The Two Boyhoods.*

their results confessed , a meek old woman and a child being let into a pew , for whom the rending by candlelight will be beneficial . * For the rest , this religion seems to him discreditable—discredited not believing in itself ; putting forth its authority in a cowardly way , watching how far it might he tolerated , continually shrinking , disclaiming , fencing , finessing ; divided against itself , not by stormy rents , but by thin fissures , and splittings of plaster from the walls . Not to be either obeyed , or combated , by an ignorant , yet

clearsighted youth ; only to be scorned . And scorned not one whit the less , though also the dome dedicated to it looms high over distant winding of the Thames ; as St . Mark ' s campanile rose , for goodly landmark , over mirage of lagoon . For St . Mark ruled over life ; the saint of London over death ; St . Mark over St . Mark ' s Place , but St . Paul over St . Paul's Churchyard . Under these influences pass away the first reflective hours of life , with such conclusion as they can reach . In consequence of a fit of

illness , lie was taken—I cannot ascertain in what year—to live with an aunt at Brentford ; and here , I believe , received some schooling , which he seems to have snatched vigorously ; getting knowledge , at least by translation , of the more picturesque classical authors , which he turned presently to use , as ive shall see . Hence also , walks about Putney and Twickenham in the summer time acquainted him with the look of English meadow-ground in its restricted states of paddock and park ; and with some round-headed appearances of

trees , and stately entrances to houses of mark -. the avenue at Bushy , and the iron gates and carved pillars of Hc . mpton , impressing him apparently with great awe and admiration ; so that in after fife his little country house is—of all jilaces in the world—at Twickenham ! Of swans and reedy shores he now learns the soft motion and the green mystery , in away not to he forgotten . And at last fortune wills that the lad ' s true life shall begin ; and one summer's eveningafter various wonderful stage-coach

, experiences on the north road , which gave him a love of stage-coaches ever after , he finds himself sitting alone among the Yorkshire lulls . f For the first time , the silence of Nature round him , her freedom sealed to him , her glory opened to him . Peace at last ; no roll of cart-wheel , nor mutter of sullen voices in the back shop ; but curlew-cry in sjiaco of heaven , and welling of

bell-toned streamlet by its shadowy rock . Freedom nt last . Dead wall , dark railing , fenced field , gate garden , all passed away like the dream of a prisoner ; and behold , far as foot or eye can race or range , the moor , and cloud . Loveliness at last . It is here then , among these deserted vales ! Not among men . Those pale , poverty-struck , or cruel faces;—that multitudinous , marred humanity—are not the only things that God has made . Hero is something He has made ivhich no one has marred . Pride of purple rocks , and river pools

of blue , and tender wilderness of glittering trees , and misty lights of evening on immeasurable hills . Beauty , and freedom , and jieace ; ancl yetaiiother teacher graver than these . Sound preaching at last here , in Kirkstall crypt , concerning fate and life . 1 fere , where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars , and the cattle lie . in unhindered rest , the soft sunshine on their dappled bodies , instead of priests' vestments ; their white furry hair milled a littlefitfullhthe evening winddeep-scented

, y , y , from the meadow thyme . Consider deeply the import to him of this , his first sight of ruin , and compare it with the effect ofthe architecture that was around Giorgione . There were indeed aged buildings , at Venice , in his time , but none in decay . All ruin ivas removed , and its place filled as quickly as in our London : but filled always by architecture loftier and more wonderful than that whose place it took , the boy

himself hajijiy to work ujion the walls of it ; so that the idea of the passing away of the strength of men and beauty of their works never could occur to him sternly . Brighter and brighter the cities of Italy had been rising and broadening on hill and plain , for three hundred years . Be saw only strength and immortality , could not but paint both ; conceived the form of man as deathless , calm with power , and fiery with life . Turner saw the exact reverse , of this , In the jiresent work of

men , meauess , ainilessucss , uusightliiiess ; thin-Mallei " ., lath-divided , narrowed garretcd houses of clay ; booths of a darksome Vanity Pair , busily base . But on Whitby Hill , and by Bolton Brook , remained traces of other handiwork . Men ivho could build had been there ; and who also had wrought , not merely for their own days . But to what purpose ? Strong faith , and steady hands , and ' patient souls—can this , then , be all you have left ! this the sum of your doing on the

earth!—a nest whence the night-owl may whimper to the brook , and a ribbed skeleton of consumed arches , looming above the bleak banks of mist , from its cliff to the sea ? As the strength of the men to Giorgione , to Turner their weakness and idleness , ivere alone visible . They themselves , unworthy or ephemeral ; their work , despicable , or decayed . In the A ' enetian's eyes , all beaut } - dejiendecl on man's presence and pride ; in Turner's , on the solitude ho had left , and the humiliation he had suffered .

And thus the fate and issue of all his work were determined at once . He must be a painter of the strength of nature , there was no beauty elsewhere than in that ; he must paint also Hie labour and sorrow and passing away of men I this was the great human truth visible to him . The labour , their sorrow , and their death . Mark the three . Labour ; by sea and land , in field and city , at forge and furnace ,. helm and jilough . No pastoral indolence nor classic pride shall stand ,

between him and the troubling of the world ; still less between him ancl the toil of his country , —blind , tormented , unwearied ,, marvellous England . Also their Sorrow ; ruin of all their glorious work , passing away of their thoughts and their honour , mirage of pleasure , PALI _ . CY or HOPE ; gathering of weed on temple step ; gaining of wave on deserted strand ; weeping of the mother for the children , desolate hy her breathless first-born in the streets of the city , * desolate hy

her last sons slain , among the beasts of the field . f "And their Death "; that old Greek question again;—yet unanswered . The unconquerable spectre still flitting among the forest trees , at twilight ; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand;—white , a strange Aphrodite , —out of the sea-foam ; stretching its grey , cloven wings among the clouds ; turning the light of their sunsetsinto blood . This has to be looked upon , and in a more terrible shape than ever Salvator or Durer saw it . The wreck of one guilty

country does not infer tho ruin of all countries , aud need not cause general terror respecting the laws of the universe . Neither did the orderly and narrow succession of domestic joy and sorrow in a small Get-man community bring tho question in its breadth , or in any unresolvable shape , before the mind of Durer . But the English death—tho European death of the nineteenth century—was of another range amlpower ; more terrible a thousand-fold in its merely physical grasp and grief ; more terrible , incalculably , in its mystery

and shame . What were the robber's casual pang , or the rage of the Hying skirmish , compared to the work of the axe , and the sword , and the famine , which was clone during the man ' s youth on all the hills ancl plains of the Christian earth , from Moscow to Gibraltar . lie was eighteen years old when Napoleon came down on Areola . Look on the map of Europe , and count the blood-stains on it , between it , between Areola and Waterloo . Not alone those blood-stains on the Aline snowand the blue of

p , the Lombard plain . The English death was before his eyes also . No decent , calculable , consoled dying ; no passing to rest like that of the aged burghers of Nuremberg town . No gentle processions to churchyards among the fields , the bronze crests bossed deep on the memorial tablets , and the skylark singing above them from among the corn . But the life trampled out in the slime of the street , crushed to dust amidst the roaring of the wheel , tossed

countlossly away into howling winter wind along 500 leagues of rock-fanged shore . Or , worst of all , rotted down to forgotten graves through years of ignorant patience , and vain seeking for help from man , for hope in God—infirm , imperfect yearning , as of motherless infants starving at the dawn ; opjiressed royalties of captive thought , vague ague-fits of bleak , amazed despair . A goodlIandscajie thisfor the lad to . paintand under a

goodlyy , , light . AVide enough the light was , and clear ; no more Salvator ' s lurid chasm on jagged horizon , nor Durer ' s spotted rest of sunny gleam on hedgerow and field ; but light over all the world . Pull shone now its awful globe , one pallid charnel-house—a ball strewn bright with human ashes , glaring in poised sway beneath the sun , all blinding-white with death from pole to pole—death , not of myriads of poor bodiesbut of willand mercyand conscience ;

, , , death , not only inilicted on the flesh , but daily fastening' on the spirit j death , not silent or patient , waiting his appointed hour , but voicef'ul , venomous ; death , with the taunting word , and burning grasji , and infixed sting . " Put ye in the sickle , for the harvest is ripe . " The word is . spoken in our ears continuall y to other reapers than the angels , to the busy skeletons that never tire for stooping . AVhen the measure

of iniquity is full , and it seems that another day might bring repentance and redeiuption— " Put ye in the sickle . " When the young life has beer , wasted all away , and the eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin , and faint resolution rising in the heart for nobler thing .-: — " Put ve in the sickle . " AVhen the roughest blows