Arthur Stanley

“ Rawson, his schoolmaster, to be the stupidest boy at figures who ever came under his care, save only one, who was yet more hopeless, and was unable to grasp simple addition and multiplication, yet Arthur Stanley rose like a rocket at Rugby, achieved fame in Oxford and became a blessing to mankind. ”

“ He left the pulpit for his bed. His illness proved to be erysipelas, of which he died on Monday, 18 July 1881. On Monday, 25 July, he was buried in Westminster Abbey by the side of his wife.
Stanley's principal works have been already mentioned. None of them, with the possible exception of the ‘Life of Dr. Arnold,’ belong to the highest or most permanent class of literature. His personal charm was a stronger influence than his books. Of the fascination that he exercised over his friends, a vivid picture will be found in Dean Bradley's ‘Recollections of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’ (1883) . ”

“ It is possible to sympathise with him.
Stanley returned to London in April, 1890, after {206} the Emin Expedition. There were crowds to greet him in the streets, and a big crowd at the railway station. I went, with an old friend of his, to meet him at the train. We had special cards to the platform at which the train would arrive, and were fortunate enough to secure places at the point where Stanley's saloon carriage stopped. There were about five hundred holders of similar cards, I should think, and among them the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who was a very old friend of Stanley. ”

“ Farther up the slopes of Neapolis and Epipolai straggle great rocky groves of uncanny, fantastically shaped old olives, the most disreputable-looking tenants of the soil imaginable. They are whorled like an oak, knobbed like an apple tree, split full of holes, leaning at all angles ”

“ Beyond the edge of the older town it poises its massive stone bulk, whitewashed and scrupulously neat, on the ragged edge of the cliff: where fragrant roses climb all about and potted plants fringe the balustrades on all sides with rich color. ”

“ The light spreads. Neither camera nor pen can keep pace with the instantaneous transformations on every side. The vast crimson-coppery disc sails slowly up in majesty to eye the little world of Taormina from behind the inky green shoulder of the Greek Theater’s hill. The upper edges of the clouds turn pink and silver; the lower, soft salmon pink, saffron, orange, gold. ”

“ Whether they have lived in Sicily for ten centuries or twenty, the reeds still spring in slender, graceful stalks of tender green, without leaf or gnarl, from the moist earth, nodding their powder-puff heads lazily over the sparkling water and dreaming—if plants ever dream—of their sun-steeped home of eld beside placid Father Nile. ”

“ The magic words bring back the scene. Again we feel Nature drawing close to us, uniting with us, till we are filled with the gladness of the waves dancing in the sunshine, with the awe of the moonlight on the frozen lake. ”

“ On Easter morning the great Court of the Lord before the Cathedral is a surprising picture. Upon the heavy stone balustrade enclosing it sixteen massive saints meditate benignly in the scented air. The great gray cement yard, flowers all colors of the rainbow, marble Santa Rosalia—patroness of Palermo—the huge church itself: all are bathed in the most brilliant sunshine imaginable. ”

“ Roaring and spitting fire and smoke, a huge automobile in gray warpaint tore through the square, skidded to the edge, stopped as though it had rushed into a stone wall, and fairly shot a young man out upon the gangplank just as it quivered on the rise, while women shrieked and men laughed. ”

“ From the floor of the chancel the flying ribs of the roof seem sections of delicate enameled work. The farther away one stands the more perfect the illusion becomes, to the point where the designs lose their identity. ”

“ Saracenic love-songs full of the wild spirit of desert and river, quavering and melancholic; passionate lyric romances suggestive of cavalier Norman days. But it is the Greek that, being the purest and simplest strain, has always prevailed. Every day little shepherd lads stir the terrific solitudes of wind-swept mountain steeps with wordless songs drawn as by magic from their reedy flutes, music shrilly sweet and unforgettable. And at dinner in the evening you may hear some little minstrel wandering up and down the Corso, fluting his heart out in the moonlight. ”

“ It is streaked with wind-paths, flecked with tiny whitecaps, dotted with fishing boats flitting about like white bats, while far up the Strait where Italy seems to reach over and embrace its lovely sister, it is easy to imagine Scylla and Charybdis reaching out hungry, gleaming hands for the hapless voyagers rashly passing between. It is hard to think of anything else than the Argonauts, even amid the beauty of wild and cultivated flowers, vegetation clinging tenaciously to the face of the cliffs, or growing in luxuriance upon terraces in lovely banked and esplanaded gardens. ”

“ Arthur Penrhyn Stanley ranks considerably below Lockhart, yet his Life of Arnold (1844) is inferior only to the few unapproachable masterpieces of biography. Stanley was a fluent and able writer in several fields, but in most respects his work is now somewhat discredited. [Pg 140] His Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians (1855) has been severely handled for inaccuracy and defective scholarship. ”

“ The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. ”

“ On many a hill rises the matchless, mellow ruin of a Greek temple, lovely as anything Greece itself can show; and in the cities the architectonic genius and spirit of the races blend in structures dignified and massive, or light and airy almost to the point of being fantastic. ”

“ Crumbling bastion and curtain, roofless hall and moldy dungeon keep, silent corridor and deserted rampart, where no Elymian spears now glisten in the occasional sunshine or drip gloomily with the characteristic golden fog, weave a powerful spell, so powerful, so enchanting none would be surprised in the slightest did the castle suddenly galvanize into life, and the figure of the lovely goddess of eld once more smile in the little temple whose foundations only now exist. ”

“ The noise and unrest of the busy Corso are forgotten in this magic precinct; smiling, happy men, women and children stream through the yard, picturesque in their holiday attire; while from the windows drones the chant of the Mass, like the buzzing of a swarm of kindly bees hovering over the flowers. The white glare of the Egyptian desert is never more blinding than a Sicilian spring morning radiance.
The blending of different architectural forms in the Palermo Cathedral gives it charm. ”

“ Graciously a faint flush in the eastern sky increases in volume, deepens in tone; the grim pile of the volcano on the west darkens at the top, and as the ineffable pink spreads around behind it, the cone turns dead and spectral, and the thin, cottony tuft of curling smoke above the main crater eddies upward with all the seeming of steam on a foggy winter’s morning. ”

“ Only the massiveness of a Doric structure could so perfectly chime in with the grandeur of Nature, so fittingly command the immense and silent though turbulent landscape that rolls away from its feet. Revelation inspired its location, and genius erected it—to stand lovelier and more marvelous still after the lapse of ages than when there was a city near by to detract from its majestic solitude. ”

“ And the dashing tunny-fisheries off-shore—the brilliant sunshine glinting on the flapping white sails—the water boiling about the frantic monsters as they plunge and struggle to escape the stabbing gaffs of their captors; the water red and green and black at last, and the long line of huge, gleaming bodies—like titanic Spanish mackerel varnished an opalescent black—strewn upon the white and sparkling beach!
What more could man wish to see?
Monte Pellegrino looms square and massive at one tip of Palermo’s crescent harbor. ”

“ He succeeded Lord Granville as chancellor of the University of London in 1891, and remained in that position till his death. He lived much in Lancashire, managed his enormous estates with great skill, and did a great amount of work as a local magnate. He married in 1870 Maria Catharine, daughter of the 5th earl de la Warr, and widow of the 2nd marquess of Salisbury.
The earl left no children and he was succeeded as 16th earl by his brother Frederick Arthur Stanley (1841–1908) , who had been made a peer as Baron Stanley of Preston in 1886. ”

“ But the world which they created still lives in that marvellous cycle of legends which gather round the name of King Arthur, and which, in our own day, has given to the first of our living poets the worthiest subject which our island could furnish—the career of the stainless king and his gallant knights, which our children and our children’s children will read with their souls more and more raised to nobler and higher thoughts. ”

“ All night the moon, sailing in solemn round overhead, tints the peak’s snowy shoulders with a faint greenish tinge that makes it the wraith of a volcano. A little before four o’clock, slowly, tenderly, moon and pallid stars dwindle into spookish reflections of themselves as the sky lightens, the velvet blue of the night puckers into gelid gray, changes into pale turquoise through which majestically sail a vast fleet of enormous fluffy clouds, while Ætna rises dark and forbidding from the piana below. ”

“ There comes a town; a queer, quaint, smelly little fishing village—Ali—whose distinct perfume wafts in through even closed windows. Every house in it possesses atmosphere, character, a certain uncouth distinction all its own. ”

“ Stanley leaped to his feet; and while the supporters behind him were yapping out taunts and jeers at Harvard, he swung his arms as if he was leading a multitude, and cried out all alone the real Yale cheer. The Harvard people turned to look; some of them smiled at him a little wistfully, and because he was so clearly a Yale man they clapped him when he sat down.
"Why don't you cheer for Stanley?" asked the schoolboy next to him in a resentful voice. "He's the whole Yale team." ”

“ Crimson geraniums from five to eight feet in height blazing with color, pink wild roses, sweet-scented white locust blossoms, spiky prickly pear, the yellow striped spears of the agave, and pink and lavender morning glories vining among and over them all give one the impression of being hurled through a giant hot-house. But here is no cultivation. Sicilian Nature, with prodigal lavishness, is alone responsible for the brilliant pageant. At the feet of the taller plants burgeon scarlet poppies, low, earth-nestling lavender cactus blossoms, and legions of dazzling buttercups. ”

“ It is a white city with houses of pearl and roofs of carnelian, shimmering with golden sunlight against the dark background of vine-clad hills on the horizon and the rich green of the most fertile plain in the island, that sweeps, a vast natural amphitheater, from the edge of the sea up to the seats of the white gods on the cloud-veiled crags. Splendidly set is the city in the warm lap of its Conca d’Oro, the Golden Shell that blooms with countless orange and lemon trees whose golden fruits flash amid the glossy green of the foliage and give the rolling plain its name. ”

“ Early as the hour is, half of male Palermo seems to come to the dock to shout a cheery welcome as the boat comes in. Throngs of hotel runners and porters crowd the wharves, all clamoring for recognition, each trying to drown out his neighbor’s voice; their queer, staccato cries, combative and challenging, sound as if projected from a huge phonograph to float loosely upon the jangling air. Yet for all this eagerness it is hard to find a man not too busy shouting to attend to the baggage. ”

“ Clean, convenient trolley systems vein the capital’s face with crows’-feet in thin gray lines; enticingly black and narrow little vicoli thread devious ways among the houses, where the curious may wander unafraid, and unashamed of his curiosity and interest. And every alley, every byway and passage is spotlessly clean; while the gardens of the city, scattered with prodigal lavishness throughout even the business section, are beautiful beyond description. ”

“ Stanley, but if you are to lecture I will gladly go to hear you." And so I say that although in this assembly we may know what is going on in Africa, we must not suppose that the British public, or the journalism which is its reflection, is any wiser to-day than in the time of Mungo Park.
{220}
Rather neat scoring, I think. The world does not change much.
Stanley married and went into Parliament. One day I thought it might be interesting to see him try conclusions with an election crowd in London. He was contesting on the Surrey side of the river. ”

“ In the heart of this vast floral labyrinth lofty pines reach vainly upward toward the world from still depths where no breeze ever scatters the leaves, no gales lash denuded branches; and sun-warmed and dew-bathed, little groves of silvery-gray olives flourish beside prickly pear, sulphur colored lemons, yellow nespoli, golden oranges, almond blossoms all a mass of pallor or blushes in the tender warmth of early Spring. ”

“ The town is rugged and irregular and personal to a degree that captivates the most hardened sightseer—crooked, narrow streets, full of quaint buildings rich in Eastern touches: here a latticed casement suggesting veiled women and mystery, yonder ajimez windows divided by delicate little columns, farther along an harmonious blending of the Norman and Moorish on sculptured pillar capital and gallery. The people are as captivating as the town—caped men stalking to and fro like comic opera brigands, women whose loveliness has made Eryx noted. ”