True Words for Brave Men: A Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries

But Cortez had been too prosperous not to meet with a mishap.  Every great man must be tried by trouble; and so was Cortez.  News came to him that a fresh army of Spaniards had landed, as he thought at first, to help him.  They had nine hundred men, eighty of whom were horse soldiers, eighty musqueteers, one hundred and fifty cross-bow men, a good train of heavy guns, ammunition, &c.  What was Cortez’s disgust when he found that the treacherous Governor of Cuba had sent them, not to help him, but to take him prisoner as a rebel?  It was a villainous business got up out of envy of Cortez’s success, and covetousness of his booty.  But in the Spanish colonies in those days, so far from home, there was very little law; and the governors and adventurers were always quarrelling and fighting with each other.

What did Cortez do? made up his mind as usual to do the desperate thing, and marched against Narvaez with only seventy men, no guns, and hardly any muskets—seventy against nine hundred.  It was fearful odds; but he was forced to leave the rest to keep Mexico down.  And he armed his men with very long lances, tipped at both ends with copper—for he had no iron; with them he hoped to face Narvaez’s cavalry.

And he did it.  Happily on his road he met an old friend with one hundred and twenty soldiers, who had been sent off to form a colony on the coast.  They were as true as steel to him.  And with that one hundred and ninety he surprised and defeated by night Narvaez’s splendid little army.  And what is more, after beating them, made such friends with them, that he engaged them all next morning to march with him wherever he wanted.  The man was like a spider—whoever fell into his net, friend or foe, never came out again till he had sucked him dry.

Now he hurried back to Mexico, and terribly good reason he had; for Alvarado whom he had left in garrison had quarrelled with the Mexicans, and set upon them at one of their idol feasts, and massacred great numbers of their leading men.  It was a bloody black business, and bitterly the Spaniards paid for it.  Cortez when he heard it actually lost his temper for once, and called his lieutenant-general a madman and a traitor; but he could not afford to cashier him, for after all he was the best and bravest man he had.  But the mischief was done.  The whole city of Mexico, the whole country round, had risen in fury, had driven the Spanish garrison into the great palace; and worst of all, had burnt the boats, which Cortez had left to get off by, if the bridges were burst down.  So there was Alvarado shut up, exactly like the English at Lucknow, with this difference, that the Spaniards deserved what they got, and the English, God knows, did not.  And there was Cortez like another Havelock or Colin Campbell marching to deliver them.  But he met a very different reception.  These crafty Mexicans never struck a blow.  All was as still as the grave.  As they came over the long causeways and bridges, there was not a canoe upon the lake, not an Indian in the floating gardens.  As they marched through the streets of the glorious city, the streets were as empty as a desert.  And the Spaniard knew that he was walking into a trap, out of which none of them might come out alive; but their hearts never failed them, and they marched on to the sound of their bugles, and were answered by joyful salutes of cannon from the relieved garrison.

The Mexicans had shut up the markets, and no food was to be got.  Cortez sent to open them.  He sent another messenger off to the coast to say all was safe, and that he should soon conquer the rebels.  But here, a cleverer man than I must tell the story.

“But scarcely had his messenger been gone half an hour, when he returned breathless with terror and covered with wounds.  ‘The city,’ he said, ‘was all in arms! the drawbridges were raised, and the enemy would soon be upon them!  He spoke truth.  It was not long before a hoarse sullen sound became audible, like that of the roaring of distant waters.  It grew louder and louder, till from the parapet surrounding the enclosure, the great avenues which led to it might be seen dark with the masses of warriors, who came rolling on in a confused tide towards the fortress.  At the same time the terraces and flat roofs in the neighbourhood were thronged with combatants, brandishing their missiles, who seemed to have risen up as if by magic!  It was a spectacle to appall the stoutest.  The Spanish forces were crowded into a small compact mass in the palace, and the whole army could be assembled at a moment’s notice.  No sooner, therefore, did the trumpet call to arms, than every soldier was at his post—the cavalry mounted, the artillerymen at their guns, and the archers and arquebusiers stationed so as to give the assailants a warm reception.  On they came, with the companies, or irregular masses, into which the multitude was divided, rushing forward each in its own dense column, with many a gay banner displayed, and many a bright gleam of light reflected from helmet, arrow, and spear head, as they were tossed about in their disorderly array.  As they drew near, the Aztecs set up a hideous yell, which rose far above the sound of shell and atabat, and their other rude instruments of warlike melody.  They followed this by a tempest of missiles—stones, darts, arrows—which fell thick as rain on the besieged.  The Spaniards waited till the foremost column had arrived, when a general discharge of artillery and arquebusses swept the ranks of the assailants, and mowed them down by hundreds.” [4 - Prescott’s “History of the Conquest of Mexico.”  See Book v., ch. 1.] . . .

So the fight raged on with fury for two days, while the Aztecs, Indians who only fought by day, howled out to the wretched Spaniards every night.  On the third day Cortez brought out the Emperor Montezuma, and commanded him to quiet the Indians.  The unhappy man obeyed him.  He had made up his mind that these Spaniards were the white gods, who were to take his kingdom from him, and he submitted to them like a sheep to the butcher.  He went up to a tower in all his royal robes and jewels.  At the sight the Indians who filled the great square below were all hushed—thousands threw themselves on their faces; and to their utter astonishment, he asked them what they meant by rebelling.  He was no prisoner, he said, but the Spaniard’s guest and friend.  The Spaniards would go peaceably, if they would let them.  In any case he was the Spaniard’s friend.

The Indians answered him by a yell of fury and contempt.  He was a dog—a woman—fit only to weave and spin; and a volley of stones and arrows flew at him.  One struck him on the head and dropped him senseless.  The Indians set up a howl of terror; and frightened at what they had done, fled away ashamed.

The wretched Emperor refused comfort, food, help, tore the bandages from his wounds, and died in two days.  He had been a bad man, a cannibal, and a butcher, blood-thirsty and covetous, a ravisher of virgins, and a tyrant to his people.  But the Spaniards had got to love him in spite of all; for a true friend he had been to them, and a fearful loss to them just now.  The battle went on worse than ever.  The great idol temple commanded the palace, and was covered with Mexican warriors.  And next day Cortez sent a party to storm it.  They tried to get up the winding stairs, and were driven back three times with fearful loss.  Cortez, though he had but one hand to fight with, sallied out and cleared the pyramid himself, after a fearful hand-to-hand fight of three hours, up the winding stairs, along the platforms, and at last upon the great square on the top, an acre in breadth.  Every Mexican was either killed, or hurled down the sides.  The idol, the war god, with its gold disc of bleeding hearts smoking before it, was hurled down and the whole accursed place set on fire and destroyed.  Three hundred houses round were also burnt that night; but of what use?

The Spaniards were starving, hemmed in by hundreds of thousands.  They were like a single wasp inside a bee-hive.  Let him kill the bees by hundreds, he must be killed himself at last.  He made up his mind to evacuate the city, to leave all his conquests behind him.  It was a terrible disappointment, but it had to be done.

They marched out by night in good order, with all their guns and ammunition, and with immense plunder; as much of poor Montezuma’s treasures as they could carry.  The old hands took very little; they knew what they were about.  The fresh ones from Narvaez’s army loaded themselves with gold and jewels, and had to pay dear for them.  Cortez, I ought to tell you, took good care of Dona Marina.  He sent her forward under a strong guard of Tlascalans, with all the other women.  The great street was crossed by many canals.  Then the causeway across the lake, two miles long, was crossed by more canals, and at every one of these the Indians had taken away the bridges.  Cortez knew that, and had made a movable bridge; but he had only time to make one, and that of course had to be taken up at the rear, and carried forward to the front every time they crossed a dyke; and that made endless delay.  As long as they were in the city, however, all went well; but the moment they came out upon the lake causeway, out thundered the serpent-skin drums from the top of every temple, the conch shells blew, and out swarmed the whole hive of bees, against the one brave wasp who was struggling.  The Spaniards cleared the dyke by cavalry and artillery, and got to the first canal, laid down the bridge, and over slowly but safely, amid a storm of stones and arrows.  They got to the second canal, fifteen or twenty feet broad.  Why, in God’s name, was not the bridge brought on?  Instead of the bridge came news from the rear.  The weight of the artillery had been too great for the bridge, and it was jammed fast.  And there they were on a narrow dyke fifty feet broad, in the midst of the lake, in the dark midnight, with countless thousands of Indians, around, before, behind, and the lord have mercy on them!

What followed you may guess—though some of the brave men who fought there, and who wrote the story themselves—which I have read—hardly knew.

The cavalry tried to swim their horses over.  Some got safe, others rolled into the lake.  The infantry followed pell mell, cut down like sheep by arrows and stones, by the terrible glass swords of the Indians, who crowded round their canoes.  The waggons prest on the men, the guns on them, the rear on them again, till in a few minutes the canal was choked with writhing bodies of men and horses, cannon, gold and treasure inestimable, over which the survivors scrambled to the further bank.  Cortez, who was helping the rear forded the gap on horseback, and hurried on to find a third and larger canal which no one dare cross.  But the Indians were not so thick here, and plunging into the water they got through as they could.  And woe that night to the soldier who had laden himself with Indian treasure.  Dragged to the bottom by the weight of their plunder, hundreds died there drowned by that very gold to find which they had crossed the seas, and fought so many a bloody battle.

What is the use of making a sad story long?  They reached the shore, and sat down like men desperate and foredone in a great idol temple.  Several of their finest officers, three-fourths of their men, were killed and missing, three-fourths too of their horses—all Cortez’s papers, all their cannon, all their treasure.  They had not even a musket left.  Nothing to face the Indians with but twenty-three crippled horses, a few damaged crossbows, and their good old swords.  Cortez’s first question was for poor Dona Marima, and strange to say she was safe.  The trusty Tlascalan Indians had brought her through it all.  Alvarado the lieutenant was safe too.  If he had been the cause of all that misery, he did his best to make up for it.  He stayed behind fighting at the last canal till all were over, and the Indians closing round him.  Then he set his long lance in the water, and to the astonishment of both armies, leapt the canal clean, while the Indians shouted, “This is indeed the Tonatiah, the child of the Sun.”  The gap is shown now, and it is called to this day, Alvarado’s Leap.  God forgive him! for if he was a cruel man, he was at least a brave one!

Cortez sat down, a ruined man, and as he looked round for his old comrades, and missed one face after another, he covered his face with his hands and cried like a child.

And was he a ruined man?  Never less.  No man is ruined till his pluck is gone.  He got his starving and shivering men together, and away for the mountains to get back to the friendly people of Tlascala.  The people followed them along the hills shouting, “Go on! you will soon find yourselves where you cannot escape.”  But he went on—till he saw what they meant.

Waiting for him in a pass was an army of Indians—two hundred thousand, some writers say—all fresh and fully armed.  What could he do?  To surrender, was to be sacrificed every man to the idols; so he marched on.  He had still twenty horses, and he put ten on each flank.  He bade his men not strike with their sword but give the point.  He made a speech to his men.  They had beaten the Indians, he said, many a time at just as fearful odds.  God had brought them through so far, God would not desert them, for they were fighting on His side against the heathen; and so he went straight at the vast army of Indians.  They were surrounded, swallowed up by them for a few minutes.  In the course of an hour the Spaniards had routed them utterly with immense slaughter.

Of all the battles I ever read of, this battle of Otumba is one of the most miraculous.  Some say that Cortez conquered Mexico by gunpowder: he had none then, neither cannon nor musket.  The sword and lance did it all, and they in the hands of men worn out with famine, cold, and fatigue, and I had said broken-hearted into the bargain.  But there was no breaking those men’s hearts—what won that battle, what won Mexico, was the indomitable pluck of the white man, before which the Indian, whether American or Hindoo, never has stood, and never will stand to the world’s end.  The Spaniards proved it in America of old, though they were better armed than the Indian.  But there are those who have proved it upon Indians as well armed as themselves.  Ay, my friends, I should be no Englishman, if while I told this story, I could help thinking all the while of our brave comrades in India, who have conquered as Cortez conquered, and against just as fearful odds; whose enemies were armed, not with copper arrows and glass knives, but with European muskets, European cannon, and most dangerous of all, European discipline.  I say Cortez did wonders in his time; but I say too that our Indian heroes have done more, and done it in a better cause.

And that is the history of the conquest of Mexico.  What, you may ask, is that the end?  When we are leaving the Spaniards a worn-out and starving handful struggling back for refuge to Tlascala, without anything but their old swords; do you call that a conquest?

Yes, I do; just as I call the getting back to Cawnpore, after the relief of Lucknow, the conquest of India.  It showed which was the better man, Englishman or sepoy, just as the retreat from Mexico showed which was the better man, Spaniard or Indian.  The sepoys were cowed from that day, just as the Mexicans were cowed after Otumba.  They had fought with all possible odds on their side, and been licked; and when men are once cowed, all the rest is merely a work of time.

So it was with Cortez.  He went back to Tlascala.  He got by mere accident, as we say, a reinforcement of Spaniards.  He stirred up all the Indian nations round, who were weary of the cruel tyranny of the Mexicans; he made large boats to navigate the lake, and he marched back upon Mexico the next year with about six hundred Spaniards and nine cannon—about half the force which he had had before; but with a hundred thousand Indian allies, who, like the sturdy Tlascalans, proved as true to him as steel.  Truly, if he was not a great general, who is?

He marched back, taking city after city as he went, and besieged Mexico.  It was a long and weary siege.  The Indians fought like fiends.  The causeways had to be taken yard by yard; but Cortez, wise by sad experience, put his cannon into the boats and swept them from the water.  Then the city had to be taken house by house.  The Indians drove him back again and again, till they were starved to skeletons, and those who used to eat their enemies were driven to eat each other.  Still they would not give in.  At last, after many weeks of fighting, it was all over.  The glorious Mexican empire was crumbled to dust.  Those proud nobles, who used to fat themselves upon the bodies of all the nations round, were reduced to a handful of starving beggars.  The cross of Christ was set up, where the hearts of human creatures were offered to foul idols, and Mexico has been ever since the property of the Spaniards, a Christian land.

And what became of Cortez?  He died sadly and in disgrace.  He sowed, and other men reaped.  If he was cruel and covetous, he was punished for it in this world heavily enough.  He had many noble qualities though.  He was a better man than those around him; and one good thing he did, which was to sweep off the face of the earth as devilish a set of tyrants as ever defiled the face of the earth.  Give him all due honour for it, and let him rest in peace.  God shall judge him and not we.

But take home with you, soldiers all, one lesson from this strange story, that while a man can keep his courage and his temper, he is not only never really beaten, but no man can tell what great things he may not do.

III. PICTURE GALLERIES

Picture-galleries should be the working-man’s paradise, [5 - Mr. Kingsley wrote these papers for London working-men, but his words apply just as much to soldiers in London barracks, as to artizans.  He thought much of the good of pictures, and all beautiful things for hard-worked men who could see such things in public galleries, though they could not afford to have them in their own homes.] a garden of pleasure, to which he goes to refresh his eyes and heart with beautiful shapes and sweet colouring, when they are wearied with dull bricks and mortar, and the ugly colourless things which fill the town, the workshop and the factory.  For, believe me, there is many a road into our hearts besides our ears and brains; many a sight, and sound, and scent, even, of which we have never thought at all, sinks into our memory, and helps to shape our characters; and thus children brought up among beautiful sights and sweet sounds will most likely show the fruits of their nursing, by thoughtfulness and affection, and nobleness of mind, even by the expression of the countenance.  The poet Wordsworth, talking of training up a beautiful country girl, says:—

“The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her—for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see,
Even in the motions of the storm,
Grace which shall mould the maiden’s form,
By silent sympathy.
* * * * *

And she shall bend her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face.”

Those who live in towns should carefully remember this, for their own sakes, for their wives’ sakes, for their children’s sakes.  Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful.  Beauty is God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank Him for it, who is the fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in, simply and earnestly, with all your eyes; it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing.

Therefore I said that picture-galleries should be the townsman’s paradise of refreshment.  Of course, if he can get the real air, the real trees, even for an hour, let him take it, in God’s name; but how many a man who cannot spare time for a daily country walk, may well slip into the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square (or the South Kensington Museum), or any other collection of pictures, for ten minutes.  That garden, at least, flowers as gaily in winter as in summer.  Those noble faces on the wall are never disfigured by grief or passion.  There, in the space of a single room, the townsman may take his country walk—a walk beneath mountain peaks, blushing sunsets, with broad woodlands spreading out below it; a walk through green meadows, under cool mellow shades, and overhanging rocks, by rushing brooks, where he watches and watches till he seems to hear the foam whisper, and to see the fishes leap; and his hard worn heart wanders out free, beyond the grim city-world of stone and iron, smoky chimneys, and roaring wheels, into the world of beautiful things—the world which shall be hereafter—ay, which shall be!  Believe it, toil-worn worker, in spite of thy foul alley, thy crowded lodging, thy grimed clothing, thy ill-fed children, thy thin, pale wife—believe it, thou too and thine, will some day have your share of beauty.  God made you love beautiful things only because He intends hereafter to give you your fill of them.  That pictured face on the wall is lovely, but lovelier still may the wife of thy bosom be when she meets thee on the resurrection morn!  Those baby cherubs in the old Italian painting—how gracefully they flutter and sport among the soft clouds, full of rich young life and baby joy!  Yes, beautiful indeed, but just such a one at this very moment is that once pining, deformed child of thine, over whose death-cradle thou wast weeping a month ago; now a child-angel, whom thou shalt meet again never to part!  Those landscapes, too, painted by loving, wise old Claude, two hundred years ago, are still as fresh as ever.  How still the meadows are! how pure and free that vault of deep blue sky!  No wonder that thy worn heart, as thou lookest, sighs aloud, “Oh that I had wings as a dove, then would I flee away and be at rest.”  Ah, but gayer meadows and bluer skies await thee in the world to come—that fairy-land made real—“the new heavens and the new earth,” which God has prepared for the pure and the loving, the just and the brave, who have conquered in this sore fight of life!

These thoughts may seem all too far-fetched to spring up in a man’s head from merely looking at pictures; but it is not so in practice.  See, now, such thoughts have sprung up in my head; how else did I write them down here?  And why should not they, and better ones, too, spring up in your heads, friends?  It is delightful to watch in a picture-gallery some street-boy enjoying himself; how first wonder creeps over his rough face, and then a sweeter, more earnest, awestruck look, till his countenance seems to grow handsomer and nobler on the spot, and drink in and reflect unknowingly, the beauty of the picture he is studying.  See how some soldier’s face will light up before the painting which tells him a noble story of bye-gone days.  And why?  Because he feels as if he himself had a share in the story at which he looks.  They may be noble and glorious men who are painted there; but they are still men of like passions with himself, and his man’s heart understands them and glories in them; and he begins, and rightly, to respect himself the more when he finds that he, too, has a fellow-feeling with noble men and noble deeds.

I say, pictures raise blessed thoughts in me—why not in you, my brothers?  Your hearts are fresh, thoughtful, kindly; you only want to have these pictures explained to you, that you may know why and how they are beautiful, and what feelings they ought to stir in your minds.  Look at the portraits on the walls, and let me explain one or two.  Often the portraits are simpler than large pictures, and they speak of real men and women who once lived on this earth of ours—generally of remarkable and noble men—and man should be always interesting to man.

IV. A PORTRAIT IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY

“Any one who goes to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, may see two large and beautiful pictures—the nearer of the two labelled ‘Titian,’ representing Bacchus leaping from a car drawn by leopards.  The other, labelled ‘Francia,’ representing the Holy Family seated on a sort of throne, with several figures arranged below—one of them a man pierced with arrows.  Between these two, low down, hangs a small picture, about two feet square, containing only the portrait of an old man, in a white cap and robe, and labelled on the picture itself, ‘Joannes Bellinus.’  Now this old man is a very ancient friend of mine, and has comforted my heart, and preached me a sharp sermon, too, many a time.  I never enter that gallery without having five minutes’ converse with him; and yet he has been dead at least three hundred years, and, what is more, I don’t even know his name.  But what more do I know of a man by knowing his name?  Whether the man’s name be Brown, or whether he has as many names and titles as a Spanish grandee, what does that tell me about the man?—the spirit and character of the man—what the man will say when he is asked—what the man will do when he is stirred up to action?  The man’s name is part of his clothes; his shell; his husk.  Change his name and all his titles, you don’t change him—‘a man’s a man for a’ that,’ as Burns says; and a goose a goose.  Other men gave him his name; but his heart and his spirit—his love and his hatred—his wisdom and his folly—his power to do well and ill; those God and himself gave him.  I must know those, and then I know the man.  Let us see what we can make out from the picture itself about the man whom it represents.  In the first place, we may see by his dress that he was in his day the Doge (or chief magistrate) of Venice—the island city, the queen of the seas.  So we may guess that he had many a stirring time of it, and many a delicate game to play among those tyrannous and covetous old merchant-princes who had elected him; who were keeping up their own power at the expense of everyone’s liberty, by spies and nameless accusers, and secret councils, tortures, and prisons, whose horrors no one ever returned to describe.  Nay, we may guess just the very men with whom he had to deal—the very battles he may have seen fought.

“But all these are circumstances—things which stand round the man (as the word means), and not the whole man himself—not the character and heart of the man: that we must get from the portrait; and if the portrait is a truly noble portrait we shall get it.  If it is a merely vulgar picture, we shall get the man’s dress and shape of his face, but little or no expression: if it is a pathetic portrait, or picture of passion, we shall get one particular temporary expression of his face—perhaps joy, sorrow, anger, disgust—but still one which may have passed any moment, and left his face quite different; but if the picture is one of the noblest kind, we shall read the man’s whole character there; just all his strength and weakness, his kindliness or his sternness, his thoughtfulness or his carelessness, written there once and for ever;—what he would be, though all the world passed away; what his immortal and eternal soul will be, unless God or the devil changed his heart, to all eternity.

“We may see at once that this man has been very handsome; but it is a peculiar sort of beauty.  How delicate and graceful all the lines in his face are!—he is a gentleman of God’s own making, and not of the tailor’s making.  He is such a gentleman as I have seen among working men and nine-shilling-a-week labourers, often and often; his nobleness is in his heart—it is God’s gift, therefore it shows in his noble looking face.  No matter whether he were poor or rich; all the rags in the world, all the finery in the world, could not have made him look like a snob or a swell.  He was a thoughtful man, too; no one with such a forehead could have been a trifler: a kindly man, too, and honest—one that may have played merrily enough with his grandchildren, and put his hand in his purse for many a widow and orphan.  Look what a bright, clear, straightforward, gentle look he has, almost a smile; but he has gone through too many sad hours to smile much: he is a man of many sorrows, like all true and noble rulers; and, like a high mountain-side, his face bears the furrows of many storms.  He has had a stern life of it, with the cares of a great nation on his shoulders.  He has seen that in this world there is no rest for those who live like true men: you may see it by the wrinkles in his brow, and the sharp-cut furrows in his cheeks, and those firm-set, determined lips.  His eyes almost show the marks of many noble tears,—tears such as good men shed over their nation’s sins; but that, too, is past now.  He has found out his path, and he will keep it; and he has no misgiving now about what God would have him do, or about the reward which God has laid up for the brave and just; and that is what makes his forehead so clear and bright, while his very teeth are clenched with calm determination.  And by the look of those high cheek bones, and that large square jaw, he is a strong-willed man enough, and not one to be easily turned aside from his purpose by any man alive, or by any woman either, or by his own passions and tempers.  One fault of character, I think, he may perhaps have had much trouble with—I mean bitterness and contemptuousness.  His lips are very thin; he may have sneered many a time, when he was younger, at the follies of the world which that great, lofty, thoughtful brain and clear eye of his told him were follies; but he seems to have got past that too.  Such is the man’s character: a noble, simple, commanding old man, who has conquered many hard things, and, hardest of all, has conquered himself, and now is waiting calm for his everlasting rest.  God send us all the same.

“Now consider the deep insight of old John Bellini, who could see all this, and put it down there for us with pencil and paint.  No doubt there was something in Bellini’s own character which made him especially best able to paint such a man; for we always understand those who are most like ourselves; and therefore you may tell pretty nearly a painter’s own character by seeing what sort of subjects he paints, and what his style of painting is.  And a noble, simple, brave, godly man was old John Bellini, who never lost his head, though princes were flattering him and snobs following him with shouts and blessings for his noble pictures of the Venetian victories, as if he had been a man sent from God Himself, as indeed he was—all great painters are; for who but God makes beauty?  Who gives the loving heart, and the clear eye, and the graceful taste to see beauty and to copy it, and to set forth on canvas, or in stone, the noble deeds of patriots dying for their country?  To paint truly patriotic pictures well, a man must have his heart in his work—he must be a true patriot himself, as John Bellini was (if I mistake not, he had fought for his country himself in more than one shrewd fight).  And what makes men patriots, or artists, or anything noble at all, but the spirit of the living God?  Those great pictures of Bellini’s are no more; they were burnt a few years afterwards, with the magnificent national hall in which they hung; but the spirit of them is not passed away.  Even now, Venice, Bellini’s beloved mother-land, is rising, new-born, from long weary years of Austrian slavery, and trying to be free and great once more; and young Italian hearts are lighting up with the thoughts of her old fleets and her old victories, her merchants and her statesmen, whom John Bellini drew.  Venice sinned, and fell; and sorely has she paid for her sins, through two hundred years of shame, and profligacy, and slavery.  And she has broken the oppressor’s yoke.  God send her a new life!  May she learn by her ancient sins!  May she learn by her ancient glories!

“You will forgive me for forgetting my picture to talk of such things.  But we must return.  Look back at what I said about the old portrait—the clear, calm, victorious character of the old man’s face, and see how all the rest of the picture agrees with it, in a complete harmony.  The dress, the scenery, the light and shade, the general ‘tone’ of colour should all agree with the character of the face—all help to bring our minds into that state in which we may best feel and sympathise with the human beings painted.  Now here, because the face is calm and grand, the colour and the outlines are quiet and grand likewise.  How different these colours are from that glorious ‘Holy Family’ of Francia’s, next to it on the right; or from that equally glorious ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’ of Titian’s, on the left!  Yet all three are right, each for its own subject.  Here you have no brilliant reds, no rich warm browns; no luscious greens.  The white robe and cap give us the thought of purity and simplicity; the very golden embroidery on them, which marks his rank, is carefully kept back from being too gaudy.  Everything is sober here; and the lines of the dress, how simple they all are—no rich curves, no fluttering drapery.  They would be quite stiff if it were not for that waving line of round tassels in front, which break the extreme straightness and heaviness of the splendid robe; and all pointing upwards towards that solemn, thin, calm face, with its high white cap, rising like the peak of a snow mountain against the dark, deep, boundless blue sky beyond.  That is a grand thought of Bellini’s.  You do not see the man’s hands; he does not want them now, his work is done.  You see no landscape behind—no buildings.  All earth’s ways and sights are nothing to him now; there is nothing but the old man and the sky—nothing between him and the heaven now, and he knows it and is glad.  A few months more, and those way-worn features shall have crumbled to their dust, and that strong, meek spirit shall be in the abyss of eternity, before the God from whence it came.

“So says John Bellini, with art more cunning than words.  And if this paper shall make one of you look at that little picture with fresh interest, and raise one strong and solemn longing in you to die the death of the righteous, and let your last end be like his who is painted there—then I shall rejoice in the only payment I desire to get, for this my afternoon’s writing.”

V. THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Nature is infinitely more wonderful than the highest art; and in the commonest hedgeside leaf lies a mystery and beauty greater than that of the greatest picture, the noblest statue—as infinitely greater as God’s work is infinitely greater than man’s.  But to those who have no leisure to study nature in the green fields (and there are now-a-days too many such, though the time may come when all will have that blessing), to such I say, go to the British Museum, Bloomsbury Square; there at least, if you cannot go to nature’s wonders, some of nature’s wonders are brought to you.

The British Museum is my glory and joy; because it is one of the only places which is free to English citizens as such—where the poor and the rich may meet together, and before those works of God’s Spirit, “who is no respecter of persons,” feel that “the Lord is the maker of them all.”  In the British Museum and the National Gallery, the Englishman may say, “Whatever my coat or my purse, I am an Englishman, and therefore I have a right here.  I can glory in these noble halls, as if they were my own house.”

English commerce, the joint enterprise and industry of the poor sailor as well as the rich merchant, brought home these treasures from foreign lands; and those glorious statues—though it was the wealth and taste of English noblemen and gentlemen (who in that proved themselves truly noble and gentle) who placed them here, yet it was the genius of English artists—men at once above and below all ranks—men who have worked their way up, not by money or birth, but by worth and genius, which taught the noble and wealthy the value of those antiques, and which proclaimed their beauty to the world.  The British Museum is a truly equalising place, in the deepest and most spiritual sense.  And it gives the lie, too, to that common slander, “that the English are not worthy of free admission to valuable and curious collections, because they have such a trick of seeing with their fingers; such a trick of scribbling their names, of defiling and disfiguring works of art.  On the Continent it may do, but you cannot trust the English.”

This has been, like many other untruths, so often repeated, that people now take it for granted; but I believe that it is utterly groundless, and I say so on the experience of the British Museum and the National Gallery.  In the only two cases, I believe, in which injury has been done to anything in either place, the destroyers were neither working-men, nor even poor reckless heathen street-boys, but persons who had received what is too often miscalled “a liberal education.”  But national property will always be respected, because all will be content, while they feel that they have their rights, and all will be careful while they feel that they have a share in the treasure.

Go to the British Museum in Easter week, and see there hundreds of thousands, of every rank and age, wandering past sculptures and paintings, which would be ruined by a blow—past jewels and curiosities, any one of which would buy many a poor soul there a month’s food and lodging—only protected by a pane of glass, if by that; and then see not a thing disfigured—much less stolen.  Everywhere order, care, attention, honest pride in their country’s wealth and science; earnest reverence for the mighty works of God, and of the God-inspired.  I say, the people of England prove themselves worthy of free admission to all works of art, and it is therefore the duty of those who can to help them to that free admission.