Part 17 (1/2)
”You seem to have a most uncomfortable time of it, with the disturbance of the house However, I can only leave you to s as you think best--or feel pleasantest to yourself I am saddened by another kind of disorder, France is in everything so fallen back, so desolate and coo--the people so ar and base Rein to know you I a at a nice tallow-chandler's door, and to-day, for the first tio inside for rain He was very courteous and nice, and warned ainst the candle-ends--or botto--'You must take care, you see, not to steal any ofnot to rub them off on my coat He has a beautiful faora”
”_22nd Sept_
”I a to my cats and tallow-chandler I was very much struck by the superiority of hters who serve at the counter, to persons of the sahed out their candles, or written down the orders that are sent in, they instantly sit down to their needlework behind the counter, and are always busy, yet always quiet; and their father, though of course there nize, has entirely the entlee here I had not counted on I see by the papers that the weather in England is very storh it is showery here, and breezy, it has always allowed me at some time of the day to draw The air is tender and soft, invariably--even when bloith force; and to-day, I have seen quite the loveliest sunset I ever yet saw,--one at Boulogne in '61 was richer; but for delicacy and loveliness nothing of past sight ever came near this”
Earlier on the same day he had written:
”I a, and even withit, if only I can keephurriedly But I can do _very_ little quite _well_, each day: with that however it is my bounden duty to be content
”And now I have a little piece of news for you Our old Herne Hill house being now tenantless, and requiring soet a tenant, I have resolved to keep it for heronly my finest specimens at Denmark Hill My first reason for this, is affection for the old house:--my second, want of roo, and experis And my fourth is the power I shall have, when I want to do anything very quietly, of going up the hill and thinking it out in the old garden, where your greenhouse still stands, and the aviary--without fear of interruption from callers
”It may perhaps amuse you, in hours which otherould be listless, to think over what may be done with the old house I have ordered it at once to be put in proper repair by Mr Snell; but for the furnishi+ng, I can give no directions at present: it is to be very simple, at all events, and calculated chiefly for museum work and for stores of stones and books: and you really haht to-day, for five pounds, the front of the porch of the Church of St Ja to be entirely destroyed It is worn away, and has little of its old beauty; but as a remnant of the Gothic of Abbeville--as I happen to be here--and as the church was dedicated to lad to have got it It is a low arch--with tracery and niches, which ivy, and the Erba della Madonna, will grow over beautifully, wherever I rebuild it”
At Abbeville he had with him as usual his valet Crawley; and as before he sent for Downes the gardener, to give hiht CE Norton came on a short visit, and Ruskin followed hifellow (October 7) At last on Monday, 19th October, he wrote:
”Only a line to-day, for I aether, and ahfailed in halfcompared to what I expected But it is better than if I were displeased with all I _had_ done It isn't Turner--and it isn't Correggio--it isn't even Prout--but it isn't bad”
Returning hoave an account of his autumn's work in the lecture at the Royal Institution, January 29th, 1869, on the ”Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme” This lecture was not then published in full: but part of the original text is printed in the third chapter of the e have next to notice, ”The Queen of the Air”
CHAPTER IX
”THE QUEEN OF THE AIR” (1869)
In spite of a ”classical education” and the influence of Aristotle upon the immature art-theories of his earlier works, Ruskin was known, in his younger days, as a Goth, and the enean life, his sense of justice ainst classical tradition Later on, when considering the great questions of education and the aims of life, he entirely set aside the corammar as the all-in-all of culture
But this was not because he shared Carlyle's contempt for classical studies
In ”Modern Painters,” Vol III, he had followed out the indications of nature-worshi+p, and tried to analyse in general terms the attitude of the Greek spirit towards landscape scenery, as betrayed in Homer and Aristophanes and the poets usually read Since that tiradually increasing He had e; and he had spentthe terra-cottas and vases and coins at the British Museuh Chain of Greek decorative art Coy, at that tilish public chiefly by Max Muller Under his influence Ruskin entered step by step upon an inquiry which afterwards becaht
In 1865 he had told his hearers at Bradford that Greek Religion was not, as commonly supposed, the worshi+p of Beauty, but of Wisdoe, worshi+p ”Venus,” but Apollo and Athena And he regarded their h reat school of art In the ”Ethics of the Dust” he had explained the ypt; and in his fable of Neith and St Barbara he had hinted at a coy He ended by saying that, though he would not have his young hearers believe ”that the Greeks were better than we, and that their Gods were real angels,” yet their art and reater, and their beliefs orth respectful and sympathetic study
The ”Queen of the Air” is his contribution to this study
On March 9th, 1869, his lecture at University College, London, on ”Greek Myths of Cloud and Storan with an attempt to explain in popular terms how a ory on the other, being ”not conceived didactically, but didactic in its essence, as all good art is” He showed that Greek poetry dealt with the series of Nature-estions; that these were connected with Egyptian beliefs, but that the full force of them was only developed in the central period of Greek history, and their interpretation was to be read in a sympathetic analysis of the spirit of reat question,” he said, ”in reading a story is, always, not ild hunter dreamed, or what childish race first dreaded it; but isepeople first perfectly lived by it And the real e of the nation a whom it was current”
In the next chapter he worked out, as a sequel to his lecture, two groups of Animal-myths; those connected with birds, and especially the dove, as type of Spirit, and those connected with the serpent in its various significances These two studies were continued, more or less, in ”Love's Meinie” and in the lecture printed in ”Deucalion,” as the third group, that of Plant-myths, was carried on in ”Proserpina” The volume contained also extracts from the lecture on the Architecture of the Valley of the Solaia,” and closed with a paper on The Hercules of Camarina, read to the South Lambeth Art School on March 15th This study of a Greek coin had already fore, and anticipated the second course of Oxford Lectures For the rest, ”The Queen of the Air” is marked by its state, of the dependence of moral upon physical life, and of physical upon moral science He speaks with respect of the work of Darwin and Tyndall; but as forle's Nest,” he claims that natural science should not be pursued as an end in itself, paramount to all other conclusions and considerations; but as a department of study subordinate to ethics, with a view to utility and instruction
Before this book was quite ready for publication, and after a sale of some of his less treasured pictures at Christie's he left home for a journey to Italy, to revisit the subjects of ”Stones of Venice,” as in 1868 he had revisited those of the ”Seven Lamps” At Vevey, on the way, he wrote his preface (May 1st)
By quiet stages he passed the Si from Domo d'Ossola, 5th May, 1869:
”I never yet had so beautiful a day for the Si now all over--to keepat 6 exactly--light clouds breaking away into perfect calue--with the wreaths in e Then, white crocus all over the fields, with Soldanelle and Primula farinosa I walked about three reat content all in rainbows, and one beyond anything I ever yet saw; for it fell in a pillar of spray against shadow behind, and becaet the belt broad, and the down part of the arch: and the whole fall becaet news of you all, at Baveno”