DORA. I'm going down-stairs; I shall take care, at any rate, that there are no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboards.



LECTURE IV.

THE CRYSTAL ORDERS.

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 crystallise 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 crystallise 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 practise patience. I can tell you children, that requires nearly as much practising 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 practise. 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 forenoon to choose the shapes we are to crystallise 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 jewellers, 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've the school room 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 crystallised. 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 endeavour). 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 centre.

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 crystallise 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, crystallised 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 philosophical 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 crystallisation. 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 crystallised: 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 crystallised, puts itself into such masses, as if to show us how others are made. Here is a brown six-sided crystal, quite as beautifully chiselled 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 colour, 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 is 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 crystallised, 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 favourite 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, crystallised 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 fibres), 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 fibres 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 lustre 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.[150] It is more interesting to me, for instance, to try and find out why the red oxide of copper, usually crystallising 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 fulfilment, 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 try 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[150] Note iv.



LECTURE V.

CRYSTAL VIRTUES.

A quiet talk, in the afternoon, by the sunniest window of the Drawing-room. Present, FLORRIE, ISABEL, MAY, LUCILLA, KATHLEEN, DORA, MARY, and some others, who have saved time for the bye-Lecture.

L. So you have really come, like good girls, to be made ashamed of yourselves?

DORA (very meekly). No, we needn't be made so; we always are.

L. Well, I believe that's truer than most pretty speeches: but you know, you saucy girl, some people have more reason to be so than others. Are you sure everybody is, as well as you?

THE GENERAL VOICE. Yes, yes; everybody.

L. What! Florrie ashamed of herself?

(FLORRIE hides behind the curtain.)

L. And Isabel?

(ISABEL hides under the table.)

L. And May?

(MAY runs into the corner behind the piano.)

L. And Lucilla?

(LUCILLA hides her face in her hands.)

L. Dear, dear; but this will never do. I shall have to tell you of the faults of the crystals, instead of virtues, to put you in heart again.

MAY (coming out of her corner). Oh! have the crystals faults, like us?

L. Certainly, May. Their best virtues are shown in fighting their faults. And some have a great many faults; and some are very naughty crystals indeed.

FLORRIE (from behind her curtain). As naughty as me?

ISABEL (peeping from under the table cloth). Or me?

L. Well, I don't know. They never forget their syntax, children, when once they've been taught it. But I think some of them are, on the whole, worse than any of you. Not that it's amiable of you to look so radiant, all in a minute, on that account.

DORA. Oh! but it's so much more comfortable.

(Everybody seems to recover their spirits. Eclipse of FLORRIE and ISABEL terminates.)

L. What kindly creatures girls are, after all, to their neighbours' failings! I think you may be ashamed of yourselves indeed, now, children! I can tell you, you shall hear of the highest crystalline merits that I can think of, to-day: and I wish there were more of them; but crystals have a limited, though a stern, code of morals; and their essential virtues are but two;—the first is to be pure, and the second to be well shaped.

MARY. Pure! Does that mean clear—transparent?

L. No; unless in the case of a transparent substance. You cannot have a transparent crystal of gold; but you may have a perfectly pure one.

ISABEL. But you said it was the shape that made things be crystals; therefore, oughtn't their shape to be their first virtue, not their second?

L. Right, you troublesome mousie. But I call their shape only their second virtue, because it depends on time and accident, and things which the crystal cannot help. If it is cooled too quickly, or shaken, it must take what shape it can; but it seems as if, even then, it had in itself the power of rejecting impurity, if it has crystalline life enough. Here is a crystal of quartz, well enough shaped in its way; but it seems to have been languid and sick at heart; and some white milky substance has got into it, and mixed itself up with it, all through. It makes the quartz quite yellow, if you hold it up to the light, and milky blue on the surface. Here is another, broken into a thousand separate facets, and out of all traceable shape; but as pure as a mountain spring. I like this one best.

THE AUDIENCE. So do I—and I—and I.

MARY. Would a crystallographer?

L. I think so. He would find many more laws curiously exemplified in the irregularly grouped but pure crystal. But it is a futile question, this of first or second. Purity is in most cases a prior, if not a nobler, virtue; at all events it is most convenient to think about it first.

MARY. But what ought we to think about it? Is there much to be thought—I mean, much to puzzle one?

L. I don't know what you call 'much.' It is a long time since I met with anything in which there was little. There's not much in this, perhaps. The crystal must be either dirty or clean,—and there's an end. So it is with one's hands, and with one's heart—only you can wash your hands without changing them, but not hearts, nor crystals. On the whole, while you are young, it will be as well to take care that your hearts don't want much washing; for they may perhaps need wringing also, when they do.

(Audience doubtful and uncomfortable. LUCILLA at last takes courage.)

LUCILLA. Oh! but surely, sir, we cannot make our hearts clean?

L. Not easily, Lucilla; so you had better keep them so when they are.

LUCILLA. When they are! But, sir—

L. Well?

LUCILLA. Sir—surely—are we not told that they are all evil?

L. Wait a little, Lucilla; that is difficult ground you are getting upon; and we must keep to our crystals, till at least we understand what their good and evil consist in; they may help us afterwards to some useful hints about our own. I said that their goodness consisted chiefly in purity of substance, and perfectness of form: but those are rather the effects of their goodness, than the goodness itself. The inherent virtues of the crystals, resulting in these outer conditions, might really seem to be best described in the words we should use respecting living creatures—'force of heart' and steadiness of purpose.' There seem to be in some crystals, from the beginning, an unconquerable purity of vital power, and strength of crystal spirit. Whatever dead substance, unacceptant of this energy, comes in their way, is either rejected, or forced to take some beautiful subordinate form; the purity of the crystal remains unsullied, and every atom of it bright with coherent energy. Then the second condition is, that from the beginning of its whole structure, a fine crystal seems to have determined that it will be of a certain size and of a certain shape; it persists in this plan, and completes it. Here is a perfect crystal of quartz for you. It is of an unusual form, and one which it might seem very difficult to build—a pyramid with convex sides, composed of other minor pyramids. But there is not a flaw in its contour throughout; not one of its myriads of component sides but is as bright as a jeweller's facetted work (and far finer, if you saw it close). The crystal points are as sharp as javelins; their edges will cut glass with a touch. Anything more resolute, consummate, determinate in form, cannot be conceived. Here, on the other hand, is a crystal of the same substance, in a perfectly simple type of form—a plain six-sided prism; but from its base to its point,—and it is nine inches long,—it has never for one instant made up its mind what thickness it will have. It seems to have begun by making itself as thick as it thought possible with the quantity of material at command. Still not being as thick as it would like to be, it has clumsily glued on more substance at one of its sides. Then it has thinned itself, in a panic of economy; then puffed itself out again; then starved one side to enlarge another; then warped itself quite out of its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite human image of decrepitude and dishonour; but the worst of all the signs of its decay and helplessness, is that half-way up, a parasite crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in the side of the larger one, eating out a cavity round its root, and then growing backwards, or downwards, contrary to the direction of the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least difference in purity of substance between the first most noble stone, and this ignoble and dissolute one. The impurity of the last is in its will, or want of will.

MARY. Oh, if we could but understand the meaning of it all!

L. We can understand all that is good for us. It is just as true for us, as for the crystal, that the nobleness of life depends on its consistency,—clearness of purpose,—quiet and ceaseless energy. All doubt, and repenting, and botching, and retouching, and wondering what it will be best to do next, are vice, as well as misery.

MARY (much wondering). But must not one repent when one does wrong, and hesitate when one can't see one's way?

L. You have no business at all to do wrong; nor to get into any way that you cannot see. Your intelligence should always be far in advance of your act. Whenever you do not know what you are about, you are sure to be doing wrong.

KATHLEEN. Oh, dear, but I never know what I am about!

L. Very true, Katie, but it is a great deal to know, if you know that. And you find that you have done wrong afterwards; and perhaps some day you may begin to know, or at least, think, what you are about.

ISABEL. But surely people can't do very wrong if they don't know, can they? I mean, they can't be very naughty. They can be wrong, like Kathleen or me, when we make mistakes; but not wrong in the dreadful way. I can't express what I mean; but there are two sorts of wrong are there not?

L. Yes, Isabel; but you will find that the great difference is between kind and unkind wrongs, not between meant and unmeant wrong. Very few people really mean to do wrong,—in a deep sense, none. They only don't know what they are about. Cain did not mean to do wrong when he killed Abel.

(ISABEL draws a deep breath, and opens her eyes very wide.)

L. No, Isabel; and there are countless Cains among us now, who kill their brothers by the score a day, not only for less provocation than Cain had, but for no provocation,—and merely for what they can make of their bones,—yet do not think they are doing wrong in the least. Then sometimes you have the business reversed, as over in America these last years, where you have seen Abel resolutely killing Cain, and not thinking he is doing wrong. The great difficulty is always to open people's eyes: to touch their feelings, and break their hearts, is easy; the difficult thing is to break their heads. What does it matter, as long as they remain stupid, whether you change their feelings or not? You cannot be always at their elbow to tell them what is right: and they may just do as wrong as before, or worse; and their best intentions merely make the road smooth for them,—you know where, children. For it is not the place itself that is paved with them, as people say so often. You can't pave the bottomless pit; but you may the road to it.

MAY. Well, but if people do as well as they can see how, surely that is the right for them, isn't it?

L. No, May, not a bit of it; right is right, and wrong is wrong. It is only the fool who does wrong, and says he 'did it for the best.' And if there's one sort of person in the world that the Bible speaks harder of than another, it is fools. Their particular and chief way of saying 'There is no God' is this, of declaring that whatever their 'public opinion' may be, is right: and that God's opinion is of no consequence.

MAY. But surely nobody can always know what is right?

L. Yes, you always can, for to-day; and if you do what you see of it to-day, you will see more of it, and more clearly, to-morrow. Here, for instance, you children are at school, and have to learn French, and arithmetic, and music, and several other such things. That is your 'right' for the present; the 'right' for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt of conscience about that, I suppose?

VIOLET. No; but if one wants to read an amusing book, instead of learning one's lesson?

L. You don't call that a 'question,' seriously, Violet? You are then merely deciding whether you will resolutely do wrong or not.

MARY. But, in after life, how many fearful difficulties may arise, however one tries to know or to do what is right!

L. You are much too sensible a girl, Mary, to have felt that, whatever you may have seen. A great many of young ladies' difficulties arise from their falling in love with a wrong person: but they have no business to let themselves fall in love, till they know he is the right one.

DORA. How many thousands ought he to have a year?

L. (disdaining reply). There are, of course, certain crises of fortune when one has to take care of oneself, and mind shrewdly what one is about. There is never any real doubt about the path, but you may have to walk very slowly.

MARY. And if one is forced to do a wrong thing by some one who has authority over you?

L. My dear, no one can be forced to do a wrong thing, for the guilt is in the will: but you may any day be forced to do a fatal thing, as you might be forced to take poison; the remarkable law of nature in such cases being, that it is always unfortunate you who are poisoned, and not the person who gives you the dose. It is a very strange law, but it is a law. Nature merely sees to the carrying out of the normal operation of arsenic. She never troubles herself to ask who gave it you. So also you may be starved to death, morally as well as physically, by other people's faults. You are, on the whole, very good children sitting here to-day;—do you think that your goodness comes all by your own contriving? or that you are gentle and kind because your dispositions are naturally more angelic than those of the poor girls who are playing, with wild eyes, on the dustheaps in the alleys of our great towns; and who will one day fill their prisons,—or, better, their graves? Heaven only knows where they, and we who have cast them there, shall stand at last. But the main judgment question will be, I suppose, for all of us, 'Did you keep a good heart through it?' What you were, others may answer for;—what you tried to be, you must answer for, yourself. Was the heart pure and true—tell us that?

And so we come back to your sorrowful question, Lucilla, which I put aside a little ago. You would be afraid to answer that your heart was pure and true, would not you?

LUCILLA. Yes, indeed, sir.

L. Because you have been taught that it is all evil—'only evil continually.' Somehow, often as people say that, they never seem, to me, to believe it? Do you really believe it?

LUCILLA. Yes, sir; I hope so.

L. That you have an entirely bad heart?

LUCILLA (a little uncomfortable at the substitution of the monosyllable for the dissyllable, nevertheless persisting in her orthodoxy). Yes, sir.

L. Florrie, I am sure you are tired; I never like you to stay when you are tired; but, you know, you must not play with the kitten while we're talking.

FLORRIE. Oh! but I'm not tired; and I'm only nursing her. She'll be asleep in my lap directly.

L. Stop! that puts me in mind of something I had to show you, about minerals that are like hair. I want a hair out of Tittie's tail.

FLORRIE (quite rude, in her surprise, even to the point of repeating expressions). Out of Tittie's tail!

L. Yes; a brown one: Lucilla, you can get at the tip of it nicely, under Florrie's arm; just pull one out for me.

LUCILLA. Oh! but, sir, it will hurt her so!

L. Never mind; she can't scratch you while Florrie is holding her. Now that I think of it, you had better pull out two.

LUCILLA. But then she may scratch Florrie! and it will hurt her so, sir! if you only want brown hairs, wouldn't two of mine do?

L. Would you really rather pull out your own than Tittie's?

LUCILLA. Oh, of course, if mine will do.

L. But that's very wicked, Lucilla!

LUCILLA. Wicked, sir?

L. Yes; if your heart was not so bad, you would much rather pull all the cat's hairs out, than one of your own.

LUCILLA. Oh! but sir, I didn't mean bad, like that.

L. I believe, if the truth were told, Lucilla, you would like to tie a kettle to Tittie's tail, and hunt her round the playground.

LUCILLA. Indeed, I should not, sir.

L. That's not true, Lucilla; you know it cannot be.

LUCILLA. Sir?

L. Certainly it is not;—how can you possibly speak any truth out of such a heart as you have? It is wholly deceitful.

LUCILLA. Oh! no, no; I don't mean that way; I don't mean that it makes me tell lies, quite out.

L. Only that it tells lies within you?

LUCILLA. Yes.

L. Then, outside of it, you know what is true, and say so; and I may trust the outside of your heart; but within, it is all foul and false. Is that the way?

LUCILLA. I suppose so: I don't understand it, quite.

L. There is no occasion for understanding it; but do you feel it? Are you sure that your heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked?

LUCILLA (much relieved by finding herself among phrases with which she is acquainted). Yes, sir. I'm sure of that.

L. (pensively). I'm sorry for it, Lucilla.

LUCILLA. So am I, indeed.

L. What are you sorry with, Lucilla?

LUCILLA. Sorry with, sir?

L. Yes; I mean, where do you feel sorry? in your feet?

LUCILLA (laughing a little). No, sir, of course.

L. In your shoulders, then?

LUCILLA. No, sir.

L. You are sure of that? Because, I fear, sorrow in the shoulders would not be worth much.

LUCILLA. I suppose I feel it in my heart, if I really am sorry.

L. If you really are! Do you mean to say that you are sure you are utterly wicked, and yet do not care?

LUCILLA. No, indeed; I have cried about it often.

L. Well, then, you are sorry in your heart?

LUCILLA. Yes, when the sorrow is worth anything.

L. Even if it be not, it cannot be anywhere else but there. It is not the crystalline lens of your eyes which is sorry, when you cry?

LUCILLA. No, sir, of course.

L. Then, have you two hearts; one of which is wicked, and the other grieved? or is one side of it sorry for the other side?

LUCILLA (weary of cross-examination, and a little vexed). Indeed, sir, you know I can't understand it; but you know how it is written—'another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.'

L. Yes, Lucilla, I know how it is written; but I do not see that it will help us to know that, if we neither understand what is written, nor feel it. And you will not get nearer to the meaning of one verse, if, as soon as you are puzzled by it, you escape to another, introducing three new words—'law,' 'members,' and 'mind'; not one of which you at present know the meaning of; and respecting which, you probably never will be much wiser; since men like Montesquieu and Locke have spent great part of their lives in endeavouring to explain two of them.

LUCILLA. Oh! please, sir, ask somebody else.

L. If I thought anyone else could answer better than you, Lucilla, I would; but suppose I try, instead, myself, to explain your feelings to you?

LUCILLA. Oh, yes; please do.

L. Mind, I say your 'feelings,' not your 'belief.' For I cannot undertake to explain anybody's beliefs. Still I must try a little, first, to explain the belief also, because I want to draw it to some issue. As far as I understand what you say, or any one else, taught as you have been taught, says, on this matter,—you think that there is an external goodness, a whited-sepulchre kind of goodness, which appears beautiful outwardly, but is within full of uncleanness: a deep secret guilt, of which we ourselves are not sensible; and which can only be seen by the Maker of us all. (Approving murmurs from audience.)

L. Is it not so with the body as well as the soul?

(Looked notes of interrogation.)

L. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful thing?

(Grave faces, signifying 'Certainly not,' and 'What next?')

L. And if you all could see in each other, with clear eyes, whatever God sees beneath those fair faces of yours, you would not like it?

(Murmured 'No's.')

L. Nor would it be good for you?

(Silence.)

L. The probability being that what God does not allow you to see, He does not wish you to see; nor even to think of?

(Silence prolonged.)

L. It would not at all be good for you, for instance, whenever you were washing your faces, and braiding your hair, to be thinking of the shapes of the jawbones, and of the cartilage of the nose, and of the jagged sutures of the scalp?

(Resolutely whispered No's.)

L. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily processes of nourishment and decay?

(No.)

L. Still less if instead of merely inferior and preparatory conditions of structure, as in the skeleton,—or inferior offices of structure, as in operations of life and death,—there were actual disease in the body; ghastly and dreadful. You would try to cure it; but having taken such measures as were necessary, you would not think the cure likely to be promoted by perpetually watching the wounds, or thinking of them. On the contrary, you would be thankful for every moment of forgetfulness: as, in daily health, you must be thankful that your Maker has veiled whatever is fearful in your frame under a sweet and manifest beauty; and has made it your duty, and your only safety, to rejoice in that, both in yourself and in others:—not indeed concealing, or refusing to believe in sickness, if it come; but never dwelling on it.

Now, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are just the same. Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you; and so far as you know any means of mending it, take those means, and have done: when you are examining yourself, never call yourself merely a 'sinner,' that is very cheap abuse; and utterly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of it. But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an evil-eyed jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in any wise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly accused yourself of. And as soon as you are in active way of mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over an undefined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of others' faults: in every person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong: honour that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it: and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life should seem rugged as a palm tree stem; still, never mind, so long as it has been growing; and has its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of honied fruit, at top. And even if you cannot find much good in yourself at last, think that it does not much matter to the universe either what you were, or are; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be; and rejoice in their nobleness. An immense quantity of modern confession of sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly egotism; which will rather gloat over its own evil, than lose the centralisation of its interest in itself.

MARY. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did the old Greek proverb 'Know thyself' come to be so highly esteemed?

L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs; Apollo's proverb, and the sun's;—but do you think you can know yourself by looking into yourself? Never. You can know what you are, only by looking out of yourself. Measure your own powers with those of others; compare your own interests with those of others; try to understand what you appear to them, as well as what they appear to you; and judge of yourselves, in all things, relatively and subordinately; not positively: starting always with a wholesome conviction of the probability that there is nothing particular about you. For instance, some of you perhaps think you can write poetry. Dwell on your own feelings and doings:—and you will soon think yourselves Tenth Muses; but forget your own feelings; and try, instead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or Dante: and you will soon begin to feel yourselves very foolish girls—which is much like the fact.

So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfortune;—you meditate over its effects on you personally; and begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a this or that or the other of profound significance; and that all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little while, that they may watch its effects on your mind. But give up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy; examine a little what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happening, every second, to twenty times worthier persons: and your self-consciousness will change into pity and humility; and you will know yourself, so far as to understand that 'there hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man.'

Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any person of sense would arrive at, supposing the texts which relate to the inner evil of the heart were as many, and as prominent, as they are often supposed to be by careless readers. But the way in which common people read their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said), over and over, where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to their spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is. But you can only get the skins of the texts that way. If you want their juice, you must press them in cluster. Now, the clustered texts about the human heart, insist, as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts, but on the terrific distinction between the bad and the good ones. 'A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil.' 'They on the rock are they which, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it.' 'Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' 'The wicked have bent their bow, that they may privily shoot at him that is upright in heart.' And so on; they are countless, to the same effect. And, for all of us, the question is not at all to ascertain how much or how little corruption there is in human nature; but to ascertain whether, out of all the mass of that nature, we are of the sheep or the goat breed; whether we are people of upright heart, being shot at, or people of crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the texts bearing on the subject, this, which is a quite simple and practical order, is the one you have chiefly to hold in mind. 'Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.'

LUCILLA. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem!

L. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the universe is bound to look consistent to a girl of fifteen? Look up at your own room window;—you can just see it from where you sit. I'm glad that it is left open, as it ought to be, in so fine a day. But do you see what a black spot it looks, in the sunlighted wall?

LUCILLA. Yes, it looks as black as ink.

L. Yet you know it is a very bright room when you are inside of it; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very probable, also, that if you could look into your heart from the sun's point of view, it might appear a very black hole indeed; nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make it very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters up. And the one question for you, remember, is not 'dark or light?' but 'tidy or untidy?' Look well to your sweeping and garnishing; and be sure it is only the banished spirit, or some of the seven wickeder ones at his back, who will still whisper to you that it is all black.



LECTURE VI.

CRYSTAL QUARRELS.

Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game at crystallisation in the morning, of which various account has to be rendered. In particular, everybody has to explain why they were always where they were not intended to be.

L. (having received and considered the report). You have got on pretty well, children: but you know these were easy figures you have been trying. Wait till I have drawn you out the plans of some crystals of snow!

MARY. I don't think those will be the most difficult:—they are so beautiful that we shall remember our places better; and then they are all regular, and in stars: it is those twisty oblique ones we are afraid of.

L. Read Carlyle's account of the battle of Leuthen, and learn Freidrich's 'oblique order.' You will 'get it done for once, I think, provided you can march as a pair of compasses would.' But remember, when you can construct the most difficult single figures, you have only learned half the game—nothing so much as the half, indeed, as the crystals themselves play it.

MARY. Indeed; what else is there?

L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallises alone. Usually two or three, under quite different crystalline laws, form together. They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, when they are in fine temper: and observe what this signifies. It signifies that the two, or more, minerals of different natures agree, somehow, between themselves, how much space each will want;—agree which of them shall give away to the other at their junction; or in what measure each will accommodate itself to the other's shape! And then each takes its permitted shape, and allotted share of space; yielding, or being yielded to, as it builds, till each crystal has fitted itself perfectly and gracefully to its differently-natured neighbour. So that, in order to practise this, in even the simplest terms, you must divide into two parties, wearing different colours; each must choose a different figure to construct; and you must form one of these figures through the other, both going on at the same time.

MARY. I think we may, perhaps, manage it; but I cannot at all understand how the crystals do. It seems to imply so much preconcerting of plan, and so much giving way to each other, as if they really were living.

L. Yes, it implies both concurrence and compromise, regulating all wilfulness of design: and, more curious still, the crystals do not always give way to each other. They show exactly the same varieties of temper that human creatures might. Sometimes they yield the required place with perfect grace and courtesy; forming fantastic, but exquisitely finished groups: and sometimes they will not yield at all; but fight furiously for their places, losing all shape and honour, and even their own likeness, in the contest.

MARY. But is not that wholly wonderful? How is it that one never sees it spoken of in books?

L. The scientific men are all busy in determining the constant laws under which the struggle takes place; these indefinite humours of the elements are of no interest to them. And unscientific people rarely give themselves the trouble of thinking at all when they look at stones. Not that it is of much use to think; the more one thinks, the more one is puzzled.

MARY. Surely it is more wonderful than anything in botany?

L. Everything has its own wonders; but, given the nature of the plant, it is easier to understand what a flower will do, and why it does it, than, given anything we as yet know of stone-nature, to understand what a crystal will do, and why it does it. You at once admit a kind of volition and choice, in the flower, but we are not accustomed to attribute anything of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, in reality, more likeness to some conditions of human feeling among stones than among plants. There is a far greater difference between kindly-tempered and ill-tempered crystals of the same mineral, than between any two specimens of the same flower: and the friendships and wars of crystals depend more definitely and curiously on their varieties of disposition, than any associations of flowers. Here, for instance, is a good garnet, living with good mica; one rich red, and the other silver white: the mica leaves exactly room enough for the garnet to crystallise comfortably in; and the garnet lives happily in its little white house; fitted to it, like a pholas in its cell. But here are wicked garnets living with wicked mica. See what ruin they make of each other! You cannot tell which is which; the garnets look like dull red stains on the crumbling stone. By the way, I never could understand, if St. Gothard is a real saint, why he can't keep his garnets in better order. These are all under his care; but I suppose there are too many of them for him to look after. The streets of Airolo are paved with them.

MAY. Paved with garnets?

L. With mica-slate and garnets; I broke this bit out of a paving stone. Now garnets and mica are natural friends, and generally fond of each other; but you see how they quarrel when they are ill brought up. So it is always. Good crystals are friendly with almost all other good crystals, however little they chance to see of each other, or however opposite their habits may be; while wicked crystals quarrel with one another, though they may be exactly alike in habits, and see each other continually. And of course the wicked crystals quarrel with the good ones.

ISABEL. Then do the good ones get angry?

L. No, never: they attend to their own work and life; and live it as well as they can, though they are always the sufferers. Here, for instance, is a rock-crystal of the purest race and finest temper, who was born, unhappily for him, in a bad neighbourhood, near Beaufort in Savoy; and he has had to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life. See here, when he was but a child, it came down on him, and nearly buried him; a weaker crystal would have died in despair; but he only gathered himself together, like Hercules against the serpents, and threw a layer of crystal over the clay; conquered it,—imprisoned it,—and lived on. Then, when he was a little older, came more clay; and poured itself upon him here, at the side; and he has laid crystal over that, and lived on, in his purity. Then the clay came on at his angles, and tried to cover them, and round them away; but upon that he threw out buttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to his own central line as chapels round a cathedral apse; and clustered them round the clay; and conquered it again. At last the clay came on at his summit, and tried to blunt his summit; but he could not endure that for an instant; and left his flanks all rough, but pure; and fought the clay at his crest, and built crest over crest, and peak over peak, till the clay surrendered at last; and here is his summit, smooth and pure, terminating a pyramid of alternate clay and crystal, half a foot high!

LILY. Oh, how nice of him! What a dear, brave crystal! But I can't bear to see his flanks all broken, and the clay within them.

L. Yes; it was an evil chance for him, the being born to such contention; there are some enemies so base that even to hold them captive is a kind of dishonour. But look, here has been quite a different kind of struggle: the adverse power has been more orderly, and has fought the pure crystal in ranks as firm as its own. This is not mere rage and impediment of crowded evil: here is a disciplined hostility; army against army.

LILY. Oh, but this is much more beautiful!

L. Yes, for both the elements have true virtue in them; it is a pity they are at war, but they war grandly.

MARY. But is this the same clay as in the other crystal?

L. I used the word clay for shortness. In both, the enemy is really limestone; but in the first, disordered, and mixed with true clay; while, here, it is nearly pure, and crystallises into its own primitive form, the oblique six-sided one, which you know: and out of these it makes regiments; and then squares of the regiments, and so charges the rock crystal literally in square against column.

ISABEL. Please, please, let me see. And what does the rock crystal do?

L. The rock crystal seems able to do nothing. The calcite cuts it through at every charge. Look here,—and here! The loveliest crystal in the whole group is hewn fairly into two pieces.

ISABEL. Oh, dear; but is the calcite harder than the crystal then?

L. No, softer. Very much softer.

MARY. But then, how can it possibly cut the crystal?

L. It did not really cut it, though it passes through it. The two were formed together, as I told you; but no one knows how. Still, it is strange that this hard quartz has in all cases a good-natured way with it, of yielding to everything else. All sorts of soft things make nests for themselves in it; and it never makes a nest for itself in anything. It has all the rough outside work; and every sort of cowardly and weak mineral can shelter itself within it. Look; these are hexagonal plates of mica; if they were outside of this crystal they would break, like burnt paper; but they are inside of it,—nothing can hurt them,—the crystal has taken them into its very heart, keeping all their delicate edges as sharp as if they were under water, instead of bathed in rock. Here is a piece of branched silver: you can bend it with a touch of your finger, but the stamp of its every fibre is on the rock in which it lay, as if the quartz had been as soft as wool.

LILY. Oh, the good, good quartz! But does it never get inside of anything?

L. As it is a little Irish girl who asks, I may perhaps answer, without being laughed at, that it gets inside of itself sometimes. But I don't remember seeing quartz make a nest for itself in anything else.

ISABEL. Please, there was something I heard you talking about, last term, with Miss Mary. I was at my lessons, but I heard something about nests; and I thought it was birds' nests; and I couldn't help listening; and then, I remember, it was about 'nests of quartz in granite.' I remember, because I was so disappointed!

L. Yes, mousie, you remember quite rightly; but I can't tell you about those nests to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow: but there's no contradiction between my saying then, and now; I will show you that there is not, some day. Will you trust me meanwhile?

ISABEL. Won't I!

L. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of courtesy in quartz; it is on a small scale, but wonderfully pretty. Here is nobly born quartz living with a green mineral, called epidote; and they are immense friends. Now, you see, a comparatively large and strong quartz-crystal, and a very weak and slender little one of epidote, have begun to grow, close by each other, and sloping unluckily towards each other, so that they at last meet. They cannot go on growing together; the quartz crystal is five times as thick, and more than twenty times as strong,[151] as the epidote; but he stops at once, just in the very crowning moment of his life, when he is building his own summit! He lets the pale little film of epidote grow right past him; stopping his own summit for it; and he never himself grows any more.

LILY (after some silence of wonder). But is the quartz never wicked then?

L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured, compared to other things. Here are two very characteristic examples; one is good quartz, living with good pearlspar, and the other, wicked quartz, living with wicked pearlspar. In both, the quartz yields to the soft carbonate of iron: but, in the first place, the iron takes only what it needs of room; and is inserted into the planes of the rock crystal with such precision, that you must break it away before you can tell whether it really penetrates the quartz or not; while the crystals of iron are perfectly formed, and have a lovely bloom on their surface besides. But here, when the two minerals quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all its surfaces jagged and torn to pieces; and there is not a single iron crystal whose shape you can completely trace. But the quartz has the worst of it, in both instances.

VIOLET. Might we look at that piece of broken quartz again, with the weak little film across it? it seems such a strange lovely thing, like the self-sacrifice of a human being.

L. The self-sacrifice of a human being is not a lovely thing, Violet. It is often a necessary and noble thing; but no form nor degree of suicide can be ever lovely.

VIOLET. But self-sacrifice is not suicide!

L. What is it then?

VIOLET. Giving up one's self for another.

L. Well; and what do you mean by 'giving up one's self?'

VIOLET. Giving up one's tastes, one's feelings, one's time, one's happiness, and so on, to make others happy.

L. I hope you will never marry anybody, Violet, who expects you to make him happy in that way.

VIOLET (hesitating). In what way?

L. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing your feelings, and happiness.

VIOLET. No, no, I don't mean that; but you know, for other people, one must.

L. For people who don't love you, and whom you know nothing about? Be it so; but how does this 'giving up' differ from suicide then?

VIOLET. Why, giving up one's pleasures is not killing one's self?

L. Giving up wrong pleasure is not; neither is it self-sacrifice, but self-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If you surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither; you may as well cut it off: if you surrender the pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be unable to bear the light; you may as well pluck them out. And to maim yourself is partly to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you will soon slay.

VIOLET. But why do you make me think of that verse then about the foot and the eye?

L. You are indeed commanded to cut off and to pluck out, if foot or eye offend you; but why should they offend you?

VIOLET. I don't know; I never quite understood that.

L. Yet it is a sharp order; one needing to be well understood if it is to be well obeyed! When Helen sprained her ancle the other day, you saw how strongly it had to be bandaged: that is to say, prevented from all work, to recover it. But the bandage was not 'lovely.'

VIOLET. No, indeed.

L. And if her foot had been crushed, or diseased, or snake-bitten, instead of sprained, it might have been needful to cut it off. But the amputation would not have been 'lovely.'

VIOLET. No.

L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you—if the light that is in you be darkness, and your feet run into mischief, or are taken in the snare,—it is indeed time to pluck out, and cut off, I think: but, so crippled, you can never be what you might have been otherwise. You enter into life, at best, halt or maimed; and the sacrifice is not beautiful, though necessary.

VIOLET (after a pause). But when one sacrifices one's self for others?

L. Why not rather others for you?

VIOLET. Oh! but I couldn't bear that.

L. Then why should they bear it?

DORA (bursting in, indignant). And Thermopylae, and Protesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia, and Jephthah's daughter?

L. (sustaining the indignation unmoved). And the Samaritan woman's son?

DORA. Which Samaritan woman's?

L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29.

DORA (obeys). How horrid! As if we meant anything like that!

L. You don't seem to me to know in the least what you do mean, children. What practical difference is there between 'that,' and what you are talking about? The Samaritan children had no voice of their own in the business, it is true; but neither had Iphigenia: the Greek girl was certainly neither boiled, nor eaten; but that only makes a difference in the dramatic effect; not in the principle.

DORA (biting her lip). Well, then, tell us what we ought to mean. As if you didn't teach it all to us, and mean it yourself, at this moment, more than we do, if you wouldn't be tiresome!

L. I mean, and have always meant, simply this, Dora;—that the will of God respecting us is that we shall live by each other's happiness, and life; not by each other's misery, or death. I made you read that verse which so shocked you just now, because the relations of parent and child are typical of all beautiful human help. A child may have to die for its parents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live for them;—that, not by its sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, its force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and as the arrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all other right relations. Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They are not intended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen themselves for each other. And among the many apparently beautiful things which turn, through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that the thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of good men must be named as one of the fatallest. They have so often been taught that there is a virtue in mere suffering, as such; and foolishly to hope that good may be brought by Heaven out of all on which Heaven itself has set the stamp of evil, that we may avoid it,—that they accept pain and defeat as if these were their appointed portion; never understanding that their defeat is not the less to be mourned because it is more fatal to their enemies than to them. The one thing that a good man has to do, and to see done, is justice; he is neither to slay himself nor others causelessly: so far from denying himself, since he is pleased by good, he is to do his utmost to get his pleasure accomplished. And I only wish there were strength, fidelity, and sense enough, among the good Englishmen of this day, to render it possible for them to band together in a vowed brotherhood, to enforce, by strength of heart and hand, the doing of human justice among all who came within their sphere. And finally, for your own teaching, observe, although there may be need for much self-sacrifice and self-denial in the correction of faults of character, the moment the character is formed, the self-denial ceases. Nothing is really well done, which it costs you pain to do.

VIOLET. But surely, sir, you are always pleased with us when we try to please others, and not ourselves?

L. My dear child, in the daily course and discipline of right life, we must continually and reciprocally submit and surrender in all kind and courteous and affectionate ways: and these submissions and ministries to each other, of which you all know (none better) the practice and the preciousness, are as good for the yielder as the receiver: they strengthen and perfect as much as they soften and refine. But the real sacrifice of all our strength, or life, or happiness to others (though it may be needed, and though all brave creatures hold their lives in their hand, to be given, when such need comes, as frankly as a soldier gives his life in battle), is yet always a mournful and momentary necessity; not the fulfilment of the continuous law of being. Self-sacrifice which is sought after, and triumphed in, is usually foolish; and calamitous in its issue: and by the sentimental proclamation and pursuit of it, good people have not only made most of their own lives useless, but the whole framework of their religion so hollow, that at this moment, while the English nation, with its lips, pretends to teach every man to 'love his neighbour as himself,' with its hands and feet it clutches and tramples like a wild beast; and practically lives, every soul of it that can, on other people's labour. Briefly, the constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts; and to strengthen them for the help of others. Do you think Titian would have helped the world better by denying himself, and not painting; or Casella by denying himself, and not singing? The real virtue is to be ready to sing the moment people ask us; as he was, even in purgatory. The very word 'virtue' means not 'conduct' but 'strength,' vital energy in the heart. Were not you reading about that group of words beginning with V,—vital, virtuous, vigorous, and so on,—in Max Muller, the other day, Sibyl? Can't you tell the others about it?

SIBYL. No, I can't; will you tell us, please?

L. Not now, it is too late. Come to me some idle time to-morrow, and I'll tell you about it, if all's well. But the gist of it is, children, that you should at least know two Latin words; recollect that 'mors' means death and delaying; and 'vita' means life and growing: and try always, not to mortify yourselves, but to vivify yourselves.

VIOLET. But, then, are we not to mortify our earthly affections? and surely we are to sacrifice ourselves, at least in God's service, if not in man's?

L. Really, Violet, we are getting too serious. I've given you enough ethics for one talk, I think! Do let us have a little play. Lily, what were you so busy about, at the ant-hill in the wood, this morning?

LILY. Oh, it was the ants who were busy, not I; I was only trying to help them a little.

L. And they wouldn't be helped, I suppose?

LILY. No, indeed. I can't think why ants are always so tiresome, when one tries to help them! They were carrying bits of stick, as fast as they could, through a piece of grass; and pulling and pushing, so hard; and tumbling over and over,—it made one quite pity them; so I took some of the bits of stick, and carried them forward a little, where I thought they wanted to put them; but instead of being pleased, they left them directly, and ran about looking quite angry and frightened; and at last ever so many of them got up my sleeves, and bit me all over, and I had to come away.

L. I couldn't think what you were about. I saw your French grammar lying on the grass behind you, and thought perhaps you had gone to ask the ants to hear you a French verb.

ISABEL. Ah! but you didn't, though!

L. Why not, Isabel? I knew, well enough, Lily couldn't learn that verb by herself.

ISABEL. No; but the ants couldn't help her.

L. Are you sure the ants could not have helped you, Lily?

LILY (thinking). I ought to have learned something from them, perhaps.

L. But none of them left their sticks to help you through the irregular verb?

LILY. No, indeed. (Laughing, with some others.)

L. What are you laughing at, children? I cannot see why the ants should not have left their tasks to help Lily in her's,—since here is Violet thinking she ought to leave her tasks, to help God in His. Perhaps, however, she takes Lily's more modest view, and thinks only that 'He ought to learn something from her.'

(Tears in VIOLET'S eyes.)

DORA (scarlet). It's too bad—it's a shame:—poor Violet!

L. My dear children, there's no reason why one should be so red, and the other so pale, merely because you are made for a moment to feel the absurdity of a phrase which you have been taught to use, in common with half the religious world. There is but one way in which man can ever help God—that is, by letting God help him: and there is no way in which his name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by calling the abandonment of our own work, the performance of His.

God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where He wishes us to be employed; and that employment is truly 'our Father's business.' He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves. Now, away with you, children; and be as happy as you can. And when you cannot, at least don't plume yourselves upon pouting.

FOOTNOTES:

[151] Quartz is not much harder than epidote; the strength is only supposed to be in some proportion to the squares of the diameters.



LECTURE VII.

HOME VIRTUES.

By the fireside, in the Drawing-room. Evening.

DORA. Now, the curtains are drawn, and the fire's bright and here's your arm-chair—and you're to tell us all about what you promised.

L. All about what?

DORA. All about virtue.

KATHLEEN. Yes, and about the words that begin with V.

L. I heard you singing about a word that begins with V, in the playground, this morning, Miss Katie.

KATHLEEN. Me singing?

MAY. Oh tell us—tell us.

L. 'Vilikens and his——'

KATHLEEN (stopping his mouth). Oh! please don't. Where were you?

ISABEL. I'm sure I wish I had known where he was! We lost him among the rhododendrons, and I don't know where he got to; oh, you naughty—naughty—(climbs on his knee).

DORA. Now, Isabel, we really want to talk.

L. I don't.

DORA. Oh, but you must. You promised, you know.

L. Yes, if all was well; but all's ill. I'm tired, and cross; and I won't.

DORA. You're not a bit tired, and you're not crosser than two sticks; and we'll make you talk, if you were crosser than six. Come here, Egypt; and get on the other side of him.

(EGYPT takes up a commanding position near the hearth-brush.)

DORA (reviewing her forces). Now, Lily, come and sit on the rug in front.

(LILY does as she is bid.)

L. (seeing he has no chance against the odds.) Well, well; but I'm really tired. Go and dance a little, first; and let me think.

DORA. No; you mustn't think. You will be wanting to make us think next; that will be tiresome.

L. Well, go and dance first, to get quit of thinking; and then I'll talk as long as you like.

DORA. Oh, but we can't dance to-night. There isn't time; and we want to hear about virtue.

L. Let me see a little of it first. Dancing is the first of girl's virtues.

EGYPT. Indeed! And the second?

L. Dressing.

EGYPT. Now, you needn't say that! I mended that tear the first thing before breakfast this morning.

L. I cannot otherwise express the ethical principle, Egypt; whether you have mended your gown or not.

DORA. Now don't be tiresome. We really must hear about virtue, please; seriously.

L. Well. I'm telling you about it, as fast as I can.

DORA. What! the first of girls' virtues is dancing?

L. More accurately, it is wishing to dance, and not wishing to tease, nor hear about virtue.

DORA (to EGYPT). Isn't he cross?

EGYPT. How many balls must we go to in the season, to be perfectly virtuous?

L. As many as you can without losing your colour. But I did not say you should wish to go to balls. I said you should be always wanting to dance.

EGYPT. So we do; but everybody says it is very wrong.

L. Why, Egypt, I thought—

'There was a lady once, That would not be a queen,—that would she not, For all the mud in Egypt.'

You were complaining the other day of having to go out a great deal oftener than you liked.

EGYPT. Yes, so I was; but then, it isn't to dance. There's no room to dance: it's—(Pausing to consider what it is for).

L. It is only to be seen, I suppose. Well, there's no harm in that. Girls ought to like to be seen.

DORA (her eyes flashing). Now, you don't mean that; and you're too provoking; and we won't dance again, for a month.

L. It will answer every purpose of revenge, Dora, if you only banish me to the library; and dance by yourselves: but I don't think Jessie and Lily will agree to that. You like me to see you dancing, don't you Lily?

LILY. Yes, certainly,—when we do it rightly.

L. And besides, Miss Dora, if young ladies really do not want to be seen, they should take care not to let their eyes flash when they dislike what people say; and, more than that, it is all nonsense from beginning to end, about not wanting to be seen. I don't know any more tiresome flower in the borders than your especially 'modest' snowdrop; which one always has to stoop down and take all sorts of tiresome trouble with, and nearly break its poor little head off, before you can see it; and then, half of it is not worth seeing. Girls should be like daisies; nice and white, with an edge of red, if you look close; making the ground bright wherever they are; knowing simply and quietly that they do it, and are meant to do it, and that it would be very wrong if they didn't do it. Not want to be seen, indeed! How long were you in doing your back hair, this afternoon, Jessie?

(JESSIE not immediately answering, DORA comes to her assistance.)

DORA. Not above three-quarters of an hour, I think, Jess?

JESSIE (putting her finger up). Now, Dorothy, you needn't talk, you know!

L. I know she needn't, Jessie; I shall ask her about those dark plaits presently. (DORA looks round to see if there is any way open for retreat.) But never mind; it was worth the time, whatever it was; and nobody will ever mistake that golden wreath for a chignon; but if you don't want it to be seen, you had better wear a cap.

JESSIE. Ah, now, are you really going to do nothing but play? And we all have been thinking, and thinking, all day; and hoping you would tell us things; and now—!

L. And now I am telling you things, and true things, and things good for you; and you won't believe me. You might as well have let me go to sleep at once, as I wanted to.

(Endeavours again to make himself comfortable.)

ISABEL. Oh, no, no, you sha'n't go to sleep, you naughty—Kathleen, come here.

L. (knowing what he has to expect if KATHLEEN comes). Get away, Isabel, you're too heavy. (Sitting up.) What have I been saying?

DORA. I do believe he has been asleep all the time! You never heard anything like the things you've been saying.

L. Perhaps not. If you have heard them, and anything like them, it is all I want.

EGYPT. Yes, but we don't understand, and you know we don't; and we want to.

L. What did I say first?

DORA. That the first virtue of girls was wanting to go to balls.

L. I said nothing of the kind.

JESSIE. 'Always wanting to dance,' you said.

L. Yes, and that's true. Their first virtue is to be intensely happy;—so happy that they don't know what to do with themselves for happiness,—and dance, instead of walking. Don't you recollect 'Louisa,'

'No fountain from a rocky cave E'er tripped with foot so free; She seemed as happy as a wave That dances on the sea.'

A girl is always like that, when everything's right with her.

VIOLET. But, surely, one must be sad sometimes?

L. Yes, Violet; and dull sometimes, and stupid sometimes, and cross sometimes. What must be, must; but it is always either our own fault, or somebody else's. The last and worst thing that can be said of a nation is, that it has made its young girls sad, and weary.

MAY. But I am sure I have heard a great many good people speak against dancing?

L. Yes, May; but it does not follow they were wise as well as good. I suppose they think Jeremiah liked better to have to write Lamentations for his people, than to have to write that promise for them, which everybody seems to hurry past, that they may get on quickly to the verse about Rachel weeping for her children; though the verse they pass is the counter-blessing to that one: 'Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance; and both young men and old together; and I will turn their mourning into joy.'

(The children get very serious, but look at each other, as if pleased.)

MARY. They understand now: but, do you know what you said next?

L. Yes; I was not more than half asleep. I said their second virtue was dressing.

MARY. Well! what did you mean by that?

L. What do you mean by dressing?

MARY. Wearing fine clothes.

L. Ah! there's the mistake. I mean wearing plain ones.

MARY. Yes, I daresay! but that's not what girls understand by dressing, you know.

L. I can't help that. If they understand by dressing, buying dresses, perhaps they also understand by drawing, buying pictures. But when I hear them say they can draw, I understand that they can make a drawing; and when I hear them say they can dress, I understand that they can make a dress and—which is quite as difficult—wear one.

DORA. I'm not sure about the making; for the wearing, we can all wear them—out, before anybody expects it.

EGYPT (aside, to L., piteously). Indeed I have mended that torn flounce quite neatly; look if I haven't!

L. (aside, to EGYPT). All right; don't be afraid. (Aloud to DORA.) Yes, doubtless; but you know that is only a slow way of undressing.

DORA. Then, we are all to learn dress-making, are we?

L. Yes; and always to dress yourselves beautifully—not finely, unless on occasion; but then very finely and beautifully too. Also, you are to dress as many other people as you can; and to teach them how to dress, if they don't know; and to consider every ill-dressed woman or child whom you see anywhere, as a personal disgrace; and to get at them, somehow, until everybody is as beautifully dressed as birds.

(Silence; the children drawing their breaths hard, as if they had come from under a shower bath.)

L (seeing objections begin to express themselves in the eyes). Now you needn't say you can't; for you can: and it's what you were meant to do, always; and to dress your houses, and your gardens, too; and to do very little else, I believe, except singing; and dancing, as we said, of course; and—one thing more.