and the weak-or let me say rather, between the availing and valueless intelligence-is in the relation of the love of self to the love of the subject or occupation. Many an Alpine traveller, many a busy man of science, volubly represent to us their pleasure in the Alps; but I scarcely recognize one who would not willingly see them all ground down into gravel, on condition of his being the first to exhibit a pebble of it at the Royal Institution. Whereas it may be felt in any single page of Forbes' writing, or De Saussure's, that they love crag and glacier for their own sake's sake; that they question their secrets in reverent and solemn thirst: not at all that they may communicate them at breakfast to the readers of the Daily News-and that, although there were no news, no institutions, no leading articles, no medals, no money, and no mob, in the world, these men would still labor, and be glad, though all their knowledge was to rest with them at last in the silence of the snows, or only to be taught to peasant children sitting in the shade of pines.

And whatever Forbes did or spoke during his noble life was in this manner patiently and permanently true. The passage of his lectures in which he shows the folly of Macaulay's assertion that "The giants of one generation are the pigmies of the next," beautiful in itself, is more interesting yet in the indication it gives of the general grasp and melodious tone of Forbes' reverent intellect, as opposed to the discordant inso

1 This saying of Macaulay's occurred in an address which, as M.P. for that city, he delivered at the opening of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in 1846 (Nov. 4). Forbes' criticism of it and of the whole address may be found in a lecture introductory to a course on Natural Philosophy, delivered before the University of Edinburgh (Nov. 1 and 2, 1848), and entitled "The Danger of Superficial knowledge; " under which title it was afterwards printed, together with a newspaper report of Macaulay's address (London and Edinburgh, 1849). In the edition of Macaulay's speeches revised by himself, the sentence in question is omitted, though others of a like nature, such as "The profundity of one age is the shallowness of the next," are retained, and the whole argument of the address remains the same. (See Macaulay's Works, 8 vol. ed., Longmans, 1866. Vol. viii. p. 380, The Literature of Great Britain.) For a second mention of this saying by Mr. Ruskin, see also "Remarks

lence of modernism. His mind grew and took color like an Alpine flower, rooted on rock, and perennial in flower; while Macaulay's swelled like a puff-ball in an unwholesome pasture, and projected itself far round in deleterious dust.

I had intended saying a few words more touching the difference in temper, and probity of heart, between Forbes and Agassiz, as manifested in the documents now' laid before the public. And as far as my own feelings are concerned, the death of Agassiz' would not have caused my withholding a word. For in all utterance of blame or praise, I have striven always to be kind to the living-just to the dead. But in deference to the wish of the son of Forbes, I keep silence: I willingly leave sentence to be pronounced by time, above their two graves. JOHN RUSKIN.

addressed to the Mansfield Art Night Class," 1873, now reprinted in A Joy for Ever (Ruskin's Works, vol. ix. p. 201).

The following are parts of the passage (extending over some pages) in Forbes' lecture alluded to by Mr. Ruskin :

"How false, then, as well as arrogant, is the self-gratulation of those, who, forgetful of the struggles and painful efforts by which knowledge is increased, would place themselves, by virtue of their borrowed acquirements, in the same elevated position with their great teachersnay, who, perceiving the dimness of light and the feebleness of grasp, with which, often at first, great truths have been perceived and held, find food for pride in the superior clearness of their vision and tenacity of their apprehension!" Then, after quoting some words from Dr. Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii. p. 525, and after some further remarks, the lecturer thus continued: "The activity of mind, the earnestness, the struggle after truth, the hopeless perplexity breaking up gradually into the fulness of perfect apprehension,—the dread of error, the victory over the imagination in discarding hypotheses, the sense of weakness and humility arising from repeated disappointments, the yearnings after a fuller revelation, and the sure conviction which attends the final advent of knowledge sought amidst difficulties and disappointments, -these are the lessons and the rewards of the discoverers who first put truth within our reach, but of which we who receive it at second-hand can form but a faint and lifeless conception." (See pp. 39-41 of The Danger of Superficial Knowledge.)

'In the edition of Rendu's Glaciers of Savoy already alluded to.

2 Forbes died Dec. 31, 1868; Agassiz in 1873; and De Saussure in 1845.

The following letters,' one from Forbes to myself, written ten years ago, and the other from one of his pupils, received by me a few weeks since, must, however, take their due place among the other evidence on which such judgment is to be given. J. R.

II. MISCELLANEOUS.

[From "The Artist and Amateur's Magazine" (edited by E. V. Rippingille), February, 1844, pp. 314-319.]

REFLECTIONS IN WATER.'

To the Editor of "The Artist and Amateur's Magazine."

SIR: The phenomena of light and shade, rendered to the eye by the surface or substance of water, are so intricate and so multitudinous, that had I wished fully to investigate, or even fully to state them, a volume instead of a page would have been

...

The letter from Forbes to Mr. Ruskin (dated December 2, 1864) was presumably elicited by the allusions to Forbes in Mr. Ruskin's letter to the Reader of November 26, 1874 (see ante, pp. 171-176). "Advancing years and permanently depressed state of health," ran the letter, "have taken the edge off the bitterness which the injustice I have experienced caused me during many years. But . . . the old fire revives within me when I see any one willing and courageous, like you, to remember an old friend, and to show that you do so. The second letter speaks of the writer's "boyish enthusiasm" for Agassiz, an expression to which Mr. Ruskin appends this note: "The italics are mine. I think this incidental and naïve proof of the way in which Forbes had spoken of Agassiz to his class, of the greatest value and beautiful interest.-J. R."

2 In the first edition of Modern Painters (vol. i. p. 330) it was stated that "the horizontal lines cast by clouds upon the sea are not shadows, but reflections; " and that "on clear water near the eye there can never be even the appearance of shadow." This statement being questioned in a letter to the Art Union Journal (November, 1843), and that letter being itself criticised in a review of Modern Painters in the Artist and Amateur's Magazine, p. 262 (December, 1843), there appeared in the last-named periodical two letters upon the subject, of which one was from J. H. Maw, the correspondent of the Art Union, and the other— that reprinted here-a reply from "The Author of Modern Painters "

required for the task. In the paragraphs' which I devoted to the subject I expressed, as briefly as possible, the laws which are of most general application-with which artists are indeed so universally familiar, that I conceived it altogether unnecessary to prove or support them: but since I have expressed them in as few words as possible, I cannot afford to have any of those words missed or disregarded; and therefore when I say that on clear water, near the eye, there is no shadow, I must not be understood to mean that on muddy water, far from the eye there is no shadow. As, however, your correspondent appears to deny my position in toto, and as many persons, on their first glance at the subject, might be inclined to do the same, you will perhaps excuse me for occupying a page or two with a more explicit statement, both of facts and principles, than my limits admitted in the "Modern Painters."

2

First, for the experimental proof of my assertion that "on clear water, near the eye, there is no shadow." Your correspondent's trial with the tub is somewhat cumbrous and inconvenient; a far more simple experiment will settle the matter. Fill a tumbler with water; throw into it a narrow strip of white paper; put the tumbler into sunshine; dip your finger into the water between the paper and the sun, so as to throw a shadow across the paper and on the water. The shadow will of course be distinct on the paper, but on the water absolutely and totally invisible.

The passages in Modern Painters referred to in this letter were considerably altered and enlarged in later editions of the work, and the exact words quoted are not to be found in it as finally revised. The reader is, however, referred to vol. i. part ii., § v., chap. i., "Of Water as painted by the Ancients," in whatever edition of the book he may chance to meet with or possess.

? See the Artist and Amateur's Magazine, p. 313, where the author of the letter, to which this is a reply, adduced in support of his views the following experiment, viz. to put a tub filled with clear water in the sunlight, and then taking an opaque screen with a hole cut in it, to place the same in such a position as to intercept the light falling upon the tub. Then, he argued, cover the hole over, and the tub will be in shadow; uncover it again, and a patch of light will fall on the water, proving that water is not "insusceptible of light as well as shadow."

This simple trial of the fact, and your explanation of the principle given in your ninth number,' are sufficient proof and explanation of my assertion; and if your correspondent requires authority as well as ocular demonstration, he has only to ask Stanfield or Copley Fielding, or any other good painter of sea; the latter, indeed, was the person who first pointed out the fact to me when a boy. What then, it remains to be determined, are those lights and shades on the sea, which, for the sake of clearness, and because they appear such to the ordinary observer, I have spoken of as "horizontal lines," and which have every appearance of being cast by the clouds like real shadows? I imagined that I had been sufficiently explicit on this subject both at pages 330 and 363;' but your correspondent appears to have confused himself by inaccurately receiving the term shadow as if it meant darkness of any kind; whereas my second sentence-" every darkness on water is reflection, not shadow"-might have shown him that I used it in its particular sense, as meaning the absence of positive light on a visible surface. Thus, in endeavoring to support his assertion that the shadows on the sea are as distinct as on a grass field, he says that they are so by contrast with the “light reflected from its polished surface;" thus showing at once that he has been speaking and thinking all along, not of shadow, but of the absence of reflected light-an absence which is no more shadow than the absence of the image of a piece of white paper in a mirror is shadow on the mirror.

The question, therefore, is one of terms rather than of things; and before proceeding it will be necessary for me to make your correspondent understand thoroughly what is meant by the term shadow as opposed to that of reflection.

Let us stand on the sea-shore on a cloudless night, with a full moon over the sea, and a swell on the water. Of course a long line of splendor will be seen on the waves under the

1In the review of Modern Painters mentioned above.

2 Of the first edition of the first volume of Modern Painters. The size of the book (and consequently the paging) was afterwards altered to suit the engravings contained in the last three volumes.