The Ethics of the Dust Part 8

VIOLET. Why, it is leaf gold!

L. Yes; but beaten by no man's hammer; or rather, not beaten at all, but woven. Besides, feel the weight of it. There is gold enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, if it were beaten thin.

VIOLET. How beautiful! And it glitters like a leaf covered with frost.

L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of bra.s.s for it is Transylvanian gold; and they say there is a foolish gnome in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don't know how that may be, but the silver always IS in the gold, and if he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is woven so fine anywhere else.

MARY (who has been looking through her magnifying gla.s.s). But this is not woven. This is all made of little triangles.

L. Say "patched," then, if you must be so particular. But if you fancy all those triangles, small as they are (and many of them are infinitely small), made up again of rods, and those of grains, as we built our great triangle of the beads, what word will you take for the manufacture?

MAY. There's no word--it is beyond words.

L. Yes, and that would matter little, were it not beyond thoughts too. But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, shed, not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, will help you to remember the second kind of crystals, LEAF-crystals, or FOLIATED crystals, though I show you the form in gold first only to make a strong impression on you, for gold is not generally or characteristically, crystallized in leaves; the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica; which if you once feel well and break well, you will always know again; and you will often have occasion to know it, for you will find it everywhere nearly, in hill countries.

KATHLEEN. If we break it well! May we break it?

L. To powder, if you like.

(Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation. Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophic al treatment at all hands.)

FLORRIE (to whom the last fragments have descended). Always leaves, and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust?

L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves.

(Shows them to FLORRIE through magnifying gla.s.s.)

ISABEL (peeping over FLORRIE'S shoulder). But then this bit under the gla.s.s looks like that bit out of the gla.s.s! If we could break this bit under the gla.s.s, what would it be like?

L. It would be all leaves still.

ISABEL. And then if we broke those again?

L. All less leaves still.

ISABEL (impatient). And if we broke them again, and again, and again, and again, and again?

L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could only see it. Notice that the little flakes already differ somewhat from the large ones: because I can bend them up and down, and they stay bent; while the large flake, though it bent easily a little way, sprang back when you let it go, and broke when you tried to bend it far. And a large ma.s.s would not bend at all.

MARY. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in the same way?

L. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteristic specimen of a foliated crystallization. The little triangles are portions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, which looks like a black mica; but you see it is made up of triangles like the gold, and stands, almost accurately, as an intermediate link, in crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is the commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals.

MARY. Is it iron? I never saw iron so bright.

L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallized: from its resemblance to mica, it is often called micaceous iron.

KATHLEEN. May we break this, too?

L. No, for I could not easily get such another crystal; besides, it would not break like the mica; it is much harder. But take the gla.s.s again, and look at the fineness of the jagged edges of the triangles where they lap over each other. The gold has the same: but you see them better here, terrace above terrace, countless, and, in successive angles, like superb fortified bastions.

MAY. But all foliated crystals are not made of triangles?

L. Far from it; mica is occasionally so. but usually of hexagons; and here is a foliated crystal made of squares, which will show you that the leaves of the rock-land have their summer green, as well as their autumnal gold.

FLORRIE. Oh! oh! oh! (jumps for joy).

L. Did you never see a bit of green leaf before, Florrie?

FLORRIE. Yes, but never so bright as that, and not in a stone.

L. If you will look at the leaves of the trees in suns.h.i.+ne after a shower, you will find they are much brighter than that; and surely they are none the worse for being on stalks instead of in stones?

FLORRIE. Yes, but then there are so many of them, one never looks, I suppose.

L. Now you have it, Florrie.

VIOLET (sighing). There are so many beautiful things we never see!

L. You need not sigh for that, Violet; but I will tell you what we should all sigh for--that there are so many ugly things we never see.

VIOLET. But we don't want to see ugly things!

L. You had better say, "We don't want to suffer them." You ought to be glad in thinking how much more beauty G.o.d has made, than human eyes can ever see; but not glad in thinking how much more evil man has made, than his own soul can ever conceive, much more than his hands can ever heal.

VIOLET. I don't understand;--how is that like the leaves?

L. The same law holds in our neglect of multiplied pain, as in our neglect of multiplied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy at sight of half an inch of a green leaf in a brown stone, and takes more notice of it than of all the green in the wood, and you, or I, or any of us, would be unhappy if any single human creature beside us were in sharp pain; but we can read, at breakfast, day after day, of men being killed, and of women and children dying of hunger, faster than the leaves strew the brooks in Vallombrosa;--and then go out to play croquet, as if nothing had happened.

MAY. But we do not see the people being killed or dying.

L. You did not see your brother, when you got the telegram the other day, saying he was ill, May; but you cried for him; and played no croquet. But we cannot talk of these things now; and what is more, you must let me talk straight on, for a little while; and ask no questions till I've done: for we branch ("exfoliate," I should say, mineralogically) always into something else,--though that's my fault more than yours; but I must go straight on now. You have got a distinct notion, I hope, of leaf- crystals; and you see the sort of look they have: you can easily remember that "folium" is Latin for a leaf, and that the separate flakes of mica, or any other such stones, are called "folia;" but, because mica is the most characteristic of these stones, other things that are like it in structure are called "micas;" thus we have Uran-mica, which is the green leaf I showed you; and Copper- mica, which is another like it, made chiefly of copper; and this foliated iron is called "micaceous iron." You have then these two great orders, Needle-crystals, made (probably) of grains in rows; and Leaf-crystals, made (probably) of needles interwoven; now, lastly, there are crystals of a third order, in heaps, or knots, or ma.s.ses, which may be made either of leaves laid one upon another, or of needles bound like Roman fasces; and mica itself, when it is well crystallized, puts itself into such ma.s.ses, as if to show us how others are made. Here is a brown six-sided crystal, quite as beautifully chiseled at the sides as any castle tower; but you see it is entirely built of folia of mica, one laid above another, which break away the moment I touch the edge with my knife. Now, here is another hexagonal tower, of just the same size and color, which I want you to compare with the mica carefully; but as I cannot wait for you to do it just now, I must tell you quickly what main differences to look for. First, you will feel it far heavier than the mica. Then, though its surface looks quite micaceous in the folia of it when you try them with the knife, you will find you cannot break them away--

KATHLEEN. May I try?

L. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here's my strong knife for you.

(Experimental pause. KATHLEEN doing her best.) You'll have that knife shutting on your finger presently, Kate; and I don't know a girl who would like less to have her hand tied up for a week.

KATHLEEN (who also does not like to be beaten--giving up the knife despondently.). What CAN the nasty hard thing be?

L. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate: very hard set certainly, yet not so hard as it might be. If it were thoroughly well crystallized, you would see none of those micaceous fractures; and the stone would be quite red and clear, all through.

KATHLEEN. Oh, cannot you show us one?

L. Egypt can, if you ask her; she has a beautiful one in the clasp of her favorite bracelet.

KATHLEEN. Why, that's a ruby!

L. Well, so is that thing you've been scratching at.