The Crown of Wild Olive
nor Egyptian could have conceived. It is the character of pure and
eyeless manual labour to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, in
reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected; aggrandising
itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of all noble things. I
heard an orator, and a good one too, at the Working Men's College, the
other day, make a great point in a description of our railroads; saying,
with grandly conducted emphasis, 'They have made man greater, and the
world less.' His working audience were mightily pleased; they thought it
so very fine a thing to be made bigger themselves; and all the rest of
the world less. I should have enjoyed asking them (but it would have
been a pity--they were so pleased), how much less they would like to
have the world made;--and whether, at present, those of them really felt
the biggest men, who lived in the least houses.
SIBYL. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he could make weak
things strong, and small things great?
L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so
far true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighbourhood--a
very fine fair we thought it. You never saw such an one; but if you look
at the engraving of Turner's 'St. Catherine's Hill,' you will see what
it was like. There were curious booths, carried on poles; and
peep-shows; and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much
barley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like: and in the alleys of this
fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, after their fashion,
very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one day; he
made the wooden poles into iron ones, and put them across, like his own
crooked legs, so that you always fall over them if you don't look where
you are going; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, and put
it up on his iron cross-poles; and made all the little booths into one
great booth; and people said it was very fine, and a new style of
architecture; and Mr. Dickens said nothing was ever like it in
Fairyland, which was very true. And then the little Pthah set to work to
put fine fairings in it; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, with
the blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he
got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like his
gingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could think
of, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and her
children; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders;
and the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin;
and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops, and buns, and beer; and all
the little-Pthah-worshippers say, never was anything so sublime!
SIBYL. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these Crystal Palace
concerts? They're as good as good can be.
L. I don't go to the thundering things with a million of bad voices in
them. When I want a song, I get Julia Mannering and Lucy Bertram and
Counsellor Pleydell to sing 'We be three poor Mariners' to me; then I've
no headache next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when I
can; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl: and I always get a
reserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I am sure I can see
the kettle-drummer drum.
SIBYL. Now _do_ be serious, for one minute.
L. I am serious--never was more so. You know one can't see the
modulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the vibration of the
drummer's hand; and it's lovely.
SIBYL. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to see!
L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, is to go
there to talk. I confess, however, that in most music, when very well
done, the doing of it is to me the chiefly interesting part of the
business. I'm always thinking how good it would be for the fat,
supercilious people, who care so little for their half-crown's worth, to
be set to try and do a half-crown's worth of anything like it.
MARY. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and help to the
people of London?
L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear; but they are
spoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. And the palace (as they
call it) is a better place for them, by much, than the old fair; and it
is always there, instead of for three days only; and it shuts up at
proper hours of night. And good use may be made of the things in it, if
you know how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them
nothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah's work--nothing but hammer and
tongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his doing, in the place, only the
other day. Some unhappy metal-worker--I am not sure if it was not a
metal-working firm--had taken three years to make a Golden eagle.
SIBYL. Of real gold?
L. No; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent metal--it is
no matter what. I meant a model of our chief British eagle. Every
feather was made separately; and every filament of every feather
separately, and so joined on; and all the quills modelled of the right
length and right section, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened
together. You know, children, I don't think much of my own drawing; but
take my proud word for once, that when I go to the Zoological Gardens,
and happen to have a bit of chalk in my pocket, and the Gray Harpy will
sit, without screwing his head round, for thirty seconds,--I can do a
better thing of him in that time than the three years' work of this
industrious firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my
object,--not myself; and during the three years, the firm's object, in
every fibre of bronze it made, was itself, and not the eagle. That is
the true meaning of the little Pthah's having no eyes--he can see only
himself. The Egyptian beetle was not quite the full type of him; our
northern ground beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it at
work, gathering its treasures (such as they are) into little round
balls; and pushing them home with the strong wrong end of it,--head
downmost all the way,--like a modern political economist with his ball
of capital, declaring that a nation can stand on its vices better than
on its virtues. But away with you, children, now, for I'm getting cross.
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