And when he suffered, it was with so quick a
nerve and yet so wide an apprehension that the race seemed to suffer in
him. He pitied not himself so tenderly as mankind, of whose capacity for
pain he was then feelingly persuaded. His darkening eyes said in the
extreme hour: 'I have compassion on the multitude.'
THE SUN
Nowhere else does the greater light so rule the day, so measure, so
divide, so reign, make so imperial laws, so visibly kindle, so
immediately quicken, so suddenly efface, so banish, so restore, as in a
plain like this of Suffolk with its enormous sky. The curious have an
insufficient motive for going to the mountains if they do it to see the
sunrise. The sun that leaps from a mountain peak is a sun past the dew
of his birth; he has walked some way towards the common fires of noon.
But on the flat country the uprising is early and fresh, the arc is wide,
the career is long. The most distant clouds, converging in the beautiful
and little-studied order of cloud-perspective (for most painters treat
clouds as though they formed perpendicular and not horizontal scenery),
are those that gather at the central point of sunrise. On the plain, and
there only, can the construction--but that is too little vital a word; I
should rather say the organism--the unity, the design, of a sky be
understood.
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