The Crown of Wild Olive
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