Ariel was nothing in his ubiquity to him, though he put a
span about the world in forty minutes; "but there was some apology for
the public's not understanding this, for few people have had the
opportunity of seeing the sea at such a time, and when they have,
cannot face it. To hold by a mast or rock, and watch it, is a
prolonged endurance of drowning, which few people have courage to go
through. To those who have, it is one of the noblest lessons in
nature." Very few people, indeed, and those few "involuntary
experimentalists."
We are glad to get on dry land again, "brown furze or any thing"--and
here we must question one of his truths of vegetation: he asserts,
that the stems of all trees, the "ordinary trees of Europe, do not
taper, but grow up or out, in undiminished thickness, till they throw
out branch and bud, and then go off again to the next of equal
thickness." We have carefully examined many trees this last week, and
find it is not the case; in almost all, the bulging at the bottom,
nearest the root, is manifest. There is an early association in our
minds, that the birch for instance is remarkably tapering in its
twigs. We would rather refer our "sworn measurer" to the factor than
the painter, and we very much question whether his "top and top" will
meet the market. We are satisfied the fact is not as he states it, and
surely nature works not by such measure rule. We suspect, for nature
we should here read Turner, for his trees, certainly, are strange
things; it is true, he generally shirks them. We do not remember one
picture that has a good, true, _bona fide_, conspicuous tree in it.
The reader will not be surprised to learn that the worst painter of
trees was Gaspar Poussin! and that the perfection of trees is to be
found in Turner's "Marley," where most people will think the trees
look more like brooms than trees. The chapter on "the Truth of Turner"
concludes with a quotation--we presume the extract from a letter from
Mr Turner to the author. If so, Mr Turner has somewhat caught the
author's style, and tells very simple truths in a very fine manner,
thus:--"I cannot gather the sunbeams out of the east, or I would make
_them_ tell you what I have seen; but read this, and interpret this,
and let us remember together. I cannot gather the gloom out of the
night-sky, or I would make that teach you what I have seen; but read
this, and interpret this, and let us feel together." We must pause.
Really we do not see the slightest necessity of an interpretation
here. It is a simple fact. He cannot extract "sunbeams" from
cucumbers--from the east, we should say. The only riddle seems to be,
that they should, in one instance, remember together, and in the
other, feel together; only we guess that, being night-gloom, people
naturally feel about them in the dark. But he proceeds--"And if you
have not that within you which I can summon to my aid, if you have not
the sun in your spirit, and the passion in your heart, which my words
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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