ILLUMINATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17889, 17 September 1921, Page 1 (Supplement)

ILLUMINATIONS.

NATIONAL CUSTOMS.

BX FSANK MORTON..

life is a long night in which the comforts and delights are illuminations. It is a human instinct at every possible opportunity to brighten things up a bit. When in the faraway days our ancestors, who had long shivered in their shaggy pelts, discovered the uses of fire, they promptly learned to worship it because it shone. And so the idea of light "became closely associated with the idea of worship. Wherever men made unto themselves gods, they set up illuminations. At the festival of Osiris, all men illuminated their dwellings and the public ways, and the mystery at Sais was celebrated in a blaze of lamps. From celebrating the death of the god, men came to celebrate all human dead, and so the festival of Osiris became a festival of All Souls.

Men believed that on a certain night every year the souls of the dead revisited the glimpses of the moon, and on that night they set tables with food for the spirits to eat, and lamps to light them down the darkling ways. This lighting of lamps for the dead became customary in ail sorts of places, in most parts of the world. The Eskimos made a great business of it, and so did most of the Ameri-can-Indian tribes, right down to the equator, and away to the south of it. In China the welcoming of the spirits rose to a glad intensity of worship. So everywhere, when men felt glad or solemn or thankful or afraid, they, set up flares in the dark places. It seems even that the essential beauty of illuminations dawned on the primitive, mind quite early: a little light close at hand seemed like a star that had corns nearer. The Beautiful and the Garish. But illuminations were crude, however elaborate, right down to our own timecrude, that is to say, everywhere hut in China, where illuminations have been beautiful through uncounted centuries back into the night, right back to the night of Time. The moment any man begins to grope towards a conscious imagination, ho likes to sat up a little candle somewhere. Among the British peoples illuminations are marred by a too reckless garishneis. The more light there is, and the more diversity of light, the better are we satisfied. The Chinese and Japanese are w;ser. They have learned the beauty of little lights posed irregularly. They have been able to see that far more beautiful than any fixed glare is a tender light that swings and is softened by some dim or translucent mask of colour. An illuminated night in Japan, when everywhere the home stars twinkle among the hills, when every street and home-place is a warmly inspiring kaleidoscopic glowthere is nothing On earth more beautiful than that. It is a far finer thing, for instance, than Japan's 'predatory patriotism, a far greater thing than Japan's tough valour in war. It always seems a thing strange and inexplicable that a people so keenly sensitive to natural beauty should bother with sordid ambitions at all.

In India, on the other hand, the illuminations are all somehow sinister. It is as if they hang heavily, weeping into the night, remembering departed glories- One loves India, but one loves India always morbidly. The great glowering country frightens while it attracts one. I remember once losing my way on a night of barbaric festival in Benares, and in the deep thrill of the sensation there was a twinging nerve of fear. In Calcutta and Bombay it is always the twentieth century, hut at Benares, after nightfall, you may easily slip back a thousand years at any time.

The most beautiful of all illuminations arranged by man are candles glimmering distantly in a great church, home-lights in a little hilly town, and any shore-lights seen across intervening waters. In that sense Sydney is wonderfuLy beautiful, but I think sometimes that it is not so purely beautiful as Wellington, a city seldom beautiful by day. Auckland does not lend itself to efforts of illumination, but I have seen good water-effects by night there. The effect of the lights of Wellington at night, especially on a night of ram, is superb, grander than anything I have ever known the pagan beauty of Sydney to' compass. The night beauty of Singapore is also very appealing, but it is oddly more intimate and human. Making Special Occasions.

In England the eighteenth century was a great period of illuminations. The streets were ordinarily so dark and troublesome after nightfall, that men took every opportunity to make them brighter to mark a special occasion. Any victory of British arms or policy blossomed in a great display of lights. If a citizen proved indifferent to the general enthusiasm, it went ill with him sometimes. Mark The Times, June 13, 1794, after Lord Howe's victory :—

Several mobs paraded about the streets, at one, and two o'clock, yesterday morning, breaking the windows of those who had already shown their good wishes to the general cause, by illuminating their windows, but had retired to rest. Other houses again, belonging to the Quakers, were damaged because no lights were- put forth. Such acts are contrary to the way of thinking of this very respectable class of citizens. In this outrageous manner did several mobs proceed during the early part of yesterday morning, to the very great inconvenience of domestic comfort, and infringement on public tranquillity.

The next day the Lord Mayor requested that illuminations should now cease, as " the public will be satisfied with the general joy which has been so conspicuously expressed." But the outlauders and pacifists continued, and four days later we are told that " The veiy idea of the horrors attending the cry of " PuS out your lights,' made a poor loyal German, in Bedfordbury, watch his little farthing rush-lights, on Wednesday last, till a late hour. At length he, ventured really to put out his lights ; prudently pasting up at his door the following notice in capitals : 'Two o'clock—gone to bed. If I am to light again, pray be so obliging as to rnig the bell.' " A humorous German !

la the Eeata of Thought. Reasonable illumination is a good thing, even in the realm of thoughtif you will permit me for once to b» disreputable enough to hint as much. What I mean is that when a new idea pomes with a sadden flash that shocks you, it may in the ultimate result, be a very good thing tor you. We are all far too scnrvily afraid of the illumination of new ideas; we are all slavishly inclined to go to lied by candlelight, just as our great grandmothers did, and on that to pull down the blinds as a means of shutting out the stars. Was itGoethe, or somebody else, who, dying, cried "More light! "More light!"? Whoever it was, he proved that he had lived to noble purpose. There is a special incidental charm of homely lights. They say that when 0. Henry was dying he asked for a candle to be brought to him. " But, Mr. Porter," said the nurse, " there is the incandescent." Still, the lighted candle was brought, and the tired humourist smiled gently. "I'm afraid to go home in the dark." Paid he. I love the thought of the men standing humbly in the full glow of the Beatific Vision, with that little earth-ligb«v burning in his hand.