CHAPTER XV. Mists and Fogs. FOGS and mists, being nothing but vapors which the cold air will not suffer to evaporate, must sometimes present a gorgeous aspect next the sun. To the eye of an eagle, or whatever other eyes there may be to look down upon them, they may appear like masses of cloudy gold. In fact, they are but clouds unrisen. The city of London, at the time we are writing this article, is literally a city in the clouds. Its inhabitants walk through the same airy heaps which at other times float over their heads in the sky, or minister with glorious faces to the setting sun. We do not say, that any one can "hold a fire in his hand" by thinking on a fine sunset; or that sheer imagination of any sort can make it a very agreeable thing to feel as if one's body were wrapped round with cold wet paper; much less to flounder through gutters, or run against posts. But the mind can often help itself with agreeable images against disagreeable ones; or pitch itself round to the best sides and aspects of them. The solid and fiery ball of the sun, stuck as it were, in the thick foggy atmosphere; the moon just winning her way through it, into beams; nay, the very candles and gas-lights in the shopwindows of a misty evening-all have, in our eyes, their agreeable varieties of contrast to the surrounding haze. We have even halted, of a dreary autumnal evening, at that open part of the Strand by St. Clement's, and seen the church, which is a poor structure of itself, take an aspect of ghastly grandeur from the dark atmosphere; looking like a tall white mass, mounting up interminably into the night overhead. The poets, who are the common friends that keep up the intercourse between nature and humanity, have in numberless pas sages done justice to these our melancholy visitors, and shown us what grand personages they are. To mention only a few of the most striking. When Thetis, in the Iliad (Lib. i., v. 359), rises out of the sea to console Achilles, she issues forth in a mist; like the Genius in the Arabian Nights. The reader is to suppose that the mist, after ascending, comes gliding over the water; and condensing itself into a human shape, lands the white-footed goddess on the shore. When Achilles, after his long and vindictive absence from the Greek armies, re-appears in consequence of the death of his friend Patroclus, and stands before the appalled Trojan armies, who are thrown into confusion at the very sight, Minerva, to render his aspect the more astonishing and awful, puts about his head a halo of golden mist, streaming upwards with fire (Lib. xviii., v. 205). He shouts aloud under this preternatural diadem; Minerva throws into his shout her own immortal voice with a strange unnatural cry; at which the horses of the Trojan warriors run round with their chariots, and twelve of their noblest captains perish in the crush. A mist was the usual clothing of the gods, when they descended to earth; especially of Apollo, whose brightness had double need of mitigation. Homer, to heighten the dignity of Ulysses, has finely given him the same covering, when he passes through the court of Antincus, and suddenly appears before the throne. This has been turned to happy account by Virgil, and to a new and noble one by Milton. Virgil makes Æneas issue suddenly from a mist, at the moment when his friends think him lost, and the beautiful queen of Carthage is wishing his presence. Milton-but we will give one or two of his minor uses of mists, by way of making a climax of the one alluded to. If Satan, for instance, goes lurking about Paradise, it is "like a black mist low creeping." If the angels on guard glide about it, upon their gentler errand, it is like fairer vapors : On the ground Gliding meteorous, as evening mist Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the laborer's heel Homeward returning.—(Par. Lost, B. xii., v. 628.) Now behold one of his greatest imaginations. The fallen demi-gods are assembled in Pandæmonium, waiting the return of their "great adventurer" from his "search of worlds:" He through the midst unmarked, In show plebeian angel militant Of lowest order, passed; and from the door And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter; clad At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng Bent their aspect; and whom they wished, beheld, There is a piece of imagination in Apollonius Rhodius worthy of Milton or Homer. The Argonauts, in broad day-light, are suddenly benighted at sea with a black fog. They pray to Apollo; and he descends from heaven, and lighting on a rock, holds up his illustrious bow, which shoots a guiding light for them to an island. Spenser, in a most romantic chapter of the Faery Queene (Book ii.), seems to have taken the idea of a benighting from Apollonius, as well as to have had an eye to some passages of the Odyssey; but, like all great poets, what he borrows only brings worthy companionship to some fine invention of his own. It is a scene thickly beset with horror. Sir Guyon, in the course of his voyage through the perilous sea, wishes to stop and hear the Syrens; but the palmer, his companion, dissuades him: When suddeinly a grosse fog overspred That all things one, and one as nothing was, And this great universe seemed one confused mass. Thereat they greatly were dismayd, ne wist But feared to wander in that wastefull mist Of harmfull fowles about them fluttering cride, Even all the nation of unfortunate And fatall birds about them flocked were, The ruefull stritch, still waiting on the bere: All these, and all that else does horror breed. Whiles th' one did row, and th' other stifly steare. Ovid has turned a mist to his usual account. It is where Jupiter, to conceal his amour with Io, throws a cloud over the vale of Tempe. There is a picture of Jupiter and Io, by Correggio, in which that great artist has finely availed himself of the circumstance; the head of the father of gods and men coming placidly out of the cloud, upon the young lips of Io, like the very benignity of creation. The poet who is the most conversant with mists is Ossian, who was a native of the north of Scotland or Ireland. The following are as many specimens of his uses of mist as we have room for. The first is very grand; the second as happy in its analogy; the third is ghastly, but of more doubtful merit: Two Chiefs parted by their King.-They sunk from the king on either side, like two columns of morning mist, when the sun rises between them on his glittering rocks. Dark is their rolling on either side, each towards its reedy pool. A great Enemy.—I love a foe like Cathmor: his soul is great; his arm is strong; his battles are full of fame. But the little soul is like a vapor, that hovers round the marshy lake. It never rises on the green hill, lest the winds meet it there. A terrible Omen.—A mist rose slowly from the lake. It came, in the figure of an aged man, along the silent plain. Its large limbs did not move in steps; for a ghost supported it in mid air. It came towards Selma's hall, and dissolved in a shower of blood. We must mention another instance of the poetical use of a mist, if it is only to indulge ourselves in one of those masterly passages of Dante, in which he contrives to unite minuteness of detail with the most grand and sovereign effect. It is in a lofty comparison of the planet Mars looking through morning vapors; the reader will see with what (Purgatorio, c. ii., v. 10). Dante and his guide Virgil have just left the infernal regions, and are lingering on a solitary sea-shore in purgatory; which reminds us of that still and far-thoughted verse— Lone sitting by the shores of old romance. But to our English-like Italian. Noi eravam lungh' esso 'l mare ancora, &c. That solitary shore we still kept on, Like men, who musing on their journey, stay When lo! as at the early dawn of day, Red Mars looks deepening through the foggy heat, Of my sage leader, when its orb had got Of white about it; and beneath the white One word, till those first issuing candours bright |