Page images
PDF
EPUB

§ 9. Spirituality, how so expressed.

away from their own white purity of life), all these circumstances strengthen the instinct by associations countless and irresistible. And then, finally, with the idea of purity comes that of spirituality; for the essential characteristic of matter is its inertia, whence, by adding to its purity of energy, we may in some measure spiritualize even matter itself. Thus in the Apocalyptic descriptions, it is the purity of every substance that fits it for its place in heaven; the river of the water of life, that proceeds out of the throne of the Lamb, is clear as crystal,' and the pavement of the city is pure gold "like unto clear glass." *

* I have not spoken here of any of the associations connected with warmth or coolness of colour; they are partly connected with Vital beauty, compare Chap. XIV. § 21, 22, and partly with impressions of the sublime, the discussion of which is foreign to the present subject: purity, however, it is which gives colour to both; for neither warm nor cool colour can be beautiful, if impure.

Neither have I spoken of any questions relating to melodies of colour; a subject of separate science, whose general principle has been already stated in the Seventh Chapter respecting unity of Sequence. Those qualities only are here noted which give absolute beauty, whether to separate colour or to melodies of it: for all melodies of it are not beautiful, but only those which are expressive of certain pleasant or solemn emotion; the rest are startling, or curious, or cheerful, or exciting, or sublime, but not beautiful; and so in music. And all questions relating to this grandeur, cheerfulness, or other characteristic impression of colour, must be considered under the head of Ideas of Relation.**

** I used then to slip things out of my way from one chapter to another, partly with a notion of being systematic, partly because I was tired; until at last they often slipped out of my head altogether. Thus in the sixth paragraph, the quite primary difficulty of saying whether spots are pretty or ugly; whether a fallow-deer is the worse for dappling, or a mackerel for mottling, or a foxglove for speckling, is wholly lost sight of; and, throughout the chapter, the question why we like gold-yellow better than brass-yellow-or rose-colour better than brown-or in general any colour better than any other. I believe there is something said on these points farther on in the book: 2 if not, I'll say something about them where I think it will be useful; only in the meantime, observe that we like gold because it is of a pretty and permanent yellow; and not the yellow colour because it is like gold. I overwork the epithet "golden" in most of my descriptions; not because I like guineas, but because I like buttercups and broom. [1883.]

1 [Revelation xxii. 1, xxi. 18-21.]

2 In his first scheme for the volume Ruskin had planned to treat the question at length; and in the first draft, some pages were written on the subject: see Appendix i., p. 368. In the book as it stands, there is little discussion of the sources and order of pleasure in different colours.]

CHAPTER X1

OF MODERATION, OR THE TYPE OF GOVERNMENT

BY LAW 2

§ 1. Meaning of

Chasteness and

Refinement.

Of objects which, in respect of the qualities hitherto considered, appear to have equal claims to regard, we find, nevertheless, that certain are preferred to others in the terms consequence of an attractive power, usually expressed by the terms 'chasteness,' 'refinement,' or elegance:' and it appears also that things which in other respects have little in them of natural beauty, and are of forms altogether simple, and adapted to simple uses, are capable of much distinction and desirableness in consequence of these qualities only. It is of importance to discover the real nature of the ideas thus expressed.

Something of the peculiar meaning of the words is referable to the authority of fashion and the exclusive- § 2. How referness of pride, owing to which that which is the able to tempomode of a particular time is submissively esteemed, rary fashions; and that which by its costliness or its rarity is of difficult attainment, or in any way appears to have been chosen as the best of many things (which is the original sense of the words elegant and exquisite), is esteemed for the witness it bears to the dignity of the chooser: but neither of these ideas is in any way connected with constant beauty: neither do they account for that agreeableness of colour and form which is especially termed chasteness, and which it would seem to be a characteristic of rightly trained minds in all things to prefer, and of common minds to reject.

3

1 [Ch. vi. of sec. ii. in the re-arranged edition of 1883.]

2 [For the application of this element of beauty to ornament, see Stones of Venice, vol. i.ch. xxi. § 31.]

3 [Ed. 1 reads "are" for "is," "eternal" for "constant," and inserts "at all” before "account."]

[ocr errors]

There is however another character of artificial productions § 3. How to the to which these terms have partial reference, which perception of it is of some importance to note; that of finish, Completion. exactness, or refinement: which are commonly desired in the works of men, owing both to their difficulty of accomplishment and consequent expression of care and power (compare Chapter on Ideas of Power, Part I. Sec. I.), and from their greater resemblance to the working of God, whose "absolute exactness," says Hooker, "all things imitate, by tending to that which is most exquisite in every particular." And there is not a greater sign of the imperfection of general taste, than its capability of contentment with forms and things which, professing completion, are yet not exact nor complete; as in the vulgar with wax and clay and china figures, and in bad sculptors with an unfinished and clay-like modelling of surface, and curves and angles of no precision or delicacy; and in general, in all common and unthinking persons, with an imperfect rendering of that which might be pure and fine: as churchwardens are content to lose the sharp lines of stone carving under clogging obliterations of whitewash; and as the modern Italians scrape away and polish white all the sharpness and glory of the carvings on their old churches, as most miserably and pitifully on St. Mark's at Venice, and the Baptisteries of Pistoja and Pisa,* and many others. So also

4

3

* When I came here first, in 1845, the pinnacles of the Baptistery were lying round it in shattered heaps. I have since witnessed the destruction of the Spina chapel,-see Fors Clavigera of 1874; and yesterday found the whole façade of one of the few remaining uninjured churches, plastered white with election bills. (Pisa, Nov. 7th, 1882.) [1883.]

1 [Vol. III. pp. 93-98, in this edition.]

2

3

[Ecclesiastical Polity, I. v. 3. "Tending to" is "tending unto" in the original.] [In a letter to his father from Venice (Sept. 14, 1845), Ruskin writes:

"I am but barely in time to see the last of dear old St. Mark's. They have ordered him to be pulito,' and after whitewashing the Doge's Palace, and daubing it with the Austrian national distillation of coffins and jaundice, they are scraping St. Mark's clean. Off go all the glorious old weather stains, the rich hues of the marble which nature, mighty as she is, has taken two centuries to bestow, and already the noble corner farthest from the seathat on which the sixth part of the age of the generations of man was dyed in gold-is reduced to the colour of magnesia-the old marbles displaced and torn down."]

4 [See Fors, Letter 20 (of 1872, not 1874).]

[merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »