I May Mention One Other Expression Which, Though Not Derived From
English, Has A Curious Analogy To An English Usage.
When the
beautiful children with names like Handel's operas come round one
while one is sketching, some one of
Them will assuredly before long
be heard to whisper the words "Tira giu," or as children say when
they come round one in England, "He is drawing it down." The
fundamental idea is, of course, that the draughtsman drags the
object which he is drawing away from its position, and "transfers"
it, as we say by the same metaphor, to his paper, as St. Cecilia
"drew an angel down" in "Alexander's Feast."
A good walk from Dalpe is to the Alpe di Campolungo and Fusio, but
it is better taken from Fusio. A very favourite path with me is
the one leading conjointly from Cornone and Dalpe to Prato. The
view up the valley of the St. Gothard looking down on Prato is
fine; I give a sketch of it taken five years ago before the railway
had been begun.
The little objects looking like sentry boxes that go all round the
church contain rough modern frescoes, representing, if I remember
rightly, the events attendant upon the Crucifixion. These are on a
small scale what the chapels on the sacred mountain of Varallo are
on a large one. Small single oratories are scattered about all
over the Canton Ticino, and indeed everywhere in North Italy by the
roadside, at all halting-places, and especially at the crest of any
more marked ascent, where the tired wayfarer, probably heavy laden,
might be inclined to say a naughty word or two if not checked. The
people like them, and miss them when they come to England. They
sometimes do what the lower animals do in confinement when
precluded from habits they are accustomed to, and put up with
strange makeshifts by way of substitute. I once saw a poor
Ticinese woman kneeling in prayer before a dentist's show-case in
the Hampstead Road; she doubtless mistook the teeth for the relics
of some saint. I am afraid she was a little like a hen sitting
upon a chalk egg, but she seemed quite contented.
Which of us, indeed, does not sit contentedly enough upon chalk
eggs at times? And what would life be but for the power to do so?
We do not sufficiently realise the part which illusion has played
in our development. One of the prime requisites for evolution is a
certain power for adaptation to varying circumstances, that is to
say, of plasticity, bodily and mental. But the power of adaptation
is mainly dependent on the power of thinking certain new things
sufficiently like certain others to which we have been accustomed
for us not to be too much incommoded by the change - upon the power,
in fact, of mistaking the new for the old. The power of fusing
ideas (and through ideas, structures) depends upon the power of
confusing them; the power to confuse ideas that are not very
unlike, and that are presented to us in immediate sequence, is
mainly due to the fact of the impetus, so to speak, which the mind
has upon it.
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