A very dull Lecture, willfully brought upon themselves by the elder children. Some of the young ones have, however, managed to get in by mistake. SCENE, the Schoolroom.
L. So I am to stand up here merely to be asked questions, to-day, Miss Mary, am I?
MARY. Yes; and you must answer them plainly; without telling us any more stories. You are quite spoiling the children: the poor little things' heads are turning round like kaleidoscopes: and they don't know in the least what you mean. Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter: to-day you must really tell us nothing but facts.
L. I am sworn; but you won't like it, a bit.
MARY. Now, first of all, what do you mean by "bricks"?—Are the smallest particles of minerals all of some accurate shape, like bricks?
L. I do not know. Miss Mary; I do not even know if anybody knows. The smallest atoms which are visibly and practically put together to make large crystals, may better be described as "limited in fixed directions" than as "of fixed forms." But I can tell you nothing clear about ultimate atoms: you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of little spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put it to.
MARY. Well, it's very provoking; one seems always to be stopped just when one is coming to the very thing one wants to know.
L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything but what is easily and assuredly knowable. There's no end to it. If I could show you, or myself, a group of ultimate atoms, quite clearly, in this magnifying glass, we should both be presently vexed, because we could not break them in two pieces, and see their insides.
MARY. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying of the bricks? What is it the atoms do, that is like flying?
L. When they are dissolved, or uncrystallized, they are really separated from each other, like a swarm of gnats in the air, or like a shoal of fish in the sea;—generally at about equal distances. In currents of solutions, or at different depths of them, one part may be more full of the dissolved atoms than another; but on the whole, you may think of them as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. If they are separated by force of heat only, the substance is said to be melted; if they are separated by any other substance, as particles of sugar by water, they are said to be "dissolved." Note this distinction carefully, all of you.
DORA. I will be very particular. When next you tell me there isn't sugar enough in your tea, I will say, "It is not yet dissolved, sir."
L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora; and that's the present parliament, if the members get too saucy.
(DORA folds her hands and casts down her eyes.)
L. (proceeds in state). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, I believe, that nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient heat, like wax. Limestone melts (under pressure); sand melts; granite melts; the lava of a volcano is a mixed mass of many kinds of rocks, melted: and any melted substance nearly always, if not always, crystallizes as it cools; the more slowly the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call the freezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conveniently, call the melting, point; and radiates as it cools into the most beautiful of all known crystals. Glass melts at a greater heat, and will crystallize, if you let it cool slowly enough, in stars, much like snow. Gold needs more heat to melt it, but crystallizes also exquisitely, as I will presently show you. Arsenic and sulphur crystallize from their vapors. Now in any of these cases, either of melted, dissolved, or vaporous bodies, the particles are usually separated from each other, either by heat, or by an intermediate substance; and in crystallizing they are both brought nearer to each other, and packed, so as to fit as closely as possible: the essential part of the business being not the bringing together, but the packing. Who packed your trunk for you, last holidays, Isabel?
ISABEL. Lily does, always.
L. And how much can you allow for Lily's good packing, in guessing what will go into the trunk?
ISABEL. Oh! I bring twice as much as the trunk holds. Lily always gets everything in.
LILY. Ah! but, Isey, if you only knew what a time it takes! and since you've had those great hard buttons on your frocks, I can't do anything with them. Buttons won't go anywhere, you know.
L. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only knew what a time it takes; and I wish any of us knew what a time crystallization takes, for that is consummately fine packing. The particles of the rock are thrown down, just as Isabel brings her things—in a heap; and innumerable Lilies, not of the valley, but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes such a time!
However, the best—out and out the best—way of understanding the thing, is to crystallize yourselves.
THE AUDIENCE. Ourselves!
L. Yes; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly on the schoolroom forms; but carefully and finely, out in the playground. You can play at crystallization there as much as you please.
KATHLEEN and JESSIE. Oh! how?—how?
L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you can, in the middle of the grass, and form, for first practice, any figure you like.
JESSIE. Any dancing figure, do you mean?
L. No; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any figure you like, standing close together. You had better outline it first on the turf, with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see that it is rightly drawn; then get into it and enlarge or diminish it at one side, till you are all quite in it, and no empty space left.
DORA. Crinoline and all?
L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface, unless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal of yourselves.
LILY. Oh, we'll pin it in—we'll pin it in!
L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note her place, and who is next her on each side; and let the outsiders count how many places they stand from the corners.
KATHLEEN. Yes, yes,—and then?
L. Then you must scatter all over the playground—right over it from side to side, and end to end; and put yourselves all at equal distances from each other, everywhere. You needn't mind doing it very accurately, but so as to be nearly equidistant; not less than about three yards apart from each other, on every side.
JESSIE. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, to hold. And then? L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same rate, towards the outlined figure in the middle. You had better sing as you walk; that will keep you in good time. And as you close in towards it, let each take her place, and the next comers fit themselves in beside the first ones, till you are all in the figure again.
KATHLEEN. Oh! how we shall run against each other. What fun it will be!
L. No, no, Miss Katie; I can't allow any running against each other. The atoms never do that, whatever human creatures do. You must all know your places, and find your way to them without jostling.
LILY. But how ever shall we do that?
ISABEL. Mustn't the ones in the middle be the nearest, and the outside ones farther off—when we go away to scatter, I mean?
L. Yes; you must be very careful to keep your order; you will soon find out how to do it; it is only like soldiers forming square, except that each must stand still in her place as she reaches it, and the others come round her; and you will have much more complicated figures, afterwards, to form, than squares.
ISABEL. I'll put a stone at my place: then I shall know it.
L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your place, with your name upon it: but it would be of no use, for if you don't know your places, you will make a fine piece of business of it, while you are looking for your names. And, Isabel, if with a little head, and eyes, and a brain (all of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as such things go), you think you cannot know your place without a stone at it, after examining it well,—how do you think each atom knows its place, when it never was there before, and there's no stone at it?
ISABEL. But does every atom know its place?
L. How else could it get there?
MARY. Are they not attracted into their places?
L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals; and then imagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any law of attraction, to exist between the spots, and try how, on that permitted supposition, you can attract them into the figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of the paper.
MARY (having tried it). Yes; I see that I cannot:—one would need all kinds of attractions, in different ways, at different places. But you do not mean that the atoms are alive?
L. What is it to be alive?
DORA. There now; you're going to be provoking, I know.
L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked what it is to be alive. Do you think you don't know whether you are alive or not?
(ISABEL skips to the end of the room and back.)
L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine; and you and I may call that being alive: but a modern philosopher calls it being in a "mode of motion." It requires a certain quantity of heat to take you to the sideboard; and exactly the same quantity to bring you back again. That's all.
ISABEL. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot.
L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you know, Isabel, you might have been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been carried round the room, or anywhere else, by chemical forces, in the liveliest way.
ISABEL. Yes; but I wasn't carried: I carried myself.
L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say what makes a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut off from the rest of the universe into a Self, you begin to be alive.
VIOLET (indignant). Oh, surely—surely that cannot be so. Is not all the life of the soul in communion, not separation?
L. There can be no communion where there is no distinction. But we shall be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't look out; and besides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children. We'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we must. (The younger children are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but, knowing by experience, that all conversations in which the word "communion" occurs, are unintelligible, think better of it.) Meantime, for broad answer about the atoms. I do not think we should use the word "life," of any energy which does not belong to a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a young animal, are properly called "alive" with respect to the force belonging to those forms, which consistently develops that form, and no other. But the force which crystallizes a mineral appears to be chiefly external, and it does not produce an entirely determinate and individual form, limited in size, but only an aggregation, in which some limiting laws must be observed.
MARY. But I do not see much difference, that way, between a crystal and a tree.
L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a continual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may define life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its attached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this, just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome. Rocks have always been called "living" in their native place.
MARY. There's one question more; then I've done.
L. Only one?
MARY. Only one.
L. But if it is answered, won't it turn into two?
MARY. No; I think it will remain single, and be comfortable.
L. Let me hear it.
MARY. You know, we are to crystallize ourselves out of the whole playground. Now, what playground have the minerals! Where are they scattered before they are crystallized; and where are the crystals generally made?
L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, Mary. If it is only one, it is a wide one.
MARY. I did not say anything about the width of it.
L. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. When rocks either dry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarily alter in bulk; and cracks, or open spaces, form in them in all directions. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or the rock would eventually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water, sometimes by vapor, sometimes nobody knows how, crystallizable matter is brought from somewhere, and fastens itself in these open spaces, so as to bind the rock together again with crystal cement. A vast quantity of hollows are formed in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are left in bread well baked. In process of time these cavities are generally filled with various crystals.
MARY. But where does the crystallizing substance come from?
L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below or above, through the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;—or with mineral vapor;—or it may be so charged at one place, and empty at another. There's no end to the "may be's." But all that you need fancy, for our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves in Derbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapor containing certain elements in a more or less free or separate state, which crystallize on the cave walls.
SIBYL. There now;—Mary has had all her questions answered: it's my turn to have mine.
L. Ah, there's a conspiracy among you, I see. I might have guessed as much.
DORA. I'm sure you ask us questions enough! How can you have the heart, when you dislike so to be asked them yourself?
L. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it does not matter how many they are asked, because they've no trouble with them. Now, when I ask you questions, I never expect to be answered; but when you ask me, you always do; and it's not fair.
DORA. Very well, we shall understand, next time.
SIBYL. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing more, quite dreadfully.
L. And I don't want to be asked it, quite dreadfully; but you'll have your own way, of course.
SIBYL. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. It was not merely yesterday; but in all we have read about him in Wilkinson, or in any book, we cannot understand what the Egyptians put their god into that ugly little deformed shape for.
L. Well, I'm glad it's that sort of question; because I can answer anything I like to that.
EGYPT. Anything you like will do quite well for us; we shall be pleased with the answer, if you are.
L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen; for I must begin by the statement that queens seem to have disliked all sorts of work, in those days, as much as some queens dislike sewing to-day.
EGYPT. Now, it's too bad! and just when I was trying to say the civillest thing I could!
L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing so?
EGYPT. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I always get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew long.
L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought everybody got cramp in their neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people's fingers. At all events, every kind of manual labor was despised both by them, and the Greeks; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of it, they yet held it a degradation to all who practiced it. Also, knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the special practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfection strengthened the body distortedly; one energy or member gaining at the expense of the rest. They especially dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to be done near fire: yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, as the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed reverence and scorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaestus, and the lower Pthah.
SIBYL. But what did you mean by making him say "Everything great I can make small, and everything small great"?
L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen in modern times the power of the lower Pthah developed in a separate way, which no Greek nor Egyptian could have conceived. It is the character of pure and eyeless manual labor to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, in reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected, aggrandizing itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of all noble things. I heard an orator, and a good one too, at the Working Men's College, the other day, make a great point in a description of our railroads; saying, with grandly conducted emphasis, "They have made man greater, and the world less." His working audience were mightily pleased; they thought it so very fine a thing to be made bigger themselves; and all the rest of the world less. I should have enjoyed asking them (but it would have been a pity—they were so pleased), how much less they would like to have the world made;—and whether, at present, those of them really felt the biggest men, who lived in the least houses.
SIBYL. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he could make weak things strong, and small things great?
L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so far true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighborhood—a very fine fair we thought it. You never saw such an one; but if you look at the engraving of Turner's "St. Catherine's Hill," you will see what it was like. There were curious booths, carried on poles; and peep-shows; and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much barley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like: and in the alleys of this fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, after their fashion, very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one day; he made the wooden poles into iron ones, and put them across, like his own crooked legs, so that you always fall over them if you don't look where you are going; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, and put it up on his iron cross-poles; and made all the little booths into one great booth;—and people said it was very fine, and a new style of architecture; and Mr. Dickens said nothing was ever like it in Fairy-land, which was very true. And then the little Pthah set to work to put fine fairings in it; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, with the blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like his gingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could think of, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and her children; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders; and the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin; and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops, and buns, and beer; and all the little-Pthah-worshippers say, never was anything so sublime!
SIBYL. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these Crystal Palace concerts? they're as good as good can be.
L. I don't go to the thundering things with a million of bad voices in them. When I want a song, I get Julia Mannering and Lucy Bertram and Counselor Pleydell to sing "We be three poor Mariners" to me; then I've no headache next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when I can; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl: and I always get a reserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I am sure I can see the kettle-drummer drum.
SIBYL. Now DO be serious, for one minute.
L. I am serious—never was more so. You know one can't see the modulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the vibration of the drummer's hand; and it's lovely.
SIBYL. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to see!
L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, is to go there to talk. I confess, however, that in most music, when very well done, the doing of it is to me the chiefly interesting part of the business. I'm always thinking how good it would be for the fat, supercilious people, who care so little for their half- crown's worth, to be set to try and do a half-crown's worth of anything like it.
MARY. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and help to the people of London?
L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear; but they are spoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. And the palace (as they call it) is a better place for them, by much, than the old fair; and it is always there, instead of for three days only; and it shuts up at proper hours of night. And good use may be made of the things in it, if you know how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them nothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah's work—nothing but hammer and tongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his doing, in the place, only the other day. Some unhappy metal-worker—I am not sure if it was not a metal- working firm—had taken three years to make a Golden eagle.
SIBYL. Of real gold?
L. No; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent metals— it is no matter what. I meant a model of our chief British eagle. Every feather was made separately; and every filament of every feather separately, and so joined on; and all the quills modeled of the right length and right section, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened together. You know, children, I don't think much of my own drawing; but take my proud word for once, that when I go to the Zoological Gardens, and happen to have a bit of chalk in my pocket, and the Gray Harpy will sit, without screwing his head round, for thirty seconds,—I can do a better thing of him in that time than the three years' work of this industrious firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my object,—not myself; and during the three years, the firm's object, in every fiber of bronze it made, was itself, and not the eagle. That is the true meaning of the little Pthah's having no eyes—he can see only himself. The Egyptian beetle was not quite the full type of him; our northern ground beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it at work, gathering its treasures (such as they are) into little round balls; and pushing them home with the strong wrong end of it,—head downmost all the way,—like a modern political economist with his ball of capital, declaring that a nation can stand on its vices better than on its virtues. But away with you, children, now, for I'm getting cross.
DORA. I'm going downstairs; I shall take care, at any rate, that there are no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboards.
A working Lecture in the large Schoolroom; with experimental Interludes. The great bell has rung unexpectedly.
KATHLEEN (entering disconsolate, though first at the summons). Oh dear, oh dear, what a day! Was ever anything so provoking! just when we wanted to crystallize ourselves;—and I'm sure it's going to rain all day long.
L. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an Irish way with it. But I don't see why Irish girls should also look so dismal. Fancy that you don't want to crystallize yourselves: you didn't, the day before yesterday, and you were not unhappy when it rained then.
FLORRIE. Ah! but we do want to-day; and the rain's so tiresome.
L. That is to say, children, that because you are all the richer by the expectation of playing at a new game, you choose to make yourselves unhappier than when you had nothing to look forward to, but the old ones.
ISABEL. But then, to have to wait—wait—wait; and before we've tried it;—and perhaps it will rain to-morrow, too!
L. It may also rain the day after to-morrow. We can make ourselves uncomfortable to any extent with perhapses, Isabel. You may stick perhapses into your little minds, like pins, till you are as uncomfortable as the Lilliputians made Gulliver with their arrows, when he would not lie quiet.
ISABEL. But what ARE we to do to-day?
L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw there was nothing better to be done. And to practice patience. I can tell you, children, THAT requires nearly as much practicing as music; and we are continually losing our lessons when the master comes. Now, to-day, here's a nice, little adagio lesson for us, if we play it properly.
ISABEL. But I don't like that sort of lesson. I can't play it properly.
L. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel? The more need to practice. All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time. But there must be no hurry.
KATHLEEN. I'm sure there's no music in stopping in on a rainy day.
L. There's no music in a "rest," Katie, that I know of: but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life-melody; and scrambling on without counting— not that it's easy to count; but nothing on which so much depends ever IS easy. People are always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude,—and the rarest, too. I know twenty persevering girls for one patient one: but it is only that twenty-first who can do her work, out and out, or enjoy it. For patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, when Impatience companions her.
(ISABEL and LILY sit down on the floor, and fold their hands. The others follow their example.)
Good children! but that's not quite the way of it, neither. Folded hands are not necessarily resigned ones. The Patience who really smiles at grief usually stands, or walks, or even runs: she seldom sits; though she may sometimes have to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by monuments; or like Chaucer's, "with face pale, upon a hill of sand." But we are not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous fore-noon to choose the shapes we are to crystallize into? we know nothing about them yet.
(The pictures of resignation rise from the floor not in the patientest manner. General applause.)
MARY (with one or two others). The very thing we wanted to ask you about!
LILY. We looked at the books about crystals, but they are so dreadful.
L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, that's a fact: no road to any good knowledge is wholly among the lilies and the grass; there is rough climbing to be done always. But the crystal-books are a little TOO dreadful, most of them, I admit; and we shall have to be content with very little of their help. You know, as you cannot stand on each other's heads, you can only make yourselves into the sections of crystals,—the figures they show when they are cut through; and we will choose some that will be quite easy. You shall make diamonds of yourselves—
ISABEL. Oh, no, no! we won't be diamonds, please.
L, Yes, you shall, Isabel; they are very pretty things, if the jewelers, and the kings and queens, would only let them alone. You shall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies of yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of those—with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which we will hope the best; and you shall make Derbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and—Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without any making.
MARY. Now you know, the children will be getting quite wild we must really get pencils and paper, and begin properly.
L. Wait a minute, Miss Mary, I think as we the schoolroom clear to-day, I'll try to give you some notion of the three great orders or ranks of crystals, into which all the others seem more or less to fall. We shall only want one figure a day, in the playground, and that can be drawn in a minute: but the general ideas had better be fastened first. I must show you a great many minerals; so let me have three tables wheeled into the three windows, that we may keep our specimens separate;—we will keep the three orders of crystals on separate tables.
(First Interlude of pushing and pulling, and spreading of baize covers. VIOLET, not particularly minding what she is about, gets herself jammed into a corner, and bid to stand out of the way; on which she devotes herself to meditation.)
VIOLET (after interval of meditation). How strange it is that everything seems to divide into threes!
L. Everything doesn't divide into threes. Ivy won't, though shamrock will, and daisies won't though lilies will.
VIOLET. But all the nicest things seem to divide into threes.
L. Violets won't.
VIOLET. No; I should think not, indeed! But I mean the great things.
L. I've always heard the globe had four quarters.
ISABEL. Well; but you know you said it hadn't any quarters at all. So mayn't it really be divided into three?
L. If it were divided into no more than three, on the outside of it, Isabel, it would be a fine world to live in; and if it were divided into three in the inside of it, it would soon be no world to live in at all.
DORA. We shall never get to the crystals, at this rate. (Aside to MARY.) He will get off into political economy before we know where we are. (Aloud.) But the crystals are divided into three, then?
L. No; but there are three general notions by which we may best get hold of them. Then between these notions there are other notions.
LILY (alarmed). A great many? And shall we have to learn them all?
L. More than a great many—a quite infinite many. So you cannot learn them all.
LILY (greatly relieved). Then may we only learn the three?
L. Certainly; unless, when you have got those three notions, you want to have some more notions;—which would not surprise me. But we'll try for the three, first. Katie, you broke your coral necklace this morning?
KATHLEEN. Oh! who told you? It was in jumping. I'm so sorry!
L. I'm very glad. Can you fetch me the beads of it?
KATHLEEN. I've lost some; here are the rest in my pocket, if I can only get them out.
L. You mean to get them out some day, I suppose; so try now. I want them.
(KATHLEEN empties her pocket on the floor. The beads disperse. The School disperses also. Second Interlude—hunting piece.)
L. (after waiting patiently for a quarter of an hour, to ISABEL, who comes up from under the table with her hair all about her ears and the last findable beads in her hand.) Mice are useful little things sometimes. Now, mousie, I want all those beads crystallized. How many ways are there of putting them in order?
ISABEL. Well, first one would string them, I suppose?
L. Yes, that's the first way. You cannot string ultimate atoms; but you can put them in a row, and then they fasten themselves together, somehow, into a long rod or needle. We will call these "NEEDLE-crystals." What would be the next way?
ISABEL. I suppose, as we are to get together in the playground, when it stops raining, in different shapes?
L. Yes; put the beads together, then, in the simplest form you can, to begin with. Put them into a square, and pack them close.
ISABEL (after careful endeavor). I can't get them closer.
L. That will do. Now you may see, beforehand, that if you try to throw yourselves into square in this confused way, you will never know your places; so you had better consider every square as made of rods, put side by side. Take four beads of equal size, first, Isabel; put them into a little square. That, you may consider as made up of two rods of two beads each. Then you can make a square a size larger, out of three rods of three. Then the next square may be a size larger. How many rods, Lily?
LILY. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose.
L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, look here; make another square of four beads again. You see they leave a little opening in the center.
ISABEL (pushing two opposite ones closer together). Now they don't.
L. No; but now it isn't a square; and by pushing the two together you have pushed the two others farther apart.
ISABEL. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they were!
L. Yes; for before, each of them only touched two of the others, but now each of the two in the middle touches the other three. Take away one of the outsiders, Isabel: now you have three in a triangle—the smallest triangle you can make out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on at one side. So, you have a triangle of six beads; but just the shape of the first one. Next a rod of four on the side of that; and you have a triangle of ten beads: then a rod of five on the side of that; and you have a triangle of fifteen. Thus you have a square with five beads on the side, and a triangle with five beads on the side; equal-sided, therefore, like the square. So, however few or many you may be, you may soon learn how to crystallize quickly into these two figures, which are the foundation of form in the commonest, and therefore actually the most important, as well as in the rarest, and therefore, by our esteem, the most important, minerals of the world. Look at this in my hand.
VIOLET. Why, it is leaf gold!
L. Yes; but beaten by no man's hammer; or rather, not beaten at all, but woven. Besides, feel the weight of it. There is gold enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, if it were beaten thin.
VIOLET. How beautiful! And it glitters like a leaf covered with frost.
L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of brass for it is Transylvanian gold; and they say there is a foolish gnome in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don't know how that may be, but the silver always IS in the gold, and if he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is woven so fine anywhere else.
MARY (who has been looking through her magnifying glass). But this is not woven. This is all made of little triangles.
L. Say "patched," then, if you must be so particular. But if you fancy all those triangles, small as they are (and many of them are infinitely small), made up again of rods, and those of grains, as we built our great triangle of the beads, what word will you take for the manufacture?
MAY. There's no word—it is beyond words.
L. Yes, and that would matter little, were it not beyond thoughts too. But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, shed, not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, will help you to remember the second kind of crystals, LEAF-crystals, or FOLIATED crystals, though I show you the form in gold first only to make a strong impression on you, for gold is not generally or characteristically, crystallized in leaves; the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica; which if you once feel well and break well, you will always know again; and you will often have occasion to know it, for you will find it everywhere nearly, in hill countries.
KATHLEEN. If we break it well! May we break it?
L. To powder, if you like.
(Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation. Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophic al treatment at all hands.)
FLORRIE (to whom the last fragments have descended). Always leaves, and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust?
L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves.
(Shows them to FLORRIE through magnifying glass.)
ISABEL (peeping over FLORRIE'S shoulder). But then this bit under the glass looks like that bit out of the glass! If we could break this bit under the glass, what would it be like?
L. It would be all leaves still.
ISABEL. And then if we broke those again?
L. All less leaves still.
ISABEL (impatient). And if we broke them again, and again, and again, and again, and again?
L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could only see it. Notice that the little flakes already differ somewhat from the large ones: because I can bend them up and down, and they stay bent; while the large flake, though it bent easily a little way, sprang back when you let it go, and broke when you tried to bend it far. And a large mass would not bend at all.
MARY. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in the same way?
L. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteristic specimen of a foliated crystallization. The little triangles are portions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, which looks like a black mica; but you see it is made up of triangles like the gold, and stands, almost accurately, as an intermediate link, in crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is the commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals.
MARY. Is it iron? I never saw iron so bright.
L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallized: from its resemblance to mica, it is often called micaceous iron.
KATHLEEN. May we break this, too?
L. No, for I could not easily get such another crystal; besides, it would not break like the mica; it is much harder. But take the glass again, and look at the fineness of the jagged edges of the triangles where they lap over each other. The gold has the same: but you see them better here, terrace above terrace, countless, and, in successive angles, like superb fortified bastions.
MAY. But all foliated crystals are not made of triangles?
L. Far from it; mica is occasionally so. but usually of hexagons; and here is a foliated crystal made of squares, which will show you that the leaves of the rock-land have their summer green, as well as their autumnal gold.
FLORRIE. Oh! oh! oh! (jumps for joy).
L. Did you never see a bit of green leaf before, Florrie?
FLORRIE. Yes, but never so bright as that, and not in a stone.
L. If you will look at the leaves of the trees in sunshine after a shower, you will find they are much brighter than that; and surely they are none the worse for being on stalks instead of in stones?
FLORRIE. Yes, but then there are so many of them, one never looks, I suppose.
L. Now you have it, Florrie.
VIOLET (sighing). There are so many beautiful things we never see!
L. You need not sigh for that, Violet; but I will tell you what we should all sigh for—that there are so many ugly things we never see.
VIOLET. But we don't want to see ugly things!
L. You had better say, "We don't want to suffer them." You ought to be glad in thinking how much more beauty God has made, than human eyes can ever see; but not glad in thinking how much more evil man has made, than his own soul can ever conceive, much more than his hands can ever heal.
VIOLET. I don't understand;—how is that like the leaves?
L. The same law holds in our neglect of multiplied pain, as in our neglect of multiplied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy at sight of half an inch of a green leaf in a brown stone, and takes more notice of it than of all the green in the wood, and you, or I, or any of us, would be unhappy if any single human creature beside us were in sharp pain; but we can read, at breakfast, day after day, of men being killed, and of women and children dying of hunger, faster than the leaves strew the brooks in Vallombrosa;—and then go out to play croquet, as if nothing had happened.
MAY. But we do not see the people being killed or dying.
L. You did not see your brother, when you got the telegram the other day, saying he was ill, May; but you cried for him; and played no croquet. But we cannot talk of these things now; and what is more, you must let me talk straight on, for a little while; and ask no questions till I've done: for we branch ("exfoliate," I should say, mineralogically) always into something else,—though that's my fault more than yours; but I must go straight on now. You have got a distinct notion, I hope, of leaf- crystals; and you see the sort of look they have: you can easily remember that "folium" is Latin for a leaf, and that the separate flakes of mica, or any other such stones, are called "folia;" but, because mica is the most characteristic of these stones, other things that are like it in structure are called "micas;" thus we have Uran-mica, which is the green leaf I showed you; and Copper- mica, which is another like it, made chiefly of copper; and this foliated iron is called "micaceous iron." You have then these two great orders, Needle-crystals, made (probably) of grains in rows; and Leaf-crystals, made (probably) of needles interwoven; now, lastly, there are crystals of a third order, in heaps, or knots, or masses, which may be made either of leaves laid one upon another, or of needles bound like Roman fasces; and mica itself, when it is well crystallized, puts itself into such masses, as if to show us how others are made. Here is a brown six-sided crystal, quite as beautifully chiseled at the sides as any castle tower; but you see it is entirely built of folia of mica, one laid above another, which break away the moment I touch the edge with my knife. Now, here is another hexagonal tower, of just the same size and color, which I want you to compare with the mica carefully; but as I cannot wait for you to do it just now, I must tell you quickly what main differences to look for. First, you will feel it far heavier than the mica. Then, though its surface looks quite micaceous in the folia of it when you try them with the knife, you will find you cannot break them away—
KATHLEEN. May I try?
L. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here's my strong knife for you. (Experimental pause. KATHLEEN doing her best.) You'll have that knife shutting on your finger presently, Kate; and I don't know a girl who would like less to have her hand tied up for a week.
KATHLEEN (who also does not like to be beaten—giving up the knife despondently.). What CAN the nasty hard thing be?
L. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate: very hard set certainly, yet not so hard as it might be. If it were thoroughly well crystallized, you would see none of those micaceous fractures; and the stone would be quite red and clear, all through.
KATHLEEN. Oh, cannot you show us one?
L. Egypt can, if you ask her; she has a beautiful one in the clasp of her favorite bracelet.
KATHLEEN. Why, that's a ruby!
L. Well, so is that thing you've been scratching at.
KATHLEEN. My goodness! (Takes up the stone again, very delicately; and drops it. General consternation.)
L. Never mind, Katie, you might drop it from the top of the house, and do it no harm. But though you really are a very good girl, and as good-natured as anybody can possibly be, remember, you have your faults, like other people, and, if I were you, the next time I wanted to assert anything energetically, I would assert it by "my badness," not "my goodness."
KATHLEEN. Ah, now, it's too bad of you!
L. Well, then, I'll invoke, on occasion, my "too-badness." But you may as well pick up the ruby, now you have dropped it; and look carefully at the beautiful hexagonal lines which gleam on its surface, and here is a pretty white sapphire (essentially the same stone as the ruby), in which you will see the same lovely structure, like the threads of the finest white cobweb. I do not know what is the exact method of a ruby's construction, but you see by these lines, what fine construction there is, even in this hardest of stones (after the diamond), which usually appears as a massive lump or knot. There is therefore no real mineralogical distinction between needle crystals and knotted crystals, but, practically, crystallized masses throw themselves into one of the three groups we have been examining to-day; and appear either as Needles, as Folia, or as Knots; when they are in needles (or fibers), they make the stones or rocks formed out of them "FIBROUS;" when they are in folia, they make them "FOLIATED;" when they are in knots (or grains), "GRANULAR." Fibrous rocks are comparatively rare, in mass; but fibrous minerals are innumerable; and it is often a question which really no one but a young lady could possibly settle, whether one should call the fibers composing them "threads" or "needles." Here is amianthus, for instance, which is quite as fine and soft as any cotton thread you ever sewed with; and here is sulphide of bismuth, with sharper points and brighter luster than your finest needles have; and fastened in white webs of quartz more delicate than your finest lace; and here is sulphide of antimony, which looks like mere purple wool, but it is all of purple needle crystals; and here is red oxide of copper (you must not breathe on it as you look, or you may blow some of the films of it off the stone), which is simply a woven tissue of scarlet silk. However, these finer thread-forms are comparatively rare, while the bolder and needle- like crystals occur constantly; so that, I believe, "Needle- crystal" is the best word (the grand one is, "Acicular crystal," but Sibyl will tell you it is all the same, only less easily understood; and therefore more scientific). Then the Leaf- crystals, as I said, form an immense mass of foliated rocks; and the Granular crystals, which are of many kinds, form essentially granular, or granitic and porphyritic rocks; and it is always a point of more interest to me (and I think will ultimately be to you), to consider the causes which force a given mineral to take any one of these three general forms, than what the peculiar geometrical limitations are, belonging to its own crystals. [Footnote: Note iv.] It is more interesting to me, for instance, to try and find out why the red oxide of copper, usually crystallizing in cubes or octahedrons, makes itself exquisitely, out of its cubes, into this red silk in one particular Cornish mine, than what are the absolutely necessary angles of the octahedron, which is its common form. At all events, that mathematical part of crystallography is quite beyond girls' strength; but these questions of the various tempers and manners of crystals are not only comprehensible by you, but full of the most curious teaching for you. For in the fulfillment, to the best of their power, of their adopted form under given circumstances, there are conditions entirely resembling those of human virtue; and indeed expressible under no term so proper as that of the Virtue, or Courage of crystals;—which, if you are not afraid of the crystals making you ashamed of yourselves, we will by to get some notion of, to-morrow. But it will be a bye-lecture, and more about yourselves than the minerals. Don't come unless you like.
MARY. I'm sure the crystals will make us ashamed of ourselves; but we'll come, for all that.
L. Meantime, look well and quietly over these needle, or thread crystals, and those on the other two tables, with magnifying glasses; and see what thoughts will come into your little heads about them. For the best thoughts are generally those which come without being forced, one does not know how. And so I hope you will get through your wet day patiently.