ue je le parle.' There shall be no
requitals.

DORA. Well, then, first of all--What shall we ask first, Mary?

MARY. It does not matter. I think all the questions come into one, at
last, nearly.

DORA. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were alive; and we
never understand how much you are in play, and how much in earnest.
That's the first thing.

L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I am in earnest.
The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle you. They look as if they were
alive, and make me speak as if they were; and I do not in the least know
how much truth there is in the appearance. I'm not to ask things back
again to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the
one main question, which we asked, before, in vain, 'What is it to be
alive?'

DORA. Yes; but we want to come back to that: for we've been reading
scientific books about the 'conservation of forces,' and it seems all so
grand, and wonderful; and the experiments are so pretty; and I suppose
it must be all right: but then the books never speak as if there were
any such thing as 'life.'

L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, Dora; but they
are beautifully right as far as they go; and life is not a convenient
element to deal with. They seem to have been getting some of it into and
out of bottles, in their 'ozone' and 'antizone' lately; but they still
know little of it: and, certainly, I know less.

DORA. You promised not to be provoking, to-night.

L. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the secrets of
life than the philosophers do; I yet know one corner of ground on which
we artists can stand, literally as 'Life Guards' at bay, as steadily as
the Guards at Inkermann; however hard the philosophers push. And you may
stand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely.

DORA. I'm sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may stand.

L. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a painter, the
essential character of anything is the form of it; and the philosophers
cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for instance, that there is
as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (or whatever else they like
to call it), in a tea-kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so;
and it is very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil
the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest; and as much more to
bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we painters