The Crown of Wild Olive
at the ends; and here you have a short thick column, as solid as a
haystack, with two fat caps at the ends; and here you have two caps
fastened together, and no column at all between them! Then here is a
crystal with its column fat in the middle, and tapering to a little cap;
and here is one stalked like a mushroom, with a huge cap put on the top
of a slender column! Then here is a column built wholly out of little
caps, with a large smooth cap at the top. And here is a column built of
columns and caps; the caps all truncated about half way to their points.
And in both these last, the little crystals are set anyhow, and build
the large one in a disorderly way; but here is a crystal made of columns
and truncated caps, set in regular terraces all the way up.
MARY. But are not these, groups of crystals, rather than one crystal?
L. What do you mean by a group, and what by one crystal?
DORA (_audibly aside, to_ MARY, _who is brought to pause_). You know you
are never expected to answer, Mary.
L. I'm sure this is easy enough. What do you mean by a group of people?
MARY. Three or four together, or a good many together, like the caps in
these crystals.
L. But when a great many persons get together they don't take the shape
of one person?
(MARY _still at pause._)
ISABEL. No, because they can't; but, you know the crystals can; so why
shouldn't they?
L. Well, they don't; that is to say, they don't always, nor even often.
Look here, Isabel.
ISABEL. What a nasty ugly thing!
L. I'm glad you think it so ugly. Yet it is made of beautiful crystals;
they are a little grey and cold in colour, but most of them are clear.
ISABEL. But they're in such horrid, horrid disorder!
L. Yes; all disorder is horrid, when it is among things that are
naturally orderly. Some little girl's rooms are naturally _dis_orderly,
I suppose; or I don't know how they could live in them, if they cry out
so when they only see quartz crystals in confusion.
ISABEL. Oh! but how come they to be like that?
L. You may well ask. And yet you will always hear people talking as if
they thought order more wonderful than disorder! It _is_ wonderful--as
we have seen; but to me, as to you, child, the supremely wonderful thing
is that nature should ever be ruinous or wasteful, or deathful! I look
at this wild piece of crystallisation with endless astonishment.
MARY. Where does it come from?
L. The Tete Noire of Chamonix. What makes it more strange is that it
should be in a vein of fine quartz rock. If it were in a mouldering
rock, it would be natural enough; but in the midst of so fine substance,
here are the crystals tossed in a heap; some large, myriads small
(almost as small as dust), tumbling over each other like a terrified
crowd, and glued together by the sides, and edges, and backs, and heads;
some warped, and some pushed out and in, and all spoiled and each
spoiling the rest.
MARY. And how flat they all are!
L. Yes; that's the fashion at the Tete Noire.
MARY. But surely this is ruin, not caprice?
L. I believe it is in great part misfortune; and we will examine these
crystal troubles in next lecture. But if you want to see the
gracefullest and happiest caprices of which dust is capable, you must go
to the Hartz; not that I ever mean to go there myself, for I want to
retain the romantic feeling about the name; and I have done myself some
harm already by seeing the monotonous and heavy form of the Brocken from
the suburbs of Brunswick. But whether the mountains be picturesque or
not, the tricks which the goblins (as I am told) teach the crystals in
them, are incomparably pretty. They work chiefly on the mind of a
docile, bluish coloured, carbonate of lime; which comes out of a grey
limestone. The goblins take the greatest possible care of its education,
and see that nothing happens to it to hurt its temper; and when it may
be supposed to have arrived at the crisis which is, to a well brought up
mineral, what presentation at court is to a young lady--after which it
is expected to set fashions--there's no end to its pretty ways of
behaving. First it will make itself into pointed darts as fine as
hoar-frost; here, it is changed into a white fur as fine as silk; here
into little crowns and circlets, as bright as silver; as if for the
gnome princesses to wear; here it is in beautiful little plates, for
them to eat off; presently it is in towers which they might be
imprisoned in; presently in caves and cells, where they may make
nun-gnomes of themselves, and no gnome ever hear of them more; here is
some of it in sheaves, like corn; here, some in drifts, like snow; here,
some in rays, like stars: and, though these are, all of them,
necessarily, shapes that the mineral takes in other places, they are
all taken here with such a grace that you recognise the high caste and
breeding of the crystals wherever you meet them; and know at once they
are Hartz-born.
Of course, such fine things as these are only done by crystals which are
perfectly good, and good-humoured; and of course, also, there are
ill-humoured crystals who torment each other, and annoy quieter
crystals, yet without coming to anything like serious war. Here (for
once) is some ill-disposed quartz, tormenting a peaceable octahedron of
fluor, in mere caprice. I looked at it the other night so long, and so
wonderingly, just before putting my candle out, that I fell into another
strange dream. But you don't care about dreams.
DORA. No; we didn't, yesterday; but you know we are made up of caprice;
so we do, to-day: and you must tell it us directly.
L. Well, you see, Neith and her work were still much in my mind; and
then, I had been looking over these Hartz things for you, and thinking
of the sort of grotesque sympathy there seemed to be in them with the
beautiful fringe and pinnacle work of Northern architecture. So, when I
fell asleep, I thought I saw Neith and St. Barbara talking together.
DORA. But what had St. Barbara to do with it?[152]
L. My dear, I am quite sure St. Barbara is the patroness of good
architects: not St. Thomas, whatever the old builders thought. It might
be very fine, according to the monks' notions, in St. Thomas, to give
all his employer's money away to the poor: but breaches of contract are
bad foundations; and I believe, it was not he, but St. Barbara, who
overlooked the work in all the buildings you and I care about. However
that may be, it was certainly she whom I saw in my dream with Neith.
Neith was sitting weaving, and I thought she looked sad, and threw her
shuttle slowly; and St. Barbara was standing at her side, in a stiff
little gown, all ins and outs, and angles; but so bright with embroidery
that it dazzled me whenever she moved; the train of it was just like a
heap of broken jewels, it was so stiff, and full of corners, and so
many-coloured, and bright. Her hair fell over her shoulders in long,
delicate waves, from under a little three pinnacled crown, like a tower.
She was asking Neith about the laws of architecture in Egypt and Greece;
and when Neith told her the measures of the pyramids, St. Barbara said
she thought they would have been better three-cornered: and when Neith
told her the measures of the Parthenon, St. Barbara said she thought it
ought to have had two transepts. But she was pleased when Neith told her
of the temple of the dew, and of the Caryan maidens bearing its frieze:
and then she thought that perhaps Neith would like to hear what sort of
temples she was building herself, in the French valleys, and on the
crags of the Rhine. So she began gossiping, just as one of you might to
an old lady: and certainly she talked in the sweetest way in the world
to Neith; and explained to her all about crockets and pinnacles: and
Neith sat, looking very grave; and always graver as St. Barbara went on;
till at last, I'm sorry to say, St. Barbara lost her temper a little.
MAY (_very grave herself_). 'St. Barbara?'
L. Yes, May. Why shouldn't she? It was very tiresome of Neith to sit
looking like that.
MAY. But, then, St. Barbara was a saint!
L. What's that, May?
MAY. A saint! A saint is--I am sure you know!
L. If I did, it would not make me sure that you knew too, May: but I
don't.
VIOLET (_expressing the incredulity of the audience_). Oh,--sir!
L. That is to say, I know that people are called saints who are supposed
to be better than others: but I don't know how much better they must be,
in order to be saints; nor how nearly anybody may be a saint, and yet
not be quite one; nor whether everybody who is called a saint was one;
nor whether everybody who isn't called a saint, isn't one.
(_General silence; the audience feeling themselves on the
verge of the Infinities--and a little shocked--and much
puzzled by so many questions at once._)
L. Besides, did you never hear that verse about being 'called to be
saints'?
MAY (_repeats Rom._ i. 7.)
L. Quite right, May. Well, then, who are called to be that? People in
Rome only?
MAY. Everybody, I suppose, whom God loves.
L. What! little girls as well as other people?
MAY. All grown-up people, I mean.
L. Why not little girls? Are they wickeder when they are little?
MAY. Oh, I hope not.
L. Why not little girls, then?
(_Pause._)
LILY. Because, you know, we can't be worth anything if we're ever so
good;--I mean, if we try to be ever so good; and we can't do difficult
things--like saints.
L. I am afraid, my dear, that old people are not more able or willing
for their difficulties than you children are for yours. All I can say
is, that if ever I see any of you, when you are seven or eight and
twenty, knitting your brows over any work you want to do or to
understand, as I saw you, Lily, knitting your brows over your slate this
morning, I should think you very noble women. But--to come back to my
dream--St. Barbara _did_ lose her temper a little; and I was not
surprised. For you can't think how provoking Neith looked, sitting there
just like a statue of sandstone; only going on weaving, like a machine;
and never quickening the cast of her shuttle; while St. Barbara was
telling her so eagerly all about the most beautiful things, and
chattering away, as fast as bells ring on Christmas Eve, till she saw
that Neith didn't care; and then St. Barbara got as red as a rose, and
stopped, just in time;--or I think she would really have said something
naughty.
ISABEL. Oh, please, but didn't Neith say anything then?
L. Yes. She said, quite quietly, 'It may be very pretty, my love; but it
is all nonsense.'
ISABEL. Oh dear, oh dear; and then?
L. Well; then I was a little angry myself, and hoped St. Barbara would
be quite angry; but she wasn't. She bit her lips first; and then gave a
great sigh--such a wild, sweet sigh--and then she knelt down and hid her
face on Neith's knees. Then Neith smiled a little, and was moved.
ISABEL. Oh, I am so glad!
L. And she touched St. Barbara's forehead with a flower of white lotus;
and St. Barbara sobbed once or twice, and then said: 'If you only could
see how beautiful it is, and how much it makes people feel what is good
and lovely; and if you could only hear the children singing in the Lady
chapels!' And Neith smiled,--but still sadly,--and said, 'How do you
know what I have seen, or heard, my love? Do you think all those vaults
and towers of yours have been built without me? There was not a pillar
in your Giotto's Santa Maria del Fiore which I did not set true by my
spearshaft as it rose. But this pinnacle and flame work which has set
your little heart on fire, is all vanity; and you will see what it will
come to, and that soon; and none will grieve for it more than I. And
then every one will disbelieve your pretty symbols and types. Men must