The Crown of Wild Olive
the fierce revulsion and slow renewal of the earth's frame, in beauty,
and order, and permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea draw
themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered symmetry;
burdened and strained under increase of pressure, they pass into a
nascent marble; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and blanch into
the snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river,
or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself
as it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each
by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in which it
was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, till it must shatter into
fragments, it infuses continually a finer ichor into the opening veins,
and finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength.
Bent at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in
lambent fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibres of a perennial
endurance; and, during countless subsequent centuries, declining, or
rather let me say, rising to repose, finishes the infallible lustre of
its crystalline beauty, under harmonies of law which are wholly
beneficent, because wholly inexorable.
(_The children seem pleased, but more inclined to think over
these matters than to talk._)
L. (_after giving them a little time_). Mary, I seldom ask you to read
anything out of books of mine; but there is a passage about the Law of
Help, which I want you to read to the children now, because it is of no
use merely to put it in other words for them. You know the place I mean,
do not you?
MARY. Yes (_presently finding it_); where shall I begin?
L. Here; but the elder ones had better look afterwards at the piece
which comes just before this.
MARY (_reads_):
* * * * *
'A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are
helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and
the other name of life, is therefore, "help." The other name of death is
"separation." Government and co-operation are in all things, and
eternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in
all things, the laws of death.
'Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we could take of
the nature and power of consistence, will be that of the possible
changes in the dust we tread on.
'Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type
of impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp, over-trodden path, in the
outskirts of a manufacturing town. I do not say mud of the road, because
that is mixed with animal refuse; but take merely an ounce or two of the
blackest slime of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a
manufacturing town. That slime we shall find in most cases composed of
clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay), mixed with soot, a little sand
and water. All these elements are at helpless war with each other, and
destroy reciprocally each other's nature and power: competing and
fighting for place at every tread of your foot; sand squeezing out clay,
and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling
the whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect
rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their
atoms may get into the closest relations possible.
'Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, it
gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with
help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted
on, and be kept in kings' palaces. But such artificial consistence is
not its best. Leave it still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity,
and it becomes, not only white but clear; not only clear, but hard; nor
only clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a
wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only,
refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire.
'Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of
quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth; then proceeds
to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious,
infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting, not
merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the
greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material
whatsoever. We call it then an opal.
'In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself white at
first; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder; and
comes out clear at last; and the hardest thing in the world: and for
the blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting
all the rays of the sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid
thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond.
'Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself; contented enough if
it only reach the form of a dewdrop: but, if we insist on its proceeding
to a more perfect consistence, it crystallises into the shape of a star.
And, for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of
competition, we have, by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire,
an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.'
* * * * *
L. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we
have seen in the work and play of these past days, I would have you gain
at least one grave and enduring thought. The seeming trouble,--the
unquestionable degradation,--of the elements of the physical earth, must
passively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their restoration.
It can only be brought about for them by the agency of external law. But
if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving
atoms;--if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire
which inhabits them, and that which animates us,--it must be shown, by
each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in
the activity of our hope; not merely by our desire, but our labour, for
the time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for
foundations of the gates of the city of God. The human clay, now
trampled and despised, will not be,--cannot be,--knit into strength and
light by accident or ordinances of unassisted fate. By human cruelty and
iniquity it has been afflicted;--by human mercy and justice it must be
raised: and, in all fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real
message of creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect
peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly
required,--and content that He should indeed require no more of
you,--than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.
FOOTNOTES:
[153] Note vi.
NOTES.
NOTE I.
Page 24.
_'That third pyramid of hers.'_
Throughout the dialogues, it must be observed that 'Sibyl' is addressed
(when in play) as having once been the Cumaean Sibyl; and 'Egypt' as
having been queen Nitocris,--the Cinderella, and 'the greatest heroine
and beauty' of Egyptian story. The Egyptians called her 'Neith the
Victorious' (Nitocris), and the Greeks 'Face of the Rose' (Rhodope).
Chaucer's beautiful conception of Cleopatra in the 'Legend of Good
Women,' is much more founded on the traditions of her than on those of
Cleopatra; and, especially in its close, modified by Herodotus's
terrible story of the death of Nitocris, which, however, is
mythologically nothing more than a part of the deep monotonous ancient
dirge for the fulfilment of the earthly destiny of Beauty; 'She cast
herself into a chamber full of ashes.'
I believe this Queen is now sufficiently ascertained to have either
built, or increased to double its former size, the third pyramid of
Gizeh: and the passage following in the text refers to an imaginary
endeavour, by the Old Lecturer and the children together, to make out
the description of that pyramid in the 167th page of the second volume
of Bunsen's 'Egypt's Place in Universal History'--ideal
endeavour,--which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer's real
endeavours to the same end always have terminated. There are, however,
valuable notes respecting Nitocris at page 210 of the same volume: but
the 'Early Egyptian History for the Young,' by the author of Sidney
Gray, contains, in a pleasant form, as much information as young readers
will usually need.
NOTE II.
Page 25.
_'Pyramid of Asychis.'_
This pyramid, in mythology, divides with the Tower of Babel the shame,
or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great edifices,
built with 'brick for stone.' This was the inscription on it, according
to Herodotus:--
'Despise me not, in comparing me with the pyramids of stone;
for I have the pre-eminence over them, as far as Jupiter has
pre-eminence over the gods. For, striking with staves into
the pool, men gathered the clay which fastened itself to the
staff, and kneaded bricks out of it, and so made me.'
The word I have translated 'kneaded' is literally 'drew;' in the sense
of drawing, for which the Latins used 'duco;' and thus gave us our
'ductile' in speaking of dead clay, and Duke, Doge, or leader, in
speaking of living clay. As the asserted pre-eminence of the edifice is
made, in this inscription, to rest merely on the quantity of labour
consumed in it, this pyramid is considered, in the text, as the type, at
once, of the base building, and of the lost labour, of future ages, so
far at least as the spirits of measured and mechanical effort deal with
it: but Neith, exercising her power upon it, makes it a type of the work
of wise and inspired builders.
NOTE III.
Page 25.
_'The Greater Pthah.'_
It is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal
agencies of the Egyptian deities. They are continually associated in
function, or hold derivative powers, or are related to each other in
mysterious triads; uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena with
real spiritual power. I have endeavoured partly to explain this in the
text of the tenth Lecture: here, it is only necessary for the reader to
know that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power
of order and measurement: he always stands on a four-square pedestal,
'the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth;'
his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a
pillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand; and at Philae, is represented
as holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if this symbol
occurs in older sculptures. His usual title is the 'Lord of Truth.'
Others, very beautiful: 'King of the Two Worlds, of Gracious
Countenance,' 'Superintendent of the Great Abode,' &c., are given by Mr.
Birch in Arundale's 'Gallery of Antiquities,' which I suppose is the
book of best authority easily accessible. For the full titles and
utterances of the gods, Rosellini is as yet the only--and I believe,
still a very questionable--authority; and Arundale's little book,
excellent in the text, has this great defect, that its drawings give the
statues invariably a ludicrous or ignoble character. Readers who have
not access to the originals must be warned against this frequent fault
in modern illustration (especially existing also in some of the painted
casts of Gothic and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing
to any wilful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale's book are
laboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in a
figure depend merely on emphasis of touch; and, in barbaric art, most
draughtsmen emphasise what they plainly see--the barbarism; and miss
conditions of nobleness, which they must approach the monument in a