It
varies more than in the case of colour in the material itself
or of pigments, because it is a "living" colour, as Crabbe
rightly says in his lumbering verse:
The living stains, which Nature's hand alone,
Profuse of life, pours out upon the stone.
Greys, greens, yellows, and browns and rust-reds are but the
colours of a variety of lowly vegetable forms, mostly lichens
and the aerial alga called iolithus.
Without this colouring, its "living stains," Salisbury would
not have fascinated me as it did during this last visit. It
would have left me cold though all the architects and artists
had assured me that it was the most perfectly beautiful
building on earth.
I also found an increasing charm in the interior, and made the
discovery that I could go oftener and spend more hours in this
cathedral without a sense of fatigue or depression than in any
other one known to me, because it has less of that peculiar
character which we look for and almost invariably find in our
cathedrals. It has not the rich sombre majesty, the dim
religious light and heavy vault-like atmosphere of the other
great fanes. So airy and light is it that it is almost like
being out of doors. You do not experience that instantaneous
change, as of a curtain being drawn excluding the light and
air of day and of being shut in, which you have on entering
other religious houses. This is due, first, to the vast size
of the interior, the immense length of the nave, and the
unobstructed view one has inside owing to the removal by the
"vandal" Wyatt of the old ponderous stone screen - an act for
which I bless while all others curse his memory; secondly, to
the comparatively small amount of stained glass there is to
intercept the light. So graceful and beautiful is the
interior that it can bear the light, and light suits it best,
just as a twilight best suits Exeter and Winchester and other
cathedrals with heavy sculptured roofs. One marvels at a
building so vast in size which yet produces the effect of a
palace in fairyland, or of a cathedral not built with hands
but brought into existence by a miracle.
I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too long
lest it should compel me to stay there always or cause me to
feel dissatisfied and homesick when away.
But the interior of itself would never have won me, as I had
not expected to be won by any building made by man; and from
the inside I would pass out only to find a fresh charm in that
part where Nature had come more to man's aid.
Walking on the cathedral green one morning, glancing from time
to time at the vast building and its various delicate shades
of colour, I asked myself why I kept my eyes as if on purpose
away from it most of the time, now on the trees, then on the
turf, and again on some one walking there - why, in fact, I
allowed myself only an occasional glance at the object I was
there solely to look at. I knew well enough, but had never
put it into plain words for my own satisfaction.
We are all pretty familiar from experience with the
limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable
odours please us only fitfully; the sensation comes as a
pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly gone. If we
attempt to keep it for some time by deliberately smelling a
fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense of
failure as if we had exhausted the sense, keen as it was a
moment ago.
There must be an interval of rest for the nerve before the
sensation can be renewed in its first freshness. Now it is
the same, though in a less degree, with the more important
sense of sight. We look long and steadily at a thing to know
it, and the longer and more fixedly we look the better, if it
engages the reasoning faculties; but an aesthetic pleasure
cannot be increased or retained in that way. We must look,
merely glancing as it were, and look again, and then again,
with intervals, receiving the image in the brain even as we
receive the "nimble emanation" of a flower, and the image is
all the brighter for coming intermittently. In a large
prospect we are not conscious of this limitation because of
the wideness of the field and the number and variety of
objects or points of interest in it; the vision roams hither
and thither over it and receives a continuous stream or series
of pleasing impressions; but to gaze fixedly at the most
beautiful object in nature or art does but diminish the
pleasure. Practically it ceases to be beautiful and only
recovers the first effect after we have given the mind an
interval of rest.
Strolling about the green with this thought in my mind, I
began to pay attention to the movements of a man who was
manifestly there with the same object as myself - to look at
the cathedral. I had seen him there for quite half an hour,
and now began to be amused at the emphatic manner in which he
displayed his interest in the building. He walked up and down
the entire length and would then back away a distance of a
hundred yards from the walls and stare up at the spire, then
slowly approach, still gazing up, until coming to a stop when
quite near the wall he would remain with his eyes still fixed
aloft, the back of his head almost resting on his back between
his shoulders.
