Ah, that Distance!
What a magician for conjuring up scenes of joy or sorrow, smoothing
all asperities, reconciling all incongruities, veiling all absurdness,
softening every coarseness, doubling every effect by the influence of
the imagination. A Scottish wedding should be seen at a distance; the
gay band of the dancers just distinguished amid the elderly group of
the spectators,--the glass held high, and the distant cheers as it is
swallowed, should be only a sketch, not a finished Dutch picture, when
it becomes brutal and boorish. Scotch psalmody, too, should be heard
from a distance. The grunt and the snuffle, and the whine and the
scream, should be all blended in that deep and distant sound, which
rising and falling like the Eolian harp, may have some title to be
called the praise of our Maker. Even so the distant funeral: the few
mourners on horseback with their plaids wrapped around them--the
father heading the procession as they enter the river, and pointing
out the ford by which his darling is to be carried on the last long
road--not one of the subordinate figures in discord with the general
tone of the incident--seeming just accessories, and no more--this _is_
affecting.
The same idea is the subject of T. E. Brown's poem, _The Schooner_:
Just mark that schooner westward far at sea--
'Tis but an hour ago
When she was lying hoggish at the quay,
And men ran to and fro,
And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed and swore,
And ever and anon, with crapulous glee,
Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore.


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