A representation of Nature, in order to be a true landscape, must be organic. It must not present itself as an aggregation, but as a growth. It must manifest obedience to laws which are peculiarly its own, and through the operation of which it has developed from the moment of inception to that of maturity. And, moreover, that inception must have been near a human heart, that development must have been nourished by vitality derived from human life, and that maturity must be that of the divine unity to which tend all the mysterious operations of organizing energies.
We hold this to be the first essential condition of Landscape Art, the condition without which no rendering of Nature can be Art. Other points of excellence may be unattained. Let this be evident, that the production is an offspring of humanity, and it shall be perceived also that it partakes of whatever immortality the human heart inherits. Herein is concealed the whole secret of the value of pre-Raphaelite Art, and not, as we have been assured, in the faithfulness of its followers to the exact representation of the individual details of Nature. Each wrought from the love of Nature, consciously giving what truth he possessed, unconsciously giving of his own interior life. Each picture was the child of the painter. Yet, however much the ancient artist may have failed in rendering the specific truths of the external world, we can never attribute his failure to any disregard for the true. His picture never gives the impression of falsehood; and in the most erroneous record of the external there is ever the promise of more truth, and this promise is not that of the man, but of the principle governing the character of his picture.
We think that all works of Art may be divided into two distinct classes: those which are the result of a man's whole nature, involving the affectional, religious, and intellectual, and those which are the productions of the intellect, and from the will. The first class comprises those results of Art which are vital,—which come to us through processes of growth, and impress us with a sense of organization. The second includes those works which are constructed,—which present an accumulation of objects mechanically combined, parts skilfully joined through scientific means.
Earnestness and the definite purpose which is its sign, love which drew the soul into sweetest communion with our mother Nature, giving to him who thus came revelations of the harmonies possible between her and her children, and devotion to his art mightier than ever inspired the Hindoo devotee in self-sacrifice, characterized those who have given all that pure Art which has been alluded to as the true: and such were the majority of those artists who preceded Raphael.
True, all of those who were devoted to Landscape Art, or who made it a part of their practice to introduce this element into their pictures, often failed in attaining truth; but, by some strange power with which they have invested their landscapes, an impulse is given to the perception, and the essential truth, feebly hinted at, perhaps, is recognized. But as the record comes down through the years, each new picture approximates more nearly to the character of the scene attempted, with, occasionally, (as in the works of Masaccio,) touches of truth absolutely perfect, until at last appeared that man altogether at one with Nature, who reproduced Nature in all its glory, pomp, freedom, and life, as might an archangel. Titian brought to perfection the first great class of Landscape Art, and, of course, in doing so, perfected that department which was the only one as yet developed, and which remains a distinct branch, subject to its own peculiar laws. We refer to the rendering of natural scenery, beginning in the merely and completely subordinate accessory, and ending, with Titian, in the perfectly dignified and noble companionship of the visible universe with man.
We speak of this Art perfected far back, because we feel assured that landscape, as accessory to the historical, has an ideal altogether distinct from that of pure landscape.
It would not be just, perhaps, to regard the law which necessitates this ideal as a law of subordination, although that condition prevails up to the time of Titian. Nature, to the true man, never presents itself as subordinate, but as correspondently ever equal with man, ever ready with possibilities to match his own. So true is this, that a man's universe, that of which his vision takes possession, is a part of himself, subject to his sorrows and joys, his hope and his despair: to him, the violets, the mountains, and the far-away worlds, throbbing in unison with his own heart-beat, are in some wise the signs or the manifestations of his own soul's possibilities. And he is right. That of the flower which is its beauty, that of the mountains which is their magnificent grandeur, that of the stars which is their ineffable glory and sublimity, is his, is within him, is a part of his soul's life, waxing or waning so in unison with its richness or poverty that wise men mark the soul's stature by the part of it which is akin to the violets, the hills, or the infinite sky.
"The world is as large as a man's head." In that there is a fine hint of a great truth, but beyond that isthetruth. It is not the mere knowledge of Alcyone that necessitates the sublime. After that comes the wonder. The world is as large as is a man, and its relation to him is marked by a sympathy which acts and reacts with the certainty and precision of law.
The ideal of Landscape Art, used in alliance with representations of the human figure, must, then, be founded upon this immutable sympathy between the landscape world and the human. Thus, in the painting alluded to in the article on Mr. Page, "The Entombment" of the Louvre, the landscape is charged with the solemnity of the hour. No blade of grass or shadow of leaf but seems conscious of the great event, and the sky reveals, by its heavenly tenderness, that there all is known.
How different in expression, yet how similar in strength, is the landscape of that seeming miracle, "The Presentation in the Temple"! It is clear, confident day,—so pure and perfect a day abroad over the happy earth, that all things lure forth into an atmosphere so unsullied that to breathe it is life and joy,—over an earth youthful with spring, fresh with morning; and hither have come the people to see confirmed the future mother of Christ, now the child Mary. As the maiden ascends the steps of the Temple, a halo surrounds her,—not her head alone, but all the form,—and far away a fainter halo rests upon the hills. Her youth, its purity and half-recognized promise, seem sweetly imaged in the morning freshness and spring-life of the landscape.
We can remember no landscape by Titian which is not in full sympathy with the motives which actuate his groups. It is the unison of scene and act that gives his pictures a unity and completeness never or rarely found elsewhere.
After Titian came painters—among them, mighty ones—who, like Tintoretto, wrought from the external. The elements of the landscape were treated with knowledge and power, but not often with feeling, and very seldom with a recognition of its central significance. One example is so marvellous, however, that we cannot forbear referring to it. Its truthfulness is the more remarkable from the fact that the painter's conceptions rarely were such that any true landscape could be found capable of harmony with their character. In this picture, "The Temptation of Saint Anthony," one of the Pitti Palace Gallery, Salvator has wrought marvellously like a demon. The horizon and the sky near it are charged with a sense of demoniacal conflict for human souls, and forebodings of defeat and woe.
Yet within this, mantling the remotest depths, there is a sheen of light, a gleam of hope and faith.
In our own times there is little to refer to illustrative of excellence in this branch of Art. Overbeck makes frequent use of natural scenery, and his delicate yet firm outlines repeat, hill and valley and clouds, the sentiment of peace and purity which pervades his noble productions.
Not that there are not produced frequently, and especially in France, works remarkable for truth and power. But, too often, the truths are redundant, and the power vanquishes the sentiments of the group.
One artist in France, Rosa Bonheur, has, however, embodied conceptions so noble, so in unison with the finest Nature, that its most glorious and most significant scenery, rendered with a handling akin to the old mastership, is alone adequate to sympathize with and sustain them. I need but refer to the wonderful view of the Pyrenees in the picture of "The Muleteers," the tender morning spirit of that heathery scene in the Highlands, and that miracle of representation, the near ground, crisp and frosty, of Mr. Belmont's "Hunters in Early Morning."
American Art, as represented in Italy, has few examples of excellence in this branch of painting. Its followers have wrought more persistently in other directions, toward the expression of a class of ideals rarely involving the one which we have attempted to analyze. Yet, occasionally, an artist has appeared, making Rome or Florence his home long enough to win a place, which, when he has departed, is not quickly filled, who has ideas of history and events calling for the record of the palette; or there has been wrought in the studio of some resident painter a composition in which landscape has been employed as accessory.
In many instances there have been produced works which reflect the highest honor upon our country. As it is foreign to the purpose of the present paper to deal with other than the different phases of landscape-painting, we forbear to speak as their merits suggest of the figure portions of the works of Mr. Rothermel, the result of his brief sojourn in Italy. In any passage of scenery, and particularly in sky forms and tones, the expression and character are always such as support vigorously the action of his group. We say vigorously; for Mr. Rothermel, in his Italian pictures, revealed an artistic nature related to humanity in its most agitated moods, as in the "Lear," and in the "Saint Agnese,"—this beautiful picture being, however, a higher conception, inasmuch as in it the spirit might find some rest in the stillness of the maiden Agnese, already saint and about to be martyr, and in the deep blue sky, on whose field linger white clouds, like lambs "shepherded by the slow unwilling winds."
Brief mention was made, in our allusion to Mr. Page's picture of the "Flight into Egypt," to its landscape. This work was executed in Rome, and its peculiar tone excited much interest among the friends of Mr. Field, its fortunate possessor. A beautiful, yet not altogether original idea, finds expression in the foreground group, where Mary, poised upon the back of the ass, folds the child in her arms, the animal snatches at a wayside weed, Joseph, drawing tightly the long rope by which he leads, bends away into the desert with weird energy. In all other representations of this subject the accessory landscape has usually been living with full-foliaged trees, abundant herbage, and copious streams. To indicate the Egyptian phase of its character, palms have been introduced, as in the beautiful picture by Claude in the Doria Gallery, and almost invariably the scene has been one of luxury and peace. But with the event itself all this conflicts. In it were sorrow and apprehension and death. The fugitives saw not then the safety, nor anticipated the victory. In this picture, beyond and before the hurrying group, stretches the immeasurable, hungry sand. A sad golden-brown haze—such as sometimes comes in our Indian summer, when the hectic autumn rests silent, mournful and hopeless, in the arms of Nature— pervades the plain; while on the horizon far away,—an infinite distance it seems, so strangely spectral are they,—rise the Pyramids, just those awful ghosts against the ominous sky!
As different as are the subjects he chooses are the bits of scenery Hamilton Wild introduces in his pictures of life as it now is. His are more truly historical paintings, although aspiring to no record of the greatly bad and sorrowful transactions of our age. They represent the joy and hope of youth, the cheerfulness and vivacity of the lowly, their pleasantest pursuits, their most primitive customs, their characteristic and often superb costumes; and wherever a passage of scenery occurs, it is always that which has aided in developing the human life with which it is associated.
There is never a discrepancy, nor is unison of sentiment ever achieved by any bending of the truth. His keen sense of harmony never fails to perceive, in the infinite range of tones and expressions of Nature, just that which better than all others supports the character and action of his group. With motives so healthful, it may be less difficult to find that sympathy which Nature cheerfully gives; yet there is a tendency with artists to be enticed away from Nature's joyousness, and especially from her simplicity.
To this temptation Mr. Wild can never have been subjected. The freedom which he manifests is not that which has been won, but into which he must have been born, and with that grew the ability which transfigures labor into play. Unto such a Nature the out-world presents unasked her phases of joy and brightness, her light and life.
Does he seek Nature? No. Nature goes with him; and whether he tarry among the Lagoons, where all seems Art or Death, or in the shadow and desolation of the Campagna, in the unclean villages of the Alban Hills, or where the shadows of deserted palaces fall black, broken, and jagged on the red earth of Granada, there she companions him. She shows him, that, after all, Venice is hers, and gives him the white marble enriched with subtilest films of gold, alabaster which the processes of her incessant years have changed to Oriental amber, a city made opalescent by the magic of her sunsets. At Rome she opens vistas away from the sepulchral, out into the wine-colored light of the Campagna, into the peace gladdened by larks and the bleating of lambs; above are pines,—Italian pines,—and across the path falls the still shadow of blooming oleanders. She leads away from squalid towns, and gathers a group of her children,—peasants, costumed in scarlet and gold, under the grape-laden festoons of vines, while the now distant village glows like cliffs of Carrara. How lavish she must have been of her old ideal Spain, the while he dwelt in Granada!—the dance of the gypsies; pomegranates heavy with ripeness hanging among the quivering glossy leaves; olives gleaming with soft ashy whiteness, as the south-wind wanders across their grove up to where the towers of the Alhambra lift golden and pale lilac against the clear sky.
We have dwelt thus lengthily upon this primitive and apparently less important branch of Landscape Art for several reasons: from a conviction that its importance is, and is only apparently less; from the fact that from it have been derived all other classes of landscape; and because a comprehension of its scope and purpose aids more than any other agency in understanding those of the pure and simple Landscape Art.
We have seen Nature ever ready with moods so related to the soul that no ideal worthy of Art might be conceived beyond the range of her sympathies. Even to that event involving all the intensity of human thought and feeling, the last refinement of all spiritual emotion, and a sense of mysteries more sublime than the creation of worlds,—even to the Crucifixion,—Nature gathered herself, as the only possible sign, the only expression for men, then and forever, of the awful significance. The joyfulness of festivals, the pomp of processions, the sublimity of great martyrdoms, the sorrow of defeats, the peace of holiness, the innocence and sweetness of childhood, the hope of manhood, and the retrospection of old age, when represented upon the canvas, find in her forms and colors endless refrain of response.
This truth, that Nature is capable of such cooperation with the human, that she confines herself to no country or continent, and that her expressions are not relative, depending upon the suggestiveness of the human action to which they correspond, but are positive and under the rule of the immutable, enables the artist to evolve the first great class of simple landscape-painting.
Had Art always been real and artists ever true, this consideration must have called forth this class. It being true that natural scenery readily allies itself with representations of the human figure in order to express more perfectly than otherwise possible the ideal, it must be through affinity with that which evolves the ideal, and only by indirect relation to its sign or visible manifestation in form-language. Then why not found a school of landscape by discarding the human figure as an element of expression? A man comes who is born to the easel, yet who feels no impulse to represent the practical effect upon human faces and limbs of the various emotions, passions, and sentiments which demand utterance. His thought is to hold himself to his kindred by more subtile and far more delicate bonds. He knows that any one can look upon the "Huguenot Lovers," by Millais, and feel responsive; for it occupies a great plane, a part of which may be mistaken for passion. But he feels that the love of Thekla and Max Piccolomini will permit no effigy but that sacred bank beyond the cliffs of Libussa's Castle, whither come no footsteps nor jarring of wheels, but only the sound of the deep Moldau and of remote bells. It is the essence of the ideal which compels his imagination, not the limited and restless circumstance which chanced to occur as its revelator. Then the day uprises as if conscious of his inner life and purpose. Then she gives him breadth after breadth of color, within which is traced her no longer mystic alphabet. How significant are the forms she gives him for the foreground, sweet monosyllables! There are pansies, and rue, and violets, and rosemary. Among these and their companions children walk and learn, and to the child-man, the artist to be, she proffers these emblems. Should he accept her gifts, then all this wonderful world of Art-Nature is open to him. He inherits, possesses beyond all deeds, above all statutes,—as does Mr. Gay, who painted that great, though unassuming, picture of "The Marshes of Cohasset."
Because Art was not held to the highest, few men have known the elevation of this department of landscape-painting. Too deep or too devoted a life seems to have been required, too constant communion with Nature, or too broad a study of her phenomena. Unfortunately, we have few representatives of this class, in Italy,—Mr. Wild producing only rarely works which to the principles hinted at are precious illustrations. After the remarks we have made, we fear that allusion to the existing facts of painting may be deemed disparaging. Not so; we deprecate such a conclusion. One great and living picture marks the man. To be true to himself and Nature is the first duty, even should he be compelled to stand lifelong with his face towards the west, in order to possess his soul in Art.
One of the pleasantest styles of landscape painting is that where the artist, in a mood of deep peace, sits down in the midst of scenes endeared by long and sweet association, and records in all tenderness their spirit and beauty. Such scenery Italy affords, and the Alban Hills seem to be the centre whence radiate all phases of the lovely and beautiful in Nature. There her forms have conspired with all the highest and rarest phenomena of light to render her state unapproachably glorious.
There has also been given such an artist,—a woman altogether truthful, strong, and nobly delicate; and although several years have passed since she left Italy, her representations of scenery peculiarly Italian are too remarkable to be passed unnoticed. Indeed, this lady, Miss Sarah Jane Clark, is the only artist whose works are illustrative of a style of simple Landscape Art which unites in itself the love and conscientiousness of early Art and the precision and science of the modern. Her picture of Albano is wonderful,—not from the rendering of unusual or brilliant effects, but from a sense of genuineness. We feel that it grew. The flower and leaf forms which enrich the near ground are such as spring up on days like the one she has chosen. Another month, and new combinations would have given another key to her work and rendered the present impossible. In that real landscape had wrought the secret vitality clothing the earth in leafage and bloom. In its representation we see that a still more refined, a diviner vitality, has evolved leaf, flower, and golden grain. Another fact associated with this painting, as well as with some of its companions, is its character of restraint.
Temperance in Landscape Art is very difficult in the vicinity of Rome. In this picture the scene sweeps downward, with most gentle and undulating inclination, over vast groves of olive and luxuriant vineyards, to the Campagna with its convex waves of green and gold, on which float the wrecks of cities, out to the sea itself, not so far away as to conceal the flashing of waves upon the beach. Daily, over this groundwork, so deftly wrought for their reception, are cast fields and mighty bands of violet and rose, of amber and pale topaz, of blue, orange, and garnet, upon the sea. It is as if an aurora had fallen from Arctic skies, living, changeful, evanescent, athwart sea, plain, and mountain. Here is sore temptation for the colorist; more, perhaps, than by the wealth and combination of tints, he is affected by their celestial quality. All is prismatic, or like those hues produced by the interference of rays of light as seen in the colors of stars. Gorgeous as are these phenomena, they are also as transitory; and although the scene is repeated, it is with such subtile and such great changes as to remove it from the grasp of the painter who wishes to study his work wholly from Nature. The eye must be quick and the brush obedient, to catch the fleeting glories of those Alban sunsets. Even the imperial hand of Turner could give us only reminiscences.
The allurements to adopt a style of coloring involving these effects must have been great to one whose love of color amounted to a passion. Only a still greater love could have drawn her of whom we speak to the more subdued, but higher plane upon which she stands,—and that must have been a love of truth, and of that which has appealed to her nature through repetition's sweet influences. This is the scene lying in deep repose in open, permanent day. Trees, hills, plain, and sea forget the flying hours. Yesterday they did not remember, serene and changeless as ivy on the wall. So gradual has been the transition, so slowly has the surface of the grain lifted from the rippling blade to the billowy stalk, so continually have the scarlet poppies bloomed since May came, that, to her, this is ever the same beneficent and dear spot, sacred to her soul, as well as fitting type and sign of her pure Art.
The class of landscape-painting which deals with morning and evening phenomena, and is based upon the fleeting and transitory, is the only one that finds representation at present in Italy. Mr. Brown has developed new and peculiar strength since his return to America, and must require place from his new stand-point. Abel Nichols, whose copies of Claude were so truthful, and whose original pictures ever strove to be so, who through surpassing sacrifice became great, who lived, if ever man has, the wonderful Christ-life, now sleeps the sleep of peace, the last peace, under the sod of the landscape of his nativity.
There remains to be considered a series of undeniably remarkable pictures, executed in Rome by John Rollin Tilton.
This artist's landscapes are remarkable for the conflicting effects which they have produced on the public. They have excited, as they have been exhibited in his studio in Rome, great enthusiasm, and admiration which would listen to no criticism. Until perhaps the present year, which is one of prostration in Rome, his works could not be purchased, each one being the fulfilment of a commission given long before. These commissions were given not by men merely wealthy, but by men widely known for cultivation, discrimination, and for refinement of that taste which requires the influences of Art. On the other hand, men equally as remarkable for their accomplishments in matters of taste have expressed their condemnation of all the paintings of Mr. Tilton, or rather for those executed prior to 1859, and there were those who heaped them with ridicule. In admiration and condemnation we have often shared;—in the sentiment of ridicule never; for in all attempts there have been the hintings of worthy purpose and a desire to excel.
Those who most despise Mr. Tilton's style and productions are men whose tendencies are to the theories of English pre-Raphaelism. Viewed in relation to those principles, his pictures have little value. The purchasers of them are the men who regard with enthusiastic admiration the evanescent splendors of Nature.
Mr. Tilton's early ambition was to be the painter to fulfil the demands of this latter class. He not only sympathized with it in its greater admiration for "effects" in Nature, but he found associated therewith an enthusiasm which inspired him with unbounded hope and energy.
When he came to Rome, the Campagnian sunsets were found to be representative of the peculiar class of effects which he regarded as the manifestation of his feeling; and so he forthwith took possession of that part of the day which was passing while the sun performed the last twelve degrees of his daily journey. Other portions of the twenty-four hours did not appear to excite even ordinary interest; and whenever conversation involved consideration of scenery under other than the favorite character, he was prone to silence, or to attempts to change the subject. Yet he has been known to speak in terms of commendation of certain sunrises, and once was actually caught by a friend making a sketch of Pilatus at sunrise across the Lake of Lucerne.
The objects in the immediate foreground shared in the neglect which attached to certain seasons. They were ignored as organized members of what should be a living foreground, and their places were concealed by unintelligible pigment. As to life there, he wanted none: light,—light that gleams, and color to reflect it, were his aim. As an inevitable attending result of these principles, or practices, the structure of the whole landscape was ambiguous. The essential line and point were evaded, and one perceived that the artist hadwatchedfar more attentively than he had studied Nature.
At the same time the pictures produced in this studio were marked by qualities of great beauty. The peculiarly ethereal character of the vast bands of thin vapors made visible by the slant rays of the sun, and illuminated with tints which are exquisitely pure and prismatic, was rendered with surprising success. On examination, the tints which were used to represent the prismatic character of those of Nature were found to present surfaces of such excessive delicacy, that the evanescence of the natural phenomena was suggested, and apprehensions were indulged as to the permanency of the effects. That noble north light of a cloudless Roman sky did not extend far, hardly to Civita Vecchia, certainly not to England, Old or New; and with a less friendly hand than his own to expose his work, under sight still less kind, there might be presented a picture bereft of all but its faults. Such has been the case.
We here dismiss willingly further recollection of the works to which we have called attention. They are marked by error in theory, inasmuch as they show neglect of the specific and essential, and by feebleness of system, inasmuch as under no other light than that in which they were painted could their finer qualities be perceived. Yet it is but just to add that these were produced during a state of transition from one method of applying pigments to another of totally different character.
This period of the painter's experience was brought to a close by the better one of a summer residence at Pieve di Cadore, a village among the Friulian Alps. Thither he might have gone merely to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Titian; for other reason thanthathe stayed in Cadore. He stayed for life, truth, and correction, and he found all. No other place on the continent could have afforded Mr. Tilton the benefit that this mountain village did. Here was no ambiguity, no optical illusion, but frank; ingenuous Nature. The peaks which guarded the valley were clear and immutable. They suffered no conflicting opinions; accident had done little to disguise, their true character, but Nature held them as specimens of the essential in mountain structure. That the lesson of these peaks might not be forgotten, the student finds them copied accurately in nearly every landscape painted by Titian. The magnificent one in "The Presentation in the Temple" was his favorite. The sketches of this period show that the artist's attention was divided between the study of these hill forms and of the luxuriant vegetation of the sloping fields and pastures so characteristic of Swiss scenery. Cadore is most richly endowed in this respect. The hill-sides are burdened with flowers, many of which are large and of tropical splendor. The green of the broad fields is modified by the burden of blossoms. We have seen against the background of one of these steepest fields what seemed to be a column of delicate blue smoke wreathing up the hill-side. In reality it was a bed of wild forget-me-nots, which marked the course of a minute rill. Under such influences as these, a man born to be a painter, to whom Art is all, whose hand never fails to execute, and whose mind has risen above any erroneous combination of principles which may have checked his progress toward the greatly excellent, must find himself with new strength, a chastened imagination, and broader conceptions of his art.
The results of Mr. Tilton's labors since the summer in the Alps prove that such was the effect upon him. His pictures have of late occupied nearly every class of Landscape Art. The works now wrought in his Roman studio are indicative of great changes in feeling, and are marked by surprising improvements in execution. Yet the individuality of the artist is impressed upon every canvas. The changes to which we refer are these,—foregrounds suggested by or painted from living forms. In one view of Nemi we saw a superb black, gold, and crimson butterfly resting on a flower. Yet these foregrounds require more strength, more "body," more of that which artists achieve who achieve nothing else. We notice far more individualism in tree forms. The ideal tree, that is, the tree as it should be, and the conventional one coming against the sky on one side of the composition, the one bequeathed by Claude, have given place to Nature's homelier types. The question as to the meaning of passages no longer arises. The lines are drawn with a decision, with a sense of certainty, raising them above all doubt. In the rendering of distant mountains, Mr. Dillon evinces new knowledge of what such forms necessarily imply,—their tendency to monotone and to flatness, yet preserving all their essential surface markings, and their inevitable cutting outline against the sky,—which sharpness Mr. Tilton as yet has only hinted at, not represented. Positive edges are the true.—But we have no further space to devote to these particulars of landscape form. In these Mr. Tilton has many rivals and not a few superiors.
There is left us the pleasant privilege of alluding to an ability which we believe he shares with none, and which enables him to give his present pictures their great value. This is the power to discriminate accurately between the several classes of color,—the local, the reflected, and the prismatic. It will be found on reference to most landscapes, especially those of the English schools, that it is the understanding, already informed on the subject, which accepts as reflected the continual attempts to render this kind of color: they are regarded as indicative. But the eye, which should have been satisfied first, recognizes nothing more than local coloring. Near objects, under broad, open daylight, yield us their local coloring,—as the surfaces of stones, the trunks of trees, and the many tints of soil and vegetation,—yet even here all is modified by reflections. We remember a cliff at L'Ariccia, which, gray in morning light, became, as evening approached, a marvellous beryl green, upon which some large poppies cast wafts of purest scarlet. Farther away, both local and reflected color lose their power. The rays no longer convey information of surfaces as separate existences. Nature gathers up into masses, and these masses tide back to the foreground colors far removed in character from the near. Vast combinations of rays and atmospheric influences have wrought this change. As we have said, noon gives us the earth clean and itself; but, as the sun declines, flushes of color pass along the ground. Their character we have already described. The particles which fill the atmosphere just above the surface of the earth become illuminated and visible in radiant masses. Farther away there is floated over the mountains a miraculous bloom, a bloom like that upon virgin fruit; and still more remote, upon the far sea, there is a dream of amber mantling the sleeping blue. To render these effects, to give us the illuminated air, the soft green which the mossy sod casts upon the shaded cliff, the precious bloom upon the hills, and the tints diffused along the sea,—to achieve this so completely that there never shall be any doubt, to give us upon the canvas what shall be all this to the beholder, is great, and this Mr. Tilton has performed.
"Bridgeport! Change cars for the Naugatuck Railroad!" shouted the conductor of the New York and Boston Express Train, on the evening of May 27th, 1858. Indeed, he does it every night, (Sundays excepted,) for that matter; but as this story refers especially to Mr. J. Edward Johnson, who was a passenger on that train, on the aforesaid evening, I make special mention of the fact. Mr. Johnson, carpet-bag in hand, jumped upon the platform, entered the office, purchased a ticket for Waterbury, and was soon whirling in the Naugatuck train towards his destination.
On reaching Waterbury, in the soft spring twilight, Mr. Johnson walked up and down in front of the station, curiously scanning the faces of the assembled crowd. Presently he noticed a gentleman who was performing the same operation upon the faces of the alighting passengers. Throwing himself directly in the way of the latter, the two exchanged a steady gaze.
"Is your name Billings?" "Is your name Johnson?" were simultaneous questions, followed by the simultaneous exclamations,—"Ned!" "Enos!"
Then there was a crushing grasp of hands, repeated after a pause, in testimony of ancient friendship, and Mr. Billings, returning to practical life, asked,—
"Is that all your baggage? Come, I have a buggy here: Eunice has heard the whistle, and she'll be impatient to welcome you."
The impatience of Eunice (Mrs. Billings, of course) was not of long duration; for in five minutes thereafter she stood at the door of her husband's chocolate-colored villa, receiving his friend.
While these three persons are comfortably seated at the tea-table, enjoying their waffles, cold tongue, and canned peaches, and asking and answering questions helter-skelter in the delightful confusion of reunion after long separation, let us briefly inform the reader who and what they are.
Mr. Enos Billings, then, was part owner of a manufactory of metal buttons, forty years old, of middling height, ordinarily quiet and rather shy, but with a large share of latent warmth and enthusiasm in his nature. His hair was brown, slightly streaked with gray, his eyes a soft, dark hazel, forehead square, eye-brows straight, nose of no very marked character, and mouth moderately full, with a tendency to twitch a little at the corners. His voice was undertoned, but mellow and agreeable.
Mrs. Eunice Billings, of nearly equal age, was a good specimen of the wide-awake New-England woman. Her face had a piquant smartness of expression, which might have been refined into a sharp edge, but for her natural hearty good-humor. Her head was smoothly formed, her face a full oval, her hair and eyes blond and blue in a strong light, but brown and steel-gray at other times, and her complexion of that ripe fairness into which a ruddier color will sometimes fade. Her form, neither plump nor spare, had yet a firm, elastic compactness, and her slightest movement conveyed a certain impression of decision and self-reliance.
As for J. Edward Johnson, it is enough to say that he was a tall, thin gentleman of forty-five, with an aquiline nose, narrow face, and military whiskers, which swooped upwards and met under his nose in a glossy black moustache. His complexion was dark, from the bronzing of fifteen summers in New Orleans. He was a member of a wholesale hardware firm in that city, and had now revisited his native North for the first time since his departure. A year before, some letters relating to invoices of metal buttons, signed "Foster, Kirkup, & Co., per Enos Billings," had accidentally revealed to him the whereabouts of the old friend of his youth, with whom we now find him domiciled. The first thing he did, after attending to some necessary business matters in New York, was to take the train for Waterbury.
"Enos," said he, as he stretched out his hand for the third cup of tea, (which he had taken only for the purpose of prolonging the pleasant table-chat,) "I wonder which of us is most changed."
"You, of course," said Mr. Billings, "with your brown face and big moustache. Your own brother wouldn't have known you, if he had seen you last, as I did, with smooth cheeks and hair of unmerciful length. Why, not even your voice is the same!"
"That is easily accounted for," replied Mr. Johnson. "But in your case, Enos, I am puzzled to find where the difference lies. Your features seem to be but little changed, now that I can examine them at leisure; yet it is not the same face. But, really, I never looked at you for so long a time, in those days. I beg pardon: you used to be so—so remarkably shy."
Mr. Billings blushed slightly, and seemed at a loss what to answer. His wife, however, burst into a merry laugh, exclaiming,—
"Oh, that was before the days of the A.C.!"
He, catching the infection, laughed also: in fact, Mr. Johnson laughed, but without knowing why.
"The 'A.C.'!" said Mr. Billings. "Bless me, Eunice! how long it is since we have talked of that summer! I had almost forgotten that there ever was an A.C."
"Enos,couldyou ever forget Abel Mallory and the beer?—or that scene between Hollins and Shelldrake?—or" (heresheblushed the least bit) "your own fit of candor?" And she laughed again, more heartily than ever.
"What a precious lot of fools, to be sure!" exclaimed her husband.
Mr. Johnson, meanwhile, though enjoying the cheerful humor of his hosts, was not a little puzzled with regard to its cause.
"What is the A.C.?" he ventured to ask.
Mr. and Mrs. Billings looked at each other, and smiled, without replying.
"Really, Ned," said the former, finally, "the answer to your question involves the whole story."
"Then why not tell him the whole story, Enos?" remarked his wife.
"You know I've never told it yet, and it's rather a hard thing to do, seeing that I'm one of the heroes of the farce,—for it wasn't even genteel comedy, Ned," said Mr. Billings. "However," he continued, "absurd as the story may seem, it's the only key to the change in my life, and I must run the risk of being laughed at."
"I'll help you through, Enos," said his wife, encouragingly; "and besides, myrôlein the farce was no better than yours. Let us resuscitate, for to-night only, the constitution of the A.C."
"Upon my word, a capital idea! But we shall have to initiate Ned."
Mr. Johnson merrily agreeing, he was blindfolded and conducted into another room. A heavy arm-chair, rolling on casters, struck his legs in the rear, and he sank into it with lamb-like resignation.
"Open your mouth!" was the command, given with mock solemnity.
He obeyed.
"Now shut it!"
And his lips closed upon a cigar, while at the same time the handkerchief was whisked away from his eyes. He found himself in Mr. Billings's library.
"Your nose betrays your taste, Mr. Johnson," said the lady, "and I am not hard-hearted enough to deprive you of the indulgence. Here are matches."
"Well," said he, acting upon the hint, "if the remainder of the ceremonies are equally agreeable, I should like to be a permanent member of your order."
By this time Mr. and Mrs. Billings, having between them lighted the lamp, stirred up the coal in the grate, closed the doors, and taken possession of comfortable chairs, the latter proclaimed,—
"The Chapter (isn't that what you call it?) will now be held!"
"Was it in '43 when you left home, Ned?" asked Mr. B.
"Yes."
"Well, the A.C. culminated in '45. You remember something of the society of Norridgeport, the last winter you were there? Abel Mallory, for instance?"
"Let me think a moment," said Mr. Johnson, reflectively. "Really, it seems like looking back a hundred years. Mallory,—wasn't that the sentimental young man, with wispy hair, a tallowy skin, and big, sweaty hands, who used to be spouting Carlyle on the 'reading evenings' at Shelldrake's? Yes, to be sure; and there was Hollins, with his clerical face and infidel talk,—and Pauline Ringtop, who used to say, 'The Beautiful is the Good.' I can still hear her shrill voice singing, 'Would thatIwere beautiful, would thatIwere fair!'"
There was a hearty chorus of laughter at poor Miss Ringtop's expense.It harmed no one, however; for the tar-weed was already thick over herCalifornian grave.
"Oh, I see," said Mr. Billings, "you still remember the absurdities of those days. In fact, I think you partially saw through them then. But I was younger, and far from being so clear-headed, and I looked upon those evenings at Shelldrake's as being equal, at least, to thesymposiaof Plato. Something in Mallory always repelled me. I detested the sight of his thick nose, with the flaring nostrils, and his coarse, half-formed lips, of the bluish color of raw corned-beef. But I looked upon these feelings as unreasonable prejudices, and strove to conquer them, seeing the admiration which he received from others. He was an oracle on the subject of 'Nature.' Having eaten nothing for two years, except Graham bread, vegetables without salt, and fruits, fresh or dried, he considered himself to have attained an antediluvian purity of health,—or that he would attain it, so soon as two pimples on his left temple should have healed. These pimples he looked upon as the last feeble stand made by the pernicious juices left from the meat he had formerly eaten and the coffee he had drunk. His theory was, that through a body so purged and purified none but true and natural impulses could find access to the soul. Such, indeed, was the theory we all held. A Return to Nature was the near Millennium, the dawn of which we already beheld in the sky. To be sure, there was a difference in our individual views as to how this should be achieved, but we were all agreed as to what the result should be.
"I can laugh over those days now, Ned; but they were really happy while they lasted. We were the salt of the earth; we were lifted above those grovelling instincts which we saw manifested in the lives of others. Each contributed his share of gas to inflate the painted balloon to which we all clung, in the expectation that it would presently soar with us to the stars. But it only went up over the out-houses, dodged backwards and forwards two or three times, and finally flopped down with us into a swamp."
"And that balloon was the A. C.?" suggested Mr. Johnson.
"As President of this Chapter, I prohibit questions," said Eunice. "And, Enos, don't send up your balloon until the proper time. Don't anticipate the programme, or the performance will be spoiled."
"I had almost forgotten that Ned is so much in the dark," her obedient husband answered. "You can have but a slight notion," he continued, turning to his friend, "of the extent to which this sentimental, or transcendental, element in the little circle at Shelldrake's increased after you left Norridgeport. We read the 'Dial,' and Emerson; we believed in Alcott as the 'purple Plato' of modern times; we took psychological works out of the library, and would listen for hours to Hollins while he read Schelling or Fichte, and then go home with a misty impression of having imbibed infinite wisdom. It was, perhaps, a natural, though very eccentric rebound from the hard, practical, unimaginative New-England mind which surrounded us; yet I look back upon it with a kind of wonder. I was then, as you know, unformed mentally, and might have been so still, but for the experiences of the A. C."
Mr. Johnson shifted his position, a little impatiently. Eunice looked at him with laughing eyes, and shook her finger with a mock threat.
"Shelldrake," continued Mr. Billings, without noticing this by-play, "was a man of more pretence than real cultivation, as I afterwards discovered. He was in good circumstances, and always glad to receive us at his house, as this made him, virtually, the chief of our tribe, and the outlay for refreshments involved only the apples from his own orchard and water from his well. There was an entire absence of conventionality at our meetings, and this, compared with the somewhat stiff society of the village, was really an attraction. There was a mystic bond of union in our ideas: we discussed life, love, religion, and the future state, not only with the utmost candor, but with a warmth of feeling which, in many of us, was genuine. Even I (and you know how painfully shy and bashful I was) felt myself more at home there than in my father's house; and if I didn't talk much, I had a pleasant feeling of being in harmony with those who did.
"Well, 'twas in the early part of '45,—I think in April,—when we were all gathered together, discussing, as usual, the possibility of leading a life in accordance with Nature. Abel Mallory was there, and Hollins, and Miss Ringtop, and Faith Levis, with her knitting,—and also Eunice Hazleton, a lady whom you have never seen, but you may take my wife as her representative"——
"Stick to the programme, Enos," interrupted Mrs. Billings.
"Eunice Hazleton, then. I wish I could recollect some of the speeches made on that occasion. Abel had but one pimple on his temple, (there was a purple spot where the other had been,) and was estimating that in two or three months more he would be a true, unspoiled man. His complexion, nevertheless, was more clammy and whey-like than ever.
"'Yes,' said he, 'I also am an Arcadian! This false dual existence which I have been leading will soon be merged in the unity of Nature. Our lives must conform to her sacred law. Why can't we strip off these hollow Shams,' (he made great use of that word,) 'and be our true selves, pure, perfect, and divine?'
"Miss Ringtop heaved a sigh, and repeated a stanza from her favorite poet:—
"'Ah, when wrecked are my desiresOn the everlasting Never,And my heart with all its firesOut forever,In the cradle of CreationFinds the soul resuscitation!'
"Shelldrake, however, turning to his wife, said,—
"'Elviry, how many up-stairs rooms is there in that house down on theSound?'
"'Four,—besides three small ones under the roof. Why, what made you think of that, Jesse?' said she.
"'I've got an idea, while Abel's been talking,' he answered. 'We've taken a house for the summer, down the other side of Bridgeport, right on the water, where there's good fishing and a fine view of the Sound. Now, there's room enough for all of us,—at least, all that can make it suit to go. Abel, you and Enos, and Pauline and Eunice might fix matters so that we could all take the place in partnership, and pass the summer together, living a true and beautiful life in the bosom of Nature. There we shall be perfectly free and untrammelled by the chains which still hang around us in Norridgeport. You know how often we have wanted to be set on some island in the Pacific Ocean, where we could build up a true society, right from the start. Now, here's a chance to try the experiment for a few months, anyhow.'
"Eunice clapped her hands (yes, you did!) and cried out,—
"'Splendid! Arcadian! I'll give up my school for the summer.'
"Miss Ringtop gave her opinion in another quotation:—
"'The rainbow hues of the IdealCondense to gems, and form the Real!'
"Abel Mallory, of course, did not need to have the proposal repeated. He was ready for anything which promised indolence, and the indulgence of his sentimental tastes. I will do the fellow the justice to say that he was not a hypocrite. He firmly believed both in himself and his ideas,—especially the former. He pushed both hands through the long wisps of his drab-colored hair, and threw his head back until his wide nostrils resembled a double door to his brain.
"'O Nature!' he said, 'you have found your lost children! We shall obey your neglected laws! we shall hearken to your divine whispers! we shall bring you back from your ignominious exile, and place you on your ancestral throne!'
"'Let us do it!' was the general cry.
"A sudden enthusiasm fired us, and we grasped each other's hands in the hearty impulse of the moment. My own private intention to make a summer trip to the White Mountains had been relinquished the moment I heard Eunice give in her adhesion. I may as well confess, at once, that I was desperately in love, and afraid to speak to her.
"By the time Mrs. Shelldrake brought in the apples and water we were discussing the plan as a settled thing. Hollins had an engagement to deliver Temperance lectures in Ohio during the summer, but decided to postpone his departure until August, so that he might, at least, spend two months with us. Faith Levis couldn't go,—at which, I think, we were all secretly glad. Some three or four others were in the same case, and the company was finally arranged to consist of the Shelldrakes, Hollins, Mallory, Eunice, Miss Ringtop, and myself. We did not give much thought, either to the preparations in advance, or to our mode of life when settled there. We were to live near to Nature: that was the main thing.
"'What shall we call the place?' asked Eunice.
"'Arcadia!' said Abel Mallory, rolling up his large green eyes.
"'Then,' said Hollins, 'let us constitute ourselves the Arcadian Club!'"
——"Aha!" interrupted Mr. Johnson, "I see! The A.C.!"
"Yes, you see the A.C. now," said Mrs. Billings; "but to understand it fully, you should have had a share in those Arcadian experiences."
"I am all the more interested in hearing them described. Go on, Enos."
"The proposition was adopted. We called ourselves The Arcadian Club; but in order to avoid gossip, and the usual ridicule, to which we were all more or less sensitive, in case our plan should become generally known, it was agreed that the initials only should be used. Besides, there was an agreeable air of mystery about it: we thought of Delphi, and Eleusis, and Samothrace: we should discover that Truth which the dim eyes of worldly men and women were unable to see, and the day of disclosure would be the day of Triumph. In one sense we were truly Arcadians: no suspicion of impropriety, I verily believe, entered any of our minds. In our aspirations after what we called a truer life there was no material taint. We were fools, if you choose, but as far as possible from being sinners. Besides, the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Shelldrake, who naturally became the heads of our proposed community, were sufficient to preserve us from slander or suspicion, if even our designs had been publicly announced.
"I won't bore you with an account of our preparations. In fact, there was very little to be done. Mr. Shelldrake succeeded in hiring the house, with most of its furniture, so that but a few articles had to be supplied. My trunk contained more books than boots, more blank paper than linen.
"'Two shirts will be enough,' said Abel: 'you can wash one of them any day, and dry it in the sun.'
"The supplies consisted mostly of flour, potatoes, and sugar. There was a vegetable-garden in good condition, Mr. Shelldrake said, which would be our principal dependence.
"'Besides, the clams!' I exclaimed, unthinkingly.
"'Oh, yes!' said Eunice, 'we can have chowder-parties: that will be delightful!'
"'Clams! chowder! oh, worse than flesh!' groaned Abel. 'Will you reverence Nature by outraging her first laws?'
"I had made a great mistake, and felt very foolish. Eunice and I looked at each other, for the first time."
"Speak for yourself only, Enos," gently interpolated his wife.
"It was a lovely afternoon in the beginning of June when we first approached Arcadia. We had taken two double teams at Bridgeport, and drove slowly forward to our destination, followed by a cart containing our trunks and a few household articles. It was a sweet, bright, balmy day: the wheat-fields were rich and green, the clover showed faint streaks of ruby mist along slopes leaning southward, and the meadows were yellow with buttercups. Now and then we caught glimpses of the Sound, and, far beyond it, the dim Long-Island shore. Every old white farm-house, with its gray-walled garden, its clumps of lilacs, viburnums, and early roses, offered us a picture of pastoral simplicity and repose. We passed them, one by one, in the happiest mood, enjoying the earth around us, the sky above, and ourselves most of all.
"The scenery, however, gradually became more rough and broken. Knobs of gray gneiss, crowned by mournful cedars, intrenched upon the arable land, and the dark-blue gleam of water appeared through the trees. Our road, which had been approaching the Sound, now skirted the head of a deep, irregular inlet, beyond which extended a beautiful promontory, thickly studded with cedars, and with scattering groups of elm, oak, and maple trees. Towards the end of the promontory stood a house, with white walls shining against the blue line of the Sound.
"'There is Arcadia, at last!' exclaimed Mr. Shelldrake.
"A general outcry of delight greeted the announcement. And, indeed, the loveliness of the picture surpassed our most poetic anticipations. The low sun was throwing exquisite lights across the point, painting the slopes of grass a golden green, and giving a pearly softness to the gray rocks. In the background was drawn the far-off water-line, over which a few specks of sail glimmered against the sky. Miss Ringtop, who, with Eunice, Mallory, and myself, occupied one carriage, expressed her 'gushing' feelings in the usual manner:—
"'Where the turf is softest, greenest,Doth an angel thrust me on,—Where the landscape lies serenest,In the journey of the sun!'
"'Don't, Pauline!' said Eunice; 'I never like to hear poetry flourished in the face of Nature. This landscape surpasses any poem in the world. Let us enjoy the best thing we have, rather than the next best.'
"'Ah, yes!' sighed Miss Ringtop, 'tis true!
"They sing to the ear; this sings to the eye."'
"Thenceforward, to the house, all was childish joy and jubilee. All minor personal repugnances were smoothed over in the general exultation. Even Abel Mallory became agreeable; and Hollins, sitting beside Mrs. Shelldrake on the back seat of the foremost carriage, shouted to us, in boyish lightness of heart.
"Passing the head of the inlet, we left the country-road, and entered, through a gate in the tottering stone wall, on our summer domain. A track, open to the field on one side, led us past a clump of deciduous trees, between pastures broken by cedared knolls of rock, down the centre of the peninsula, to the house. It was quite an old frame-building, two stories high, with a gambrel roof and tall chimneys. Two slim Lombardy poplars and a broad-leaved catalpa shaded the southern side, and a kitchen-garden, divided in the centre by a double row of untrimmed currant-bushes, flanked it on the east. For flowers, there were masses of blue flags and coarse tawny-red lilies, besides a huge trumpet-vine which swung its pendent arms from one of the gables. In front of the house a natural lawn of mingled turf and rock sloped steeply down to the water, which was not more than two hundred yards distant. To the west was another and broader inlet of the Sound, out of which our Arcadian promontory rose bluff and bold, crowned with a thick fringe of pines. It was really a lovely spot which Shelldrake had chosen,—so secluded, while almost surrounded, by the winged and moving life of the Sound, so simple, so pastoral and home-like. No one doubted the success of our experiment, for that evening, at least.
"Perkins Brown, Shelldrake's boy-of-all-work, awaited us at the door. He had been sent on two or three days in advance, to take charge of the house, and seemed to have had enough of hermit-life, for he hailed us with a wild whoop, throwing his straw hat half-way up one of the poplars. Perkins was a boy of fifteen, the child of poor parents, who were satisfied to get him off their hands, regardless as to what humanitarian theories might be tested upon him. As the Arcadian Club recognized no such thing as caste, he was always admitted to our meetings, and understood just enough of our conversation to excite a silly ambition in his slow mind. His animal nature was predominant, and this led him to be deceitful. At that time, however, we all looked upon him as a proper young Arcadian, and hoped that he would develop into a second Abel Mallory.
"After our effects had been deposited on the stoop, and the carriages had driven away, we proceeded to apportion the rooms, and take possession. On the first floor there were three rooms, two of which would serve us as dining-and drawing-rooms, leaving the third for the Shelldrakes. As neither Eunice and Miss Ringtop, nor Hollins and Abel showed any disposition to room together, I quietly gave up to them the four rooms in the second story, and installed myself in one of the attic chambers. Here I could hear the music of the rain close above my head, and through the little gable window, as I lay in bed, watch the colors of the morning gradually steal over the distant shores. The end was, we were all satisfied.
"'Now for our first meal in Arcadia!' was the next cry. Mrs. Shelldrake, like a prudent housekeeper, marched off to the kitchen, where Perkins had already kindled a fire. We looked in at the door, but thought it best to allow her undisputed sway in such a narrow realm. Eunice was unpacking some loaves of bread and paper bags of crackers; and Miss Ringtop, smiling through her ropy curls, as much as to say, 'You see,Ialso can perform the coarser tasks of life!' occupied herself with plates and cups. We men, therefore, walked out to the garden, which we found in a promising condition. The usual vegetables had been planted and were growing finely, for the season was yet scarcely warm enough for the weeds to make much headway. Radishes, young onions, and lettuce formed our contribution to the table. The Shelldrakes, I should explain, had not yet advanced to the antediluvian point, in diet: nor, indeed, had either Eunice or myself. We acknowledged the fascination of tea, we saw a very mitigated evil in milk and butter, and we were conscious of stifled longings after the abomination of meat. Only Mallory, Rollins, and Miss Ringtop had reached that loftiest round on the ladder of progress where the material nature loosens the last fetter of the spiritual. They looked down upon us, and we meekly admitted their right to do so.
"Our board, that evening, was really tempting. The absence of meat was compensated to us by the crisp and racy onions, and I craved only a little salt, which had been interdicted, as a most pernicious substance. I sat at one corner of the table, beside Perkins Brown, who took an opportunity, while the others were engaged in conversation, to jog my elbow gently. As I turned towards him, he said nothing, but dropped his eyes significantly. The little rascal had the lid of a blacking-box, filled with salt, upon his knee, and was privately seasoning his onions and radishes. I blushed at the thought of my hypocrisy, but the onions were so much better that I couldn't help dipping into the lid with him.
"'Oh,' said Eunice, 'we must send for some oil and vinegar! This lettuce is very nice."
"'Oil and vinegar?' exclaimed Abel.
"'Why, yes,' said she, innocently: 'they are both vegetable substances.'
"Abel at first looked rather foolish, but quickly recovering himself, said,—
"'All vegetable substances are not proper for food: you would not taste the poison-oak, or sit under the upas-tree of Java.'
"'Well, Abel,' Eunice rejoined, 'how are we to distinguish what is best for us? How are we to knowwhatvegetables to choose, or what animal and mineral substances to avoid?'
"'I will tell you,' he answered, with a lofty air. 'See here!' pointing to his temple, where the second pimple—either from the change of air, or because, in the excitement of the last few days, he had forgotten it—was actually healed. 'My blood is at last pure. The struggle between the natural and the unnatural is over, and I am beyond the depraved, influences of my former taste. My instincts are now, therefore, entirely pure also. What is good for man to eat, that I shall have a natural desire to eat: what is bad will be naturally repelled. How does the cow distinguish between the wholesome and the poisonous herbs of the meadow? And is man less than a cow, that he cannot cultivate his instincts to an equal point? Let me walk through, the woods and I can tell you every berry and root which God designed for food, though I know not its name, and have never seen it before. I shall make use of my time, during our sojourn here, to test, by my purified instinct, every substance, animal, mineral, and vegetable, upon which the human race subsists, and to create a catalogue of the True Food of Man!'
"Abel was eloquent on this theme, and he silenced not only Eunice, but the rest of us. Indeed, as we were all half-infected with the same delusions, it was not easy to answer his sophistries.
"After supper was over, the prospect of cleaning the dishes and putting things in order was not so agreeable; but Mrs. Shelldrake and Perkins undertook the work, and we did not think it necessary to interfere with them. Half an hour afterwards, when the full moon had risen, we took our chairs upon the stoop, to enjoy the calm, silver night, the soft sea-air, and our summer's residence in anticipatory talk.
"'My friends,' said Hollins, (andhishobby, as you may remember, Ned, was the organization of Society, rather than those reforms which apply directly to the Individual,)—'my friends, I think we are sufficiently advanced in progressive ideas to establish our little Arcadian community upon what I consider the true basis: not Law, nor Custom, but the uncorrupted impulses of our nature. What Abel said in regard to dietetic reform is true; but that alone will not regenerate the race. We must rise superior to those conventional ideas of Duty whereby Life is warped and crippled. Life must not be a prison, where each one must come and go, work, eat, and sleep, as the jailer commands. Labor must not be a necessity, but a spontaneous joy. 'T is true, but little labor is required of us here: let us, therefore, have no set tasks, no fixed rules, but each one work, rest, eat, sleep, talk or be silent, as his own nature prompts.'
"Perkins, sitting on the steps, gave a suppressed chuckle, which I think no one heard but myself. I was vexed with his levity, but, nevertheless, gave him a warning nudge with my toe, in payment for the surreptitious salt.
"'That's just the notion I had, when I first talked of our coming here,' said Shelldrake. 'Here we're alone and unhindered; and if the plan shouldn't happen to work well, (I don't see why it shouldn't, though,) no harm will be done. I've had a deal of hard work in my life, and I've been badgered and bullied so much by your strait-laced professors, that I'm glad to get away from the world for a spell, and talk and do rationally, without being laughed at.'
"'Yes,' answered Hollins, 'and if we succeed, as I feel we shall, for I think I know the hearts of all of us here, this may be the commencement of a new _ee_poch for the world. We may become the turning-point between two dispensations: behind us everything false and unnatural,—before us everything true, beautiful, and good.'
"'Ah,' sighed Miss Ringtop, 'it reminds me of Gamaliel J. Gawthrop's beautiful lines:—
"Unrobed man is lying hoaryIn the distance, gray and dead;There no wreaths of godless gloryTo his mist-like tresses wed,And the foot-fall of the AgesReigns supreme, with noiseless tread."'
"'I am willing to try the experiment,' said I, on being appealed to by Hollins; 'but don't you think we had better observe some kind of order, even in yielding everything to impulse? Shouldn't there be, at least, a platform, as the politicians call it,—an agreement by which we shall all be bound, and which we can afterwards exhibit as the basis of our success?'
"He meditated a few moments, and then answered,—
"'I think not. It resembles too much the thing we are trying to overthrow. Can you bind a man's belief by making him sign certain articles of Faith? No: his thought will be free, in spite of it; and I would have Action—Life—as free as Thought. Our platform—to adopt your image—has but one plank: Truth. Let each only be true to himself:behimself,acthimself, or herself, with the uttermost candor. We can all agree upon that.'
"The agreement was accordingly made. And certainly no happier or more hopeful human beings went to bed in all New England that night.
"I arose with the sun, went into the garden, and commenced weeding, intending to do my quota of work before breakfast, and then devote the day to reading and conversation. I was presently joined by Shelldrake and Mallory, and between us we finished the onions and radishes, stuck the peas, and cleaned the alleys. Perkins, after milking the cow and turning her out to pasture, assisted Mrs. Shelldrake in the kitchen. At breakfast we were joined by Hollins, who made no excuse for his easy morning habits; nor was one expected. I may as well tell you now, though, that his natural instincts never led him to work. After a week, when a second crop of weeds was coming on, Mallory fell off also, and thenceforth Shelldrake and myself had the entire charge of the garden. Perkins did the rougher work, and was always on hand when he was wanted. Very soon, however, I noticed that he was in the habit of disappearing for two or three hours in the afternoon.
"Our meals preserved the same Spartan simplicity. Eunice, however, carried her point in regard to the salad; for Abel, after tasting and finding it very palatable, decided that oil and vinegar might be classed in the catalogue of True Food. Indeed, his long abstinence from piquant flavors gave him such an appetite for it, that our supply of lettuce was soon exhausted. An embarrassing accident also favored us with the use of salt. Perkins happening to move his knee at the moment I was dipping an onion into the blacking-box lid, our supply was knocked upon the floor. He picked it up, and we both hoped the accident might pass unnoticed. But Abel, stretching his long neck across the corner of the table, caught a glimpse of what was going on.
"'What's that?' he asked.
"'Oh, it's—it's only,' said I, seeking for a synonyme, 'onlychloride of sodium!'
"'Chloride of sodium! what do you do with it?'
"'Eat it with onions,' said I, boldly: 'it's a chemical substance, but I believe it is found in some plants.'
"Eunice, who knew something of chemistry, (she taught a class, though you wouldn't think it,) grew red with suppressed fun, but the others were as ignorant as Abel Mallory himself.
"'Let me taste it,' said he, stretching out an onion.
"I handed him the box-lid, which still contained a portion of its contents. He dipped the onion, bit off a piece, and chewed it gravely.
"'Why,' said he, turning to me, 'it's very much like salt.'
"Perkins burst into a spluttering yell, which discharged an onion-top he had just put between his teeth across the table; Eunice and I gave way at the same moment; and the others, catching the joke, joined us. But while we were laughing, Abel was finishing his onion, and the result was that Salt was added to the True Food, and thereafter appeared regularly on the table.
"The forenoons we usually spent in reading and writing, each in his or her chamber. (Oh, the journals, Ned!—but you shall not see mine.) After a mid-day meal,—I cannot call it dinner,—we sat upon the stoop, listening while one of us read aloud, or strolled down the shores on either side, or, when the sun was not too warm, got into a boat, and rowed or floated lazily around the promontory.
"One afternoon, as I was sauntering off, past the garden, towards the eastern inlet, I noticed Perkins slipping along behind the cedar knobs, towards the little woodland at the end of our domain. Curious to find out the cause of his mysterious disappearances, I followed cautiously. From the edge of the wood I saw him enter a little gap between the rocks, which led down to the water. Presently a thread of blue smoke stole up. Quietly creeping along, I got upon the nearer bluff and looked down. There was a sort of hearth built up at the base of the rock, with a brisk little lire burning upon it, but Perkins had disappeared. I stretched myself out upon the moss, in the shade, and waited. In about half an hour up came Perkins, with a large fish in one hand and a lump of clay in the other. I now understood the mystery. He carefully imbedded the fish in a thin layer of clay, placed it on the coals, and then went down to the shore to wash his hands. On his return he found me watching the fire.
"'Ho, ho, Mr. Enos!' said he, 'you've found me out! Butyouwon't say nothin'. Gosh!youlike it as well I do. Look 'ee there!'—breaking open the clay, from which arose 'a steam of rich-distilled perfumes,'—'and, I say, I've got the box-lid with that 'ere stuff in it,—ho! ho!' and the scamp roared again.