In what mood of mind were they conceived by the great Artist? Of what
feelings of his are they the expression - springing up out of the
dust, in these gigantic, waste, and desolate regions, where one would
think the sense of his almightiness might overpower the soul? Born in
the track of the glacier and the avalanche, they seem to say to us
that this Almighty Being is very pitiful, and of tender compassion;
that, in his infinite soul, there is an exquisite gentleness and love
of the beautiful, and that, if we would be blessed, his will to bless
is infinite.
The greatest men have always thought much of flowers. Luther always
kept a flower in a glass, on his writing table; and when he was waging
his great public controversy with Eckius, he kept a flower in his
hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. As to
Shakspeare, he is a perfect Alpine valley - he is full of flowers; they
spring, and blossom, and wave in every cleft of his mind. Witness the
Midsummer Night's Dream. Even Milton, cold, serene, and stately as he
is, breaks forth into exquisite gushes of tenderness and fancy when he
marshals the flowers, as in Lycidas and Comus.
But all this while the sun has been withering the flowers the guide
brought me; how they look! blue and white Canterbury bells, harebells,
clochettes, all bedraggled and wilted, like a young lady who has been
up all night at a ball.
"No, no," say I to the guide; "don't pick me any more. I don't want
them. The fact is, if they are pretty I cannot help it. I must even
take it out in looking as I go by."
One thing is evident; He who made the world is no utilitarian, no
despiser of the fine arts, and no condemner of ornament; and those
religionists, who seek to restrain every thing within the limits of
cold, bare utility, do not imitate our Father in heaven.
Cannot a bonnet cover your head, without the ribbon and the flowers,
say they? Yes; and could not a peach tree bear peaches without a
blossom? What a waste is all this colored corolla of flowers, as if
the seed could not mature without them! God could have created the
fruit in good, strong, homely bushel baskets, if he had been so
disposed.
"Turn off my eyes from beholding vanity," says a good man, when he
sees a display of graceful ornament. What, then, must he think of the
Almighty Being, all whose useful work is so overlaid with ornament?
There is not a fly's leg, nor an insect's wing, which is not polished
and decorated to an extent that we should think positive extravagance
in finishing up a child's dress. And can we suppose that this Being
can take delight in dwellings and modes of life or forms of worship
where every thing is reduced to cold, naked utility? I think not. The
instinct to adorn and beautify is from him; it likens us to him, and
if rightly understood, instead of being a siren to beguile our hearts
away, it will be the closest affiliating band.
If this power of producing the beautiful has been always so
fascinating that the human race for its sake have bowed down at the
feet even of men deficient in moral worth, if we cannot forbear loving
the painter, poet, and sculptor, how much more shall we love God, who,
with all goodness, has also all beauty!
But all this while we have been riding on till we have passed the
meadows, and the fields, and are coming into the dark and awful pass
of the Tete Noir, which C. has described to you.
One thing I noticed which he did not. When we were winding along the
narrow path, bearing no more proportion to the dizzy heights above and
below than the smallest insect creeping on the wall, I looked across
the chasm, and saw a row of shepherds' cottages perched midway on a
narrow shelf, that seemed in the distance not an inch wide. By a very
natural impulse, I exclaimed, "What does become of the little children
there? I should think they would all fall over the precipice!"
My guide looked up benevolently at me, as if he felt it his duty to
quiet my fears, and said in a soothing tone, "O, no, no, no!"
Of course, I might have known that little children have their angels
there, as well as every where else. "When they have funerals there,"
said he, "they are obliged to carry the dead along that road,"
pointing to a road that resembled a thread drawn on the rocky wall.
What a strange idea - such a life and death! It seemed to me, that I
could see a funeral train creeping along; the monks, with their black
cloaks, carrying tapers, and singing psalms; the whole procession
together not larger in proportion than a swarm of black gnats; and
yet, perhaps, hearts there wrung with an infinite sorrow. In that
black, moving point, may be a soul, whose convulsions and agonies
cannot be measured or counted by any thing human, so impossible is it
to measure souls by space.
What can they think of, these creatures, who are born in this strange
place, half way between heaven and earth, to whom the sound of
avalanches is a cradle hymn, and who can never see the sun above the
top of the cliff on either side, till he really gets into the zenith?
What they can be thinking of I cannot tell. Life, I suppose, is made
up of the same prosaic material there that it is every where. The
mother thinks how she shall make her goat's milk and black bread hold
out.
