Part 12 (1/2)

I chose Giorgione rather than Veronese to helpout this parallel; because I do not find in Giorgione's work any of the early Venetian edin this; it is no matter;--suppose it were so, and that he ca the usual priestly doctrines of his day,--hoould the Venetian religion, fro-point, have _looked_ to hiion indisputably powerful in hu s'

houses,[124] and consu into otry the policy of the old: also, on the other hand, ani souls, otherwise sordid, into heroisreat power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, ti forth its clai any atoe oodly systeeous, har which had either to be obeyed or co over all the city--many-buttressed--luminous in marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety[125] shi+nes over the sea; , over all the eastern seas, to the sentinel his ord, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death

I suppose the boy Turner to have regarded the religion of his city also fro-point

What did he see in Maiden Lane?

Let not the reader be offended withto let him describe, at his own pleasure, what Turner saw there; but to ion th of the lane, at point of constable's staff; but, at other times, placed under the custody of the beadle, within certain black and unstately iron railings of St Paul's, Covent Garden Aetables, no perceptible doion; in the narrow, disquieted streets, none; in the tongues, deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little Solish industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice; but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; its paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold gris to it--(dependent ht),--ill, however, draw considerately; no goodliness of escutcheon, nor other respectability being omitted, and the best of their results confessed, alet into a pew, for whoht will be beneficial[126]

For the rest, this religion see in itself; putting forth its authority in a cowardly atching how far it , fencing, finessing; divided against itself, not by stors of plaster fronorant, yet clear-sighted youth: only to be scorned And scorned not one whit the less, though also the do of the Thaoodly landoon For St Mark ruled over life; the Saint of London over death; St Mark over St Mark's Place, but St

Paul over St Paul's Churchyard

Under these influences pass away the first reflective hours of life, with such conclusion as they can reach In consequence of a fit of illness, he was taken--I cannot ascertain in what year[127]--to live with an aunt, at Brentford; and here, I believe, received soorously; getting knowledge, at least by translation, of the more picturesque classical authors, which he turned presently to use, as we shall see Hence also, walks about Putney and Twickenhalish round in its restricted states of paddock and park; and with some round-headed appearances of trees, and stately entrances to houses of ates and carved pillars of Hareat awe and admiration; so that in after life his little country house is,--of all places in the world,--at Twickenham! Of swans and reedy shores he now learns the soft otten

And at last fortune wills that the lad's true life shall begin; and one sue-coach experiences on the north road, which gave hi alone a the Yorkshi+re hills[129] For the first time, the silence of Nature round hilory opened to him Peace at last; no roll of cart-wheel, nor mutter of sullen voices in the back shop; but curlew-cry in space of heaven, and welling of bell-toned streamlet by its shadowy rock

Freedoarden, all passed away like the dream, of a prisoner; and behold, far as foot or eye can race or range, thethese deserted vales! Not a men Those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel faces;--that s that God hasHe has made which no one has marred Pride of purple rocks, and river pools of blue, and tender wilderness of glittering trees, andon immeasurable hills

Beauty, and freedoraver than these Sound preaching at last here, in Kirkstall crypt, concerning fate and life Here, where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars, and the cattle lie in unhindered rest, the soft sunshi+ne on their dappled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their white furry hair ruffled a little, fitfully, by the evening wind deep-scented from the meadow thyme

Consider deeply the iht of ruin, and compare it with the effect of the architecture that was around Giorgione There were indeed aged buildings, at Venice, in his time, but none in decay All ruin was removed, and its place filled as quickly as in our London; but filled always by architecture loftier and more wonderful than that whose place it took, the boy himself happy to work upon the walls of it; so that the idea of the passing away of the strength of men and beauty of their works never could occur to hihter the cities of Italy had been rising and broadening on hill and plain, for three hundred years He saw only strength and immortality, could not but paint both; conceived the form of man as deathless, calm with power, and fiery with life

Turner saw the exact reverse of this In the present work of htliness: thin-walled, lath-divided, narrow-garreted houses of clay; booths of a darksome Vanity Fair, busily base

But on Whitby Hill, and by Bolton Brook,[130] remained traces of other handiwork Men who could build had been there; and who also had wrought, notfaith, and steady hands, and patient souls--can this, then, be all you have left! this the suht-owl may whimper to the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of consu above the bleak banks of th of ione, to Turner their weakness and vileness, were alone visible They themselves, unworthy or ephemeral; their work, despicable, or decayed In the Venetian's eyes, all beauty depended on man's presence and pride; in Turner's, on the solitude he had left, and the humiliation he had suffered

And thus the fate and issue of all his ere deterth of nature, there was no beauty elsewhere than in that; heaway of reat human truth visible to him

Their labour, their sorrow, and their death Mark the three Labour; by sea and land, in field and city, at forge and furnace, helh

No pastoral indolence nor classic pride shall stand between hi of the world; still less between him and the toil of his country,--blind, torland

Also their Sorrow; Ruin of all their glorious work, passing away of their thoughts and their honour,of weed on te of the mother for the children, desolate by her breathless first-born in the streets of the city,[131] desolate by her last sons slain, a the beasts of the field[132]

And their Death That old Greek question again;--yet unanswered The unconquerable spectre still flitting a ribbed out of the sea-sand;--white, a strange Aphrodite,--out of the sea-foa the light of their sunsets into blood This has to be looked upon, and in a more terrible shape than ever Salvator or Durer saw it[133] The wreck of one guilty country does not infer the ruin of all countries, and need not cause general terror respecting the laws of the universe Neither did the orderly and narrow succession of do the question in its breadth, or in any unresolvable shape, before the lish death--the European death of the nineteenth century--was of another range and power; rasp and grief; more terrible, incalculably, in its , or the range of the flying skirmish, compared to the work of the axe, and the sword, and the fa this man's youth on all the hills and plains of the Christian earth, frohteen years old when Napoleon came down on Arcola Look on the map of Europe and count the blood-stains on it, between Arcola and Waterloo[134]

Not alone those blood-stains on the Alpine snow, and the blue of the Lolish death was before his eyes also No decent, calculable, consoled dying; no passing to rest like that of the aged burghers of Nure the fields, the bronze crests bossed deep on theabove the the corn But the life trampled out in the sli of the wheel, tossed countlessly away into howling winter wind along five hundred leagues of rock-fanged shore Or, worst of all, rotted down to forgotten graves through years of ignorant patience, and vain seeking for help fro, as ofat the dawn; oppressed royalties of captive thought, vague ague-fits of bleak, aoodly landscape this, for the lad to paint, and under a goodly light Wide enough the light was, and clear; no ed horizon, nor Durer's spotted rest of sunny gleaht over all the world Full shone now its awful globe, one pallid charnel-house,--a ball strewn bright with hu in poised sway beneath the sun, all blinding-white with death from pole to pole,--death, not of myriads of poor bodies only, but of will, and mercy, and conscience; death, not once inflicted on the flesh, but daily, fastening on the spirit; death, not silent or patient, waiting his appointed hour, but voiceful, venorasp, and infixed sting

”Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe”[135] The word is spoken in our ears continually to other reapers than the angels,--to the busy skeletons that never tire for stooping When the ht bring repentance and rede life has been wasted all away, and the eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin, and faint resolution rising in the heart for nobler things,--”Put ye in the sickle” When the roughest blows of fortune have been borne long and bravely, and the hand is just stretched to grasp its goal,--”Put ye in the sickle” And when there are but a few in the midst of a nation, to save it, or to teach, or to cherish; and all its life is bound up in those few golden ears,--”Put ye in the sickle, pale reapers, and pour heht which opened on the young eyes, this the ord sounding within the heart of Turner in his youth

So taught, and prepared for his life's labour, sate the boy at last alone aan to paint, with cautious toil, the rocks, and fields, and trickling brooks, and soft white clouds of heaven