domain of art,—by throwing its doors wide open to the cool breath of nature and the liberal sunshine. To pass from the Byzantines into the school of Giotto is to come out from the catacombs into the warm precincts of the cheerful day.
Of the pictures of the early part of the fifteenth century, none are more worthy of attention in this collection than those of Fra Angelico of Fiesole. (1387-1455.) Nevertheless, it seems no great progress from Cimabue, Giotto, and Orgagna, whose compositions are so full of energetic life and human passion, to these careful, gentle miniatures upon an expanded scale. The Fra was aminiatore, after all,—a manuscript illuminator of the first class. His effort to represent a descent from the cross in a large and dramatic manner is feeble and flat. This flight seems beyond his strength; and his waxy little wings, which sustained him so well within his own sphere, melted at once in this higher region.
Far better is an exquisite little picture in his very best manner, a work which hangs in the apartment De' Piccoli Quadri. This is a Judgment Day, and a cheerful painting of its class. There is an old conceit, very cleverly carried out through the whole composition, of representing all the just made perfect as actually converted into little children. Kings with crowns, popes, bishops, cardinals in hats and mitres, monks cowled and robed in conventual habiliments, are all philandering together through gardens of amaranth and asphodel towards the Grecian portico of heaven; and all these fortunate personages, whether monarchs, priests, fine ladies, or beggars, are depicted with perfectly infantine faces. To do this well lay exactly in the quaint, delicate nature of the angelic Frater; and this portion of the picture is most exquisitely handled. The other moiety, where devils with rabbits' ears, tiger faces, and monkeys' tails, are forking over the damned into frying-pans, while Satan devours them as fast as cooked, is common-place and vulgar. At the same time, it is certain that the whole composition shows much poetry of invention and delicacy of finish.
Andrew Castagno's Magdalen, like Donatello's Wooden Statue of the same penitent in the Baptistery, seems a female Robinson Crusoe,—hirsute, cadaverous, fleshless, uncombed and uncomely,—certainly a more edifying spectacle than the voluptuous, Titianesque exhibitions of fair frailty which became the fashion afterwards.
Of Gentile da Fabriano, a very rare master, there hangs an Adoration of the Magi, marked May, 1423. One always feels grateful to such of theQuattrocentistias enlarged the sphere of artistic action, by going out of the conventional circle of holy families, nativities, and entombments. There is a dash about Gentile, a fresh, cavalier-like gentility, quite surprising, and altogether his own. A showy, flippant frivolity in several of the figures enlivens and refreshes us with its mundane sparkle and energy. One of the three kings, in particular,—a young, well-dressed, vivacious,goguenard-looking personage, with a very glittering pair of spurs, which his groom is just unbuckling, while another holds a highly bedizened war-horse, who is throwing up his head, showing all his teeth, and crying ha, ha, with all his might,—has a very dramatic effect.
Of the Lippo Lippis, the Lorenzo di Credis, the Ghirlandaios, the Peruginos, and the other great masters of the fifteenth century, of whom are many masterpieces in this collection, there shall, for the present, not a word be said.
There is also a portrait of Savonarola, by Fra Bartolommeo. The face is neither impressive nor attractive. The head is shorn, except the monastic coronal, and shows a small organ of benevolence, and a very large one of self-esteem. The profile is not handsome,—the nose being regularly aquiline, while the mouth is heavy with a projecting upper lip. A strong, blue beard, closely shaven, but very visible, darkens and improves the physiognomy.
This church was so beloved by Michel Angelo as to be called his bride. It must be confessed that the great artist was determined in his choice less by the external charms than by the interior excellence of hissposa; for although she has now got herself a new front and vamped herself up a little, thus looking a trifle younger than she must have done three hundred years ago, still she has any thing but a bridal or virginal aspect.
This church and monastery belong to the earlier German period of Italy, if such a thing as Italian Gothic can be said to have ever existed. The truth is, that with the exception of Milan cathedral, which is modern, exotic, and exceptional, the German, or, to use the common and senseless expression, the Gothic system of architecture never fairly took root in Italy. Certainly, the pointed windows and arches of the Florenceduomoand itscampaniledo not constitute it a Gothic church. The square cornices, vast masses of wall, heavy pilasters, and, in general, the horizontal outlines and heavy expression of all these churches, have a character very remote from that of the airy, upspringing, fantastic German architecture, in which every shaft, arch, vault-girdle, pillar, window-frame, pinnacle, seems struggling and panting upward with an almost audible eloquence. This is not the expression of theduomohere. There is no perpetualExcelsiorringing from point, spire, and turret. On the contrary, the grave, almost rigid aspect of the ancientbasilica—the Roman business-hall, compounded of Greek elements, and transformed into a Grecian temple—is ever at work repressing that devotional ecstasy which is the characteristic of the Gothic church. The Italian language in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was like the Italian architecture of the same period. The different intellectual manifestations, subjected to the same influences, obeyed one general law. The conquering German mind of the Dark Ages easily impressed itself where the soil was still virgin. ThroughoutsavageEurope the dominion was yielded at once to the new power which succeeded to the decrepit empire of Rome. Gaul, Germany, Britain, Iberia obeyed instinctively the same impulse. The children born of that vigorous embrace were of fresh and healthy beauty. The manifestations of the German mind in the cathedrals of Paris, Cologne, Antwerp are undimmed and unrivalled. The early German architecture in the actual realms of Germany is as romantic, energetic, and edifying as its poetry at the same epoch. A great German cathedral is a religious epic in stone. All the ornaments, all the episodes, spring from and cluster around one central, life-giving principle.
In Italy, on the other hand, the architecture of the so-called Gothic period embodies a constant struggle between the ancient and the new-born mind,—a contest in which the eventual triumph of the elder is already foreshadowed, even while the new has apparently gained the ascendency. Why was this? Because in Italy the German conquerors had invaded the land of ancient culture, of settled and organized form. The world could not be createdde novo, as in the shaggy deserts of Hercynia and Belgica. The seeds of human speech, planted in those vast wildernesses, sprouted readily into new and luxuriant languages. English, Flemish, German, French spring from German roots hidden in Celtic soil. The Latin element, afterwards engrafted, is exotic, excrescent, and not vital to the organization. In Italy, where a language, a grammar, a literature already existed in full force, the German element was almost neutralized. The Goths could only deface the noble language of Rome. They gave it auxiliary verbs,—that feeblest form of assistance to human eloquence,—and they took away its declensions. Architecture presented the same phenomenon. It submitted to what seemed the German tyranny for a time, but it submitted under a perpetual and visible protest. [Footnote: Compare Kugler,Kunstgeschichte, pp. 590, 591.] The Gothic details in thecampanileand theduomolook altogether extraneous and compulsory; they are not assimilated into the constitution of the structure. The severe Roman profile is marked as distinctly as ever, notwithstanding the foreign ornaments which it has been forced to assume.
Santa Maria Novella, then, is as good a German Italian church as can be found; but, for the reasons stated, it is not particularly interesting as a piece of architecture. Its wealth is in its frescos. In the quadrangle of the cloister is a series of pictures by Paolo Uccello, who, by the introduction of linear perspective, of which he is esteemed the inventor, made a new epoch in art. In the "chapel of the Spaniards" is a famous collection of frescos by Giotto's scholars. A large, thoughtful, and attractive composition is called the Wisdom of the Church. On the opposite side is a very celebrated painting, entitled the Church Militant and Triumphant; the militating and triumphing business being principally confided to the dogs of the Lord,—videlicet, Domini-canes. A large number of this dangerous fraternity is represented as a pack of hounds, fighting, pulling, biting, and howling most vigorously in a life-and-death-struggle with the wolves of heresy. In the centre of the composition are introduced various portraits. These were thought for a long time to represent Cimabue (in a white night-cap), Petrarch (in long petticoats), Laura (in short ones), and various other celebrities. Vasari is the original authority [Footnote: Vite da Vasari, ed. Lemonnier, 1846. Sim. and Lippo Memmi, p. 90, and notes.] for this opinion, which has ceased to be entertained bycognoscenti. It is also no longer believed that the pictures are the work of Taddeo Gaddi and Simon Memmi. Thecustodeclings to both delusions,—the portraits and the painters. Whether red Murray, and that devoted band of English and Americans who follow his flag, patronize the Vasari theory or more modern ones, we are at this moment unable to state.
By what subtile threads are international hearts bound together! Two great nations have wrangled for a century; but they have a common property in Shakspeare and Tupper,—and—most precious of all joint-possessions—in the hand-books of Murray. We feel with one throb upon all æsthetic subjects. We admire the same great works of art. We drop a tear upon exactly the same spots, hallowed in ancient or modern history. The fraternity is absolute.
In the Strozzi chapel are an altar-piece and several wall-pictures by Andrew Orgagna. They are not so grandly conceived as that wondrous composition of his, the Triumph of Death, in the Pisan Campo Santo; but they are additional proofs of his intense and Dante-like genius. No doubt Dante influenced him deeply, as he did all his contemporaries, whose minds were fertile enough to ripen such seed. The large picture on the left—a view of paradise—is full of energetic and beautiful figures, combined with much dramatic effect and great technical skill. The opposite pictures, representing hell, were not by Andrew, but by Bernard Orgagna, a man of far inferior calibre. They have, moreover, been entirely revamped.
In the choir are the renowned frescos of Dominic Ghirlandaio,—scenes from the lives of John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary. These, however, are but names and frames. The great merit of these paintings is that they were the first, or among the first, to introduce the actual into the world of conventional and conventual art. They form a series of full-length portraits,—sometimes of celebrated contemporaries, as Politian, Marsilio Ficino, and others,—but always of flesh-and-blood people, living, moving, and having a being. That group of Platonists, with their looks of profound wisdom and dogmatic eloquence, are lifting their forefingers, pricking up their ears, opening their mouths, (each obviously interrupting the flow of the others' rhetoric,) in most lifelike fashion. One almost catches the winged syllogisms as they fly from lip to lip. We are almost drawn into the dispute ourselves, and are disposed to ventilate a score of outrageous paradoxes, for the mere satisfaction of contradicting such wiseacres. These heads are painted with a vivacity and an energy worthy of the Dutch great masters of the seventeenth century. In fact, there is something caught, no doubt, from the early schools of Flanders; for Dominic was the contemporary of the glorious masters protected by Philip the Good of Burgundy,—the only good thing he ever did in his life,—the man who opened the road for that long triumphant procession which for two centuries was to march through the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. There is no want, however, of historical dignity in these compositions. Each one has a stately rhythm, an harmonious grandeur of conception and execution, which, in connection with the lifelike fidelity and unaffected beauty of the heads, stamp their creator as a dramatic genius of a higher order than any of his contemporaries.
The Madonna of Cimabue, which hangs at the end of the south transept, resembles the one in the Academy. In place of the powerful saints' heads, is a group of angels of much grace and purity, supporting a shrine. This picture is considered a bolder and more untrammelled composition than the other. It is the world-renowned masterpiece of the thirteenth century, which all Florence turned out in procession to honor when it left the painter's hands; and which even Charles of Anjou, dripping in blood, and stalking through the scenes of that great tragedy whose catastrophe was the Sicilian vespers, paused on his way to admire.
In this church, which the admirers of Brunelleschi must study, are two small, but most exquisite masterpieces of Lippo Lippi. All the works of this most profligate of friars are tender and holy beyond description. They have also that distinguishing charm of the Florentine school of the fifteenth century,naïveté,—a fresh, gentle, and loving appreciation of the beautiful and the natural. It is evident that the Fra went through the world with his eyes open, looking for beauty wherever it was visible; and in his works, at least, there is no lingering trace of Byzantinism. A scholar of Masaccio, of a far inferior mind both to Masaccio and Maselino, and without the force of hand of either, he is still, more than both together, the founder of the natural school of Florence.
One of his pictures is in this church,—a Madonna with the child on her lap. The Christ is leaning forward and playing with a cross which the infant Saint John holds in his hand. Nothing can be more suggestive or touching than this prophetic infantile movement. Although the color of the picture is rather feeble and washy, as frequently may be observed of Lippo's paintings, the whole expression is bathed in purity and piety. Yet the Fra was such an incorrigiblemauvais sujet, that when he was employed to decorate thepalazzoof Cosmo Vecchio, thePater Patriæwas obliged to lock up his artist in the chamber which he was painting. The holy man was not easily impounded, however; for he cut his bedclothes into strips, let himself into the street from an upper-story window, and departed on his usual adventures; so that it was weeks before Cosmo could hear of his painter again.
[Concluded in the next Number.]
Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,Our hearts, in glad surprise,To higher levels rise.
The tidal wave of deeper soulsInto our inmost being rolls,And lifts us unawaresOut of all meaner cares.
Honor to those whose words or deedsThus help us in our daily needs,And by their overflowRaise us from what is low!
Thus thought I, as by night I readOf the great army of the dead,The trenches cold and damp,The starved and frozen camp,—
The wounded from the battle-plain,In dreary hospitals of pain,The cheerless corridors,The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of miseryA lady with a lamp I seePass through the glimmering gloomAnd flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss,The speechless sufferer turns to kissHer shadow, as it fallsUpon the darkening walls.
As if a door in heaven should beOpened, and then closed suddenly,The vision came and went,The light shone and was spent.
On England's annals, through the longHereafter of her speech and song,That light its rays shall castFrom portals of the past.
A lady with a lamp shall standIn the great history of the land,A noble type of good,Heroic womanhood.
Nor even shall be wanting hereThe palm, the lily, and the spear,The symbols that of yoreSaint Filomena bore.
The sun that shines on eastern Massachusetts, specially on buttercups and dandelions, and providentially on potatoes, looks down on no greener fields in these days than it saw in the spring of 1775, fenced in and fenced off by the zigzag snake-fences of 'Zekiel Parsons's farm.
"About this time," as almanacs say, young orchards were misty with buds, red maples on the highway shone in the clear light, and a row of bright tin pans at the shed door of the farm-house testified to a sturdy arm and skilful hand within,—arm and hand both belonging to no less a person than Miss Sally, 'Zekiel Parsons's only daughter, and the prettiest girl in Westbury; a short, sturdy, rosy little maid, with hair like a ripe chestnut shell, bright blue eyes full of mischief, and such a sunny, healthy, common-sense character, one is almost afraid to tell of it, it is so out of date now.
But of what use is it to describe her? How can I impress upon moderns how enlivening and refreshing was her aspect, as she spun, or scoured pans, in a linsey-woolsey petticoat and white short gown, wearing her pretty curls in a crop? George Tucker knew it all without telling; and so did half a dozen of the Westbury boys, who haunted the picket fence round 'Zekiel's garden every moonlight night in summer, or scraped their feet by the half hour together on his door-step in winter evenings. Sally was a belle; she knew it and liked it, as every honest girl does;—and she would have been a belle without the aid of her father's wide farm and pine-tree shillings; for she was fresh and lovely, with a spice of coquetry, but a true woman's heart beneath it all.
It was very hard to discover whom Sally Parsons favored among her numerous beaux. Her father seriously inclined to George Tucker; not because he was rich,—for 'Zekiel had not arrived at fashionable principles,—but because he was honest, kind-hearted, and reliable; but as yet Sally showed no decided preference; time and the hour were near, but not in sight.
One Sunday night, early in April, after the nine o'clock bell had scattered Sally's admirers far and wide, and old 'Zekiel sat by the chimney corner, watching his sister, Aunt Poll, rake up the rest of the hickory log in the ashes, while he rubbed away sturdily at his feet, holding in one hand the blue yarn stockings, "wrought by no hand, as you may guess," but that of Sally; the talk, that had momentarily died away, began again, and with a glance at Long Snapps,—a lank, shrewd-faced old sailor, who, to use his own speech, had "cast anchor 'longside of an old ship-met fur a spell, bein' bound fur his own cabin up in Lenox,"—'Zekiel spoke after this wise:—
"I expect, Long, you sailors hev a drefful hard, onsartain time navigatin', don't ye?"
"Well, skipper! that are depen's on folks. I don't calk'late to hev no sort of a hard time, ef I don't get riled with it; but these times I doo rile easy."
"What onsettles ye, Snapps?"
"Well, there's a squall to wind'ard, skipper; 'ta'n't no cat's-paw neither; good no-no-east, ef it's a flaw. And you landlubbers are a-goin' to leeward, some on ye."
"You don't say! what be you a hintin' at?"
"Well, there's a reel blow down to Bostin, Zekle; there's no more gettin' out o' harbour with our old sloop; she's ben an' gone, an' got some 'tarnal lawyer's job spliced to her bows, an' she's laid up to dry; but that's a pesky small part o' judgment. Bostin's full o' them Britishers, sech as scomfishkated the Susan Jane, cos our skipper done suthin' he hedn't oughter, or didn't do suthin' he hed oughter; and I tellyewthe end o' things is nigh about comin' on here!"
Sally, in the chimney corner, heard Long Snapps with open eyes, and hitching her wooden chair nearer, inquired solemnly,—
"What do you mean, Mister Snapps? Is the end of the world comin' here?"
"Bless your pooty little figger-head, Sally! I don't know as 'tis, but suthin' nigh about as bad is a-comin. Them Britishers is sot out for to hev us under hatches, or else walk the plank; and they're darned mistook, ef they think men is a-goin' to be steered blind, and can't blow up the cap'en no rate. There a'n't no man in Ameriky but what's got suthin' to fight for, afore he'll gin in to sech tyrints; and it'll come to fightin', yet, afore long!"
"Oh my! oh goody! the land's sakes! yew don't mean ter say that, Long?" wofully screeched Aunt Poll, whose ideas of war were derived in great measure from the tattered copy of Josephus extant in the Parsons family; and who was at present calculating the probable effect of a battering-ram on their back buttery, and thinking how horrid it would be to eat up Uncle 'Zekiel in case of famine,—even after long courses of rats and dogs.
"Well, I dew, Aunt Poll; there'll be some poppin' an' stickin' done in these parts, afore long!"
"The Lord deliver us! an' the rest on't!" devoutly ejaculated Poll, whose piety exceeded her memory; whereat 'Zekiel, pulling on the other blue stocking that had hung suspended in his fingers, while the sailor discoursed, exhorted a little himself.
"Well, the Lord don't deliver nobody, without they wriggle for themselves pretty consider'ble well fust. This a'n't the newest news to me; I've been expectin' on't a long spell, an' I've talked consider'ble with Westbury folks about it; and there a'n't nobody much, round about here, but what'll stand out agin the Britishers, exceptin' Tucker's folks; they're desp'rit for Church an' King; they tell as ef the Lord gin the king a special license to set up in a big chair an' rewl creation; an' they think it's perticular sin to speak as though he could go 'skew anyhow. Now I believe the Lord lets folks find out what He does, out o' Scriptur; and I han't found nothin' yet to tell about kings bein' better than their neighbours, and it don't look as ef this king was so clever as common. I s'pose you ha'n't heerd what our Colony Congress is a-doin', hev ye, Snapps?"
"Well, no, I ha'n't. They was a-layin' to, last I heerd, so's to settle their course, I 'xpect they've heaved up an' let go by this, but I han't seen no signals."
"Dear me!" interrupted Sally, "a real war coming! and I a'n't any thing but a woman!"
Her cheeks and eyes glowed with fervent feeling, as she said this; and the old sailor, turning round, surveyed her with a grin of honest admiration.
"Well said, gal! but you're out o' your reckonin', ef you think women a'n't nothin' in war-time. I tellyew, them is the craft that sails afore the wind, and does the signallin' to all the fleet. When gals is full-rigged an' tonguey, they're reg'lar press-gangs to twist young fellers round, an' make 'em sail under the right colors. Stick to the ship, Miss Sally; give a heave at the windlass now'n then, an' don't let nary one o' them fellers that comes a buzzin' round you the hull time turn his back on Yankee Doodle; an' you won't never hanker to be a man, ef 'tis war-time!"
Sally's eyes burned bluer than before. "Thank you kindly, Mister Snapps. I'm obleeged to you for putting the good thought into my head. (If I don't pester George Tucker! the plaguy Tory!)"
This parenthesis was mental, and Sally went off to bed with a busy brain; but the sleep of youth and health quieted it; and if she dreamed of George Tucker in regimentals, I am afraid they were of flagrant militia scarlet;—the buff and blue were not distinctive yet. However, for the next week Sally heard enough revolutionary doctrine to revive her Sunday-night enthusiasm; the flame of "successful rebellion" had spread; the country began to stir and hum ominously; people assembled in groups, on corners, by church steps, around tavern-doors, with faces full of portent and expectance; ploughs stood idly in the fields; and the raw-boned horses, that should of right have dragged the reluctant share through heavy clay and abounding stones, now, bestridden by breathless couriers, scoured the country hither and yon, with news, messages, and orders from those who had taken the right to order out of the hands of sleek and positive officials.
Nor were Westbury people the last to wake up in the generalréveille. Everybody in the pretty, tranquil village, tranquil now no more, declared themselves openly on one side or the other;—Peter Tucker and his son George for the king, of course; and this open avowal caused a sufficiently pungent scene in Miss Sally Parsons's keeping-room the very next Sunday night, when the aforesaid George, in company with several of his peers, visited the farm-house for the laudable purpose of "sparkin'" Miss Sally.
There were three other youths there, besides George; all stout for the Continental side of the question, and full of eager but restrained zeal; ready to take up arms at a moment's notice; equally ready to wait for the ripened time. Of such men were those armies made up that endured with a woman's patience and fought with a man's fury, righting a great wrong as much by moral as by physical strength, and going to death for the right, when death, pitiless and inevitable, stared them in the face.
Long Snapps had been, in his own phrase, "weather-bound" at Westbury, and was there still, safe in the chimney-corner, his shrewd face puckered with thought and care, his steady old heart full of resolute bravery, and longing for the time to come; flint and steel ready to strike fire on the slightest collision. On the other side of the hearth from Snapps sat Zekle in his butternut-colored Sunday suit; the four young men ranged in a grim row of high-backed wooden chairs; Sally, blooming as the roses on her chintz gown, occupying one end of the settle, while Aunt Poll filled the rest of that institution with her ample quilted petticoat and paduasoy cloak, trying hard to keep her hands still, in their unaccustomed idleness,—nay, if it must be told, surreptitiously keeping up a knitting with the fingers, in lieu of the accustomed needles and yarn.
An awful silence reigned after the preliminary bows and scrapes had been achieved,—first broken by George Tucker, who drew from under his chair a small basket of red-cheeked apples and handed them to Aunt Poll.
"Well, now, George Tucker!" exclaimed the benign spinster, "you dew beat all for sass out o' season! Kep 'em down sullar, I expect?"
"Yes'm, our sullar's very dry."
"Well, it hed oughter. What kind be they?"
"English pippins, ma'am."
"Dew tell! be you a-goin to hev one, Sally?"
"No, Aunt Poll! I don't want any thin' English 'round!"
The three young men grinned and chuckled. George Tucker turned red.
"Hooray for you, Sally!" sung out old Snapps. "You're a three-decker, ef ever there was 'un!"
Again George reddened, fidgeted on his chair, and at last said, in a disturbed, but quite distinct voice,—
"I think the apples are good, Miss Sally, if the name don't suit you."
"The name's too bad to be good, sir!" retorted Sally, with a decided sniff and toss of the head. Old Zekle gave a low laugh and interfered.
"You see, George Tucker, these here times is curus! It wakes up the wimmen folks to hev no tea, nor no prospects of peace an' quiet, so's to make butter an' set hens."
"Oh, father!" burst out Sally, "do you think that's all that ails women? I wouldn't care if I eat samp forever, and had nothing but saxifrax tea; but I can't stand by cool, and see men driven like dumb beasts by another man, if he has got a crown, and never be let speak for themselves!"
Sally's logic was rather confused, but George got at the idea as fast as was necessary.
"If 'twas a common man, Miss Sally; but a king's set up on high by theLord, and we ought to obey what He sets over us."
"I don't see where in Scriptur you get that idee, George," retorted Zekle.
"Well, it says in one place you're to obey them that has the rule over you, sir."
"So it do; but ef the king ha'n't got no rewl over us, (an' it looks mighty like it jes' now,) why, I don't see's we're bound to mind him!"
This astute little sophism confounded poor George for a minute, during which Sally began to giggle violently, and flirt in her rustic fashion with the three rebels in a row. At length George, recovering his poise and clear-sightedness, resumed,—
"But he did rule over us, Mister Parsons, and I can't see how it's right to rebel."
"There don't everythin' come jest square about seein' things," interposed Long Snapps; "folks hed better steer by facts sometimes, than by yarns. It's jest like v'yagin'; yew do'no' sumtimes what's to pay with a compass; it'll go all p'ints to once; mebbe somebody's got a hatchet near by, or some lubber's throwed a chain down by the binnacle, or some darned thing's got inside on't, or it's shipped a sea an' got rusted; but there's allers the Dipper an' the North Star; they're allers true to their bearin's, and you can't go to Davy Jones's locker for want of a light'us so long's they're ahead. I calk'late its jes' so about this king-talk; orders is very well when they a'n't agin common sense an' the rights o' natur; but you see, George Tucker, folks will go 'cordin to natur an' reason, ef there's forty parlamints an' kings in tow. Natur's jest like a no'west squall; you can't do nothin' but tack ag'inst it; and no men is goin' to stan' still and see the wind taken out o' their sails, an' their liberty flung to sharks, without one mutiny to know why!"
"No!" burst out Sally, who had stopped flirting, and been listening with soul and body to Long; "and no man, thatisa man, will go against the right and the truth just because the wrong is strongest!"
This little feminine insult was too much for George Tucker, particularly as he had not the least idea how its utterance burned Sally's lips, and made her heart ache. He got up from his chair with a very bitter look on his handsome face.
"I see," said he, quite coldly, "I am likely to be scarce welcome here. I believe the king is my master, made so by the Lord, and I think it is my honest duty to obey him. It hurts me to part otherwise than kind with friends; but I wish you a good night, and better judgment."
There was something so manly in George's speech, that, but for its final fling and personality, every man in the room would have crowded round him to shake hands; but what man ever coolly heard his judgment impeached?
Sally swallowed a great round sob; but being, like all women, an actress in her way, bowed as calmly to Mr. George as if he only said adieu, after an ordinary call.
Aunt Poll snuffled, and followed George to the door; Uncle Zekle drew himself up straight, and looked after him, his clear blue eyes sparkling with two rays,—one of honest patriotic wrath, one of affection and regret for George; while Long, from the corner, eyed all with a serpent's wisdom in his gaze, oracularly uttering, as the door shut,—
"Well, that 'are feller is good grit!"
"All the worse for us!" growled Eliashib Sparks, the biggest of the three, surprising Sally into a little hysterical laugh, and surprised himself still more at this unexpected sequence to his remark.
"Pooty bad! George is a clever fellow!" ejaculated Zekle. "He han't got the rights on't, but I think he'll come round by'n by."
"I do'no'," said Long, meditatively; "he's pooty stiff, that 'are feller. He's sot on dooty, I see; an' that means suthin', when a man that oughter be called a man sez it. Wimmin-folks, now, don't sail on that tack. When a gal sets to talkin' about her dooty, it's allers suthin' she wants ter do and han't got no grand excuse for't. Ye never see a woman't didn't get married for dooty yet; there a'n't nary one on 'em darst to say they wanted ter."
"Oh! Mister Long!" exclaimed Sally.
"Well, Sally, it's nigh about so; you han't lived a hunderd year. Some o' these days you'll get to know yer dooty."
Sally turned red, and the three young men sniggered. Forgive the word, gentle and fair readers! it means what I mean, and no other word expresses it; let us be graphic and die!
Just then the meeting-house bell rang for nine o'clock; and every man got up from his seat, like a son of Anak, bowed, scraped, cleared his throat to say "Goodnight," did say something like it, and left.
"Well, Sally, I swear you're good at signallin'," broke out Long, as soon as the youths were fairly out of sight and sound; "you hev done it for George Tucker!"
Sally gave no answer, but a brand from the back-log fell, blazed up in a shaft of rosy flame, and showed a suspicious glitter on the girl's round, wholesome cheek. Aunt Poll had gone to bed; Zekle was going the nightly rounds of his barns, to see to the stock; Long Snapps was aware of opportunity, the secret of success.
"Sally," said he, "is that feller sparkin' you?"
Sally laughed a little, and something, perhaps the blaze, reddened her face.
"I don't know," said the pretty hypocrite, demurely.
"H'm! well, I do," answered Long; "and you a'n't never goin' to take up with a Tory? don't think it's yer dooty, hey?"
"No indeed!" flashed Sally. "Do you think I'd marry a Britisher? I'd run away and live with the Indians first."
"Pooty good! pooty good! you're calk'lating to make George into a rebel, I 'xpect?"
Long was looking into the fire when he said this; he did not see Sally's look of rage and amazement at his unpleasant penetration.
"I'm sure I don't care what George Tucker thinks," said she, with a toss of her curly head.
"H'm!" uttered Long, meditatively, "lucky! I 'xpect he carries too many guns to be steered by a woman; 'tis a kinder pity you a'n't a man, Sally; mebbe you'd argufy him round then; it's plain as the Gulf you can't crook his v'yage; he's too stiff for wimmin-folks, that is a fact!"
Oh, Long Snapps! Long Snapps! how many wives, in how many ports, went to the knowledge of feminine nature that dictated that speech? Sally set her lips. From that hour George Tucker was a doomed man; but she said nothing more audible than "Goodnight." Long looked at her, as she lit the tallow dip by the fire, and chuckled when he heard her shut the milk-room door in the safe distance. He was satisfied.
The next afternoon, Sally was weeding onions in the garden;—heroines did, in those days;—the currant-bushes had but just leafed out; so George Tucker, going by, saw her; and she, who had seen him coming before she began to weed, accidentally of course, looked up and gave him a very bright smile. That was the first spider-thread, and the fly stepped into it with such a thrill!
Of course he stopped, and said,—
"What a pleasant day!"—the saving phrase of life. Then Sally said something he couldn't hear, and he leaped the low fence without being asked, rather than request her to raise her voice; he was so considerate! Next he remembered, just as he turned to go away, that there were some white violets down in the meadow, that Sally always liked. Couldn't she spend time to walk down there across lots and get some? Sally thought the onions could not be left. Truth to tell, her heart was in her mouth. She had been playing with edge-tools; but just then she smelt a whiff of smoke from Long Snapps's pipe, and the resolve of last night came back; her face relented, and George, seeing it, used his utmost persuasiveness; so the result was, that Sally washed her hands at the well, and away they went, in the most serene silence, over fences, grass-lots, and ditches, through bits of woodland, and fields of winter-green, till they reached the edge of the great meadow, and sat down on a log to rest. It was rather a good place for that purpose. An old pine had fallen at the feet of a majestic cluster of its brethren, so close that the broad column of one made a natural back to part of the seat. The ground was warm, dry sand, strown with the fine dead leaves of past seasons, brown and aromatic. A light south wind woke the voices of every bough above, and the melancholy susurrus rose and fell in delicate cadences; while beyond the green meadow, Westbury River, a good-sized brook, babbled and danced as if there were no pine-tree laments in the world.
I believe the air, and the odor, and the crying wind drove the violets quite out of both the two heads that drooped silently over that pine log. If Sally had been nervous or poetical, she would have been glad to recollect them; but no such morbidness invaded her healthy soul. She sat quite still till George said, in a suppressed and rather broken tone,—
"I was sorry to vex you last night, Sally! I could not be sorry for any thing else."
"You did grieve me very much, Mister George," said Sally, affecting a little distance in her address, but sufficiently tender in manner.
"Well, I suppose you don't see it the way I do," returned George; "and I am very sorry, for I had rather please you than any body else."
This was especially tender, and he possessed himself of Sally's little red hand, unaware or careless that it smelt of onions; but it was withdrawn very decidedly.
"I think you take a strange way of showing your liking!" sniffed the damsel.
George sat astounded. Another tiny spider-thread stopped the fly; a subtle ray of blue sped sideways out of Sally's eye, that meant,—"I don't object to be liked."
"I wish with all my heart I knew any good way to please you," he fervently ejaculated.
"Ishould think any way to please people was a good way," retorted Sally, saying more with her eyes than with her voice,—so much more, that in fact this fly was fast. A little puff of wind blew off Sally's bonnet; she looked shy, flushed, lovely. George stood up on his feet, and took his hat off.
"Sally!" said he, in the deepest notes of his full, manly voice, "I love you very much indeed; will you be my wife?"
Sally was confounded. I rejoice to say she was quite confounded; but she was made of revolutionary stuff, and what just now interfered with her plans and schemes was the sudden discovery how very much indeed she loved George Tucker; a fact she had not left enough margin for in her plot.
But, as I said, she was made of good metal, and she answered very low,—
"I do like you, George; but I never will marry a Britisher and a Tory."
A spasm of real anguish distorted the handsome face, bent forward to listen.
"Do you mean that, Sally? Can't you love me because we don't think alike?"
Sally choked a little; her tones fell to a whisper. George had to sit down close to her to hear.
"I didn't say I didn't love you, George!"—A blissful pause of a second; then in a clear, cold voice,—"But my mind's set. I can't marry a Britisher and a Tory, if I died sayin' so."
George gasped.
"And I cannot turn traitor and rebel, Sally. I cannot. I love you better than any thing in the world; but I can't do a wicked thing; no, not even for you."
He was pale as death. Sally's secret heart felt proud of him, and never had she been so near repenting of her work in the good cause before; but she was resolute.
"Very well!" replied she, coolly, "if you prefer the king to me, it's not my fault; when your side beats, you can take your revenge!"
The thorough injustice of this speech roused her lover's generous indignation.
"If you can think that way of me, Sally, it is better for us both to have me go! Good night!" And away strode the loyal fellow, never looking back to see his sweetheart have a good cry on the pine-log, and then an equally comfortable fit of laughter; for she knew very well how restless Mister George would be, all alone by himself, and how much it meant that they both loved each other, and both knew it.
Sally's heart was stout. A sort of Yankee Evangeline, she would not have gone after Gabriel; she would have staid at home and waited for him to the end of time; doing chores and mending meanwhile, but unmarried, in the fixed intention of being her lover's sixth wife possibly, but his wife at last.
So she went home and got supper, strained and skimmed milk, set a sponge for bread, and slept all night like a dormouse. George Tucker never went to bed.
"Hooraw!" roared Long Snapps, trundling in to dinner, the next day; "they're wakin' up down to Bostin! Good many on 'em's quit the town. Them 'are Britishers is a-gettin' up sech a breeze; an' they doo say the reg'lars is comin' out full sail, to cair' off all the amminition in these parts, fear o' mutiny 'mongst the milishy!"
"Come along!" shouted Zekle, "let 'em come! like to see 'em takin' our powder an' shot 'thout askin'! Guess they'll hear thunder, ef they stick their heads inter a hornet's nest."
"Dredful suz!" exclaimed Aunt Poll, pulling turnips out of the pot with reckless haste, and so scalding her brown fingers emphatically; "be they a-comin' here? will they fetch along the batterin' rams?"
"Thunderan'dry trees," ejaculated Zekle, "what does the woman—"; but at that instant Long made for the door, and flung it open, thereby preventing explanations.
"Goin' to Concord, George?" shouted he to George Tucker, who in a one-horse wagon and his Sunday-best clothes was driving slowly past.
"No! goin' to Lexington, after corn. Can I do anything for you?"
"Well, no, I 'xpect not. When be you a-comin' back?"
"I don't know."
"Well, go long! good-luck to ye; keep to wind'ard o' squalls, George."
Long nodded, and George drove on. That day the whole village of Westbury was in an uproar. News had come from Boston that the British were about to send out forces to possess themselves of all the military stores in the country, and forestall rebellion by rendering it helpless. From every corner of every farm and village, young men and old mustered; from every barn, horses of all sizes and descriptions were driven out and saddled; rusty muskets, balls of all shapes and of any available metal that would melt and run, disabled broadswords, horse-pistols, blunderbusses, whatever wore any resemblance to a weapon, or could be rendered serviceable to that end,—all were hunted out, cleaned, mended, and laid ready;—an array that might have made a properly drilled and equipped army smile in contempt, but whose deficiencies were more than supplied by iron sinews, true blood, resolve and desperate courage.
Sally and Aunt Poll partook the gale of patriotism. They scoured the "ole queen's arm" to brilliancy; they ran bullets by the hour; baked bread and brewed Spring beer, with no more definite purpose than a general conviction that men must and would eat, as the men of their house certainly did, in the intervals of repairing harness, filling powder-horns and shot-belts, trotting over to the tavern after news, and coming back to retail it, till Aunt Poll began to imagine she heard the distant strokes of a battering-ram, and rushing out in terror to assure herself, discovered it to be only Sam Pequot, an old Indian, who, with the apathy of his race, was threshing in the barn.
Aunt Poll took down Josephus to refresh her memory, and actually drew a laugh from Sally's grave lips by confiding to her this extreme horror of the case; a laugh she forgave, since Sally reassured her by recommending to her notice the fact that Jerusalem had stone walls that were more difficult to climb than stone fences. As for Sally, she thought of George, all day of George, all night; and while the next day deepened toward noon, was still thinking of him, when in rushed Long Snapps, tarpaulin in hand, full of news and horror.
"I swan! we've got it now!" said he. "Them darned Britishers sot out fur Concord last night, to board our decks an' plunder the magazine; the boys heerd on't, and they was ready over to Lexin'ton, waitin' round the meetin'us; they stood to't, an' that old powder monkey Pitcairn sung out to throw down their arms, darned rebels; an' cause they didn't muster to his whistle, he let fly at 'em like split; an' there's some killed an' more wounded; pretty much all on 'em our folks, though they did giv the reg'lars one round o' ball afore they run."
"Hooray!" shouted Zekle; "that's the talk; guess they'll sing smaller next time!"
"They'll do more'n that, Zekle," responded Long; "this a'n't but the beginnin' o' sorrers, as Parson Marsh sez, sez he; there'll be a hull gulf stream o' blood, afore them darned reg'lars knows the color on't well enough to lay their course."
Sally glided past Long, and plucked him by the sleeve, unseen by the rest. He followed her into the shed. She was ghastly pale. "Long," said she, hurriedly, "did you hear who? was anybody shot?"
"Bless ye, gal! a hull school on 'em was shot; there wasn't many went to the bottom, though; han't heerd no names."
"But George?" gasped Sally; "he went to Lexington yesterday."
"Well, I am took aback!" growled Long. "I swear I never thought on't. I'll go see."
"Come back and tell me?" whispered Sally.
"Lord-a-massy, yes, child! jest as soon's I know myself trewly! but I shan't know nothin' more till sundown, I expect. Desire Trowbridge is a-ridin' post; he'll come through 'bout that time with news."
Long did not come back for several hours, some time after sundown, when he found Sally in the shed, waiting for him. She saw the news in his face. "Dead?" said she, clutching at the old sailor's hand.
"No! no! he a'n't slipt his moorins' yet, but he is badly stove about the figger-head; he's got a ball through his head somewhere, an' another in his leg; and he a'n't within hail; don't hear no speakin'-trumpets; fact is, Sally, he's in for the dockyard a good spell, ef he a'n't broke up hull and all."
"Who shot him?" whispered Sally.
"That's the best on't, gal; he's took an' tacked beautiful; he went into port at Lexin'ton yesterday, and heerin' there all sides o' the story, an' how them critters sot up for to thieve away our stores, he got kinder riled at the hull crew, like a common-sense feller, an' when Pitcairn come along, George finally struck his colors, run up a new un to the mast-head, borrered a musket, an' jined the milishy, an' got shot by them cussed reg'lars fur his pains; an ef he doos die, I'll hev a figger cut on a stun myself, to tell folks he was a rebel and an honest man arter all."
"Where is he?" asked Sally in another whisper.
"He's to the tavern there in Lexin'ton. There a'n't nobody along with him, cause his father's gone to Bostin to see 'bout not gettin' scomfishkated, or arter a protection, or sumthin."
"And his mother is dead," said Sally, slowly. "Long! I must go to Lexington to-night, on the pillion, and you must go with me. Father's got too much rheumatiz to ask it of him."
"Well!" said Long, after a protracted stare at Sally,—"wimmin is the oddest craft that ever sailed. I swan, when I sight 'em I don't know a main-top-sail from a flyin' jib! Goin' to take care o' George, be ye?"
"Yes," said Sally, meekly.
Long rolled the inseparable quid in his cheek, and slyly drawled out, "W-ell, if ye must, ye must! I a'n't a-goin' ter stand in the way of yer dooty!"
Sally was too far away to hear, or she might have smiled.
Uncle Zeke and Aunt Poll were to be told and coaxed into assent;—no very hard task; for George Tucker was a favorite of 'Zekiel's, and now he had turned rebel, the only grudge he had ever owed him was removed; he was only too glad to help him in any way. Aunt Poll's sole trouble was lest Sally should take cold. The proprieties, those gods of modern social worship, as well as their progenitors, the improprieties, were unknown to these simple souls; they did things because they were right and wrong. They were not nice according to Swift's definition, nor proper in the mode of the best society, but they were good and pure; are the disciples and lecturers of the 'proper' equally so?
Sally's simple preparations were quickly made. By nine o'clock she was safe on the pillion behind Long Snapps, folded in Aunt Poll's red joseph, and provided with saddle-bags full of comforts and necessaries. The night was dark, but Sally did not feel any fear; not Tam O'Shanter's experience could have shaken the honest little creature's courage, when George filled the perspective before her. The way was lonely; the hard road echoed under the old cart-horse's hoofs; many a black and desolate tract of forest lay across their twenty miles' ride; more than once the tremulous shriek of a screech-owl smote ominously on Sally's wakeful sense, and quavered away like a dying groan; more than once a mournful whippoorwill cried out in pain and expostulation, and in the young leaves a shivering wind foreboded evil;—but they rode on. Presently Sally's drooping head rose erect; she listened; she laid her hand on the bridle. "Stop, Long!" said she. "I hear horses' feet, and shouts."
"Look here!" said Long, after a moment's listening, "there's breakers ahead, Sally; let's heave to in these 'ere piny bushes side o' the track; it's pitch dark, mebbe they'll go by."
He reined the horse from the road, and forced him into a group of young hemlocks, which hid them entirely from passers by. Just as he was well ensconced, a company of British cavalry rode up, broken and disorderly enough, cursing and swearing at the Yankees, and telling to unseen ears a bloody story of Concord and its men. Sally trembled, but it was with indignation, not fear, and as soon as the last hoof-beat died away, she urged Long forward; they regained the road, and made their way at once to George in Lexington.
Is it well to paint, even in failing words, such emotions as Sally fought with and conquered in that hour? Whoever has stood by the bed of a speechless, hopeless, unconscious human being, in whom their own soul lived and suffered, will know these pangs without my interpretation. Whoever knows them not need not so anticipate. If Sally had been less a woman, I might have had more to say; but she was only a woman, and loved George, so she went on in undisturbed self-control, and untiring exertion, to nurse him.
The doctor said he could not live; Long said he was booked for Davy Jones; the minister prayed for "our dying brother";—but Sally said he should live, and he did. After weeks of patient care he knew her; after more weeks he spoke,—words few, but precious; and when accumulating months brought to the battlefields of America redder stains than even patriotic blood had splashed upon their leaves,—when one nation began to hope, and another to fear, both hope and fear had shaken hands with Sally and said good-bye. She was married to George Tucker, and, with the prospect of a crippled husband for life, was perfectly happy; too happy not to laugh, when, the day after their wedding, sitting on the door-sill of the old Westbury homestead, with George and Long Snapps, George said, "Would you ever have come to take care of me, Sally, if I'd 'a' been shot on the side of the reg'lars?"
Sally looked at him, and then looked away.
"I 'xpect she'd 'a' done her dooty," said Long Snapps dryly; and Sally laughed.
In a number of the "Illustrated News," not long since, there was what professed to be a view of Manchester. It represented a thousand tall factory-chimneys rising out of a gray mist, and surmounted by a heavy, drifting cloud of smoke. And in truth a view not very different from this was presented to any one who, standing at the entrance of the Palace of the Exhibition of Art Treasures, turned and looked back before going within. Two miles off lies the body of the great workshop-city, already stretching its begrimed arms in the direction of the Exhibition. The vast flat expanse of brick walls, diversified by countless chimney and occasional steeples, now and then interrupted by the insertion of a low shed or an enormous warehouse, offers no single object upon which the eye or the imagination can rest with pleasure. Such a view was never to be seen in the world before this century; a city built merely by trade, built for the home of labor, of machines, and of engines, and for the dwelling-place (one cannot call it the home) of crowds of human beings, whose value is, for the most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of forges and furnaces. Standing here, one may see the cloud of smoke, which waves in the wind like a pall over the city, slowly moving and settling down upon the land. One may almost hear the roar of the continual fires, the throb of the engines, the heavy beat of the trip-hammers, and the rattle of the spindles, by which the work of the world is done; and their noises, blended by the distance into one monotonous sound, seem like the voice of the restless, hard-working, unsettled spirit of gain. Manchester is built and is worked for profit, not for pleasure; beauty is driven away from her as a thing at variance with practical life; and even the sky above her and the fields around her yield only at rare moments and for short seasons those precious and gracious shows of beauty which are the free and blessed gift of love to all the world. Smoke, steam, coal-dust, blackened walls, and bare fields lie outside the Exhibition; and now let us go within.
The world could show no sharper and more affecting contrast. Outside, all suggests the competitions and struggles of trade, the crowded street, the bustle of the exchange, the cold and dry elements of purely unimaginative life. Inside, all suggests the quietness and composure of solitary and delightful labor, the silence of the studio, the resort to nature, and the frequenting of the springs of poetry. From the present, one is suddenly transferred to the past; from the near, to the remote. In place of the blank, black factory wall, there is the low wall of some Italian Campo Santo, its painted sides more precious than marbles or gold could have made them; in place of the dull and heavy stone of the Exchange, the glowing mosaics of some southern cathedral; in place of the factory bell and the rush into the steaming and dirty workroom, the bell of a convent on Fiesole, and the slow walk through its cool cloisters; in place of the dead files of uniform ugly houses, Venetian palaces, with the water at their base, reflecting the colors which Giorgione and Titian, housepainters at Venice, left upon their stones; in place of the racket of the street, the quiet greenness of an English lane, or the inaccessible ice and glory of a far-off mountain summit; in place of the burnt waste of fields covered with ashes and coal-dust, the burning stretch of the desert with the Sphinx looking out over it century after century; in place of the shower coming down through the dirty air to wash the dirty roofs, a storm breaking over the sea-shore rocks, or beating down on the broken wreck; instead of the drabbled calico of the factory girl and her face old before its time, the satins of Vandyck's beauties, and the fair looks of Sir Peter Lely's heroines; instead of Manchester mayors and masters of factories, Tintoret's noble Venetian counsellors and doges, and Titian's Shakspearian men. It was a bold thought thus to bring pictures and statues into one great collection at Old Trafford, and to set off the art of the world against the manufactures of Manchester.
The Exhibition building was admirably designed for its purpose. Its plan is simple, and not unpleasing, although the proportions, which its object required, were such as to prevent any attempt at grand architectural effect. The general arrangement of the interior is easily understood, even without the aid of a ground-plan. The chief entrance leads into a nave, which has on each side an aisle of less height, separated from it by a wall. The wall is broken by two openings, through which is the passage from nave to aisle, or aisle to nave. The nave and aisles end in a transept, and behind the transept are two small saloons, and a large hall or aisle crossing the building transversely and forming its western end. A gallery runs round the transept, and another crosses the nave at its eastern end. This is the general arrangement. The walls of the nave or central hall are occupied by the gallery of British portraits, and between the iron columns that support the roof are set pieces of sculpture, and the cases containing the precious collection of Ornamental Art, (works of the minor arts, as they might be called,) which has been brought together from private and public sources, and is quite unrivalled in its completeness. The southern aisle contains the main collection of pictures by ancient, foreign masters; while the opposite aisle is filled with the works of the British school. The transept, being chiefly given up to arrangements for an orchestra, contains below little but a collection of busts, but its galleries are occupied with the collection of miniatures, a most admirable and extensive historical series of engravings, a large number of photographs, and a very precious collection of original drawings by the old masters. The saloon at the north end of the transept is filled with East Indian and Chinese tapestries, furniture, and works of ornamental design; while the opposite saloon continues the collection of paintings of ancient masters, being chiefly occupied with works from the gallery of the Marquis of Hertford, which he sent to the Exhibition on condition that they should be kept together. The hall that crosses the building at the western end is filled with a collection of water-color drawings.—Such, in brief, is an outline of the distribution of the treasures contained in this great palace of Art.
The first impression, on entering the nave, is that of the vast space filled with light and rich with color. The attention is not attracted to particular details. Separate objects are dwarfed in the long vista. The eye rests on nothing that is not precious, and is at first contented to wander rapidly from one object to another, without attempting to delay on any thing. Passing down the middle between the ordered files of statues, (all modern works, and few of them worthy of remark,) we enter from the transept the south nave, where the works of the foreign schools of painting are arranged for the most part in chronological order. This nave, like the opposite, is divided into three saloons and two vestibules. We are now in the first saloon. On the one side are the works of the earlier Italian masters, and on the other those of the masters of the earlier German and Flemish schools. And it is here that one observes the chief deficiency of the collection. The pictures which are here have been brought from the private galleries in which England is so rich. Many a famous country-house, full of historic and poetic associations, gains additional interest from its gallery of pictures or of marbles. Blenheim, Wilton House, Warwick Castle, have their old walls hung with pictures by Titian, Vandyck, and Holbein. Who does not remember, as one of his most delightful recollections of England,—delightful as all his recollections of that dear old Mother-land are, if he has really seen her,—who does not thus remember the drive from the little country town to the old family place, up the long avenue under its ancestral trees, the ferny brook crossed by the stone bridge with its carved balustrade, the deer feeding on the green slope of the open park or lying under some secular oak, the heavy white clouds casting their slow shadows on the broad lawn, the dark spreading cedars of Lebanon standing on the edge of the bright flower-garden,—the old house itself, with its quaint gables and oriels, the broad flight of steps leading to the wide door,—the cheerful reception from the prim, but good-natured housekeeper,—her pride in the great hall, and in the pleasant, home-like rooms, in Vandyck's portrait of the beautiful countess, and in Holbein's of the fifth earl,—the satisfaction with which she would point to the pictures and the marbles brought two centuries ago from Italy, now stopping before this to tell you that "it is considered a very improportionable Virgin by Parmigianino," and calling you to observe this old statue "of a couching Silenius wrapped in the skin of a Pantheon,"—and then, when the Rubens, and the Claude, and all the other pictures have been seen, her letting you pass, as a great favor, through the library with its well-filled oaken shelves, the gilding worn off the backs of many of its books by the love of successive generations;—who does not remember such scenes as these, and recall the glorious pictures from Florence, or from Venice, or from Antwerp, that enrich many an English country home?
It was, indeed, from such homes that the Manchester collection was, in great measure, brought together; and this being the case, it is not to be wondered at that it was difficult to form an historic sequence of pictures by which the course and progress of Art should be properly illustrated, or that many of the old pictures that hang on the walls of the Exhibition bear the names of greater masters than they deserve to be honored with. Nor is it strange that the earlier schools of Art should be but very scantily represented. The earlier painters did not do much work that would answer for the decoration of homes; their work was of a public, and, for the most part, a consecrated nature. The pictures of later centuries are more easily appreciated by those who have not made a thoughtful study of Art, and they have consequently been more loudly praised and more generally sought for. The later works have attractive qualities in which the earlier are often deficient, and it is not until very recently that the real beauty and value of these first pictures of the revival have been felt with any due appreciation. The masters of the fourteenth, and of the greater part of the fifteenth century, did not, as we have said, paint pictures simply as objects of beauty or for mere purposes of adornment, nor were those methods of painting then in use which have brought pictures into private homes and within private means. And so it happens that the schools of this period are not represented at Manchester in any fair proportion to the schools of the sixteenth century.
The two most important centuries of Art are not to be studied here. Of the six pictures, for instance, that profess to be by Giotto, the great head and master of Italian Art, there are but two from which even a faint impression of his style can be gained. There is nothing here which would enable one who had not seen his works in Italy to conceive a true idea of their character and merits. Giotto stands at the threshold of the fourteenth century, breaking open the door, so long barred up, that was to let men into the glories of the unseen world. The friend of Dante, he, as painter, stands side by side with the poet. In the midst of the tumults, the confusion, and violence of those bloody times, his soul rose above the discord of the world, his hand snapped the fetters of authority and tradition, and revealed by line and color the exalted visions of his imagination. Painting, with him, took its inspiration from religious faith, and spent itself in religious service. Whether at Padua, in the little withdrawn Arena chapel, or on the bare mountains at Assisi, in the great church of St. Francis, or at Naples, in the king's chapel, his frescos, though dimmed by the dust of five hundred years, blackened by the smoke of incense, abused by restorers, still show a power of imagination, a spirituality and tenderness of feeling, a simplicity and directness of treatment, which give them place among the most sacred and precious works that Art has yet produced. That quiet, solitary chapel of the Arena at Padua is one of the places most worthy of reverence in Italy; for in the pictures from the lives of the Virgin and the Saviour, that are painted upon its walls, there is the expression of such religious fervor, such faith and love, as Art has rarely or never reached in later times.
Nor is there at Manchester any picture by Duccio da Siena, the great, and, one may almost say, the worthy contemporary of Giotto, from which his power and feeling are to be well estimated. Like Giotto he struggled to free himself from the swathing-clothes in which the traditions of Byzantine Art had bound up the limbs and the imaginations of artists, and he succeeded in at last breaking loose. But the long restraint had impaired the power of all who were subjected to it; and as in the works of Giotto, so in the rarer works of Duccio, one often finds an effort after truth of expression, which is almost pathetic in its character, from its revealing the inefficiency of the hand to carry out the thought, and the resolute will striving half in vain to overcome the impediments of bad teaching and imperfect knowledge of the materials and limits of painting. It is this groping effort after truth which results often in thenaïverendering of details, and the quaintness of composition, which are so common in the works of these early masters; but the deep feeling of the artists penetrates through all, and thus even their awkward and imperfect drawing frequently produces a stronger effect, and seems a better rendering of nature, than the cold, unfeeling, academic accuracy of Bologna, or all the finished science of the eclectic schools.
In passing down through the century one finds lamentable omissions at Manchester. Fifty pictures, of which half at least have been restored, (that is to say, in part or wholly spoiled,) and half originally the work of inferior masters, do not represent the art of a century which was full of the glow of reawakening life, and which, as the spring covers the earth with flowers, covered Italy with cathedrals, campaniles, churches, baptisteries, and camposantos, and decorated their walls with sculpture and painting. Art was gaining gradually a knowledge of her own powers. Orgagna, the Michel Angelo of his time, (one of his pictures is at Manchester,) was opening a wider field for her progress; and ten years after his death Fra Angelico was born. He was a boy of fifteen years old when in 1402 Masaccio was born at Florence, and the brightness of the fifteenth century had begun.
There is one, among the four pictures ascribed to Fra Angelico in this collection, from which something of the heavenly purity, the sweetness, and the tenderness of this great and gentle master may be learned. It is a picture of the Last Judgment. Unfortunately, it has been much injured by time and by neglect; its brilliant colors have sunk and become dim,—those pure, clear colors which give to Fra Angelico's panel pictures the brilliancy of a missal illumination, and which reflect the purity and the clearness of his tranquil life and his reverential soul. It is no fanciful theory which connects the uses of color with moral qualities, and which from the coloring of a picture will deduce something of the moral character of its painter. Thus it is not only from the exquisite delicacy of form, the spirituality of expression, and the sweet, reverent fancy in attitude, of the angels from which Fra Angelico derived his name, but also from the brightness of their golden wings, from the deep glow of their crimson, or scarlet, or azure robes, and from the clear shining of the stars on their foreheads, that one learns that he deserved that name as characteristic of his temper and his life. Something of the influence of the cloister shows itself in most of his larger works; but if his vision was narrowed within convent walls, it did but pierce the more clearly into the regions of tranquillity and loveliness that lay above them.
With the end of the fifteenth century religion almost disappears from Art. John Bellini, dying ninety years old in 1516, was the last and one of the greatest of the long line of artists who had loved Art as the means granted them of serving God upon earth. The manly vigor of his conceptions, the tender and holy purity of his imagination, the delicate strength of his fancy, are not to be discovered in the few pictures that bear his name at Manchester. His pictures are to be fairly seen only at Venice, where, in out-of-the-way churches, over tawdry altars, his colors gleam undimmed by time, and the faces of his Virgins look down with a still celestial sweetness. But there is one picture here, by a Venetian contemporary of John Bellini, before which we shall do well to pause. It is a St. Catharine, by Cima da Conegliano. It is the picture of a noble woman, full of fortitude, serenity, and faith. The richness of the color of her dress, her calm dignity, the composure of her attitude, recall to mind and make her the worthy companion of the beautiful St. Barbara of the church of Santa Maria Formosa. It is well to look at her, for we are coming to those days when such saints as these were no longer painted; but in their places whole tribes of figures with faces twisted into every trick of sentimental devotion, imbecile piety, and pretended fervor.