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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Fors Clavigera (Volume 4 of 8), by
-John Ruskin
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Fors Clavigera (Volume 4 of 8)
-       Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain
-
-Author: John Ruskin
-
-Release Date: March 2, 2022 [eBook #67544]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
-             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
-             Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
-             made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORS CLAVIGERA (VOLUME 4 OF
-8) ***
-
-
-
-
-
-                            FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-                                LETTERS
-
-                      TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS
-                           OF GREAT BRITAIN.
-
-
-                                   BY
-                          JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,
-  HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART.
-
-
-                                Vol. IV.
-
-
-                             GEORGE ALLEN,
-                      SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.
-                                 1874.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XXXVII.
-
-
-                                                      1st January, 1874
-
-
-            “Selon la loy, et ly prophetes,
-            Qui a charité parfaicte
-            Il ayme Dieu sur toute rien
-            De cueur, de force, et d’ame nette;
-            Celui devons-nous tous de debte
-            Comme soy-mesmes, son prochain;
-            Qu’on dit qui in ayme, ayme mon chien.
-            De tel pierre, et de tel merrien
-            Est ès cieulx nostre maison faicte
-            Car nulz ne peut dire, ‘c’est mien,’
-            Fors ce qu’il a mis en ce bien;
-            Tout le remenant est retraicte.”
-
-            According to the Law and the Prophets,
-            He who has perfect charity,
-            Loves God above everything,
-            With heart, with flesh, and with spirit pure.
-            Him also, our neighbour, we are all in debt
-            To love as ourselves;
-            For one says, Who loves me, loves my dog.
-            Of such stone, and of such crossbeam,
-            Is in the heavens our house made;
-            For no one can say, ‘It is mine,’
-            Beyond what he has put into that good,
-            All the rest is taken away.
-
-
-One day last November, at Oxford, as I was going in at the private door
-of the University galleries, to give a lecture on the Fine Arts in
-Florence, I was hindered for a moment by a nice little girl, whipping a
-top on the pavement. She was a very nice little girl; and rejoiced
-wholly in her whip, and top; but could not inflict the reviving
-chastisement with all the activity that was in her, because she had on
-a large and dilapidated pair of woman’s shoes, which projected the full
-length of her own little foot behind it and before; and being securely
-fastened to her ancles in the manner of mocassins, admitted, indeed, of
-dextrous glissades, and other modes of progress quite sufficient for
-ordinary purposes; but not conveniently of all the evolutions proper to
-the pursuit of a whipping-top.
-
-There were some worthy people at my lecture, and I think the lecture
-was one of my best. It gave some really trustworthy information about
-art in Florence six hundred years ago. But all the time I was speaking,
-I knew that nothing spoken about art, either by myself or other people,
-could be of the least use to anybody there. For their primary business,
-and mine, was with art in Oxford, now; not with art in Florence, then;
-and art in Oxford now was absolutely dependent on our power of solving
-the question—which I knew that my audience would not even allow to be
-proposed for solution—“Why have our little girls large shoes?”
-
-Indeed, my great difficulty, of late, whether in lecturing or writing,
-is in the intensely practical and matter-of-fact character of my own
-mind as opposed to the loquacious and speculative disposition, not only
-of the British public, but of all my quondam friends. I am left utterly
-stranded, and alone, in life, and thought. Life and knowledge, I ought
-to say; for I have done what thinking was needful for me long ago, and
-know enough to act upon, for the few days, or years, I may have yet to
-live. I find some of my friends greatly agitated in mind, for instance,
-about Responsibility, Free-will, and the like. I settled all those
-matters for myself, before I was ten years old, by jumping up and down
-an awkward turn of four steps in my nursery-stairs, and considering
-whether it was likely that God knew whether I should jump only three,
-or the whole four at a time. Having settled it in my mind that He knew
-quite well, though I didn’t, which I should do; and also whether I
-should fall or not in the course of the performance,—though I was
-altogether responsible for taking care not to,—I never troubled my head
-more on the matter, from that day to this. But my friends keep buzzing
-and puzzling about it, as if they had to order the course of the world
-themselves; and won’t attend to me for an instant, if I ask why little
-girls have large shoes.
-
-I don’t suppose any man, with a tongue in his head, and zeal to use it,
-was ever left so entirely unattended to, as he grew old, by his early
-friends; and it is doubly and trebly strange to me, because I have lost
-none of my power of sympathy with them. Some are chemists; and I am
-always glad to hear of the last new thing in elements; some are
-palæontologists, and I am no less happy to know of any lately unburied
-beast peculiar in his bones; the lawyers and clergymen can always
-interest me with any story out of their courts or parishes;—but not one
-of them ever asks what I am about myself. If they chance to meet me in
-the streets of Oxford, they ask whether I am staying there. When I say,
-yes, they ask how I like it; and when I tell them I don’t like it at
-all, and don’t think little girls should have large shoes, they tell me
-I ought to read the ‘Cours de Philosophie Positive.’ As if a man who
-had lived to be fifty-four, content with what philosophy was needful to
-assure him that salt was savoury, and pepper hot, could ever be made
-positive in his old age, in the impertinent manner of these youngsters.
-But positive in a pertinent and practical manner, I have been, and
-shall be, with such stern and steady wedge of fact and act as time may
-let me drive into the gnarled blockheadism of the British mob.
-
-I am free to confess I did not quite know the sort of creature I had to
-deal with, when I began, fifteen years ago, nor the quantity of
-ingenious resistance to practical reform which could be offered by
-theoretical reformers. Look, for instance, at this report of a speech
-of Mr. Bright’s in the Times, on the subject of adulteration of food.
-[1]
-
-
-    “The noble lord has taken great pains upon this question, and has
-    brought before the House a great amount of detail in connection
-    with it. As I listened to his observations I hoped and believed
-    that there was, though unintentional, no little exaggeration in
-    them. Although there may be particular cases in which great harm to
-    health and great fraud may possibly be shown, yet I think that
-    general statements of this kind, implicating to a large extent the
-    traders of this country, are dangerous, and are almost certain to
-    be unjust. Now, my hon. friend (Mr. Pochin) who has just addressed
-    the House in a speech showing his entire mastery of the question,
-    has confirmed my opinion, for he has shown—and I dare say he knows
-    as much of the matter as any present—that there is a great deal of
-    exaggeration in the opinions which have prevailed in many parts of
-    the country, and which have even been found to prevail upon the
-    matter in this House.... Now, I am prepared to show that the
-    exaggeration of the noble lord—I do not say intentionally, of
-    course; I am sure he is incapable of that—is just as great in the
-    matter of weights and measures as in that of adulteration. Probably
-    he is not aware that in the list of persons employing weights that
-    are inaccurate—I do not say fraudulent—no distinction is drawn
-    between those who are intentionally fraudulent and those who are
-    accidentally inaccurate, and that the penalty is precisely the
-    same, and the offence is just as eagerly detected, whether there be
-    a fraud or merely an accident. Now, the noble lord will probably be
-    surprised when I tell him that many persons are fined annually, not
-    because their weights are too small, but because they are too
-    large. In fact, when the weights are inaccurate, but are in favour
-    of the customer, still the owner and user of the weight is liable
-    to the penalty, and is fined.... My own impression with regard to
-    this adulteration is that it arises from the very great, and
-    perhaps inevitable, competition in business; and that to a great
-    extent it is promoted by the ignorance of customers. As the
-    ignorance of customers generally is diminishing, we may hope that
-    before long the adulteration of food may also diminish. The noble
-    lord appears to ask that something much more extensive and
-    stringent should be done by Parliament. The fact is, it is vain to
-    attempt by the power of Parliament to penetrate into and to track
-    out evils such as those on which the noble lord has dwelt at such
-    length. It is quite impossible that you should have the oversight
-    of the shops of the country by inspectors, and that you should have
-    persons going into shops to buy sugar, pickles, and Cayenne pepper,
-    to get them analyzed, and then raise complaints against
-    shopkeepers, and bring them before the magistrates. If men in their
-    private businesses were to be tracked by Government officers and
-    inspectors every hour of the day, life would not be worth having,
-    and I recommend them to remove to another country, where they would
-    not be subject to such annoyance.”
-
-
-Now, I neither know, nor does it matter to the public, what Mr. Bright
-actually said; but the report in the Times is the permanent and
-universally influential form of his sayings: and observe what the
-substance is, of these three or four hundred Parliamentary words, so
-reported.
-
-First. That an evil which has been exaggerated ought not to be
-prevented.
-
-Secondly. That at present we punish honest men as much as rogues; and
-must always continue to do so if we punish anybody.
-
-Thirdly. That life would not be worth having if one’s weights and
-measures were liable to inspection.
-
-I can assure Mr. Bright that people who know what life means, can
-sustain the calamity of the inspection of their weights and measures
-with fortitude. I myself keep a tea-and-sugar shop. I have had my
-scales and weights inspected more than once or twice, and am not in the
-least disposed to bid my native land good-night on that account. That I
-could bid it nothing but good-night—never good-morning, the smoke of it
-quenching the sun, and its parliamentary talk, of such quality as the
-above, having become darkness voluble, and some of it worse even than
-that, a mere watchman’s rattle, sprung by alarmed constituencies of
-rascals when an honest man comes in sight,—these are things indeed
-which should make any man’s life little worth having, unless he
-separate himself from the scandalous crowd; but it must not be in exile
-from his country.
-
-I have not hitherto stated, except in general terms, the design to
-which these letters point, though it has been again and again defined,
-and it seems to me explicitly enough—the highest possible education,
-namely, of English men and women living by agriculture in their native
-land. Indeed, during these three past years I have not hoped to do more
-than make my readers feel what mischiefs they have to conquer. It is
-time now to say more clearly what I want them to do.
-
-The substantial wealth of man consists in the earth he cultivates, with
-its pleasant or serviceable animals and plants, and in the rightly
-produced work of his own hands. I mean to buy, for the St. George’s
-Company, the first pieces of ground offered to me at fair price, (when
-the subscriptions enable me to give any price),—to put them as rapidly
-as possible into order, and to settle upon them as many families as
-they can support, of young and healthy persons, on the condition that
-they do the best they can for their livelihood with their own hands,
-and submit themselves and their children to the rules written for them.
-
-I do not care where the land is, nor of what quality. I would rather it
-should be poor, for I want space more than food. I will make the best
-of it that I can, at once, by wage-labour, under the best agricultural
-advice. It is easy now to obtain good counsel, and many of our
-landlords would willingly undertake such operations occasionally, but
-for the fixed notion that every improvement of land should at once pay,
-whereas the St. George’s Company is to be consistently monastic in its
-principles of labour, and to work for the redemption of any desert
-land, without other idea of gain than the certainty of future good to
-others. I should best like a bit of marsh land of small value, which I
-would trench into alternate ridge and canal, changing it all into solid
-land, and deep water, to be farmed in fish. If, instead, I get a rocky
-piece, I shall first arrange reservoirs for rain, then put what earth
-is sprinkled on it into workable masses; and ascertaining, in either
-case, how many mouths the gained spaces of ground will easily feed, put
-upon them families chosen for me by old landlords, who know their
-people, and can send me cheerful and honest ones, accustomed to obey
-orders, and live in the fear of God. Whether the fear be Catholic, or
-Church-of-England, or Presbyterian, I do not in the least care, so that
-the family be capable of any kind of sincere devotion; and conscious of
-the sacredness of order. If any young couples of the higher classes
-choose to accept such rough life, I would rather have them for tenants
-than any others.
-
-Tenants, I say, and at long lease, if they behave well: with power
-eventually to purchase the piece of land they live on for themselves,
-if they can save the price of it; the rent they pay, meanwhile, being
-the tithe of the annual produce, to St. George’s fund. The modes of the
-cultivation of the land are to be under the control of the overseer of
-the whole estate, appointed by the Trustees of the fund; but the
-tenants shall build their own houses to their own minds, under certain
-conditions as to materials and strength; and have for themselves the
-entire produce of the land, except the tithe aforesaid.
-
-The children will be required to attend training schools for bodily
-exercise, and music, with such other education as I have already
-described. Every household will have its library, given it from the
-fund, and consisting of a fixed number of volumes,—some constant, the
-others chosen by each family out of a list of permitted books, from
-which they afterwards may increase their library if they choose. The
-formation of this library for choice, by a republication of classical
-authors in standard forms, has long been a main object with me. No
-newspapers, nor any books but those named in the annually renewed
-lists, are to be allowed in any household. In time I hope to get a
-journal published, containing notice of any really important matters
-taking place in this or other countries, in the closely sifted truth of
-them.
-
-The first essential point in the education given to the children will
-be the habit of instant, finely accurate, and totally unreasoning,
-obedience to their fathers, mothers, and tutors; the same precise and
-unquestioning submission being required from heads of families to the
-officers set over them. The second essential will be the understanding
-of the nature of honour, making the obedience solemn and constant; so
-that the slightest wilful violation of the laws of the society may be
-regarded as a grave breach of trust, and no less disgraceful than a
-soldier’s recoiling from his place in a battle.
-
-In our present state of utter moral disorganization, it might indeed
-seem as if it would be impossible either to secure obedience, or
-explain the sensation of honour; but the instincts of both are native
-in man, and the roots of them cannot wither, even under the dust-heap
-of modern liberal opinions. My settlers, you observe, are to be young
-people, bred on old estates; my commandants will be veteran soldiers;
-and it will be soon perceived that pride based on servitude to the will
-of another is far loftier and happier than pride based on servitude to
-humour of one’s own.
-
-Each family will at first be put on its trial for a year, without any
-lease of the land: if they behave well, they shall have a lease for
-three years; if through that time they satisfy their officers, a
-life-long lease, with power to purchase.
-
-I have already stated that no machines moved by artificial power are to
-be used on the estates of the society; wind, water, and animal force
-are to be the only motive powers employed, and there is to be as little
-trade or importation as possible; the utmost simplicity of life, and
-restriction of possession, being combined with the highest attainable
-refinement of temper and thought. Everything that the members of any
-household can sufficiently make for themselves, they are so to make,
-however clumsily; but the carpenter and smith, trained to perfectest
-work in wood and iron, are to be employed on the parts of houses and
-implements in which finish is essential to strength. The ploughshare
-and spade must be made by the smith, and the roof and floors by a
-carpenter; but the boys of the house must be able to make either a
-horseshoe, or a table.
-
-Simplicity of life without coarseness, and delight in life without
-lasciviousness, are, under such conditions, not only possible to human
-creatures, but natural to them. I do not pretend to tell you
-straightforwardly all laws of nature respecting the conduct of men; but
-some of those laws I know, and will endeavour to get obeyed; others, as
-they are needful, will be in the sequel of such obedience ascertained.
-What final relations may take place between masters and servants,
-labourers and employers, old people and young, useful people and
-useless, in such a society, only experience can conclude; nor is there
-any reason to anticipate the conclusion. Some few things the most
-obstinate will admit, and the least credulous believe: that washed
-faces are healthier than dirty ones, whole clothes decenter than ragged
-ones, kind behaviour more serviceable than malicious, and pure air
-pleasanter than foul. Upon that much of ‘philosophie positive’ I mean
-to act; and, little by little, to define in these letters the processes
-of action. That it should be left to me to begin such a work, with only
-one man in England—Thomas Carlyle—to whom I can look for steady
-guidance, is alike wonderful and sorrowful to me; but as the thing is
-so, I can only do what seems to me necessary, none else coming forward
-to do it. For my own part, I entirely hate the whole business: I
-dislike having either power or responsibility; am ashamed to ask for
-money, and plagued in spending it. I don’t want to talk, nor to write,
-nor to advise or direct anybody. I am far more provoked at being
-thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought
-sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers
-of each is not to my advantage. If I could find any one able to carry
-on the plan instead of me, I never should trouble myself about it more;
-and even now, it is only with extreme effort and chastisement of my
-indolence that I go on: but, unless I am struck with palsy, I do not
-seriously doubt my perseverance, until I find somebody able to take up
-the matter in the same mind, and with a better heart.
-
-The laws required to be obeyed by the families living on the land will
-be,—with some relaxation and modification, so as to fit them for
-English people,—those of Florence in the fourteenth century. In what
-additional rules may be adopted, I shall follow, for the most part,
-Bacon, or Sir Thomas More, under sanction always of the higher
-authority which of late the English nation has wholly set its strength
-to defy—that of the Founder of its Religion; nor without due acceptance
-of what teaching was given to the children of God by their Father,
-before the day of Christ, of which, for present ending, read and attend
-to these following quiet words. [2]
-
-“‘In what point of view, then, and on what ground shall a man be
-profited by injustice or intemperance or other baseness, even though he
-acquire money or power?’
-
-‘There is no ground on which this can be maintained.’
-
-‘What shall he profit if his injustice be undetected? for he who is
-undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and punished has
-the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized; the greater
-element in him is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected and
-ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom, more
-than the body ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength, and
-health, in proportion as the soul is more honourable than the body.’
-
-‘Certainly,’ he said.
-
-‘Will not, then, the man of understanding, gather all that is in him,
-and stretch himself like a bent bow to this aim of life; and, in the
-first place, honour studies which thus chastise and deliver his soul in
-perfection; and despise others?’
-
-‘Clearly,’ he said.
-
-‘In the next place, he will keep under his body, and so far will he be
-from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasure, [3] that he will not
-even first look to bodily health as his main object, nor desire to be
-fair, or strong, or well, unless he is likely thereby to gain
-temperance; but he will be always desirous of preserving the harmony of
-the body for the sake of the concord of the soul?’
-
-‘Certainly,’ he replied, ‘that he will, if he is indeed taught by the
-Muses.’
-
-‘And he will also observe the principle of classing and concord in the
-acquisition of wealth; and will not, because the mob beatify him,
-increase his endless load of wealth to his own infinite harm?’
-
-‘I think not,’ he said.
-
-‘He will look at the city which is within him, and take care to avoid
-any change of his own institutions, such as might arise either from
-abundance or from want; and he will duly regulate his acquisition and
-expense, in so far as he is able?’
-
-‘Very true.’
-
-‘And, for the same reason, he will accept such honours as he deems
-likely to make him a better man; but those which are likely to loosen
-his possessed habit, whether private or public honours, he will avoid?’
-
-‘Then, if this be his chief care, he will not be a politician?’
-
-‘By the dog of Egypt, he will! in the city which is his own, though in
-his native country perhaps not, unless some providential accident
-should occur.’
-
-‘I understand; you speak of that city of which we are the founders, and
-which exists in idea only, for I do not think there is such an one
-anywhere on earth?’
-
-‘In heaven,’ I replied, ‘there is laid up a pattern of such a city; and
-he who desires may behold this, and, beholding, govern himself
-accordingly. But whether there really is, or ever will be, such an one,
-is of no importance to him, for he will act accordingly to the laws of
-that city and of no other?’
-
-‘True,’ he said.”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-It is due to my readers to state my reasons for raising the price, and
-withdrawing the frontispieces, of Fors.
-
-The cessation of the latter has nothing to do with the price. At least,
-for the raised price I could easily afford the plates, and they would
-help the sale; but I cannot spare my good assistant’s time in their
-preparation, and find that, in the existing state of trade, I cannot
-trust other people, without perpetual looking after them; for which I
-have no time myself. Even last year the printing of my Fors
-frontispieces prevented the publication of my Oxford lectures on
-engraving; and it is absolutely necessary that my Oxford work should be
-done rightly, whatever else I leave undone. Secondly, for the rise in
-price. I hold it my duty to give my advice for nothing; but not to
-write it in careful English, and correct press, for nothing. I like the
-feeling of being paid for my true work as much as any other labourer;
-and though I write Fors, not for money, but because I know it to be
-wanted, as I would build a wall against the advancing sea for nothing,
-if I couldn’t be paid for doing it; yet I will have proper pay from the
-harbour-master, if I can get it. As soon as the book gives me and the
-publisher what is right, the surplus shall go to the St. George’s fund.
-The price will not signify ultimately;—sevenpence, or tenpence, or a
-shilling, will be all the same to the public if the book is found
-useful;—but I fix, and mean to keep to, tenpence, because I intend
-striking for use on my farms the pure silver coin called in Florence
-the ‘soldo,’ of which the golden florin was worth twenty; (the soldo
-itself being misnamed from the Roman ‘solidus’) and this soldo will
-represent the Roman denarius, and be worth ten silver pence; and this
-is to be the price of Fors.
-
-Then one further petty reason I have for raising the price. In all my
-dealings with the public, I wish them to understand that my first price
-is my lowest. They may have to pay more; but never a farthing less. And
-I am a little provoked at not having been helped in the least by the
-Working Men’s College, after I taught there for five years, or by any
-of my old pupils there, whom I have lost sight of:—(three remain who
-would always help me in anything,) and I think they will soon begin to
-want Fors, now,—and they shall not have it for sevenpence.
-
-The following three stray newspaper cuttings may as well be printed
-now; they have lain some time by me. The first two relate to economy.
-The last is, I hope, an exaggerated report; and I give it as an example
-of the kind of news which my own journal will not give on hearsay. But
-I know that things did take place in India which were not capable of
-exaggeration in horror, and such are the results, remember, of our past
-missionary work, as a whole, in India and China.
-
-I point to them to-day, in order that I may express my entire
-concurrence in all that I have seen reported of Professor Max Müller’s
-lecture in Westminster Abbey, though there are one or two things I
-should like to say in addition, if I can find time.
-
-
-    “Those who find fault with the present Government on account of its
-    rigid economy, and accuse it of shabbiness, have little idea of the
-    straits it is put to for money and the sacrifices it is obliged to
-    make in order to make both ends meet. The following melancholy
-    facts will serve to show how hardly pushed this great nation is to
-    find sixpence even for a good purpose. The Hakluyt Society was, as
-    some of our readers may know, formed in the year 1846 for the
-    purpose of printing in English for distribution among its members
-    rare and valuable voyages, travels, and geographical records,
-    including the more important early narratives of British
-    enterprise. For many years the Home Office, the Board of Trade, and
-    the Admiralty have been in the habit of subscribing for the
-    publications of this society; and considering that an annual
-    subscription of one guinea entitles each subscriber to receive
-    without further charge a copy of every work produced by the society
-    within the year subscribed for, it can hardly be said that the
-    outlay was ruinous to the Exchequer. But we live in an exceptional
-    period; and accordingly last year the society received a
-    communication from the Board of Trade to the effect that its
-    publications were no longer required. Then the Home Office wrote to
-    say that its subscription must be discontinued, and followed up the
-    communication by another, asking whether it might have a copy of
-    the society’s publications supplied to it gratuitously. Lastly, the
-    Admiralty felt itself constrained by the urgency of the times to
-    reduce its subscription, and asked to have only one instead of two
-    copies annually. It seems rather hard on the Hakluyt Society that
-    the Home Office should beg to have its publications for nothing,
-    and for the sake of appearance it seems advisable that the
-    Admiralty should continue its subscription for two copies, and lend
-    one set to its impoverished brother in Whitehall until the advent
-    of better times.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
-
-
-
-    “We make a present of a suggestion to Professor Beesly, Mr.
-    Frederic Harrison, and the artisans who are calling upon the
-    country to strike a blow for France. They must appoint a Select
-    Committee to see what war really means. Special commissioners will
-    find out for them how many pounds, on an average, have been lost by
-    the families whose breadwinners have gone to Paris with the King,
-    or to Le Mans with Chanzy. Those hunters of facts will also let the
-    working men know how many fields are unsown round Metz and on the
-    Loire. Next, the Select Committee will get an exact return of the
-    killed and wounded from Count Bismarck and M. Gambetta. Some
-    novelist or poet—a George Eliot or a Browning—will then be asked to
-    lavish all the knowledge of human emotion in the painting of one
-    family group out of the half-million which the returns of the
-    stricken will show. That picture will be distributed broadcast
-    among the working men and their wives. Then the Select Committee
-    will call to its aid the statisticians and the political
-    economists—the Leone Levis and the John Stuart Mills. Those
-    authorities will calculate what sum the war has taken from the
-    wages fund of France and Germany; what number of working men it
-    will cast out of employment, or force to accept lower wages, or
-    compel to emigrate.” (I do not often indulge myself in the study of
-    the works of Mr. Levi or Mr. Mill;—but have they really never done
-    anything of this kind hitherto?) “Thus the facts will be brought
-    before the toiling people, solidly, simply, truthfully. Finally,
-    Professor Beesly and Mr. Harrison will call another meeting, will
-    state the results of the investigation, will say, ‘This is the
-    meaning of war,’ and will ask the workmen whether they are prepared
-    to pay the inevitable price of helping Republican France. The
-    answer, we imagine, would at once shock and surprise the scholarly
-    gentlemen to whom the Democrats are indebted for their logic and
-    their rhetoric. Meanwhile Mr. Ruskin and the Council of the
-    Workmen’s National Peace Society have been doing some small measure
-    of the task which we have mapped out. The Council asks the
-    bellicose section of the operative classes a number of questions
-    about the cost and the effect of battles. Some, it is true, are not
-    very cogent, and some are absurd; but, taken together, they press
-    the inquiry whether war pays anybody, and in particular whether it
-    pays the working man. Mr. Ruskin sets forth the truth much more
-    vividly in the letter which appeared in our impression of Thursday.
-    ‘Half the money lost by the inundation of the Tiber,’ etc., (the
-    Telegraph quotes the letter to the end).
-
-    “Before stating what might have been done with the force which has
-    been spent in the work of mutual slaughter, Mr. Ruskin might have
-    explained what good it has undone, and how. Take, first, the
-    destruction of capital. Millions of pounds have been spent on
-    gunpowder, bombs, round shot, cannon, needle guns, chassepôts, and
-    mitrailleuses. But for the war, a great part of the sum would have
-    been expended in the growing of wheat, the spinning of cloth, the
-    building of railway bridges, and the construction of ships. As the
-    political economists say, the amount would have been spent
-    productively, or, to use the plain words of common speech, would
-    have been so used that, directly or indirectly, it would have added
-    to the wealth of the country, and increased the fund to be
-    distributed among the working people. But the wealth has been blown
-    away from the muzzle of the cannon, or scattered among the woods
-    and forts of Paris in the shape of broken shells and dismounted
-    guns. Now, every shot which is fired is a direct loss to the
-    labouring classes of France and Germany. King William on the one
-    side, and General Trochu on the other, really load their guns with
-    gold. They put the wages of the working people into every shell.
-    The splinters of iron that strew the fields represent the pay which
-    would have gone to the farm labourers of Alsace, the mechanics of
-    Paris and Berlin, and the silk weavers of Lyons. If the political
-    economist were some magician, he would command the supernatural
-    agent to transform the broken gun-carriages, the fragments of
-    bombs, and the round shot into loaves of bread, bottles of wine,
-    fields of corn, clothes, houses, cattle, furniture, books, the
-    virtue of women, the health of children, the years of the aged. The
-    whole field would become alive with the forms, the wealth, the
-    beauty, the bustle of great cities. If working men ever saw such a
-    transformation, they would rise up from end to end of Europe, and
-    execrate the King or Emperor who should let loose the dogs of war.
-    And yet such a scene would represent only a small part of the real
-    havoc. For every man whom Germany takes away from the field or the
-    workshop to place in the barrack or the camp, she must sustain as
-    certain a loss as if she were to cast money into the sea. The loss
-    may be necessary as an insurance against still greater injury; but
-    nevertheless the waste does take place, and on the working people
-    does it mainly fall. The young recruit may have been earning thirty
-    shillings a week or a day, and that sum is lost to himself or his
-    friends. Hitherto he has supported himself; now he must be
-    maintained by the State—that is, by his fellow-subjects. Hitherto
-    he has added to the national wealth by ploughing the fields,
-    building houses, constructing railways. A skilful statistician
-    could state, with some approach to accuracy, the number of pounds
-    by which the amount of his yearly productive contribution could be
-    estimated. It might be thirty, or a hundred, or a thousand. Well,
-    he ceases to produce the moment that he becomes a soldier. He is
-    then a drone. He is as unproductive as a pauper. The millions of
-    pounds spent in feeding and drilling the army as clearly represent
-    a dead loss as the millions spent on workhouses. Nor are these the
-    only ways in which war destroys wealth. Hundreds of railway bridges
-    have been broken down; the communications between different parts
-    of the country have been cut off; hundreds of thousands have lost
-    their means of livelihood; and great tracts of country are wasted
-    like a desert. Thus the total destruction of wealth has been
-    appalling. A considerable time ago Professor Leone Levi calculated
-    that Germany alone had lost more than £300,000,000; France must
-    have lost much more; and, even if we make a liberal discount from
-    so tremendous a computation, we may safely say that the war has
-    cost both nations at least half as much as the National Debt of
-    England.
-
-    “A large part of that amount, it is true, would have been spent
-    unproductively, even if the war had not taken place. A vast sum
-    would have been lavished on the luxuries of dress and the table, on
-    the beauties of art, and on the appliances of war. But it is safe
-    to calculate that at least half of the amount would have been so
-    expended as to bring a productive return. Two or three hundred
-    millions would have been at the service of peace; and Mr. Ruskin’s
-    letter points the question, What could have been done with that
-    enormous total? If it were at the disposal of an English statesman
-    as farseeing in peace as Bismarck is in war, what might not be done
-    for the England of the present and the future? The prospect is
-    almost millennial. Harbours of refuge might be built all round the
-    coast; the fever dens of London, Manchester, and Liverpool might
-    give place to abodes of health; the poor children of the United
-    Kingdom might be taught to read and write; great universities might
-    be endowed; the waste lands might be cultivated, and the Bog of
-    Allen drained; the National Debt could be swiftly reduced; and a
-    hundred other great national enterprises would sooner or later be
-    fulfilled. But all this store of human good has been blown away
-    from the muzzles of the Krupps and the chassepôts. It has literally
-    been transformed into smoke. We do not deny that such a waste may
-    be necessary in order to guard against still further destruction.
-    Wars have often been imperative. It would frequently be the height
-    of national wickedness to choose an ignoble peace. Nevertheless war
-    is the most costly and most wasteful of human pursuits. When the
-    working class followers of Professor Beesly ask themselves what is
-    the price of battle, what it represents, and by whom the chief part
-    is paid, they will be better able to respond to the appeal for
-    armed intervention than they were on Tuesday night.”—Daily
-    Telegraph, January 14th, 1871.
-
-
-
-    “The story of the massacre of Tientsin, on the 21st June last, is
-    told in a private letter dated Cheefoo, June 30th, published in
-    Thursday’s Standard, but the signature of which is not given. The
-    horrors narrated are frightful, and remembering how frequently
-    stories of similar horrors in the Mutiny melted away on close
-    investigation,—though but too many were true,—we may hope that the
-    writer, who does not seem to have been in Tientsin at the time, has
-    heard somewhat exaggerated accounts. Yet making all allowances for
-    this, there was evidently horror enough. The first attack was on
-    the French Consul, who was murdered, the Chinese mandarins refusing
-    aid. Then the Consulate was broken open, and two Catholic priests
-    murdered, as well as M. and Madame Thomassin, an attaché to the
-    Legation at Pekin and his bride. Then came the worst part. The mob,
-    acting with regular Chinese soldiers, it is said, whom their
-    officers did not attempt to restrain, attacked the hospital of the
-    French Sisters of Charity, stripped them, exposed them to the mob,
-    plucked out their eyes, mutilated them in other ways, and divided
-    portions of their flesh among the infuriated people, and then set
-    fire to the hospital, in which a hundred orphan children, who were
-    the objects of the sisters’ care, were burnt to death.”—The
-    Spectator, September 3, 1870.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XXXVIII.
-
-
-                                            Herne Hill, December, 1873.
-
-The laws of Florence in the fourteenth century, for us in the
-nineteenth!
-
-Even so, good reader. You have, perhaps, long imagined that the judges
-of Israel, and heroes of Greece, the consuls of Rome, and the dukes of
-Venice, the powers of Florence, and the kings of England, were all
-merely the dim foreshadowings and obscure prophecyings of the advent of
-the Jones and Robinson of the future: demi-gods revealed in your own
-day, whose demi-divine votes, if luckily coincident upon any subject,
-become totally divine, and establish the ordinances thereof, for ever.
-
-You will find it entirely otherwise, gentlemen, whether of the suburb,
-or centre. Laws small and great, for ever unchangeable;—irresistible by
-all the force of Robinson, and unimprovable by finest jurisprudence of
-Jones, have long since been known, and, by wise nations, obeyed. Out of
-the statute books of one of these I begin with an apparently
-unimportant order, but the sway of it cuts deep.
-
-“No person whatsoever shall buy fish, to sell it again, either in the
-market of Florence, or in any markets in the state of Florence.”
-
-It is one of many such laws, entirely abolishing the profession of
-middleman, or costermonger of perishable articles of food, in the city
-of the Lily.
-
-“Entirely abolishing!—nonsense!” thinks your modern commercial worship.
-“Who was to prevent private contract?”
-
-Nobody, my good sir;—there is, as you very justly feel, no power in law
-whatever to prevent private contract. No quantity of laws, penalties,
-or constitutions, can be of the slightest use to a public inherently
-licentious and deceitful. There is no legislation for liars and
-traitors. They cannot be prevented from the pit; the earth finally
-swallows them. They find their level against all embankment—soak their
-way down, irrestrainably, to the gutter grating;—happiest the nation
-that most rapidly so gets rid of their stench. There is no law, I
-repeat, for these, but gravitation. Organic laws can only be
-serviceable to, and in general will only be written by, a public of
-honourable citizens, loyal to their state, and faithful to each other.
-
-The profession of middleman was then, by civic consent, and formal law,
-rendered impossible in Florence with respect to fish. What advantage
-the modern blessed possibility of such mediatorial function brings to
-our hungry multitudes; and how the miraculous draught of fishes, which
-living St. Peter discerns, and often dextrously catches—“the shoals of
-them like shining continents,” (said Carlyle to me, only
-yesterday,)—are by such apostolic succession miraculously diminished,
-instead of multiplied; and, instead of baskets full of fragments taken
-up from the ground, baskets full of whole fish laid down on it, lest
-perchance any hungry person should cheaply eat of the same,—here is a
-pleasant little account for you, by my good and simple clergyman’s
-wife. It would have been better still, if I had not been forced to warn
-her that I wanted it for Fors, which of course took the sparkle out of
-her directly. Here is one little naughty bit of private preface, which
-really must go with the rest. “I have written my little letter about
-the fish trade, and L. says it is all right. I am afraid you won’t
-think there is anything in it worth putting in Fors, as I really know
-very little about it, and absolutely nothing that every one else does
-not know, except ladies, who generally never trouble about anything,
-but scold their cooks, and abuse the fishmongers—when they cannot pay
-the weekly bills easily.” (After this we are quite proper.)
-
-“The poor fishermen who toil all through these bitter nights, and the
-retail dealer who carries heavy baskets, or drags a truck so many weary
-miles along the roads, get but a poor living out of their labour; but
-what are called ‘fish salesmen,’ who by reason of their command of
-capital keep entire command of the London markets are making enormous
-fortunes.
-
-“When you ask the fishermen why they do not manage better for
-themselves at the present demand for fish, they explain how helpless
-they are in the hands of what they call ‘the big men.’ Some fishermen
-at Aldborough, who have a boat of their own, told my brother that one
-season, when the sea seemed full of herrings, they saw in the
-newspapers how dear they were in London, and resolved to make a venture
-on their own account; so they spent all their available money in the
-purchase of a quantity of the right sort of baskets, and, going out to
-sea, filled them all,—putting the usual five hundred lovely fresh fish
-in each,—sent them straight up to London by train, to the charge of a
-salesman they knew of, begging him to send them into the market and do
-the best he could for them. But he was very angry with the fishermen;
-and wrote them word that the market was quite sufficiently stocked;
-that if more fish were sent in, the prices would go down; that he
-should not allow their fish to be sold at all; and, if they made a fuss
-about it, he would not send their baskets back, and would make them pay
-the carriage. As it was, he returned them, after a time; but the poor
-men never received one farthing for their thousands of nice fish, and
-only got a scolding for having dared to try and do without the agents,
-who buy the fish from the boats at whatever price they choose to settle
-amongst themselves.
-
-“When we were at Yarmouth this autumn, the enormous abundance of
-herrings on the fish quay was perfectly wonderful; it must be, (I
-should think,) two hundred yards long, and is capable of accommodating
-the unloading of a perfect fleet of boats. The ‘swills,’ as they call
-the baskets, each containing five hundred fish, were side by side,
-touching each other, all over this immense space, and men were
-shovelling salt about, with spades, over heaps of fish, previous to
-packing at once in boxes. I said, ‘How surprised our poor people would
-be to see such a sight, after constantly being obliged to pay
-three-halfpence for every herring they buy.’ An old fisherman answered
-me, saying, ‘No one need pay that, ma’am, if we could get the fish to
-them; we could have plenty more boats, and plenty more fish, if we
-could have them taken where the poor people could get them.’ We brought
-home a hundred dried herrings, for which we paid ten shillings; when we
-asked if we might buy some lovely mackerel on the Fish Quay, they said,
-(the fishermen,) that they were not allowed to sell them there, except
-all at once. Since then, I have read an account of a Royal Commission
-having been investigating the subject of the fishery for some time
-past, and the result of its inquiries seems to prove that it is
-inexhaustible, and that in the North Sea it is always harvest-time. [4]
-
-“When I told our fishmonger all about it, he said I was quite right
-about the ‘big men’ in London, and added, ‘They will not let us have
-the fish under their own prices; and if it is so plentiful that they
-cannot sell it all at that, they have it thrown away, or carted off for
-manure; sometimes sunk in the river. If we could only get it here, my
-trade would be twice what it is, for, except sprats, the poor can
-seldom buy fish now.’
-
-“I asked him if the new Columbia Market was of no use in making things
-easier, but he said, ‘No;’ that these salesmen had got that into their
-hands also; and were so rich that they would keep any number of markets
-in their own hands. A few hundred pounds sacrificed any day to keep up
-the prices they think well worth their while.”
-
-What do you think of that, by way of Free-trade?—my
-British-never-never-never-will-be-slaves,—hey? Free-trade; and the
-Divine Law of Supply and Demand; and the Sacred Necessity of
-Competition, and what not;—and here’s a meek little English housewife
-who can’t get leave, on her bended knees, from Sultan Costermonger, to
-eat a fresh herring at Yarmouth! and must pay three-halfpence apiece,
-for his leave to eat them anywhere;—and you, you simpletons—Fishermen,
-indeed!—Cod’s heads and shoulders, say rather,—meekly receiving back
-your empty baskets; your miracle of loaves and fishes executed for you
-by the Costermongering Father of the Faithful, in that thimblerig
-manner!
-
-“But haven’t you yourself been hard against competition, till now? and
-haven’t you always wanted to regulate prices?”
-
-Yes, my good SS. Peter and Andrew!—very certainly I want to regulate
-prices; and very certainly I will, as to such things as I sell, or have
-the selling of. I should like to hear of anybody’s getting this letter
-for less than tenpence!—and if you will send me some fish to sell for
-you, perhaps I may even resolve that they shall be sold at twopence
-each, or else made manure of,—like these very costermongers; but the
-twopence shall go into your pockets—not mine; which you will find a
-very pleasant and complete difference in principle between his Grace
-the Costermonger and me; and, secondly, if I raise the price of a
-herring to twopence, it will be because I know that people have been in
-some way misusing them, or wasting them; and need to get fewer for a
-time; or will eat twopenny herrings at fashionable tables, (when they
-wouldn’t touch halfpenny ones,) and so give the servants no reason to
-turn up their noses at them. [5] I may have twenty such good reasons
-for fixing the price of your fish; but not one of them will be his
-Grace the Costermonger’s. All that I want you to see is, not only the
-possibility of regulating prices, but the fact that they are now
-regulated, and regulated by rascals, while all the world is bleating
-out its folly about Supply and Demand.
-
-“Still, even in your way, you would be breaking the laws of Florence,
-anyhow, and buying to sell again?” Pardon me: I should no more buy your
-fish than a butcher’s boy buys his master’s mutton. I should simply
-carry your fish for you where I knew it was wanted; being as utterly
-your servant in the matter as if I were one of your own lads sent
-dripping up to the town with basket on back. And I should be paid, as
-your servant, so much wages; (not commission, observe,) making bargains
-far away for you, and many another Saunders Mucklebackit, just as your
-wife makes them, up the hill at Monkbarns; and no more buying the fish,
-to sell again, than she.
-
-“Well, but where could we get anybody to do this?”
-
-Have you no sons then?—or, among them, none whom you can take from the
-mercy of the sea, and teach to serve you mercifully on the land?
-
-It is not that way, however, that the thing will be done. It must be
-done for you by gentlemen. They may stagger on perhaps a year or two
-more in their vain ways; but the day must come when your poor little
-honest puppy, whom his people have been wanting to dress up in a
-surplice, and call, “The to be Feared,” that he might have pay enough,
-by tithe or tax, to marry a pretty girl, and live in a parsonage,—some
-poor little honest wretch of a puppy, I say, will eventually get it
-into his glossy head that he would be incomparably more reverend to
-mortals, and acceptable to St. Peter and all Saints, as a true monger
-of sweet fish, than a false fisher for rotten souls; and that his wife
-would be incomparably more ‘lady-like’—not to say Madonna-like—marching
-beside him in purple stockings and sabots—or even frankly barefoot—with
-her creel full of caller herring on her back, than in administering any
-quantity of Ecclesiastical scholarship to her Sunday-schools.
-
-“How dreadful—how atrocious!”—thinks the tender clerical lover. “My
-wife walk with a fish-basket on her back!”
-
-Yes, you young scamp, your’s. You were going to lie to the Holy Ghost,
-then, were you, only that she might wear satin slippers and be called a
-‘lady’? Suppose, instead of fish, I were to ask her and you to carry
-coals. Have you ever read your Bible carefully enough to wonder where
-Christ got them from, to make His fire, (when he was so particular
-about St. Peter’s dinner, and St. John’s)? Or if I asked you to be
-hewers of wood, and drawers of water;—would that also seem intolerable
-to you? My poor clerical friends, God was never more in the burning
-bush of Sinai than He would be in every crackling faggot (cut with your
-own hands) that you warmed a poor hearth with: nor did that woman of
-Samaria ever give Him to drink more surely than you may, from every
-stream and well in this your land, that you can keep pure.
-
-20th Dec.—To hew wood—to draw water;—you think these base businesses,
-do you? and that you are noble, as well as sanctified, in binding
-faggot-burdens on poor men’s backs, which you will not touch with your
-own fingers;—and in preaching the efficacy of baptism inside the
-church, by yonder stream (under the first bridge of the Seven Bridge
-Road here at Oxford,) while the sweet waters of it are choked with dust
-and dung, within ten fathoms from your font;—and in giving benediction
-with two fingers and your thumb, of a superfine quality, to the Marquis
-of B.? Honester benediction, and more efficacious, can be had cheaper,
-gentlemen, in the existing market. Under my own system of regulating
-prices, I gave an Irishwoman twopence yesterday for two oranges, of
-which fruit—under pressure of competition—she was ready to supply me
-with three for a penny. “The Lord Almighty take you to eternal glory!”
-said she.
-
-You lawyers, also,—distributors, by your own account, of the quite
-supreme blessing of Justice,—you are not so busily eloquent in her
-cause but that some of your sweet voices might be spared to
-Billingsgate, though the river air might take the curl out of your
-wigs, and so diminish that æsthetic claim which, as aforesaid, you
-still hold on existence. But you will bring yourselves to an end
-soon,—wigs and all,—unless you think better of it.
-
-I will dismiss at once, in this letter, the question of regulation of
-prices, and return to it no more, except in setting down detailed law.
-
-Any rational group of persons, large or small, living in war or peace,
-will have its commissariat;—its officers for provision of food. Famine
-in a fleet, or an army, may sometimes be inevitable; but in the event
-of national famine, the officers of the commissariat should be starved
-the first. God has given to man corn, wine, cheese, and honey, all
-preservable for a number of years;—filled His seas with inexhaustible
-salt, and incalculable fish; filled the woods with beasts, the winds
-with birds, and the fields with fruit. Under these circumstances, the
-stupid human brute stands talking metaphysics, and expects to be fed by
-the law of Supply and Demand. I do not say that I shall always succeed
-in regulating prices, or quantities, absolutely to my mind; but in the
-event of any scarcity of provision, rich tables shall be served like
-the poorest, and—we will see.
-
-The price of every other article will be founded on the price of food.
-The price of what it takes a day to produce, will be a day’s
-maintenance; of what it takes a week to produce, a week’s
-maintenance,—such maintenance being calculated according to the
-requirements of the occupation, and always with a proportional surplus
-for saving.
-
-“How am I to know exactly what a day’s maintenance is?” I don’t want to
-know exactly. I don’t know exactly how much dinner I ought to eat; but,
-on the whole, I eat enough, and not too much. And I shall not know
-‘exactly’ how much a painter ought to have for a picture. It may be a
-pound or two under the mark—a pound or two over. On the average it will
-be right,—that is to say, his decent keep [6] during the number of
-days’ work that are properly accounted for in the production.
-
-“How am I to hinder people from giving more if they like?”
-
-People whom I catch doing as they like will generally have to leave the
-estate.
-
-“But how is it to be decided to which of two purchasers, each willing
-to give its price, and more, anything is to belong?”
-
-In various ways, according to the nature of the thing sold, and
-circumstances of sale. Sometimes by priority; sometimes by privilege;
-sometimes by lot; and sometimes by auction, at which whatever excess of
-price, above its recorded value, the article brings, shall go to the
-national treasury. So that nobody will ever buy anything to make a
-profit on it.
-
-11th January, 1874.—Thinking I should be the better of a look at the
-sea, I have come down to an old watering-place, where one used to be
-able to get into a decent little inn, and possess one’s self of a
-parlour with a bow window looking out on the beach, a pretty carpet,
-and a print or two of revenue cutters, and the Battle of the Nile. One
-could have a chop and some good cheese for dinner; fresh cream and
-cresses for breakfast, and a plate of shrimps.
-
-I find myself in the Umfraville Hotel, a quarter of a mile long by a
-furlong deep; in a ghastly room, five-and-twenty feet square, and
-eighteen high,—that is to say, just four times as big as I want, and
-which I can no more light with my candles in the evening than I could
-the Peak cavern. A gas apparatus in the middle of it serves me to knock
-my head against, but I take good care not to light it, or I should soon
-be stopped from my evening’s work by a headache, and be unfit for my
-morning’s business besides. The carpet is threadbare, and has the look
-of having been spat upon all over. There is only one window, of four
-huge panes of glass, through which one commands a view of a plaster
-balcony, some ornamental iron railings, an esplanade,—and,—well, I
-suppose,—in the distance, that is really the sea, where it used to be.
-I am ashamed to ask for shrimps,—not that I suppose I could get any if
-I did. There’s no cream, “because, except in the season, we could only
-take so small a quanity, sir.” The bread’s stale, because it’s Sunday;
-and the cheese, last night, was of the cheapest tallow sort. The bill
-will be at least three times my old bill;—I shall get no thanks from
-anybody for paying it;—and this is what the modern British public
-thinks is “living in style.” But the most comic part of all the
-improved arrangements is that I can only have codlings for dinner,
-because all the cod goes to London, and none of the large fishing-boats
-dare sell a fish, here.
-
-And now but a word or two more, final, as to the fixed price of this
-book.
-
-A sensible and worthy tradesman writes to me in very earnest terms of
-expostulation, blaming me for putting the said book out of the reach of
-most of the persons it is meant for, and asking me how I can except,
-for instance, the working men round him (in Lancashire),—who have been
-in the habit of strictly ascertaining that they have value for their
-money,—to buy, for tenpence, what they know might be given them for
-twopence-halfpenny.
-
-Answer first:
-
-My book is meant for no one who cannot reach it. If a man with all the
-ingenuity of Lancashire in his brains, and breed of Lancashire in his
-body; with all the steam and coal power in Lancashire to back his
-ingenuity and muscle; all the press of literary England vomiting the
-most valuable information at his feet; with all the tenderness of
-charitable England aiding him in his efforts, and ministering to his
-needs; with all the liberality of republican Europe rejoicing in his
-dignities as a man and a brother; and with all the science of
-enlightened Europe directing his opinions on the subject of the
-materials of the Sun, and the origin of his species; if, I say, a man
-so circumstanced, assisted, and informed, living besides in the richest
-country of the globe, and, from his youth upwards, having been in the
-habit of ‘seeing that he had value for his money,’ cannot, as the
-upshot and net result of all, now afford to pay me tenpence a month—or
-an annual half-sovereign, for my literary labour,—in Heaven’s name, let
-him buy the best reading he can for twopence-halfpenny. For that sum, I
-clearly perceive he can at once provide himself with two penny
-illustrated newspapers and one halfpenny one,—full of art, sentiment,
-and the Tichborne trial. He can buy a quarter of the dramatic works of
-Shakspeare, or a whole novel of Sir Walter Scott’s. Good value for his
-money, he thinks!—reads one of them through, and in all probability
-loses some five years of the eyesight of his old age; which he does
-not, with all his Lancashire ingenuity, reckon as part of the price of
-his cheap book. But how has he read? There is an act of Midsummer
-Night’s Dream printed in a page. Steadily and dutifully, as a student
-should, he reads his page. The lines slip past his eyes, and mind, like
-sand in an hour-glass; he has some dim idea at the end of the act that
-he has been reading about Fairies, and Flowers, and Asses. Does he know
-what a Fairy is? Certainly not. Does he know what a flower is? He has
-perhaps never seen one wild, or happy, in his life. Does he even
-know—quite distinctly, inside and out—what an Ass is?
-
-But, answer second. Whether my Lancashire friends need any aid to their
-discernment of what is good or bad in literature, I do not know;—but I
-mean to give them the best help I can; and, therefore, not to allow
-them to have for twopence what I know to be worth tenpence. For here is
-another law of Florence, still concerning fish, which is transferable
-at once to literature.
-
-“Eel of the lake shall be sold for three soldi a pound; and eel of the
-common sort for a soldo and a half.”
-
-And eel of a bad sort was not allowed to be sold at all.
-
-“Eel of the lake,” I presume, was that of the Lake of Bolsena; Pope
-Martin IV. died of eating too many, in spite of their high price. You
-observe I do not reckon my Fors Eel to be of Bolsena; I put it at the
-modest price of a soldo a pound, or English tenpence. One cannot be
-precise in such estimates;—one can only obtain rude approximations.
-Suppose, for instance, you read the Times newspaper for a week, from
-end to end; your aggregate of resultant useful information will
-certainly not be more than you may get out of a single number of Fors.
-But your Times for the week will cost you eighteenpence.
-
-You borrow the Times? Borrow this then; till the days come when English
-people cease to think they can live by lending, or learn by borrowing.
-
-I finish with copy of a bit of a private letter to the editor of an
-honestly managed country newspaper, who asked me to send him Fors.
-
-“I find it—on examining the subject for these last three years very
-closely—necessary to defy the entire principle of advertisement; and to
-make no concession of any kind whatsoever to the public press—even in
-the minutest particular. And this year I cease sending Fors to any
-paper whatsoever. It must be bought by every one who has it, editor or
-private person.
-
-“If there are ten people in —— willing to subscribe a penny each for
-it, you can see it in turn; by no other means can I let it be seen.
-From friend to friend, or foe to foe, It must make its own way, or
-stand still, abiding its time.”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-The following bit of a private letter to a good girl belonging to the
-upper classes may be generally useful; so I asked her to copy it for
-Fors.
-
-
-                                                        “January, 1874.
-
-    “Now mind you dress always charmingly; it is the first duty of a
-    girl to be charming, and she cannot be charming if she is not
-    charmingly dressed.
-
-    “And it is quite the first of firsts in the duties of girls in high
-    position, nowadays, to set an example of beautiful dress without
-    extravagance,—that is to say, without waste, or unnecessary
-    splendour.
-
-    “On great occasions they may be a blaze of jewels, if they like,
-    and can; but only when they are part of a great show or ceremony.
-    In their daily life, and ordinary social relations, they ought at
-    present to dress with marked simplicity, to put down the curses of
-    luxury and waste which are consuming England.
-
-    “Women usually apologize to themselves for their pride and vanity,
-    by saying, ‘It is good for trade.’
-
-    “Now you may soon convince yourself, and everybody about you, of
-    the monstrous folly of this, by a very simple piece of definite
-    action.
-
-    “Wear, yourself, becoming, pleasantly varied, but simple dress, of
-    the best possible material.
-
-    “What you think necessary to buy (beyond this) ‘for the good of
-    trade,’ buy, and immediately burn.
-
-    “Even your dullest friends will see the folly of that proceeding.
-    You can then explain to them that by wearing what they don’t want
-    (instead of burning it) for the good of trade, they are merely
-    adding insolence and vulgarity to absurdity.”
-
-
-I am very grateful to the writer of the following letters for his
-permission to print the portions of them bearing on our work. The first
-was written several years ago.
-
-
-    “Now, my dear friend, I don’t know why I should intrude what I now
-    want to say about my little farm, which you disloyally dare to call
-    a kingdom, but that I know you do feel an interest in such things;
-    whereas I find not one in a hundred does care a jot for the moral
-    influence and responsibilities of landowners, or for those who live
-    out of it, and by the sweat of the brow for them and their own
-    luxuries which pamper them, whilst too often their tenants starve,
-    and the children die of want and fever.
-
-    “One of the most awful things I almost ever heard was from the lips
-    of a clergyman, near B——, when asked what became of the children,
-    by day, of those mothers employed in mills. He said, ‘Oh, I take
-    care of them; they are brought to me, and I lay them in the
-    churchyard.’ Poor lambs! What a flock!
-
-    “But now for my little kingdom,—the royalties of which, by the way,
-    still go to the Duke of Devonshire, as lord of the minerals under
-    the earth.
-
-    “It had for many years been a growing dream and desire of mine
-    (whether right or wrong I do not say) to possess a piece of God’s
-    earth, be it only a rock or a few acres of land, with a few people
-    to live out of and upon it. Well, my good father had an estate
-    about four miles across, embracing the whole upper streams and head
-    of ——dale, some twelve hundred feet above the sea, and lifted thus
-    far away above the din and smoke of men, surrounded by higher
-    hills, the grassy slopes of Ingleborough and Carn Fell. It was a
-    waste moorland, with a few sheep farms on it, undivided, held in
-    common,—a few small enclosures of grass and flowers, taken off at
-    the time of the Danes, retaining Danish names and farm usages,—a
-    few tenements, built by that great and noble Lady Anne Clifford,
-    two hundred years ago; in which dwelt honest, sturdy, great-hearted
-    English men and women, as I think this land knows.
-
-    “Well, this land my father made over by deed of gift to me,
-    reserving to himself the rents for life, but granting to me full
-    liberty to ‘improve’ and lay out what I pleased; charged also with
-    the maintenance of a schoolmaster for the little school-house I
-    built in memory of my late wife, who loved the place and people.
-    With this arrangement I was well pleased, and at once began to
-    enclose and drain, and, on Adam Smith principle, make two blades of
-    grass grow where one grew before. This has gone on for some years,
-    affording labour to the few folks there, and some of their
-    neighbours. Of the prejudices of the old farmers, the less said the
-    better; and as to the prospective increased value of rental, I may
-    look, at least, for my five per cent., may I not? I am well repaid,
-    at present, by the delight gained to me in wandering over this
-    little Arcady, where I fancy at times I still hear the strains of
-    the pipe of the shepherd Lord Clifford of Cumberland, blending with
-    the crow of the moor-fowl, the song of the lark, and cry of the
-    curlew, the bleating of sheep, and heaving and dying fall of the
-    many waters. To think of all this, and yet men prefer the din of
-    war or commercial strife! It is so pleasant a thing to know all the
-    inhabitants, and all their little joys and woes,—like one of your
-    bishops; and to be able to apportion them their work. Labour,
-    there, is not accounted degrading work; even stone-breaking for the
-    roads is not pauper’s work, and a test of starvation, but taken
-    gladly by tenant farmers to occupy spare time; for I at once set to
-    work to make roads, rude bridges, plantations of fir-trees, and of
-    oak and birch, which once flourished there, as the name signifies.
-
-    “I am now laying out some thousands of pounds in draining and
-    liming, and killing out the Alpine flowers, which you tell me [7]
-    is not wrong to do, as God has reserved other gardens for them,
-    though I must say not one dies without a pang to me; yet I see
-    there springs up the fresh grass, the daisy, the primrose—the life
-    of growing men and women, the source of labour and of happiness;
-    God be thanked if one does even a little to attain that for one’s
-    fellows, either for this world or the next!
-
-    “How I wish you could see them on our one day’s feast and holiday,
-    when all—as many as will come from all the country round—are
-    regaled with a hearty Yorkshire tea at the Hall, as they will call
-    a rough mullioned-windowed house I built upon a rock rising from
-    the river’s edge. The children have their games, and then all join
-    in a missionary meeting, to hear something of their
-    fellow-creatures who live in other lands; the little ones gather
-    their pennies to support and educate a little Indian school child;
-    [8] this not only for sentiment, but to teach a care for others
-    near home and far off.
-
-    “The place is five miles from church, and, happily, as far from a
-    public-house, though still, I grieve to say, drink is the one
-    failing of these good people, mostly arising from the want of full
-    occupation.
-
-    “You speak of mining as servile work: why so? Hugh Miller was a
-    quarryman, and I know an old man who has wrought coal for me in a
-    narrow seam, lying on his side to work, who has told me that in
-    winter time he had rather work thus than sit over his fireside; [9]
-    he is quiet and undisturbed, earns his bread, and is a man not
-    without reflection. Then there is the smith, an artist in his way,
-    and loves his work too; and as to the quarrymen and masons, they
-    are some of the merriest fellows I know: they come five or six
-    miles to work, knitting stockings as they walk along.
-
-    “I must just allude to one social feature which is pleasant,—that
-    is, the free intercourse, without familiarity, or loss of respect
-    for master and man. The farmer or small landowner sits at the same
-    table at meals with the servants, yet the class position of yeoman
-    or labourer is fully maintained, and due respect shown to the
-    superior, and almost royal worship to the lord of the soil, if he
-    is in anywise a good landlord. Now, is England quite beyond all
-    hope, when such things exist here, in this nineteenth century of
-    machine-made life? I know not why, I say again, I should inflict
-    all this about self upon you, except that I have a hobby, and I
-    love it, and so fancy others must do so too.
-
-
-        “Forgive me this, and believe me always,
-
-            “Yours affectionately.”
-
-
-
-                                                    “5th January, 1874.
-
-    “My dear Mr. Ruskin,—I have just come from an old Tudor house in
-    Leicestershire, which tells of happier days in some ways than our
-    own. It was once the Grange of St. Mary’s Abbey; where rent and
-    service were paid and done in kind. When there, I wished I could
-    have gone a few miles with you to St. Bernard’s Monastery in
-    Charnwood Forest; there you would see what somewhat resembles your
-    St. George’s land, only without the family and domestic
-    features—certainly most essential to the happiness of a people.
-    [10] But there you may see rich well-kept fields and gardens, where
-    thirty years ago was nothing but wild moorland and granite tors on
-    the hill ridges.
-
-    “The Cross of Calvary rises now on the highest rock; below are
-    gardens and fields, all under the care and labour (happy labour it
-    seems) of the Silent Brothers, [11] and a reformatory for boys.
-    There is still much waste land adjoining. The spot is central,
-    healthy, and as yet unoccupied: it really seems to offer itself to
-    you. There, too, is space, pure air and water, and quarries of
-    slate and granite, etc., for the less skilled labour.
-
-    “Well, you ask if the dalesmen of Yorkshire rise to a vivid state
-    of contented life and love of the pretty things of heaven and
-    earth. They have a rough outside, at times hard to penetrate; but
-    when you do, there is a warm heart, but not much culture, although
-    a keen value of manly education, and their duty to God and man.
-    Apart from the vanities of the so-called ‘higher education,’ their
-    calling is mostly out of doors, in company with sheep and cattle;
-    the philosophy of their minds often worthy of the Shepherd
-    Lord,—not much sight for the beauties of Nature beyond its uses. I
-    CAN say their tastes are not low nor degraded by literature of the
-    daily press, etc. I have known them for twenty years, have stood
-    for hours beside them at work, building or draining, and I never
-    heard one foul or coarse word. In sickness, both man and woman are
-    devoted. They have, too, a reverence for social order and ‘Divine
-    Law,’—familiar without familiarity. This even pervades their own
-    class or sub-classes;—for instance, although farmers and their
-    families, and workpeople and servants, all sit at the same table,
-    it is a rare thing for a labourer to presume to ask in marriage a
-    farmer’s daughter. Their respect to landlords is equally shown. As
-    a specimen of their politics, I may instance this;—to a man at the
-    county election they voted for Stuart Wortley, ‘because he bore a
-    well-known Yorkshire name, and had the blood of a gentleman.’
-
-    “As to hardships, I see none beyond those incident to their
-    calling, in snow-storms, etc. You never see a child unshod or
-    ill-clad. Very rarely do they allow a relative to receive aid from
-    the parish.
-
-    “I tried a reading club for winter evenings, but found they liked
-    their own fireside better. Happily, there is, in my part, no
-    public-house within six miles; still I must say drink is the vice
-    of some. In winter they have much leisure time, in which there is a
-    good deal of card-playing. Still some like reading; and we have
-    among them now a fair lot of books, mostly from the Pure Literature
-    Society. They are proud and independent, and, as you say, must be
-    dealt with cautiously. Everywhere I see much might be done. Yet on
-    the whole, when compared with the town life of men, one sees little
-    to amend. There is a pleasant and curious combination of work.
-    Mostly all workmen,—builders (i.e. wallers), carpenters, smiths,
-    etc.,—work a little farm as well as follow their own craft; this
-    gives wholesome occupation as well as independence, and almost
-    realizes Sir T. More’s Utopian plan. There is contented life of
-    men, women, and children,—happy in their work and joyful in
-    prospect: what could one desire further, if each be full according
-    to his capacity and refinement?
-
-    “You ask what I purpose to do further, or leave untouched. I desire
-    to leave untouched some 3,000 acres of moor-land needed for their
-    sheep, serviceable for peat fuel, freedom of air and mind and body,
-    and the growth of all the lovely things of moss and heather.
-    Wherever land is capable of improvement, I hold it is a grave
-    responsibility until it is done. You must come and look for
-    yourself some day.
-
-    “I enclose a cheque for ten guineas for St. George’s Fund, with my
-    best wishes for this new year.
-
-        “Ever yours affectionately.”
-
-
-I have questioned one or two minor points in my friend’s letters; but
-on the whole, they simply describe a piece of St. George’s old England,
-still mercifully left,—and such as I hope to make even a few pieces
-more, again; conquering them out of the Devil’s new England.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XXXIX.
-
-
-On a foggy forenoon, two or three days ago, I wanted to make my way
-quickly from Hengler’s Circus to Drury Lane Theatre, without losing
-time which might be philosophically employed; and therefore afoot, for
-in a cab I never can think of anything but how the driver is to get
-past whatever is in front of him.
-
-On foot, then, I proceeded, and accordingly by a somewhat complex
-diagonal line, to be struck, as the stars might guide me, between
-Regent Circus and Covent Garden. I have never been able, by the way, to
-make any coachman understand that such diagonals were not always
-profitable. Coachmen, as far as I know them, always possess just enough
-geometry to feel that the hypothenuse is shorter than the two sides,
-but I never yet could get one to see that an hypothenuse constructed of
-cross streets in the manner of the line A C, had no advantage, in the
-matter of distance to be traversed, over the simple thoroughfares A B,
-B C, while it involved the loss of the momentum of the carriage, and a
-fresh start for the cattle, at seventeen corners instead of one, not to
-mention the probability of a block at half a dozen of them, none the
-less frequent since underground railways, and more difficult to get out
-of, in consequence of the increasing discourtesy and diminishing
-patience of all human creatures.
-
-Now here is just one of the pieces of practical geometry and dynamics
-which a modern schoolmaster, exercising his pupils on the positions of
-letters in the word Chillianwallah, would wholly despise. Whereas, in
-St. George’s schools, it shall be very early learned, on a square and
-diagonal of actual road, with actual loaded wheelbarrow—first
-one-wheeled, and pushed; and secondly, two-wheeled, and pulled. And
-similarly, every bit of science the children learn shall be directly
-applied by them, and the use of it felt, which involves the truth of it
-being known in the best possible way, and without any debating thereof.
-And what they cannot apply they shall not be troubled to know. I am not
-the least desirous that they should know so much even of the sun as
-that it stands still, (if it does). They may remain, for anything I
-care, under the most simple conviction that it gets up every morning
-and goes to bed every night; but they shall assuredly possess the
-applicable science of the hour it gets up at, and goes to bed at, on
-any day of the year, because they will have to regulate their own
-gettings up and goings to bed upon those solar proceedings.
-
-Well, to return to Regent Street. Being afoot, I took the complex
-diagonal, because by wise regulation of one’s time and angle of
-crossing, one may indeed move on foot in an economically drawn line,
-provided one does not miss its main direction. As it chanced, I took my
-line correctly enough; but found so much to look at and think of on the
-way, that I gained no material advantage. First, I could not help
-stopping to consider the metaphysical reasons of the extreme gravity
-and self-abstraction of Archer Street. Then I was delayed a while in
-Prince’s Street, Soho, wondering what Prince it had belonged to. Then I
-got through Gerrard Street into Little Newport Street; and came there
-to a dead pause, to think why, in these days of division of mechanical
-labour, there should be so little space for classification of
-commodities, as to require oranges, celery, butchers’ meat, cheap
-hosiery, soap, and salt fish, to be all sold in the same alley.
-
-Some clue to the business was afforded me by the sign of the ‘Hotel de
-l’Union des Peuples’ at the corner, “bouillon et bœuf à emporter;” but
-I could not make out why, in spite of the union of people, the
-provision merchant at the opposite corner had given up business, and
-left his house with all its upper windows broken, and its door nailed
-up. Finally, I was stopped at the corner of Cranbourne Street by a sign
-over a large shop advising me to buy some “screwed boots and shoes.” I
-am too shy to go in and ask, on such occasions, what screwed boots are,
-or at least too shy to come out again without buying any, if the people
-tell me politely, and yet I couldn’t get the question what such things
-may be out of my head, and nearly got run over in consequence, before
-attaining the Arcadian shelter of Covent Garden. I was but just in time
-to get my tickets for Jack in the Box, on the day I wanted, and put
-them carefully in the envelope with those I had been just securing at
-Hengler’s for my fifth visit to Cinderella. For indeed, during the last
-three weeks, the greater part of my available leisure has been spent
-between Cinderella and Jack in the Box; with this curious result upon
-my mind, that the intermediate scenes of Archer Street and Prince’s
-Street, Soho, have become to me merely as one part of the drama, or
-pantomime, which I happen to have seen last; or, so far as the
-difference in the appearance of men and things may compel me to admit
-some kind of specific distinction, I begin to ask myself, Which is the
-reality, and which the pantomime? Nay, it appears to me not of much
-moment which we choose to call Reality. Both are equally real; and the
-only question is whether the cheerful state of things which the
-spectators, especially the youngest and wisest, entirely applaud and
-approve at Hengler’s and Drury Lane, must necessarily be interrupted
-always by the woful interlude of the outside world.
-
-It is a bitter question to me, for I am myself now, hopelessly, a man
-of the world!—of that woful outside one, I mean. It is now Sunday;
-half-past eleven in the morning. Everybody about me is gone to church
-except the kind cook, who is straining a point of conscience to provide
-me with dinner. Everybody else is gone to church, to ask to be made
-angels of, and profess that they despise the world and the flesh, which
-I find myself always living in, (rather, perhaps, living, or
-endeavouring to live, in too little of the last). And I am left alone
-with the cat, in the world of sin.
-
-But I scarcely feel less an outcast when I come out of the Circus, on
-week days, into my own world of sorrow. Inside the Circus, there have
-been wonderful Mr. Edward Cooke, and pretty Mademoiselle Aguzzi, and
-the three brothers Leonard, like the three brothers in a German story,
-and grave little Sandy, and bright and graceful Miss Hengler, all doing
-the most splendid feats of strength, and patience, and skill. There
-have been dear little Cinderella and her Prince, and all the pretty
-children beautifully dressed, taught thoroughly how to behave, and how
-to dance, and how to sit still, and giving everybody delight that looks
-at them; whereas, the instant I come outside the door, I find all the
-children about the streets ill-dressed, and ill-taught, and
-ill-behaved, and nobody cares to look at them. And then, at Drury Lane,
-there’s just everything I want people to have always, got for them, for
-a little while; and they seem to enjoy them just as I should expect
-they would. Mushroom Common, with its lovely mushrooms, white and gray,
-so finely set off by the incognita fairy’s scarlet cloak; the golden
-land of plenty with furrow and sheath; Buttercup Green, with its flock
-of mechanical sheep, which the whole audience claps because they are of
-pasteboard, as they do the sheep in Little Red Riding Hood because they
-are alive; but in either case, must have them on the stage in order to
-be pleased with them, and never clap when they see the creatures in a
-field outside. They can’t have enough, any more than I can, of the
-loving duet between Tom Tucker and little Bo Peep: they would make the
-dark fairy dance all night long in her amber light if they could; and
-yet contentedly return to what they call a necessary state of things
-outside, where their corn is reaped by machinery, and the only duets
-are between steam whistles. Why haven’t they a steam whistle to whistle
-to them on the stage, instead of Miss Violet Cameron? Why haven’t they
-a steam Jack in the Box to jump for them, instead of Mr. Evans? or a
-steam doll to dance for them, instead of Miss Kate Vaughan? They still
-seem to have human ears and eyes, in the Theatre; to know there, for an
-hour or two, that golden light, and song, and human skill and grace,
-are better than smoke-blackness, and shrieks of iron and fire, and
-monstrous powers of constrained elements. And then they return to their
-underground railroad, and say, ‘This, behold,—this is the right way to
-move, and live in a real world.’
-
-Very notable it is also that just as in these two theatrical
-entertainments—the Church and the Circus,—the imaginative congregations
-still retain some true notions of the value of human and beautiful
-things, and don’t have steam-preachers nor steam-dancers,—so also they
-retain some just notion of the truth, in moral things: Little
-Cinderella, for instance, at Hengler’s, never thinks of offering her
-poor fairy Godmother a ticket from the Mendicity Society. She
-immediately goes and fetches her some dinner. And she makes herself
-generally useful, and sweeps the doorstep, and dusts the door;—and none
-of the audience think any the worse of her on that account. They think
-the worse of her proud sisters who make her do it. But when they leave
-the Circus, they never think for a moment of making themselves useful,
-like Cinderella. They forthwith play the proud sisters as much as they
-can; and try to make anybody else, who will, sweep their doorsteps.
-Also, at Hengler’s, nobody advises Cinderella to write novels, instead
-of doing her washing, by way of bettering herself. The audience, gentle
-and simple, feel that the only chance she has of pleasing her
-Godmother, or marrying a prince, is in remaining patiently at her tub,
-as long as the Fates will have it so, heavy though it be. Again, in all
-dramatic representation of Little Red Riding Hood, everybody
-disapproves of the carnivorous propensities of the Wolf. They clearly
-distinguish there—as clearly as the Fourteenth Psalm, itself—between
-the class of animal which eats, and the class of animal which is eaten.
-But once outside the theatre, they declare the whole human race to be
-universally carnivorous—and are ready themselves to eat up any quantity
-of Red Riding Hoods, body and soul, if they can make money by them.
-
-And lastly,—at Hengler’s and Drury Lane, see how the whole of the
-pleasure of life depends on the existence of Princes, Princesses, and
-Fairies. One never hears of a Republican pantomime; one never thinks
-Cinderella would be a bit better off if there were no princes. The
-audience understand that though it is not every good little housemaid
-who can marry a prince, the world would not be the least pleasanter,
-for the rest, if there were no princes to marry.
-
-Nevertheless, it being too certain that the sweeping of doorsteps
-diligently will not in all cases enable a pretty maiden to drive away
-from said doorsteps, for evermore, in a gilded coach,—one has to
-consider what may be the next best for her. And next best, or, in the
-greater number of cases, best altogether, will be that Love, with his
-felicities, should himself enter over the swept and garnished steps,
-and abide with her in her own life, such as it is. And since St.
-Valentine’s grace is with us, at this season, I will finish my Fors,
-for this time, by carrying on our little romance of the Broom-maker, to
-the place in which he unexpectedly finds it. In which romance, while we
-may perceive the principal lesson intended by the author to be that the
-delights and prides of affectionate married life are consistent with
-the humblest station, (or may even be more easily found there than in a
-higher one,) we may for ourselves draw some farther conclusions which
-the good Swiss pastor only in part intended. We may consider in what
-degree the lightening of the wheels of Hansli’s cart, when they drave
-heavily by the wood of Muri, corresponds to the change of the English
-highway into Mount Parnassus, for Sir Philip Sidney; and if the
-correspondence be not complete, and some deficiency in the divinest
-power of Love be traceable in the mind of the simple person as compared
-to that of the gentle one, we may farther consider, in due time, how,
-without help from any fairy Godmother, we may make Cinderella’s life
-gentle to her, as well as simple; and, without taking the peasant’s
-hand from his labour, make his heart leap with joy as pure as a king’s.
-[12]
-
-
-
-Well, said Hansli, I’ll help you; give me your bag; I’ll put it among
-my brooms, and nobody will see it. Everybody knows me. Not a soul will
-think I’ve got your shoes underneath there. You’ve only to tell me
-where to leave them—or indeed where to stop for you, if you like. You
-can follow a little way off;—nobody will think we have anything to do
-with each other.
-
-The young girl made no compliments. [13]
-
-You are really very good, [14] said she, with a more serene face. She
-brought her packet, and Hans hid it so nicely that a cat couldn’t have
-seen it.
-
-Shall I push, or help you to pull? asked the young girl, as if it had
-been a matter of course that she should also do her part in the work.
-
-As you like best, though you needn’t mind; it isn’t a pair or two of
-shoes that will make my cart much heavier. The young girl began by
-pushing; but that did not last long. Presently she found herself [15]
-in front, pulling also by the pole.
-
-It seems to me that the cart goes better so, said she. As one ought to
-suppose, she pulled with all her strength; that which nevertheless did
-not put her out of breath, nor hinder her from relating all she had in
-her head, or heart.
-
-They got to the top of the hill of Stalden without Hansli’s knowing how
-that had happened: the long alley [16] seemed to have shortened itself
-by half.
-
-There, one made one’s dispositions; the young girl stopped behind,
-while Hansli, with her bag and his brooms, entered the town without the
-least difficulty, where he remitted her packet to the young girl, also
-without any accident; but they had scarcely time to say a word to each
-other before the press [17] of people, cattle, and vehicles separated
-them. Hansli had to look after his cart, lest it should be knocked to
-bits. And so ended the acquaintanceship for that day. This vexed Hansli
-not a little; howbeit he didn’t think long about it. We cannot (more’s
-the pity) affirm that the young girl had made an ineffaceable
-impression upon him,—and all the less, that she was not altogether made
-for producing ineffaceable impressions. She was a stunted little girl,
-with a broad face. That which she had of best was a good heart, and an
-indefatigable ardour for work; but those are things which, externally,
-are not very remarkable, and many people don’t take much notice of
-them.
-
-Nevertheless, the next Tuesday, when Hansli saw himself [18] at his
-cart again, he found it extremely heavy.
-
-I wouldn’t have believed, said he to himself, what a difference there
-is between two pulling, and one.
-
-Will she be there again, I wonder, thought he, as he came near the
-little wood of Muri. I would take her bag very willingly if she would
-help me to pull. Also the road is nowhere so ugly as between here and
-the town. [19]
-
-And behold that it precisely happened that the young girl was sitting
-there upon the same bench, all the same as eight days before; only with
-the difference that she was not crying.
-
-Have you got anything for me to carry to-day? asked Hansli, who found
-his cart at once became a great deal lighter at the sight of the young
-girl.
-
-It is not only for that that I have waited, answered she; even if I had
-had nothing to carry to the town, I should have come, all the same; for
-eight days ago I wasn’t able to thank you; nor to ask if that cost
-anything.
-
-A fine question! said Hansli. Why, you served me for a second donkey;
-and yet I never asked how much I owed you for helping me to pull! So,
-as all that went of itself, the young girl brought her bundle, and
-Hansli hid it, and she went to put herself at the pole as if she had
-known it all by heart. I had got a little way from home, said she,
-before it came into my head that I ought to have brought a cord to tie
-to the cart behind, and that would have gone better; but another time,
-if I return, I won’t forget.
-
-This association for mutual help found itself, then, established,
-without any long diplomatic debates, and in the most simple manner.
-And, that day, it chanced that they were also able to come back
-together as far as the place where their roads parted; all the same,
-they were so prudent as not to show themselves together before the
-gens-d’armes at the town gates.
-
-And now for some time Hansli’s mother had been quite enchanted with her
-son. It seemed to her he was more gay, she said. He whistled and sang,
-now, all the blessed day; and tricked himself up, so that he could
-never have done. [20] Only just the other day he had bought a
-great-coat of drugget, in which he had nearly the air of a real
-counsellor. But she could not find any fault with him for all that; he
-was so good to her that certainly the good God must reward him;—as for
-herself, she was in no way of doing it, but could do nothing but pray
-for him. Not that you are to think, said she, that he puts everything
-into his clothes; he has some money too. If God spares his life, I’ll
-wager that one day he’ll come to have a cow:—he has been talking of a
-goat ever so long; but it’s not likely I shall be spared to see it.
-And, after all, I don’t pretend to be sure it will ever be.
-
-
-
-Mother, said Hans one day, I don’t know how it is; but either the cart
-gets heavier, or I’m not so strong as I was; for some time I’ve
-scarcely been able to manage it. It is getting really too much for me;
-especially on the Berne road, where there are so many hills.
-
-I dare say, said the mother; aussi, why do you go on loading it more
-every day? I’ve been fretting about you many a time; for one always
-suffers for over-work when one gets old. But you must take care. Put a
-dozen or two of brooms less on it, and it will roll again all right.
-
-That’s impossible, mother; I never have enough as it is, and I haven’t
-time to go to Berne twice a week.
-
-But, Hansli, suppose you got a donkey. I’ve heard say they are the most
-convenient beasts in the world: they cost almost nothing, eat almost
-nothing, and anything one likes to give them; and that’s [21] as strong
-as a horse, without counting that one can make something of the
-milk,—not that I want any, but one may speak of it. [22]
-
-No, mother, said Hansli,—they’re as self-willed as devils: sometimes
-one can’t get them to do anything at all; and then what I should do
-with a donkey the other five days of the week! No, mother;—I was
-thinking of a wife,—hey, what say you?
-
-But, Hansli, I think a goat or a donkey would be much better. A wife!
-What sort of idea is that that has come into your head? What would you
-do with a wife?
-
-Do! said Hansli; what other people do, I suppose; and then, I thought
-she would help me to draw the cart, which goes ever so much better with
-another hand:—without counting that she could plant potatoes between
-times, and help me to make my brooms, which I couldn’t get a goat or a
-donkey to do.
-
-But, Hansli, do you think to find one, then, who will help you to draw
-the cart, and will be clever enough to do all that? asked the mother,
-searchingly.
-
-Oh, mother, there’s one who has helped me already often with the cart,
-said Hansli, and who would be good for a great deal besides; but as to
-whether she would marry me or not, I don’t know, for I haven’t asked
-her. I thought that I would tell you first.
-
-You rogue of a boy, what’s that you tell me there? I don’t understand a
-word of it, cried the mother. You too!—are you also like that? The good
-God Himself might have told me, and I wouldn’t have believed Him.
-What’s that you say?—you’ve got a girl to help you to pull the cart! A
-pretty business to engage her for! Ah well,—trust men after this!
-
-Thereupon Hansli put himself to recount the history; and how that had
-happened quite by chance; and how that girl was just expressly made for
-him: a girl as neat as a clock,—not showy, not extravagant,—and who
-would draw the cart better even than a cow could. But I haven’t spoken
-to her of anything, however. All the same, I think I’m not disagreeable
-to her. Indeed, she has said to me once or twice that she wasn’t in a
-hurry to marry; but if she could manage it, so as not to be worse off
-than she was now, she wouldn’t be long making up her mind. She knows,
-for that matter, very well also why she is in the world. Her little
-brothers and sisters are growing up after her; and she knows well how
-things go, and how the youngest are always made the most of, for one
-never thinks of thanking the elder ones for the trouble they’ve had in
-bringing them up.
-
-All that didn’t much displease the mother; and the more she ruminated
-over these unexpected matters, the more it all seemed to her very
-proper. Then she put herself to make inquiries, and learned that nobody
-knew the least harm of the girl. They told her she did all she could to
-help her parents; but that with the best they could do, there wouldn’t
-be much to fish for. Ah, well: it’s all the better, thought she; for
-then neither of them can have much to say to the other.
-
-
-
-The next Tuesday, while Hansli was getting his cart ready, his mother
-said to him,
-
-Well, speak to that girl: if she consents, so will I; but I can’t run
-after her. Tell her to come here on Sunday, that I may see her, and at
-least we can talk a little. If she is willing to be nice, it will all
-go very well. Aussi, it must happen some time or other, I suppose.
-
-But, mother, it isn’t written anywhere that it must happen, whether or
-no; and if it doesn’t suit you, nothing hinders me from leaving it all
-alone.
-
-Nonsense, child; don’t be a goose. Hasten thee to set out; and say to
-that girl, that if she likes to be my daughter-in-law, I’ll take her,
-and be very well pleased.
-
-Hansli set out, and found the young girl. Once that they were pulling
-together, he at his pole, and she at her cord, Hansli put himself to
-say,
-
-That certainly goes as quick again when there are thus two cattle at
-the same cart. Last Saturday I went to Thun by myself, and dragged all
-the breath out of my body.
-
-Yes, I’ve often thought, said the young girl, that it was very foolish
-of you not to get somebody to help you; all the business would go twice
-as easily, and you would gain twice as much.
-
-What would you have? said Hansli. Sometimes one thinks too soon of a
-thing, sometimes too late,—one’s always mortal. [23] But now it really
-seems to me that I should like to have somebody for a help; if you were
-of the same mind, you would be just the good thing for me. If that
-suits you, I’ll marry you.
-
-Well, why not,—if you don’t think me too ugly nor too poor? answered
-the young girl. Once you’ve got me, it will be too late to despise me.
-As for me, I could scarcely fall in with a better chance. One always
-gets a husband,—but, aussi, of what sort? You are quite good enough
-[24] for me: you take care of your affairs, and I don’t think you’ll
-treat a wife like a dog.
-
-My faith, she will be as much master as I; if she is not pleased that
-way, I don’t know what more to do, said Hansli. And for other matters,
-I don’t think you’ll be worse off with me than you have been at home.
-If that suits you, come to see us on Sunday. It’s my mother who told me
-to ask you, and to say that if you liked to be her daughter-in-law, she
-would be very well pleased.
-
-Liked! But what could I want more? I am used to submit myself, and take
-things as they come,—worse to-day, better to-morrow,—sometimes more
-sour, sometimes less. I never have thought that a hard word made a hole
-in me, else by this time I shouldn’t have had a bit of skin left as big
-as a kreutzer. But, all the same, I must tell my people, as the custom
-is. For the rest, they won’t give themselves any trouble about the
-matter. There are enough of us in the house: if any one likes to go,
-nobody will stop them. [25]
-
-And, aussi, that was what happened. On Sunday the young girl really
-appeared at Rychiswyl. Hansli had given her very clear directions; nor
-had she to ask long before she was told where the broom-seller lived.
-The mother made her pass a good examination upon the garden and the
-kitchen; and would know what book of prayers she used, and whether she
-could read in the New Testament, and also in the Bible, [26] for it was
-very bad for the children, and it was always they who suffered, if the
-mother didn’t know enough for that, said the old woman. The girl
-pleased her, and the affair was concluded.
-
-You won’t have a beauty there, said she to Hansli, before the young
-girl; nor much to crow about, in what she has got. But all that is of
-no consequence. It isn’t beauty that makes the pot boil; and as for
-money, there’s many a man who wouldn’t marry a girl unless she was
-rich, who has had to pay his father-in-law’s debts in the end. When one
-has health, and work, in one’s arms, one gets along always. I suppose
-(turning to the girl) you have got two good chemises and two gowns, so
-that you won’t be the same on Sunday and work-days?
-
-Oh yes, said the young girl; you needn’t give yourself any trouble
-about that. I’ve one chemise quite new, and two good ones besides,—and
-four others which, in truth, are rather ragged. But my mother said I
-should have another; and my father, that he would make me my wedding
-shoes, and they should cost me nothing. And with that I’ve a very nice
-godmother, who is sure to give me something fine;—perhaps a saucepan,
-or a frying-stove, [27]—who knows? without counting that perhaps I
-shall inherit something from her some day. She has some children,
-indeed, but they may die.
-
-Perfectly satisfied on both sides, but especially the girl, to whom
-Hansli’s house, so perfectly kept in order, appeared a palace in
-comparison with her own home, full of children and scraps of leather,
-they separated, soon to meet again and quit each other no more. As no
-soul made the slightest objection, and the preparations were
-easy,—seeing that new shoes and a new chemise are soon stitched
-together,—within a month, Hansli was no more alone on his way to Thun.
-And the old cart went again as well as ever.
-
-
-
-And they lived happily ever after? You shall hear. The story is not at
-an end; note only, in the present phase of it, this most important
-point, that Hansli does not think of his wife as an expensive luxury,
-to be refused to himself unless under irresistible temptation. It is
-only the modern Pall-Mall-pattern Englishman who must ‘abstain from the
-luxury of marriage’ if he be wise. Hansli thinks of his wife, on the
-contrary, as a useful article, which he cannot any longer get on
-without. He gives us, in fact, a final definition of proper wifely
-quality,—“She will draw the cart better than a cow could.”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XL.
-
-
-I am obliged to go to Italy this spring, and find beside me, a mass of
-Fors material in arrear, needing various explanation and arrangement,
-for which I have no time. Fors herself must look to it, and my readers
-use their own wits in thinking over what she has looked to. I begin
-with a piece of Marmontel, which was meant to follow, ‘in due time,’
-the twenty-first letter,—of which, please glance at the last four pages
-again. This following bit is from another story professing to give some
-account of Molière’s Misanthrope, in his country life, after his last
-quarrel with Celimène. He calls on a country gentleman, M. de Laval,
-“and was received by him with the simple and serious courtesy which
-announces neither the need nor the vain desire of making new
-connections. Behold, said he, a man who does not surrender himself at
-once. I esteem him the more. He congratulated M. de Laval on the
-agreeableness of his solitude. You come to live here, he said to him,
-far from men, and you are very right to avoid them.
-
-I, Monsieur! I do not avoid men; I am neither so weak as to fear them,
-so proud as to despise them, or so unhappy as to hate them.
-
-This answer struck so home that Alceste was disconcerted by it; but he
-wished to sustain his debût, and began to satirize the world.
-
-I have lived in the world like another, said M. de Laval, and I have
-not seen that it was so wicked. There are vices and virtues in it,—good
-and evil mingled,—I confess; but nature is so made, and one should know
-how to accommodate oneself to it.
-
-On my word, said Alceste, in that unison the evil governs to such a
-point that it chokes the other. Sir, replied the Viscount, if one were
-as eager to discover good as evil, and had the same delight in
-spreading the report of it,—if good examples were made public as the
-bad ones almost always are,—do you not think that the good would weigh
-down the balance? [28] But gratitude speaks so low, and indignation so
-loudly, that you cannot hear but the last. Both friendship and esteem
-are commonly moderate in their praises; they imitate the modesty of
-honour, in praise, while resentment and mortification exaggerate
-everything they describe.
-
-Monsieur, said Alceste to the Viscount, you make me desire to think as
-you do; and even if the sad truth were on my side, your error would be
-preferable. Ah, yes, without doubt, replied M. de Laval, ill-humour is
-good for nothing, the fine part that it is, for a man to play, to fall
-into a fit of spite like a child!—and why? For the mistakes of the
-circle in which one has lived, as if the whole of nature were in the
-plot against us, and responsible for the hurt we have received.
-
-You are right, replied Alceste, it would be unjust to consider all men
-as partners in fault; yet how many complaints may we not justly lodge
-against them, as a body? Believe me, sir, my judgment of them has
-serious and grave motives. You will do me justice when you know me.
-Permit me to see you often! Often, said the Viscount, will be
-difficult. I have much business, and my daughter and I have our
-studies, which leave us little leisure; but sometimes, if you will, let
-us profit by our neighbourhood, at our ease, and without formality, for
-the privilege of the country is to be alone, when we like.
-
-Some days afterwards Monsieur de Laval returned his visit, and Alceste
-spoke to him of the pleasure that he doubtless felt in making so many
-people happy. It is a beautiful example, he said, and, to the shame of
-men, a very rare one. How many persons there are, more powerful and
-more rich than you, who are nothing but a burden to their inferiors! I
-neither excuse nor blame them altogether, replied M. de Laval. In order
-to do good, one must know how to set about it; and do not think that it
-is so easy to effect our purpose. It is not enough even to be
-sagacious; it is needful also to be fortunate; it is necessary to find
-sensible and docile persons to manage: [29] and one has constantly need
-of much address, and patience, to lead the people, naturally suspicious
-and timid, to what is really for their advantage. Indeed, said Alceste,
-such excuses are continually made; but have you not conquered all these
-obstacles? and why should not others conquer them? I, said M. de Laval,
-have been tempted by opportunity, and seconded by accident. [30] The
-people of this province, at the time that I came into possession of my
-estate, were in a condition of extreme distress. I did but stretch my
-arms to them; they gave themselves up to me in despair. An arbitrary
-tax had been lately imposed upon them, which they regarded with so much
-terror that they preferred sustaining hardships to making any
-appearance of having wealth; and I found, current through the country,
-this desolating and destructive maxim, ‘The more we work, the more we
-shall be trodden down.’ (It is precisely so in England to-day, also.)
-“The men dared not be laborious; the women trembled to have children.”
-
-I went back to the source of the evil. I addressed myself to the man
-appointed for the reception of the tribute. Monsieur, I said to him, my
-vassals groan under the weight of the severe measures necessary to make
-them pay the tax. I wish to hear no more of them; tell me what is
-wanting yet to make up the payment for the year, and I will acquit the
-debt myself. Monsieur, replied the receiver, that cannot be. Why not?
-said I. Because it is not the rule. What! is it not the rule to pay the
-King the tribute that he demands with the least expense and the least
-delay possible? Yes, answered he, that would be enough for the King,
-but it would not be enough for me. Where should I be if they paid money
-down? It is by the expense of the compulsory measures that I live; they
-are the perquisites of my office. To this excellent reason I had
-nothing to reply, but I went to see the head of the department, and
-obtained from him the place of receiver-general for my peasants.
-
-My children, I then said to them, (assembling them on my return home,)
-I have to announce to you that you are in future to deposit in my hands
-the exact amount of the King’s tribute, and no more. There will be no
-more expenses, no more bailiff’s visits. Every Sunday at the bank of
-the parish, your wives shall bring me their savings, and insensibly you
-shall find yourselves out of debt. Work now, and cultivate your land;
-make the most of it you can; no farther tax shall be laid on you. I
-answer for this to you—I who am your father. For those who are in
-arrear, I will take some measures for support, or I will advance them
-the sum necessary, [31] and a few days at the dead time of the year,
-employed in work for me, will reimburse me for my expenses. This plan
-was agreed upon, and we have followed it ever since. The housewives of
-the village bring me their little offerings: I encourage them, and
-speak to them of our good King; and what was an act of distressing
-servitude, has become an unoppressive act of love.
-
-Finally, as there was a good deal of superfluous time, I established
-the workshop that you have seen; it turns everything to account, and
-brings into useful service time which would be lost between the
-operations of agriculture: the profits of it are applied to public
-works. A still more precious advantage of this establishment is its
-having greatly increased the population—more children are born, as
-there is certainty of extended means for their support.”
-
-Now note, first, in this passage what material of loyalty and affection
-there was still in the French heart before the Revolution; and,
-secondly, how useless it is to be a good King, if the good King allows
-his officers to live upon the cost of compulsory measures. [32] And
-remember that the French Revolution was the revolt of absolute loyalty
-and love against the senseless cruelty of a “good King.”
-
-Next, for a little specimen of the state of our own working population;
-and the “compulsory—not measures, but measureless license,” under which
-their loyalty and love are placed,—here is a genuine working woman’s
-letter; and if the reader thinks I have given it him in its own
-spelling that he may laugh at it, the reader is wrong.
-
-
-                                                         “May 12, 1873.
-
-    “Dear ——
-
-    “Wile Reading the herald to Day on the subject on shortor houers of
-    Labour [33] I was Reminded of A cercomstance that came under my
-    hone notis when the 10 hours sistom Began in the cotton mills in
-    Lancashire I was Minding a mesheen with 30 treds in it I was then
-    maid to mind 2 of 30 treds each with one shilling Advance of wages
-    wich was 5s for one and 6s for tow with an increes of speed and
-    with improved mecheens in A few years I was minding tow mecheens
-    with tow 100 trads Each and Dubel speed for 9s perweek so that in
-    our improved condation we had to turn out some 100 weght per day
-    and we went as if the Devel was After us for 10 houers per day and
-    with that comparative small Advance in money and the feemals have
-    ofton Been carred out fainting what with the heat and hard work and
-    those that could not keep up mst go and make room for a nother and
-    all this is Done in Christian England and then we are tould to Be
-    content in the station of Life in wich the Lord as places us But I
-    say the Lord never Did place us there so we have no Right to Be
-    content o that Right and not might was the Law yours truely
-    C. H. S.”
-
-
-Next to this account of Machine-labour, here is one of Hand-labour,
-also in a genuine letter,—this second being to myself; (I wish the
-other had been also, but it was to one of my friends.)
-
-
-                                                      “Beckenham, Kent,
-                                                       “Sept. 24, 1873.
-
-    “That is a pleasant evening in our family when we read and discuss
-    the subjects of ‘Fors Clavigera,’ and we frequently reperuse them,
-    as for instance, within a few days, your August letter. In page 16
-    I was much struck by the notice of the now exploded use of the
-    spinning wheel. My mother, a Cumberland woman, was a spinner, and
-    the whole process, from the fine thread that passed through her
-    notable fingers, and the weaving into linen by an old cottager—a
-    very ‘Silas Marner,’—to the bleaching on the orchard grass, was
-    well known to my sister [34] and myself, when children.
-
-    “When I married, part of the linen that I took to my new home was
-    my mother’s spinning, and one fine table-cloth was my
-    grandmother’s. What factory, with its thousand spindles, and
-    chemical bleaching powders, can send out such linen as that, which
-    lasted three generations? [35]
-
-    “I should not have troubled you with these remarks, had I not at
-    the moment when I read your paragraph on hand-spinning, received a
-    letter from my daughter, now for a time resident in Coburg, (a
-    friend of Octavia Hill’s,) which bears immediately on the subject.
-    I have therefore ventured to transcribe it for your perusal,
-    believing that the picture she draws from life, beautiful as it is
-    for its simplicity, may give you a moment’s pleasure.”
-
-
-
-                                                “Coburg, Sept. 4, 1873.
-
-    “On Thursday I went to call on Frau L.; she was not in; so I went
-    to her mother’s, Frau E., knowing that I should find her there.
-    They were all sitting down to afternoon coffee, and asked me to
-    join them, which I gladly did. I had my work-basket with me, and as
-    they were all at work, it was pleasant to do the same thing.
-    Hildigard was there; in fact she lives there, to take care of Frau
-    E. since she had her fall and stiffened her ankle, a year ago.
-    Hildigard took her spinning, and tied on her white apron, filled
-    the little brass basin of the spinning-wheel with water, to wet her
-    fingers, and set the wheel a-purring. I have never seen the process
-    before, and it was very pretty to see her, with her white fingers,
-    and to hear the little low sound. It is quite a pity, I think,
-    ladies do not do it in England,—it is so pretty, and far nicer work
-    than crotchet, and so on, when it is finished. This soft linen made
-    by hand is so superior to any that you get now. Presently the four
-    children came in, and the great hunting dog, Feldman; and
-    altogether I thought, as dear little Frau E. sat sewing in her
-    arm-chair, and her old sister near her at her knitting, and
-    Hildigard at her spinning, while pretty Frau L. sewed at her little
-    girl’s stuff-skirt,—all in the old-fashioned room full of old
-    furniture, and hung round with miniatures of still older dames and
-    officers, in, to our eyes, strange stiff costumes, that it was a
-    most charming scene, and one I enjoyed as much as going to the
-    theatre,—which I did in the evening.”
-
-
-A most charming scene, my dear lady, I have no doubt; just what
-Hengler’s Circus was, to me, this Christmas. Now for a little more of
-the charming scenery outside, and far away.
-
-
-                                     “12, Tunstall Terrace, Sunderland,
-                                                      “14th Feb., 1874.
-
-    “My dear Sir,—The rice famine is down upon us in earnest, and finds
-    our wretched ‘administration’ unprepared—a ministration unto death!
-
-    “It can carry childish gossip ‘by return of post’ into every
-    village in India, but not food; no, not food even for mothers and
-    babes. So far has our scientific and industrial progress attained.
-
-    “To-night comes news that hundreds of deaths from starvation have
-    already occurred, and that even high-caste women are working on the
-    roads;—no food from stores of ours except at the price of
-    degrading, health-destroying, and perfectly useless toil. God help
-    the nation responsible for this wickedness!
-
-    “Dear Mr. Ruskin, you wield the most powerful pen in England, can
-    you not shame us into some sense of duty, some semblance of human
-    feeling? [Certainly not. My good sir, as far as I know, nobody ever
-    minds a word I say, except a few nice girls, who are a great
-    comfort to me, but can’t do anything. They don’t even know how to
-    spin, poor little lilies!]
-
-    “I observe that the ‘Daily News’ of to-day is horrified at the idea
-    that Disraeli should dream of appropriating any part of the surplus
-    revenue to the help of India in this calamity [of course], and even
-    the ‘Spectator’ calls that a ‘dangerous’ policy. So far is even
-    ‘the conscience of the Press’ [What next?] corrupted by the dismal
-    science.
-
-        “I am, yours truly.”
-
-
-So far the Third Fors has arranged matters for me; but I must put a
-stitch or two into her work.
-
-Look back to my third letter, for March, 1871, page 5. You see it is
-said there that the French war and its issues were none of Napoleon’s
-doing, nor Count Bismarck’s; that the mischief in them was St. Louis’s
-doing; and the good, such as it was, the rough father of Frederick the
-Great’s doing.
-
-The father of Frederick the Great was an Evangelical divine of the
-strictest orthodoxy,—very fond of beer, bacon, and tobacco, and
-entirely resolved to have his own way, supposing, as pure Evangelical
-people always do, that his own way was God’s also. It happened,
-however, for the good of Germany, that this king’s own way, to a great
-extent, was God’s also,—(we will look at Carlyle’s statement of that
-fact another day,)—and accordingly he maintained, and the ghost of
-him,—with the help of his son, whom he had like to have shot as a
-disobedient and dissipated character,—maintains to this day in Germany,
-such sacred domestic life as that of which you have an account in the
-above letter. Which, in peace, is entirely happy, for its own part;
-and, in war, irresistible.
-
-‘Entirely blessed,’ I had written first, too carelessly. I have had to
-scratch out the ‘blessed’ and put in ‘happy.’ For blessing is only for
-the meek and merciful, and a German cannot be either; he does not
-understand even the meaning of the words. In that is the intense,
-irreconcilable difference between the French and German natures. A
-Frenchman is selfish only when he is vile and lustful; but a German,
-selfish in the purest states of virtue and morality. A Frenchman is
-arrogant only in ignorance; but no quantity of learning ever makes a
-German modest. “Sir,” says Albert Durer of his own work, (and he is the
-modestest German I know,) “it cannot be better done.” Luther serenely
-damns the entire gospel of St. James, because St. James happens to be
-not precisely of his own opinions.
-
-Accordingly, when the Germans get command of Lombardy, they bombard
-Venice, steal her pictures, (which they can’t understand a single touch
-of,) and entirely ruin the country, morally and physically, leaving
-behind them misery, vice, and intense hatred of themselves, wherever
-their accursed feet have trodden. They do precisely the same thing by
-France,—crush her, rob her, leave her in misery of rage and shame; and
-return home, smacking their lips, and singing Te Deums.
-
-But when the French conquer England, their action upon it is entirely
-beneficent. Gradually, the country, from a nest of restless savages,
-becomes strong and glorious; and having good material to work upon,
-they make of us at last a nation stronger than themselves.
-
-Then the strength of France perishes, virtually, through the folly of
-St. Louis;—her piety evaporates, her lust gathers infectious power, and
-the modern Cité rises round the Sainte Chapelle.
-
-It is a woful history. But St. Louis does not perish selfishly; and
-perhaps is not wholly dead yet,—whatever Garibaldi and his red-jackets
-may think about him, and their ‘Holy Republic.’
-
-Meantime Germany, through Geneva, works quaintly against France, in our
-British destiny, and makes an end of many a Sainte Chapelle, in our own
-sweet river islands. Read Froude’s sketch of the Influence of the
-Reformation on Scottish Character, in his “Short studies on great
-subjects.” And that would be enough for you to think of, this month;
-but as this letter is all made up of scraps, it may be as well to
-finish with this little private note on Luther’s people, made last
-week.
-
-4th March, 1874.—I have been horribly plagued and misguided by
-evangelical people, all my life; and most of all lately; but my mother
-was one, and my Scotch aunt; and I have yet so much of the superstition
-left in me, that I can’t help sometimes doing as evangelical people
-wish,—for all I know it comes to nothing.
-
-One of them, for whom I still have some old liking left, sent me one of
-their horrible sausage-books the other day, made of chopped-up Bible;
-but with such a solemn and really pathetic adjuration to read a ‘text’
-every morning, that, merely for old acquaintance’ sake, I couldn’t
-refuse. It is all one to me, now, whether I read my Bible, or my Homer,
-at one leaf or another; only I take the liberty, pace my evangelical
-friend, of looking up the contexts if I happen not to know them.
-
-Now I was very much beaten and overtired yesterday, chiefly owing to a
-week of black fog, spent in looking over the work of days and people
-long since dead; and my ‘text’ this morning was, “Deal courageously,
-and the Lord do that which seemeth Him good.” It sounds a very saintly,
-submissive, and useful piece of advice; but I was not quite sure who
-gave it; and it was evidently desirable to ascertain that.
-
-For, indeed, it chances to be given, not by a saint at all, but by
-quite one of the most self-willed people on record in any
-history,—about the last in the world to let the Lord do that which
-seemed Him good; if he could help it, unless it seemed just as good to
-himself also,—Joab the son of Zeruiah. The son, to wit, of David’s
-elder sister; who, finding that it seemed good to the Lord to advance
-the son of David’s younger sister to a place of equal power with
-himself, unhesitatingly smites his thriving young cousin under the
-fifth rib, while pretending to kiss him, and leaves him wallowing in
-blood in the midst of the highway. But we have no record of the pious
-or resigned expressions he made use of on that occasion. We have no
-record, either, of several other matters one would have liked to know
-about these people. How it is, for instance, that David has to make a
-brother of Saul’s son;—getting, as it seems, no brotherly kindness—nor,
-more wonderful yet, sisterly kindness—at his own fireside. It is like a
-German story of the seventh son—or the seventh bullet—as far as the
-brothers are concerned; but these sisters, had they also no love for
-their brave young shepherd brother? Did they receive no countenance
-from him when he was king? Even for Zeruiah’s sake, might he not on his
-death-bed have at least allowed the Lord to do what seemed Him good
-with Zeruiah’s son, who had so well served him in his battles, (and so
-quietly in the matter of Bathsheba,) instead of charging the wisdom of
-Solomon to find some subtle way of preventing his hoar head from going
-down to the grave in peace? My evangelical friend will of course desire
-me not to wish to be wise above that which is written. I am not to ask
-even who Zeruiah’s husband was?—nor whether, in the West-end sense, he
-was her husband at all?—Well; but if I only want to be wise up to the
-meaning of what is written? I find, indeed, nothing whatever said of
-David’s elder sister’s lover;—but, of his younger sister’s lover, I
-find it written in this evangelical Book-Idol, in one place, that his
-name was Ithra, an Israelite, and in another that it was Jether, the
-Ishmaelite. Ithra or Jether, is no matter; Israelite or Ishmaelite,
-perhaps matters not much; but it matters a great deal that you should
-know that this is an ill written, and worse trans-written, human
-history, and not by any means ‘Word of God;’ and that whatever issues
-of life, divine or human, there may be in it, for you, can only be got
-by searching it; and not by chopping it up into small bits and
-swallowing it like pills. What a trouble there is, for instance, just
-now, in all manner of people’s minds, about Sunday keeping, just
-because these evangelical people will swallow their bits of texts in an
-entirely indigestible state, without chewing them. Read your Bibles
-honestly and utterly, my scrupulous friends, and stand by the
-consequences,—if you have what true men call ‘faith.’ In the first
-place, determine clearly, if there is a clear place in your brains to
-do it, whether you mean to observe the Sabbath as a Jew, or the day of
-the Resurrection, as a Christian. Do either thoroughly; you can’t do
-both. If you choose to keep the ‘Sabbath,’ in defiance of your great
-prophet, St. Paul, keep the new moons too, and the other fasts and
-feasts of the Jewish law; but even so, remember that the Son of Man is
-Lord of the Sabbath also, and that not only it is lawful to do good
-upon it, but unlawful, in the strength of what you call keeping one day
-Holy, to do Evil on other six days, and make those unholy; and,
-finally, that neither new-moon keeping, nor Sabbath keeping, nor
-fasting, nor praying, will in anywise help an evangelical city like
-Edinburgh to stand in the judgment higher than Gomorrah, while her
-week-day arrangements for rent from her lower orders are as follows:
-[36]—
-
-“We entered the first room by descending two steps. It seemed to be an
-old coal-cellar, with an earthen floor, shining in many places from
-damp, and from a greenish ooze which drained through the wall from a
-noxious collection of garbage outside, upon which a small window could
-have looked had it not been filled up with brown paper and rags. There
-was no grate, but a small fire smouldered on the floor, surrounded by
-heaps of ashes. The roof was unceiled, the walls were rough and broken,
-the only light came in from the open door, which let in unwholesome
-smells and sounds. No cow or horse could thrive in such a hole. It was
-abominable. It measured eleven feet by six feet, and the rent was 10d.
-per week, paid in advance. It was nearly dark at noon, even with the
-door open; but as my eyes became accustomed to the dimness, I saw that
-the plenishings consisted of an old bed, a barrel with a flagstone on
-the top of it for a table, a three-legged stool, and an iron pot. A
-very ragged girl, sorely afflicted with ophthalmia, stood among the
-ashes doing nothing. She had never been inside a school or church. She
-did not know how to do anything, but ‘did for her father and brother.’
-On a heap of straw, partly covered with sacking, which was the bed in
-which father, son, and daughter slept, the brother, ill with rheumatism
-and sore legs, was lying moaning from under a heap of filthy rags. He
-had been a baker ‘over in the New Town,’ but seemed not very likely to
-recover. It looked as if the sick man had crept into his dark, damp
-lair, just to die of hopelessness. The father was past work, but
-‘sometimes got an odd job to do.’ The sick man had supported the three.
-It was hard to be godly, impossible to be cleanly, impossible to be
-healthy in such circumstances.
-
-“The next room was entered by a low, dark, impeded passage about twelve
-feet long, too filthy to be traversed without a light. At the extremity
-of this was a dark winding stair which led up to four superincumbent
-storeys of crowded subdivided rooms; and beyond this, to the right, a
-pitch-dark passage with a ‘room’ on either side. It was not possible to
-believe that the most grinding greed could extort money from human
-beings for the tenancy of such dens as those to which this passage led.
-They were lairs into which a starving dog might creep to die, but
-nothing more. Opening a dilapidated door, we found ourselves in a
-recess nearly six feet high, and nine feet in length by five in
-breadth. It was not absolutely dark, yet matches aided our
-investigations even at noonday. There was an earthen floor full of
-holes, in some of which water had collected. The walls were black and
-rotten, and alive with woodlice. There was no grate. The rent paid for
-this evil den, which was only ventilated by the chimney, is 1s. per
-week, or £2 12s. annually! The occupier was a mason’s labourer, with a
-wife and three children. He had come to Edinburgh in search of work,
-and could not afford a ‘higher rent.’ The wife said that her husband
-took the ‘wee drap.’ So would the President of the Temperance League
-himself if he were hidden away in such a hole. The contents of this
-lair on our first visit were a great heap of ashes and other refuse in
-one corner, some damp musty straw in another, a broken box in the
-third, with a battered tin pannikin upon it, and nothing else of any
-kind, saving two small children, nearly nude, covered with running
-sores, and pitiable from some eye disease. Their hair was not long, but
-felted into wisps, and alive with vermin. When we went in they were
-sitting among the ashes of an extinct fire, and blinked at the light
-from our matches. Here a neighbour said they sat all day, unless their
-mother was merciful enough to turn them into the gutter. We were there
-at eleven the following night, and found the mother, a decent, tidy
-body, at ‘hame.’ There was a small fire then, but no other light. She
-complained of little besides the darkness of the house, and said, in a
-tone of dull discontent, she supposed it was ‘as good as such as they
-could expect in Edinburgh.’”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-To my great satisfaction, I am asked by a pleasant correspondent, where
-and what the picture of the Princess’s Dream is. High up, in an
-out-of-the-way corner of the Academy of Venice, seen by no man—nor
-woman neither,—of all pictures in Europe the one I should choose for a
-gift, if a fairy queen gave me choice,—Victor Carpaccio’s “Vision of
-St. Ursula.”
-
-
-
-The following letter, from the ‘Standard,’ is worth preserving:—
-
-
-    Sir,—For some time past the destruction of tons of young fry—viz.,
-    salmon, turbot, trout, soles, cod, whiting, etc.,—in fact, every
-    fish that is to be found in the Thames,—has been enormous. I beg
-    leave to say that it is now worse than ever, inasmuch as larger
-    nets, and an increased number of them, are used, and the trade has
-    commenced a month earlier than usual, from the peculiarity of the
-    season.
-
-    At this time there are, at one part of the river, four or five
-    vessels at work, which in one tide catch three tons of fry; this is
-    sifted and picked over by hand, and about three per cent. of fry is
-    all that can be picked out small enough for the London market. The
-    remainder of course dies during the process, and is thrown
-    overboard! Does the London consumer realize the fact that at least
-    thirty tons a week of young fry are thus sacrificed? Do Londoners
-    know that under the name of “whitebait” they eat a mixture largely
-    composed of sprat fry, a fish which at Christmas cost 9d. a bushel,
-    but which now fetches 2s. a quart, which is £3 4s. a bushel? (Price
-    regulated by Demand and Supply, you observe!—J. R.) It is bad
-    enough that so many young salmon and trout are trapped and utterly
-    wasted in these nets; but is it fair towards the public thus to
-    diminish their supply of useful and cheap food?
-
-    Mr. Frank Buckland would faint, were he to see the wholesale
-    destruction of young fry off Southend (on one fishing-ground only).
-    I may truly say that the fishermen themselves are ashamed of the
-    havoc they are making—well they may be; but who is to blame?
-
-        I have the honour to be, etc.,
-            Pisciculus.
-
-                                                               Feb. 23.
-
-
-The following note, written long before the last Fors on fish, bears on
-some of the same matters, and may as well find place now. Of the Bishop
-to whom it alludes, I have also something to say in next, or next,
-Fors. The note itself refers to what I said about the defence of Pope,
-who, like all other gracious men, had grave faults; and who, like all
-other wise men, is intensely obnoxious to evangelical divines. I don’t
-know what school of divines Mr. Elwyn belongs to; nor did I know his
-name when I wrote the note: I have been surprised, since, to see how
-good his work is; he writes with the precise pomposity of Macaulay, and
-in those worst and fatallest forms of fallacy which are true as far as
-they reach.
-
-
-    “There is an unhappy wretch of a clergyman I read of in the
-    papers—spending his life industriously in showing the meanness of
-    Alexander Pope—and how Alexander Pope cringed, and lied. He
-    cringed—yes—to his friends;—nor is any man good for much who will
-    not play spaniel to his friend, or his mistress, on occasion;—to
-    how many more than their friends do average clergymen cringe? I
-    have had a Bishop go round the Royal Academy even with
-    me,—pretending he liked painting, when he was eternally incapable
-    of knowing anything whatever about it. Pope lied also—alas, yes,
-    for his vanity’s sake. Very woful. But he did not pass the whole of
-    his life in trying to anticipate, or appropriate, or efface, other
-    people’s discoveries, as your modern men of science do so often;
-    and for lying—any average partizan of religious dogma tells more
-    lies in his pulpit in defence of what in his heart he knows to be
-    indefensible, on any given Sunday, than Pope did in his whole life.
-    Nay, how often is your clergyman himself nothing but a lie
-    rampant—in the true old sense of the word,—creeping up into his
-    pulpit pretending that he is there as a messenger of God, when he
-    really took the place that he might be able to marry a pretty girl,
-    and live like a ‘gentleman’ as he thinks. Alas! how infinitely more
-    of a gentleman if he would but hold his foolish tongue, and get a
-    living honestly—by street-sweeping, or any other useful
-    occupation—instead of sweeping the dust of his own thoughts into
-    people’s eyes—as this ‘biographer.’”
-
-
-I shall have a good deal to say about human madness, in the course of
-Fors; the following letter, concerning the much less mischievous rabies
-of Dogs, is, however, also valuable. Note especially its closing
-paragraph. I omit a sentence here and there which seems to me
-unnecessary.
-
-
-    “On the 7th June last there appeared in the ‘Macclesfield Guardian’
-    newspaper a letter on Rabies and the muzzling and confining of
-    Dogs, signed ‘Beth-Gêlert.’ That communication contained several
-    facts and opinions relating to the disease; the possible causes of
-    the same; and the uselessness and cruelty of muzzling and
-    confinement as a preventive to it. The first-named unnatural
-    practice has been condemned (as was there shown) by no less
-    authority than the leading medical journal of England,—which has
-    termed muzzling ‘a great practical mistake, and one which cannot
-    fail to have an injurious effect both upon the health and temper of
-    dogs; for, although rabies is a dreadful thing, dogs ought not, any
-    more than men, to be constantly treated as creatures likely to go
-    mad.’
-
-    “This information and judgment, however, seem insufficient to
-    convince some minds, even although they have no observations or
-    arguments to urge in opposition. It may be useful to the public to
-    bring forward an opinion on the merits of that letter expressed by
-    the late Thomas Turner, of Manchester, who was not only a member of
-    the Council, but one of the ablest and most experienced surgeons in
-    Europe. The words of so eminent a professional man cannot but be
-    considered valuable, and must have weight with the sensible and
-    sincere; though on men of an opposite character all evidence, all
-    reason, is too often utterly cast away.
-
-                                          “Mosley Street, June 8, 1873.
-
-
-
-    “‘Dear ——,—Thanks for your sensible letter. It contains great and
-    kind truths, and such as humanity should applaud. On the subject
-    you write about there is a large amount of ignorance both in and
-    out of the profession.
-
-        “Ever yours,
-            “Thomas Turner.’
-
-    “In addition to the foregoing statement of the founder of the
-    Manchester Royal School of Medicine and Surgery, the opinion shall
-    now be given of one of the best veterinarians in London, who,
-    writing on the above letter in the ‘Macclesfield Guardian,’
-    observed,—‘With regard to your paper on muzzling dogs, I feel
-    certain from observation that the restraint put upon them by the
-    muzzle is productive of evil, and has a tendency to cause fits,
-    etc.’
-
-    “Rabies, originally spontaneous, was probably created, like many
-    other evils which afflict humanity, by the viciousness, ignorance,
-    and selfishness of man himself. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes
-    countless thousands mourn,’—wrote the great peasant and national
-    poet of Scotland. He would have uttered even a wider and more
-    embracing truth had he said, man’s inhumanity to his
-    fellow-creatures makes countless millions mourn. Rabies is most
-    prevalent amongst the breeds of dogs bred and maintained for the
-    atrocious sports of ‘the pit;’ they are likewise the most dangerous
-    when victims to that dreadful malady. Moreover, dogs kept to worry
-    other animals are also among those most liable to the disease, and
-    the most to be feared when mad. But, on the other hand, dogs who
-    live as the friends and companions of men of true humanity, and
-    never exposed to annoyance or ill-treatment, remain gentle and
-    affectionate even under the excruciating agonies of this dire
-    disease. Delabere Blaine, first an army surgeon and subsequently
-    the greatest veterinarian of this or probably of any other nation,
-    tells us in his ‘Canine Pathology,’—
-
-    “‘It will sensibly affect any one to witness the earnest, imploring
-    look I have often seen from the unhappy sufferers under this
-    dreadful malady. The strongest attachment has been manifested to
-    those around during their utmost sufferings; and the parched tongue
-    has been carried over the hands and feet of those who noticed them,
-    with more than usual fondness. This disposition has continued to
-    the last moment of life,—in many cases, without one manifestation
-    of any inclination to bite, or to do the smallest harm.’
-
-    “Here is another instance of ‘with whatsoever measure ye mete, it
-    shall be measured to you again.’ The cruelty of man, as it ever
-    does, recoils, like a viper, ultimately on man. He who invests in
-    the Bank of Vice receives back his capital with compound interest
-    at a high rate and to the uttermost farthing.
-
-    “When a mad dog bites many people, he sometimes quits scores for a
-    long, long arrear of brutalities, insults, and oppression inflicted
-    upon him by the baser portion of mankind:—the hard blow, the savage
-    kick, the loud curse, the vile annoyance, the insulting word, the
-    starving meal, the carrion food, the shortened chain, the rotten
-    straw, the dirty kennel (appropriate name), the bitter winter’s
-    night, the parching heat of summer, the dull and dreary years of
-    hopeless imprisonment, the thousand aches which patient merit of
-    the unworthy takes, are represented, culminate there; and the cup
-    man has poisoned, man is forced to drink.
-
-    “All these miseries are often, too often, the lot of this most
-    affectionate creature, who has truly been called ‘our faithful
-    friend, gallant protector, and useful servant.’
-
-    “No muzzling, murder, or incarceration tyrannically inflicted on
-    this much-enduring, much-insulted slave by his master, will ever
-    extirpate rabies. No abuse of the wondrous creature beneficently
-    bestowed by the Omniscient and Almighty on ungrateful man, to be
-    the friend of the poor and the guardian of the rich, will ever
-    extirpate rabies. Mercy and justice would help us much more.
-
-    “In many lands the disease is utterly unknown,—in the land of
-    Egypt, for example, where dogs swarm in all the towns and villages.
-    Yet the follower of Mohammed, more humane than the follower of
-    Christ,—to our shame be it spoken,—neither imprisons, muzzles, nor
-    murders them. England, it is believed, never passed such an Act of
-    Parliament as this before the present century. There is, certainly,
-    in the laws of Canute a punishment awarded to the man whose dog
-    went mad, and by his negligence wandered up and down the country. A
-    far more sensible measure than our own. Canute punished the man,
-    not the dog. Also, in Edward the Third’s reign, all owners of
-    fighting dogs whose dogs were found wandering about the streets of
-    London were fined. Very different species of legislation from the
-    brainless or brutal Dog’s Act of 1871, passed by a number of men,
-    not one of whom it is probable either knew or cared to know
-    anything of the nature of the creature they legislated about; not
-    even that he perspires, not by means of his skin, but performs this
-    vital function by means of his tongue, and that to muzzle him is
-    tantamount to coating the skin of a man all over with paint or
-    gutta-percha. Such selfishness and cruelty in this age appears to
-    give evidence towards proof of the assertion made by our greatest
-    writer on Art,—that ‘we are now getting cruel in our avarice,’—‘our
-    hearts, of iron and clay, have hurled the Bible in the face of our
-    God, and fallen down to grovel before Mammon.’—If not, how is it
-    that we can so abuse one of the Supreme’s most choicest works,—a
-    creature sent to be man’s friend, and whose devotion so often ‘puts
-    to shame all human attachments’?
-
-    “We are reaping what we have sown: Rabies certainly seems on the
-    increase in this district,—in whose neighbourhood, it is stated,
-    muzzling was first practised. It may spread more widely if we force
-    a crop. The best way to check it, is to do our duty to the noble
-    creature the Almighty has entrusted to us, and treat him with the
-    humanity and affection he so eminently deserves. To deprive him of
-    liberty and exercise; to chain him like a felon; to debar him from
-    access to his natural medicine; to prevent him from following the
-    overpowering instincts of his being and the laws of Nature, is
-    conduct revolting to reason and religion.
-
-    “The disease of rabies comes on by degrees, not suddenly. Its
-    symptoms can easily be read. Were knowledge more diffused, people
-    would know the approach of the malady, and take timely precautions.
-    To do as we now do,—namely, drive the unhappy creatures insane,
-    into an agonizing sickness by sheer ignorance or inhumanity, and
-    then, because one is ill, tie up the mouths of the healthy, and
-    unnaturally restrain all the rest, is it not the conduct of idiots
-    rather than of reasonable beings?
-
-    “Why all this hubbub about a disease which causes less loss of life
-    than almost any other complaint known, and whose fatal effects can,
-    in almost every case, be surely and certainly prevented by a
-    surgeon? If our lawgivers and lawmakers (who, by the way, although
-    the House of Commons is crowded with lawyers, do not in these times
-    draw Acts of Parliament so that they can be comprehended, without
-    the heavy cost of going to a superior court,) wish to save human
-    life, let them educate the hearts as well as heads of Englishmen,
-    and give more attention to boiler and colliery explosions, railway
-    smashes, and rotten ships; to the overcrowding and misery of the
-    poor; to the adulteration of food and medicines. Also, to dirt,
-    municipal stupidity, and neglect; by which one city alone,
-    Manchester, loses annually above three thousand lives.
-
-        “I am, your humble servant,
-
-            “Beth-Gelert.”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XLI.
-
-
-                                                Paris, 1st April, 1874.
-
-I find there are still primroses in Kent, and that it is possible still
-to see blue sky in London in the early morning. It was entirely pure as
-I drove down past my old Denmark Hill gate, bound for Cannon Street
-Station, on Monday morning last; gate, closed now on me for evermore,
-that used to open gladly enough when I came back to it from work in
-Italy. Now, father and mother and nurse all dead, and the roses of the
-spring, prime or late—what are they to me?
-
-But I want to know, rather, what are they to you? What have you,
-workers in England, to do with April, or May, or June either; your
-mill-wheels go no faster for the sunshine, do they? and you can’t get
-more smoke up the chimneys because more sap goes up the trunks. Do you
-so much as know or care who May was, or her son, Shepherd of the
-heathen souls, so despised of you Christians? Nevertheless, I have a
-word or two to say to you in the light of the hawthorn blossom, only
-you must read some rougher ones first. I have printed the June Fors
-together with this, because I want you to read the June one first, only
-the substance of it is not good for the May-time; but read it, and when
-you get to near the end, where it speaks of the distinctions between
-the sins of the hot heart and the cold, come back to this, for I want
-you to think in the flush of May what strength is in the flush of the
-heart also. You will find that in all my late books (during the last
-ten years) I have summed the needful virtue of men under the terms of
-gentleness and justice; gentleness being the virtue which distinguishes
-gentlemen from churls, and justice that which distinguishes honest men
-from rogues. Now gentleness may be defined as the Habit or State of
-Love; the Red Carita of Giotto (see account of her in Letter Seventh);
-and ungentleness or clownishness, the opposite State or Habit of Lust.
-
-Now there are three great loves that rule the souls of men: the love of
-what is lovely in creatures, and of what is lovely in things, and what
-is lovely in report. And these three loves have each their relative
-corruption, a lust—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the
-pride of life.
-
-And, as I have just said, a gentleman is distinguished from a churl by
-the purity of sentiment he can reach in all these three passions: by
-his imaginative love, as opposed to lust; his imaginative possession of
-wealth as opposed to avarice; his imaginative desire of honour as
-opposed to pride.
-
-And it is quite possible for the simplest workman or labourer for whom
-I write to understand what the feelings of a gentleman are, and share
-them, if he will; but the crisis and horror of this present time are
-that its desire of money, and the fulness of luxury dishonestly
-attainable by common persons, are gradually making churls of all men;
-and the nobler passions are not merely disbelieved, but even the
-conception of them seems ludicrous to the impotent churl mind; so that,
-to take only so poor an instance of them as my own life—because I have
-passed it in almsgiving, not in fortune-hunting; because I have
-laboured always for the honour of others, not my own, and have chosen
-rather to make men look to Turner and Luini, than to form or exhibit
-the skill of my own hand; because I have lowered my rents, and assured
-the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead of taking from them
-all I could force for the roofs they needed; because I love a wood walk
-better than a London street, and would rather watch a seagull fly than
-shoot it, and rather hear a thrush sing than eat it; finally, because I
-never disobeyed my mother, because I have honoured all women with
-solemn worship, and have been kind even to the unthankful and the evil;
-therefore the hacks of English art and literature wag their heads at
-me, and the poor wretch who pawns the dirty linen of his soul daily for
-a bottle of sour wine and a cigar, talks of the “effeminate
-sentimentality of Ruskin.”
-
-Now of these despised sentiments, which in all ages have distinguished
-the gentleman from the churl, the first is that reverence for womanhood
-which, even through all the cruelties of the Middle Ages, developed
-itself with increasing power until the thirteenth century, and became
-consummated in the imagination of the Madonna, which ruled over all the
-highest arts and purest thoughts of that age.
-
-To the common Protestant mind the dignities ascribed to the Madonna
-have been always a violent offence; they are one of the parts of the
-Catholic faith which are openest to reasonable dispute, and least
-comprehensible by the average realistic and materialist temper of the
-Reformation. But after the most careful examination, neither as
-adversary nor as friend, of the influences of Catholicism for good and
-evil, I am persuaded that the worship of the Madonna has been one of
-its noblest and most vital graces, and has never been otherwise than
-productive of true holiness of life and purity of character. I do not
-enter into any question as to the truth or fallacy of the idea; I no
-more wish to defend the historical or theological position of the
-Madonna than that of St. Michael or St. Christopher; but I am certain
-that to the habit of reverent belief in, and contemplation of, the
-character ascribed to the heavenly hierarchies, we must ascribe the
-highest results yet achieved in human nature, and that it is neither
-Madonna-worship nor saint-worship, but the evangelical self-worship and
-hell-worship—gloating, with an imagination as unfounded as it is foul,
-over the torments of the damned, instead of the glories of the
-blest,—which have in reality degraded the languid powers of
-Christianity to their present state of shame and reproach. There has
-probably not been an innocent cottage home throughout the length and
-breadth of Europe during the whole period of vital Christianity, in
-which the imagined presence of the Madonna has not given sanctity to
-the humblest duties, and comfort to the sorest trials of the lives of
-women; and every brightest and loftiest achievement of the arts and
-strength of manhood has been the fulfilment of the assured prophecy of
-the poor Israelite maiden, “He that is mighty hath magnified me, and
-Holy is His name.” What we are about to substitute for such magnifying
-in our modern wisdom, let the reader judge from two slight things that
-chanced to be noticed by me in my walk round Paris. I generally go
-first to Our Lady’s Church, for though the towers and most part of the
-walls are now merely the modern model of the original building, much of
-the portal sculpture is still genuine, and especially the greater part
-of the lower arcades of the north-west door, where the common entrance
-is. I always held these such valuable pieces of the thirteenth century
-work that I had them cast, in mass, some years ago, brought away casts,
-eight feet high by twelve wide, and gave them to the Architectural
-Museum. So as I was examining these, and laboriously gleaning what was
-left of the old work among M. Violet le Duc’s fine fresh heads of
-animals and points of leaves, I saw a brass plate in the back of one of
-the niches, where the improperly magnified saints used to be. At first
-I thought it was over one of the usual almsboxes which have a right to
-be at church entrances (if anywhere); but catching sight of an English
-word or two on it, I stopped to read, and read to the following
-effect:—
-
-
-                             “F. du Larin,
-                                 office
-                                 of the
-                        Victoria Pleasure Trips
-                     And Excursions to Versailles.
-              Excursions to the Battle-fields round Paris.
-
-    “A four-horse coach with an English guide starts daily from Notre
-    Dame Cathedral, at 10½ a.m. for Versailles, by the Bois de
-    Boulogne, St. Cloud, Montretout, and Ville d’Avray. Back in Paris
-    at 5½ p.m. Fares must be secured one day in advance at the entrance
-    of Notre Dame.
-
-                        The Manager, H. du Larin.”
-
-
-“Magnificat anima mea Dominum, quia respexit humilitatem ancillæ Suæ.”
-Truly it seems to be time that God should again regard the lowliness of
-His handmaiden, now that she has become keeper of the coach office for
-excursions to Versailles. The arrangement becomes still more perfect in
-the objects of this Christian joyful pilgrimage (from Canterbury, as it
-were, instead of to it), the “Battle-fields round Paris!”
-
-From Notre Dame I walked back into the livelier parts of the city,
-though in no very lively mood; but recovered some tranquillity in the
-Marché aux fleurs, which is a pleasant spectacle in April, and then
-made some circuit of the Boulevards, where, as the third Fors would
-have it, I suddenly came in view of one of the temples of the modern
-superstition, which is to replace Mariolatry. For it seems that human
-creatures must imagine something or someone in Apotheosis, and the
-Assumption of the Virgin, and Titian’s or Tintoret’s views on that
-matter being held reasonable no more, apotheosis of some other power
-follows as a matter of course. Here accordingly is one of the modern
-hymns on the Advent of Spring, which replace now in France the sweet
-Cathedral services of the Mois de Marie. It was printed in vast letters
-on a white sheet, dependent at the side of the porch or main entrance
-to the fur shop of the “Compagnie Anglo-Russe.”
-
-“Le printemps s’annonce avec son gracieux cortège de rayons et de
-fleurs. Adieu, l’hiver! C’en est bien fini! Et cependant il faut que
-toutes ces fourrures soient enlevées, vendues, données, dans ces 6
-jours. C’est une aubaine inesperée, un placement fabuleux; car, qu’on
-ne l’oublie pas, la fourrure vraie, la belle, la riche, a toujours sa
-valeur intrinsique. Et, comme couronnement de cette sorte d’Apothéose
-la Cie. Anglo-Russe remet gratis à tout acheteur un talisman
-merveilleux pour conserver la fourrure pendant 10 saisons.”
-
-“Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins
-and clothed them.”
-
-The Anglo-Russian company having now superseded Divine labour in such
-matters, you have also, instead of the grand old Dragon-Devil with his
-“Ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil,” only a little weasel of a
-devil with an ermine tip to his tail, advising you, “Ye shall be as
-Gods, buying your skins cheap.”
-
-
-
-I am a simpleton, am I, to quote such an exploded book as Genesis? My
-good wiseacre readers, I know as many flaws in the book of Genesis as
-the best of you, but I knew the book before I knew its flaws, while you
-know the flaws, and never have known the book, nor can know it. And it
-is at present much the worse for you; for indeed the stories of this
-book of Genesis have been the nursery tales of men mightiest whom the
-world has yet seen in art, and policy, and virtue, and none of you will
-write better stories for your children, yet awhile. And your little
-Cains will learn quickly enough to ask if they are their brother’s
-keepers, and your little Fathers of Canaan merrily enough to show their
-own father’s nakedness without dread either of banishment or
-malediction; but many a day will pass, and their evil generations
-vanish with it, in that sudden nothingness of the wicked, “He passed
-away, and lo, he was not,” before one will again rise, of whose death
-there may remain the Divine tradition, “He walked with God, and was
-not, for God took him.” Apotheosis! How the dim hope of it haunts even
-the last degradation of men; and through the six thousand years from
-Enoch, and the vague Greek ages which dreamed of their twin-hero stars,
-declines, in this final stage of civilization, into dependence on the
-sweet promise of the Anglo-Russian tempter, with his ermine tail, “Ye
-shall be as Gods, and buy cat-skin cheap.”
-
-So it must be. I know it, my good wiseacres. You can have no more
-Queens of Heaven, nor assumptions of triumphing saints. Even your
-simple country Queen of May, whom once you worshipped for a goddess—has
-not little Mr. Faraday analysed her, and proved her to consist of
-charcoal and water, combined under what the Duke of Argyll calls the
-“reign of law”? Your once fortune-guiding stars, which used to twinkle
-in a mysterious manner, and to make you wonder what they
-were,—everybody knows what they are now: only hydrogen gas, and they
-stink as they twinkle. My wiseacre acquaintances, it is very fine,
-doubtless, for you to know all these things, who have plenty of money
-in your pockets, and nothing particular to burden your chemical minds;
-but for the poor, who have nothing in their pockets, and the wretched,
-who have much on their hearts, what in the world is the good of knowing
-that the only heaven they have to go to is a large gasometer?
-
-“Poor and wretched!” you answer. “But when once everybody is convinced
-that heaven is a large gasometer, and when we have turned all the world
-into a small gasometer, and can drive round it by steam, and in forty
-minutes be back again where we were,—nobody will be poor or wretched
-any more. Sixty pounds on the square inch,—can anybody be wretched
-under that general application of high pressure?”
-
-
-
-                                                  (Assisi, 15th April.)
-
-Good wiseacres, yes; it seems to me, at least, more than probable: but
-if not, and you all find yourselves rich and merry, with steam legs and
-steel hearts, I am well assured there will be found yet room, where
-your telescopes have not reached, nor can,—grind you their lenses ever
-so finely,—room for the quiet souls, who choose for their part,
-poverty, with light and peace.
-
-I am writing at a narrow window, which looks out on some broken tiles
-and a dead wall. A wall dead in the profoundest sense, you wiseacres
-would think it. Six hundred years old, and as strong as when it was
-built, and paying nobody any interest, and still less commission, on
-the cost of repair. Both sides of the street, or pathway rather,—it is
-not nine feet wide,—are similarly built with solid blocks of grey
-marble, arched rudely above the windows, with here and there a cross on
-the keystones.
-
-If I chose to rise from my work and walk a hundred yards down this
-street (if one may so call the narrow path between grey walls, as quiet
-and lonely as a sheep-walk on Shap Fells,) I should come to a small
-prison-like door; and over the door is a tablet of white marble let
-into the grey, and on the tablet is written, in contracted Latin, what
-in English signifies:—
-
-
-                “Here, Bernard the Happy [37]
-                Received St. Francis of Assisi,
-                And saw him, in ecstacy.”
-
-
-Good wiseacres, you believe nothing of the sort, do you? Nobody ever
-yet was in ecstacy, you think, till now, when they may buy cat-skin
-cheap?
-
-Do you believe in Blackfriars Bridge, then; and admit that some day or
-other there must have been reason to call it “Black Friar’s”? As surely
-as the bridge stands over Thames, and St. Paul’s above it, these two
-men, Paul and Francis, had their ecstacies, in bygone days, concerning
-other matters than ermine tails; and still the same ecstacies, or
-effeminate sentiments, are possible to human creatures, believe it or
-not as you will. I am not now, whatever the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ may
-think, an ecstatic person myself. But thirty years ago I knew once or
-twice what joy meant, and have not forgotten the feeling; nay, even so
-little a while as two years ago, I had it back again—for a day. And I
-can assure you, good wiseacres, there is such a thing to be had; but
-not in cheap shops, nor, I was going to say, for money; yet in a
-certain sense it is buyable—by forsaking all that a man hath.
-Buyable—literally enough—the freehold Elysian field at that price, but
-not a doit cheaper; and I believe, at this moment, the reason my voice
-has an uncertain sound, the reason that this design of mine stays
-unhelped, and that only a little group of men and women, moved chiefly
-by personal regard, stand with me in a course so plain and true, is
-that I have not yet given myself to it wholly, but have halted between
-good and evil, and sit still at the receipt of custom, and am always
-looking back from the plough.
-
-It is not wholly my fault this. There seem to me good reasons why I
-should go on with my work in Oxford; good reasons why I should have a
-house of my own with pictures and library; good reasons why I should
-still take interest from the bank; good reasons why I should make
-myself as comfortable as I can, wherever I go; travel with two
-servants, and have a dish of game at dinner. It is true, indeed, that I
-have given the half of my goods and more to the poor; it is true also
-that the work in Oxford is not a matter of pride, but of duty with me;
-it is true that I think it wiser to live what seems to other people a
-rational and pleasant, not an enthusiastic, life; and that I serve my
-servants at least as much as they serve me. But, all this being so, I
-find there is yet something wrong; I have no peace, still less ecstacy.
-It seems to me as if one had indeed to wear camel’s hair instead of
-dress coats before one can get that; and I was looking at St. Francis’s
-camel’s-hair coat yesterday (they have it still in the sacristy), and I
-don’t like the look of it at all; the Anglo-Russian Company’s wear is
-ever so much nicer,—let the devil at least have this due.
-
-And he must have a little more due even than this. It is not at all
-clear to me how far the Beggar and Pauper Saint, whose marriage with
-the Lady Poverty I have come here to paint from Giotto’s dream of
-it,—how far, I say, the mighty work he did in the world was owing to
-his vow of poverty, or diminished by it. If he had been content to
-preach love alone, whether among poor or rich, and if he had understood
-that love, for all God’s creatures, was one and the same blessing; and
-that, if he was right to take the doves out of the fowler’s hand, that
-they might build their nests, he was himself wrong when he went out in
-the winter’s night on the hills, and made for himself dolls of snow,
-and said, “Francis, these—behold—these are thy wife and thy children.”
-If instead of quitting his father’s trade, that he might nurse lepers,
-he had made his father’s trade holy and pure, and honourable more than
-beggary, perhaps at this day the Black Friars might yet have had an
-unruined house by Thames shore, and the children of his native village
-not be standing in the porches of the temple built over his tomb, to
-ask alms of the infidel.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XLII.
-
-
-I must construct my letters still, for a while, of swept-up fragments;
-every day provokes me to write new matter; but I must not lose the
-fruit of the old days. Here is some worth picking up, though
-ill-ripened for want of sunshine, (the little we had spending itself on
-the rain,) last year.
-
-
-                                                      1st August, 1873.
-
-“Not being able to work steadily this morning, because there was a
-rainbow half a mile broad, and violet-bright, on the shoulders of the
-Old Man of Coniston—(by calling it half a mile broad, I mean that half
-a mile’s breadth of mountain was coloured by it,—and by calling it
-violet-bright, I mean that the violet zone of it came pure against the
-grey rocks; and note, by the way, that essentially all the colours of
-the rainbow are secondary;—yellow exists only as a line—red as a
-line—blue as a line; but the zone itself is of varied orange, green,
-and violet,)—not being able, I say, for steady work, I opened an old
-diary of 1849, and as the third Fors would have it, at this extract
-from the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
-
-                                                              (Venice.)
-
-“The Prince of Saxony went to see the Arsenal three days ago, waited on
-by a numerous nobility of both sexes; the Bucentaur was adorned and
-launched, a magnificent collation given; and we sailed a little in it.
-I was in company with the Signora Justiniani Gradenigo and Signora
-Marina Crizzo. There were two cannons founded in his (the Prince of
-Saxony’s) presence, and a galley built and launched in an hour’s time.”
-(Well may Dante speak of that busy Arsenal!)
-
-“Last night there was a concert of voices and instruments at the
-Hospital of the Incurabili, where there were two girls that in the
-opinion of all people excel either Faustina or Cuzzoni.
-
-“I am invited to-morrow to the Foscarini to dinner, which is to be
-followed by a concert and a ball.”
-
-The account of a regatta follows, in which the various nobles had boats
-costing £1000 sterling each, none less than £500, and enough of them to
-look like a little fleet. The Signora Pisani Mocenigo’s represented the
-Chariot of the Night, drawn by four sea-horses, and showing the rising
-of the moon, accompanied with stars, the statues on each side
-representing the Hours, to the number of twenty-four.
-
-Pleasant times, these, for Venice! one’s Bucentaur launched, wherein to
-eat, buoyantly, a magnificent collation—beautiful ladies driving their
-ocean steeds in the Chariot of the Night—beautiful songs, at the
-Hospital of the Incurabili. Much bettered, these, from the rough days
-when one had to row and fight for life, thought Venice; better days
-still, in the nineteenth century, being—as she appears to believe
-now—in store for her.
-
-You thought, I suppose, that in writing those numbers of Fors last year
-from Venice and Verona, I was idling, or digressing?
-
-Nothing of the kind. The business of Fors is to tell you of Venice and
-Verona; and many things of them.
-
-You don’t care about Venice and Verona? Of course not. Who does? And I
-beg you to observe that the day is coming when, exactly in the same
-sense, active working men will say to any antiquarian who purposes to
-tell them something of England, “We don’t care about England.” And the
-antiquarian will answer, just as I have answered you now, “Of course
-not. Who does?”
-
-Nay, the saying has been already said to me, and by a wise and good
-man. When I asked, at the end of my inaugural lecture at Oxford, “Will
-you, youths of England, make your country again a royal throne of
-kings, a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light—a centre of
-peace?”—my University friends came to me, with grave faces, to
-remonstrate against irrelevant and Utopian topics of that nature being
-introduced in lectures on art; and a very dear American friend wrote to
-me, when I sent the lecture to him, in some such terms as these: “Why
-will you diminish your real influence for good, by speaking as if
-England could now take any dominant place in the world? How many
-millions, think you, are there here, of the activest spirits of their
-time, who care nothing for England, and would read no farther, after
-coming upon such a passage?”
-
-That England deserves little care from any man nowadays, is fatally
-true; that in a century more she will be—where Venice is—among the dead
-of nations, is far more than probable. And yet—that you do not care for
-dead Venice, is the sign of your own ruin; and that the Americans do
-not care for dying England, is only the sign of their inferiority to
-her.
-
-For this dead Venice once taught us to be merchants, sailors, and
-gentlemen; and this dying England taught the Americans all they have of
-speech, or thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from
-England are foolish thoughts; what words they have not learned from
-England, unseemly words; the vile among them not being able even to be
-humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking birds. An American
-republican woman, lately, describes a child which “like cherubim and
-seraphim continually did cry;” [38] such their feminine learning of the
-European fashions of ‘Te Deum’! And, as I tell you, Venice in like
-manner taught us, when she and we were honest, our marketing, and our
-manners. Then she began trading in pleasure, and souls of men, before
-us; followed that Babylonish trade to her death,—we nothing loth to
-imitate, so plausible she was, in her mythic gondola, and Chariot of
-the Night! But where her pilotage has for the present carried her, and
-is like to carry us, it may be well to consider. And therefore I will
-ask you to glance back to my twentieth letter, giving account of the
-steam music, the modern Tasso’s echoes, practised on her principal
-lagoon. That is her present manner, you observe, of “whistling at her
-darg.” But for festivity after work, or altogether superseding
-work—launching one’s adorned Bucentaur for collation—let us hear what
-she is doing in that kind.
-
-From the Rinnovamento (Renewal, or Revival,) “Gazette of the people of
-Venice” of 2nd July, 1872, I print, in my terminal notes, a portion of
-one of their daily correspondent’s letters, describing his pleasures of
-the previous day, of which I here translate a few pregnant sentences.
-
-“I embarked on a little steamboat. It was elegant—it was vast. But its
-contents were enormously greater than its capacity. The little
-steamboat overflowed [39] with men, women, and boys. The Commandant, a
-proud young man, cried, ‘Come in, come in!’ and the crowd became always
-more close, and one could scarcely breathe” (the heroic exhortations of
-the proud youth leading his public to this painful result). “All at
-once a delicate person [40] of the piazza, feeling herself unwell,
-cried ‘I suffocate.’ The Commandant perceived that suffocation did
-veritably prevail, and gave the word of command, ‘Enough.’
-
-“In eighteen minutes I had the good fortune to land safe at the
-establishment, ‘The Favourite.’ And here my eyes opened for wonder. In
-truth, only a respectable force of will could have succeeded in
-transforming this place, only a few months ago still desert and
-uncultivated, into a site of delights. Long alleys, grassy carpets,
-small mountains, charming little banks, châlets, solitary and
-mysterious paths, and then an interminable covered way which conducts
-to the bathing establishment; and in that, attendants dressed in
-mariners’ dresses, a most commodious basin, the finest linen, and the
-most regular and solicitous service.
-
-“Surprised, and satisfied, I plunged myself cheerfully into the sea.
-After the bath, is prescribed a walk. Obedient to the dictates of
-hygiene, I take my returning way along the pleasant shore of the sea to
-‘The Favourite.’ A châlet, or rather an immense salon, is become a
-concert room. And, in fact, an excellent orchestra is executing therein
-most chosen pieces. The artists are all endued in dress coats, and wear
-white cravats. I hear with delight a pot-pourri from Faust. I then take
-a turn through the most vast park, and visit the Restaurant.
-
-“To conclude. The Lido has no more need to become a place of delights.
-It is, in truth, already become so.
-
-“All honour to the brave who have effected the marvellous
-transformation.”
-
-Onori ai bravi!—Honour to the brave! Yes; in all times, among all
-nations, that is entirely desirable. You know I told you, in last Fors,
-that to honour the brave dead was to be our second child’s lesson. None
-the less expedient if the brave we have to honour be alive, instead of
-long dead. Here are our modern Venetian troubadours, in white cravats,
-celebrating the victories of their Hardicanutes with collection of
-choicest melody—pot-pourri—hotch-potch, from Faust. And, indeed, is not
-this a notable conquest which resuscitated Venice has made of her Lido?
-Where all was vague sea-shore, now, behold, “little mountains,
-mysterious paths.” Those unmanufactured mountains—Eugeneans and
-Alps—seen against the sunset, are not enough for the vast mind of
-Venice born again; nor the canals between her palaces mysterious enough
-paths. Here are mountains to our perfect mind, and more solemn ways,—a
-new kingdom for us, conquered by the brave. Conquest, you observe also,
-just of the kind which in our ‘Times’ newspaper is honoured always in
-like manner, ‘Private Enterprise.’ The only question is, whether the
-privacy of your enterprise is always as fearless of exposure as it used
-to be,—or even, the enterprise of it as enterprising. Let me tell you a
-little of the private enterprise of dead Venice, that you may compare
-it with that of the living.
-
-You doubted me just now, probably, when I told you that Venice taught
-you to be sailors. You thought your Drakes and Grenvilles needed no
-such masters. No! but a hundred years before Sir Francis’s time, the
-blind captain of a Venetian galley,—of one of those things which the
-Lady Mary saw built in an hour,—won the empire of the East. You did
-fine things in the Baltic, and before Sebastopol, with your ironclads
-and your Woolwich infants, did you? Here was a piece of fighting done
-from the deck of a rowed boat, which came to more good, it seems to me.
-
-“The Duke of Venice had disposed his fleet in one line along the
-sea-wall (of Constantinople), and had cleared the battlements with his
-shot (of stones and arrows); but still the galleys dared not take
-ground. But the Duke of Venice, though he was old (ninety) and
-stone-blind, stood, all armed, at the head of his galley, and had the
-gonfalon of St. Mark before him; and he called to his people to ground
-his ship, or they should die for it. So they ran the ship aground, and
-leaped out, and carried St. Mark’s gonfalon to the shore before the
-Duke. Then the Venetians, seeing their Duke’s galley ashore, followed
-him; and they planted the flag of St. Mark on the walls, and took
-twenty-five towers.”
-
-The good issue of which piece of pantaloon’s play was that the city
-itself, a little while after, with due help from the French, was taken,
-and that the crusading army proceeded thereon to elect a new Emperor of
-the Eastern Empire.
-
-Which office six French Barons, and six Venetian, being appointed to
-bestow, and one of the French naming first the Duke of Venice, he had
-certainly been declared Emperor, but one of the Venetians themselves,
-Pantaleone Barbo, declaring that no man could be Duke of Venice, and
-Emperor too, gave his word for Baldwin of Flanders, to whom accordingly
-the throne was given; while to the Venetian State was offered, with the
-consent of all, if they chose to hold it—about a third of the whole
-Roman Empire!
-
-Venice thereupon deliberates with herself. Her own present national
-territory—the true ‘State’ of Venice—is a marsh, which you can see from
-end to end of;—some wooden houses, half afloat, and others wholly
-afloat, in the canals of it; and a total population, in round numbers,
-about as large as that of our parish of Lambeth. Venice feels some
-doubt whether, out of this wild duck’s nest, and with that number of
-men, she can at once safely, and in all the world’s sight, undertake to
-govern Lacedæmon, Ægina, Ægos Potamos, Crete, and half the Greek
-islands; nevertheless, she thinks she will try a little ‘private
-enterprise’ upon them. So in 1207 the Venetian Senate published an
-edict by which there was granted to all Venetian citizens permission to
-arm, at their own expense, war-galleys, and to subdue, if they could
-manage it in that private manner, such islands and Greek towns of the
-Archipelago as might seem to them what we call “eligible residences,”
-the Senate graciously giving them leave to keep whatever they could
-get. Whereupon certain Venetian merchants—proud young men—stood, as we
-see them standing now on their decks on the Riva, crying to the crowd,
-‘Montate! Montate!’ and without any help from steam, or encumbrance
-from the markets of Ascension Day, rowed and sailed—somewhat outside
-the Lido. Mark Dandolo took Gallipoli; Mark Sanudo, Naxos, Paros, and
-Melos;—(you have heard of marbles and Venuses coming from those places,
-have not you?)—Marin Dandolo, Andros; Andrea Ghisi, Micone and Scyros;
-Dominico Michieli, Ceos; and Philocola Navigieri, the island of Vulcan
-himself, Lemnos. Took them, and kept them also! (not a little to our
-present sorrow; for, being good Christians, these Venetian gentlemen
-made wild work among the Parian and Melian gods). It was not till 1570
-that the twenty-first Venetian Duke of Melos was driven out by the
-Turks, and the career of modern white-cravated Venice virtually begun.
-
-“Honour to the brave!” Yes, in God’s name, and by all manner of means!
-And dishonour to the cowards: but, my good Italian and good English
-acquaintances, are you so sure, then, you know which is which? Nay, are
-you honestly willing to acknowledge there is any difference? Heaven be
-praised if you are!—but I thought your modern gospel was, that all were
-alike? Here’s the ‘Punch’ of last week lying beside me, for instance,
-with its normal piece of pathos upon the advertisements of death. Dual
-deaths this time; and pathetic epitaphs on the Bishop of Winchester and
-the Baron Bethell. The best it can honestly say, (and ‘Punch’ as far as
-I know papers, is an honest one,) is that the Bishop was a pleasant
-kind of person; and the best it can say for the Chancellor is, that he
-was witty;—but, fearing that something more might be expected, it
-smooths all down with a sop of popular varnish, “How good the worst of
-us!—how bad the best!” Alas, Mr. Punch, is it come to this? and is
-there to be no more knocking down, then? and is your last scene in
-future to be—shaking hands with the devil?—clerical pantaloon in white
-cravat asking a blessing on the reconciliation, and the drum and pipe
-finishing with a pot-pourri from Faust?
-
-A popular tune, truly, everywhere, nowadays—“Devil’s hotch-potch,” and
-listened to “avec delices!” And, doubtless, pious Republicans on their
-death-beds will have a care to bequeath it, rightly played, to their
-children, before they go to hear it, divinely executed, in their own
-blessed country.
-
-“How good the worst of us!—how bad the best!” Jeanie Deans, and St.
-Agnes, and the Holy Thursday fairing, all the same!
-
-
-
-My good working readers, I will try to-day to put you more clearly in
-understanding of this modern gospel,—of what truth there is in it—for
-some there is,—and of what pestilent evil.
-
-I call it a modern gospel: in its deepest truth it is as old as
-Christianity. “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” And
-it was the most distinctive character of Christianity. Here was a new,
-astonishing religion indeed; one had heard before of righteousness;
-before of resurrection;—never before of mercy to sin, or fellowship
-with it.
-
-But it is only in strictly modern times (that is to say, within the
-last hundred years) that this has been fixed on, by a large sect of
-thick-headed persons, as the essence of Christianity,—nay, as so much
-its essence, that to be an extremely sinful sinner is deliberately
-announced by them as the best of qualifications for becoming an
-extremely Christian Christian.
-
-But all the teachings of Heaven are given—by sad law—in so obscure,
-nay, often in so ironical manner that a blockhead necessarily reads
-them wrong. Very marvellous it is that Heaven, which really in one
-sense is merciful to sinners, is in no sense merciful to fools, but
-even lays pitfalls for them, and inevitable snares.
-
-Again and again, in the New Testament, the publican (supposed at once
-traitor to his country and thief) and the harlot are made the
-companions of Christ. She out of whom He had cast seven devils, loves
-Him best, sees Him first, after His resurrection. The sting of that old
-verse, “When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst to him, and hast
-been partaker with adulterers,” seems done away with. Adultery itself
-uncondemned,—for, behold, in your hearts is not every one of you alike?
-“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
-And so, and so, no more stones shall be cast nowadays; and here, on the
-top of our epitaph on the Bishop, lies a notice of the questionable
-sentence which hanged a man for beating his wife to death with a stick.
-“The jury recommended him strongly to mercy.”
-
-They did so, because they knew not, in their own hearts, what mercy
-meant. They were afraid to do anything so extremely compromising and
-disagreeable as causing a man to be hanged,—had no ‘pity’ for any
-creatures beaten to death—wives, or beasts; but only a cowardly fear of
-commanding death, where it was due. Your modern conscience will not
-incur the responsibility of shortening the hourly more guilty life of a
-single rogue; but will contentedly fire a salvo of mitrailleuses into a
-regiment of honest men—leaving Providence to guide the shot. But let us
-fasten on the word they abused, and understand it. Mercy—misericordia:
-it does not in the least mean forgiveness of sins,—it means pity of
-sorrows. In that very instance which the Evangelicals are so fond of
-quoting—the adultery of David—it is not the Passion for which he is to
-be judged, but the want of Passion,—the want of Pity. This he is to
-judge himself for, by his own mouth:—“As the Lord liveth, the man that
-hath done this thing shall surely die,—because he hath done this thing,
-and because he had no pity.”
-
-And you will find, alike throughout the record of the Law and the
-promises of the Gospel, that there is, indeed, forgiveness with God,
-and Christ, for the passing sins of the hot heart, but none for the
-eternal and inherent sin of the cold. ‘Blessed are the merciful, for
-they shall obtain mercy’;—find it you written anywhere that the
-unmerciful shall? ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she
-loved much.’ But have you record of any one’s sins being forgiven who
-loved not at all?
-
-I opened my oldest Bible just now, to look for the accurate words of
-David about the killed lamb;—a small, closely, and very neatly printed
-volume it is, printed in Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce,
-Printers to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty in 1816. Yellow, now,
-with age, and flexible, but not unclean, with much use, except that the
-lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 32nd Deuteronomy
-are worn somewhat thin and dark, the learning of these two chapters
-having cost me much pains. My mother’s list of the chapters with which,
-learned every syllable accurately, she established my soul in life, has
-just fallen out of it. And as probably the sagacious reader has already
-perceived that these letters are written in their irregular way, among
-other reasons, that they may contain, as the relation may become
-apposite, so much of autobiography as it seems to me desirable to
-write, I will take what indulgence the sagacious reader will give me,
-for printing the list thus accidentally occurrent:—
-
-
-    Exodus,       chapters 15th and 20th.
-    2 Samuel         ,,    1st, from 17th verse to the end.
-    1 Kings          ,,    8th.
-    Psalms                 23rd, 32nd, 90th, 91st, 103rd, 112th,
-                           119th, 139th.
-    Proverbs         ,,    2nd, 3rd, 8th, 12th.
-    Isaiah           ,,    58th.
-    Matthew          ,,    5th, 6th, 7th.
-    Acts             ,,    26th.
-    1 Corinthians    ,,    13th, 15th.
-    James            ,,    4th.
-    Revelation       ,,    5th, 6th.
-
-
-And truly, though I have picked up the elements of a little further
-knowledge,—in mathematics, meteorology, and the like, in after
-life,—and owe not a little to the teaching of many people, this
-maternal installation of my mind in that property of chapters, I count
-very confidently the most precious, and, on the whole, the one
-essential part of all my education.
-
-For the chapters became, indeed, strictly conclusive and protective to
-me in all modes of thought; and the body of divinity they contain,
-acceptable through all fear or doubt: nor, through any fear or doubt or
-fault have I ever lost my loyalty to them, nor betrayed the first
-command in the one I was made to repeat oftenest, “Let not Mercy and
-Truth forsake Thee.”
-
-And at my present age of fifty-five, in spite of some enlarged
-observations of what modern philosophers call the Reign of Law, I
-perceive more distinctly than ever the Reign of a Spirit of Mercy and
-Truth,—infinite in pardon and purification for its wandering and
-faultful children, who have yet Love in their hearts; and altogether
-adverse and implacable to its perverse and lying enemies, who have
-resolute hatred in their hearts, and resolute falsehood on their lips.
-
-This assertion of the existence of a Spirit of Mercy and Truth, as the
-master first of the Law of Life, and then of the methods of knowledge
-and labour by which it is sustained, and which the ‘Saturday Review’
-calls the effeminate sentimentality of Mr. Ruskin’s political economy,
-is accurately, you will observe, reversed by the assertion of the
-Predatory and Carnivorous—or, in plainer English, flesh-eating spirit
-in Man himself, as the regulator of modern civilization, in the paper
-read by the Secretary at the Social Science meeting in Glasgow, 1860.
-Out of which the following fundamental passage may stand for sufficient
-and permanent example of the existent, practical, and unsentimental
-English mind, being the most vile sentence which I have ever seen in
-the literature of any country or time:—
-
-“As no one will deny that Man possesses carnivorous teeth, or that all
-animals that possess them are more or less predatory, it is unnecessary
-to argue, à priori, that a predatory instinct naturally follows from
-such organization. It is our intention here to show how this inevitable
-result operates on civilized existence by its being one of the
-conditions of Man’s nature, and, consequently, of all arrangements of
-civilized society.”
-
-The paper proceeds, and is entirely constructed, on the assumption that
-the predatory spirit is not only one of the conditions of man’s nature,
-but the particular condition on which the arrangements of Society are
-to be founded. For “Reason would immediately suggest to one of superior
-strength, that however desirable it might be to take possession by
-violence, of what another had laboured to produce, he might be treated
-in the same way by one stronger than himself, to which he, of course,
-would have great objection. In order, therefore, to prevent or put a
-stop to a practice which each would object to in his own case,” etc.,
-etc. And so the Social Science interpreter proceeds to sing the present
-non-sentimental Proverbs and Psalms of England,—with trumpets also and
-shawms—and steam whistles. And there is concert of voices and
-instruments at the Hospital of the Incurabili, and
-Progress—indubitably—in Chariots of the Night.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-                            CORRIERE DEI BAGNI.
-
-    M’imbarcai su di un vaporetto; era elegante, era vasto, ma il suo
-    contenuto era enormemente superiore al contenente; il vaporetto
-    rigurgitava di uomini, di donne, e di ragazzi.
-
-    Il commandante, un fiero giovanotto, gridava: Montate! Montate! e
-    la calca si faceva sempre più fitta, ed appena si poteva respirare.
-
-    Tutto ad un tratto un sensale di piazza si sentì venir male, e
-    gridò; io soffoco! Il commandante si accorse che si soffocava
-    davvero, ed ordino; basta!
-
-    Il vapore allora si avv ò (sic) ed io rimasi stipato fra la folla
-    per diciotto minuti, in capo ai quali ebbi la buona ventura di
-    sbarcare incolume sul pontile dello stabilimento la Favorita—Il
-    pontile è lunghissimo, ma elegante e coperto. Il sole per
-    conseguenza non dà nessuna noia.
-
-    Una strada che, fino a quando non sia migliorata, non consiglierei
-    di percorrere a chi non abbia i piedi in perfetto stato, conduce al
-    parco della Stabilimento Bagni del signor Delahant.—E qui i miei
-    occhi si aprirono per la meraviglia. E diffati, solo una
-    rispettibile forza di volontà ed operosita poté riuscire a
-    trasformare quel luogo, pochi mesi fa ancora deserto ed incolto, in
-    un sito di delisie.—Lunghi viali, tappeti erbosi, montagnole,
-    banchine, châlet, strade solitarie e misteriose, lumi, spalti, e
-    poi un interminabile pergolato che conduce allo stabilimento bagni,
-    ed in questo inservienti vestiti alla marinara, comodissima vasca,
-    biancheria finissima, e servizio regolare e premuroso.
-
-    Sorpreso e contento, mi tuffo allegramente nel mare.
-
-    Dopo il bagno è prescritta una passeggiata. Ossequiente ai dettami
-    dell’ igiene, riprendo la via e lungo la piacevole spiaggia del
-    mare ritorno alla Favorita.
-
-    Un châlet, o piuttosto una sala immensa, addobbata con origi nalità
-    e ricchezza, è divenuta una sala di concerto. Diffatti una
-    eccellente orchestra sta eseguendo pezzi sceltissimi.
-
-    Gli artisti indossana tutti la marsina e la cravatta bianca.
-    Ascolto con delizia un potpourri del Faust e poi torno a girare per
-    il vastissimo parco e visito il Restaurant.
-
-    Concludeno, il Lido non ha più bisogno di diventare un luogo di
-    delizie; esse lo è in verità diggià diventato, e fra breve i comodi
-    bagni del Lido di Venezia saranno fra i più famosi d’Italia.
-
-    Onore ai bravi che hanno operata la meravigliosa trasformazione!
-
-    ‘Ii Rinnovamento,’ Gazetta del Popolo di Venezia; (2nd July, 1872).
-
-
-
-This following part of a useful letter, dated 19th March, 1873, ought
-to have been printed before now:—
-
-“Sir,—Will you permit me to respectfully call your attention to a
-certain circumstance which has, not unlikely, something to do with the
-failure (if failure it is) of your appeal for the St. George’s Fund?
-
-“At page 22 of Fors Clavigera for May, 1871, your words were, ‘Will any
-such give a tenth of what they have and of what they earn?’ But in May
-of the following year, at page 8, the subject is referred to as the
-giving of ‘the tenth of what they have, or make.’ The two passages are
-open to widely differing interpretations. Moreover, none of the sums
-received appear to have any relation to ‘tenths’ either of earnings or
-possessions.
-
-“It is not probable that the majority of your readers understood you
-either to mean literally what you said, or to mean nothing but jest?
-They would naturally ask themselves, ‘Must it be a tenth of both, or
-nothing?’ ‘A tenth of either?’ Or, ‘After all, only what we feel able
-to give?’ Their perplexity would lead to the giving of nothing. As
-nobody who has a pecuniary title to ask for an explanation appears to
-have called your attention to the subject, I, who have no such title,
-do so now,—feeling impelled thereto by the hint in this month’s ‘Fors’
-of the possible ‘non-continuance of the work.’
-
-“May I presume to add one word more? Last Monday’s ‘Times’ (March 17th)
-gave a report of a Working Men’s Meeting on the present political
-crisis. One of the speakers said ‘he wanted every working man to be
-free.’ And his idea of freedom he explained to be that all workmen
-should be at liberty ‘to leave their work at a moment’s notice.’ This,
-as I have reason to know, is one of the things which working men have
-got into their heads, and which the newspapers ‘get their living by
-asserting.’
-
-“Lastly, the present English notion of civilizing China by inches, may
-be worth keeping record of.
-
-“We have Philistines out here, and a Philistine out here is a perfect
-Goliath. When he imagines that anything is wrong, he says—let it be a
-Coolie or an Emperor—‘Give him a thrashing.’ The men of this class here
-propose their usual remedy: ‘Let us have a war, and give the Chinese a
-good licking, and then we shall have the audience question granted, and
-everything else will follow.’ This includes opening up the country for
-trade, and civilizing the people, which according to their theories can
-be best done by ‘thrashing them.’ The missionaries are working to
-civilize the people here in another way, that is by the usual plan of
-tracts and preaching; but their system is not much in favour, for they
-make such very small progress among the 360,000,000, the conversion of
-which is their problem. The man of business wants the country opened up
-to trade, wants manufactures introduced, the mineral wealth to be used,
-and generally speaking the resources of the country to be developed,
-‘and that sort of thing you know—that’s the real way to civilize them.’
-This, of course, implies a multitudinous breed of Mr. Ruskin’s demons,
-or machinery, to accomplish all this. I am here giving the tone of the
-ideas I hear expressed around me. It was only the other day that I
-heard some of these various points talked over. We were sailing on the
-river in a steam launch, which was making the air impure with its
-smoke, snorting in a high-pressure way, and whistling as steam launches
-are wont to do. The scene was appropriate to the conversation, for we
-were among a forest of great junks—most quaint and picturesque they
-looked—so old-fashioned they seemed, that Noah’s Ark, had it been
-there, would have had a much more modern look about it. My friend, to
-whom the launch belonged, and who is in the machinery line himself,
-gave his opinion. He began by giving a significant movement of his head
-in the direction of the uncouth-looking junks, and then pointing to his
-own craft with its engine, said ‘he did not believe much in war, and
-the missionaries were not of much account. This is the thing to do it,’
-he added, pointing to the launch; ‘let us get at them with this sort of
-article, and steam at sixty pounds on the square inch; that would soon
-do it; that’s the thing to civilize them—sixty pounds on the square
-inch.’”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XLIII.
-
-
-                                             Rome, Corpus-Domini, 1874.
-
-I wrote, for a preface to the index at the end of the second volume of
-Fors, part of an abstract of what had been then stated in the course of
-this work. Fate would not let me finish it; but what was done will be
-useful now, and shall begin my letter for this month. Completing three
-and a half volumes of Fors, it may contain a more definite statement of
-its purpose than any given hitherto; though I have no intention of
-explaining that purpose entirely, until it is in sufficient degree
-accomplished. I have a house to build; but none shall mock me by saying
-I was not able to finish it, nor be vexed by not finding in it the
-rooms they expected. But the current and continual purpose of Fors
-Clavigera is to explain the powers of Chance, or Fortune (Fors), as she
-offers to men the conditions of prosperity; and as these conditions are
-accepted or refused, nails down and fastens their fate for ever, being
-thus ‘Clavigera,’—‘nail-bearing.’ The image is one familiar in
-mythology: my own conception of it was first got from Horace, and
-developed by steady effort to read history with impartiality, and to
-observe the lives of men around me with charity. “How you may make your
-fortune, or mar it,” is the expansion of the title.
-
-Certain authoritative conditions of life, of its happiness, and its
-honour, are therefore stated, in this book, as far as they may be,
-conclusively and indisputably, at present known. I do not enter into
-any debates, nor advance any opinions. With what is debateable I am
-unconcerned; and when I only have opinions about things, I do not talk
-about them. I attack only what cannot on any possible ground be
-defended; and state only what I know to be incontrovertibly true.
-
-You will find, as you read Fors more, that it differs curiously from
-most modern books in this. Modern fashion is, that the moment a man
-strikes some little lucifer match, or is hit by any form of fancy, he
-begins advertising his lucifer match, and fighting for his fancy,
-totally ignoring the existing sunshine, and the existing substances of
-things. But I have no matches to sell, no fancies to fight for. All
-that I have to say is that the day is in heaven, and rock and wood on
-earth, and that you must see by the one, and work with the other. You
-have heard as much before, perhaps. I hope you have; I should be
-ashamed if there were anything in Fors which had not been said
-before,—and that a thousand times, and a thousand times of times,—there
-is nothing in it, nor ever will be in it, but common truths, as clear
-to honest mankind as their daily sunrise, as necessary as their daily
-bread; and which the fools who deny can only live, themselves, because
-other men know and obey.
-
-You will therefore find that whatever is set down in Fors for you is
-assuredly true,—inevitable,—trustworthy to the uttermost,—however
-strange. [41] Not because I have any power of knowing more than other
-people, but simply because I have taken the trouble to ascertain what
-they also may ascertain if they choose. Compare on this point, Letter
-VI., page 5.
-
-The following rough abstract of the contents of the first seven letters
-may assist the reader in their use.
-
-
-    Letter I. Men’s prosperity is in their own hands; and no forms of
-    government are, in themselves, of the least use. The first
-    beginnings of prosperity must be in getting food, clothes, and
-    fuel. These cannot be got either by the fine arts, or the military
-    arts. Neither painting nor fighting feed men; nor can capital, in
-    the form of money or machinery, feed them. All capital is imaginary
-    or unimportant, except the quantity of food existing in the world
-    at any given moment. Finally, men cannot live by lending money to
-    each other, and the conditions of such loan at present are absurd
-    and deadly. [42]
-
-    Letter II. The nature of Rent. It is an exaction, by force of hand,
-    for the maintenance of Squires: but had better at present be left
-    to them. The nature of useful and useless employment. When
-    employment is given by capitalists, it is sometimes useful, but
-    oftener useless; sometimes moralizing, but oftener demoralizing.
-    And we had therefore better employ ourselves, without any appeal to
-    the capitalists (page 22); and to do this successfully, it must be
-    with three resolutions; namely, to be personally honest, socially
-    helpful, and conditionally obedient (page 23): explained in Letter
-    VII., page 21 to end.
-
-    Letter III. The power of Fate is independent of the Moral Law, but
-    never supersedes it. Virtue ceases to be such, if expecting reward:
-    it is therefore never materially rewarded. (I ought to have said,
-    except as one of the appointed means of physical and mental
-    health.) The Fates of England, and proper mode of studying them.
-    Stories of Henry II. and Richard I.
-
-    Letter IV. The value and nature of Education. It may be good,
-    bad,—or neither the one nor the other. Knowledge is not education,
-    and can neither make us happy nor rich. Opening discussion of the
-    nature and use of riches. Gold and diamonds are not riches, and the
-    reader is challenged to specify their use. Opening discussion of
-    the origin of wealth. It does not fall from heaven, (compare Letter
-    VII., page 19,) but is certainly obtainable, and has been generally
-    obtained, by pillage of the poor. Modes in which education in
-    virtue has been made costly to them, and education in vice cheap.
-    (Page 23.)
-
-    Letter V. The powers of Production. Extremity of modern folly in
-    supposing there can be over-production. The power of machines. They
-    cannot increase the possibilities of life, but only the
-    possibilities of idleness. (Page 13.) The things which are
-    essential to life are mainly three material ones and three
-    spiritual ones. First sketch of the proposed action of St. George’s
-    Company.
-
-    Letter VI. The Elysium of modern days. This letter, written under
-    the excitement of continual news of the revolution in Paris, is
-    desultory, and limits itself to noticing some of the causes of that
-    revolution: chiefly the idleness, disobedience, and covetousness of
-    the richer and middle classes.
-
-    Letter VII. The Elysium of ancient days. The definitions of true,
-    and spurious, Communism. Explanation of the design of true
-    Communism, in Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia.” This letter, though
-    treating of matters necessary to the whole work, yet introduces
-    them prematurely, being written, incidentally, upon the ruin of
-    Paris.
-
-                                                Assisi, 18th May, 1874.
-
-
-So ended, as Fors would have it, my abstraction, which I see Fors had
-her reason for stopping me in; else the abstraction would have needed
-farther abstracting. As it is, the reader may find in it the real gist
-of the remaining letters, and discern what a stiff business we have in
-hand,—rent, capital, and interest, all to be attacked at once! and a
-method of education shown to be possible in virtue, as cheaply as in
-vice!
-
-I should have got my business, stiff though it may be, farther forward
-by this time, but for that same revolution in Paris, and burning of the
-Tuileries, which greatly confused my plan by showing me how much baser
-the human material I had to deal with, was, than I thought in
-beginning.
-
-That a Christian army (or, at least, one which Saracens would have
-ranked with that they attacked, under the general name of Franks,)
-should fiercely devastate and rob an entire kingdom laid at their mercy
-by the worst distress;—that the first use made by this distressed
-country of the defeat of its armies would be to overthrow its
-government; and that, when its metropolis had all but perished in
-conflagration during the contest between its army and mob, no warning
-should be taken by other civilized societies, but all go trotting on
-again, next week, in their own several roads to ruin, persistently, as
-they had trotted before,—bells jingling, and whips cracking,—these
-things greatly appalled me, finding I had only slime to build with
-instead of mortar; and shook my plan partly out of shape.
-
-The frightfullest thing of all, to my mind, was the German temper, in
-its naïve selfishness; on which point, having been brought round again
-to it in my last letter, I have now somewhat more to say.
-
-In the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of 7th March, this year, under the head of
-‘This Evening’s News,’ appeared an article of which I here reprint the
-opening portion.
-
-
-    The well-known Hungarian author, Maurus Jokai, is at present a
-    visitor in the German capital. As a man of note he easily obtained
-    access to Prince Bismarck’s study, where an interesting
-    conversation took place, which M. Jokai reports pretty fully to the
-    Hungarian journal the Hon:—
-
-    “The Prince was, as usual, easy in his manner, and communicative,
-    and put a stop at the very outset to the Hungarian’s attempt at
-    ceremony. M. Jokai humorously remarked upon the prevalence of
-    ‘iron’ in the surroundings of the ‘iron’ Prince. Among other
-    things, there is an iron couch, and an iron safe, in which the
-    Chancellor appears to keep his cigars. Prince Bismarck was struck
-    by the youthful appearance of his guest, who is ten years his
-    junior, but whose writings he remembers to have seen reviewed long
-    ago, in the Augsburg Gazette (at that time still, the Chancellor
-    said, a clever paper) when he bore a lieutenant’s commission. In
-    the ensuing conversation, Prince Bismarck pointed out the paramount
-    necessity to Europe of a consolidated State in the position of
-    Austro-Hungary. It was mainly on that account that he concluded
-    peace with so great despatch in 1866. Small independent States in
-    the East would be a misfortune to Europe. Austria and Hungary must
-    realize their mutual interdependence, and the necessity of being
-    one. However, the dualist system of government must be preserved,
-    because the task of developing the State, which on this side of the
-    Leitha falls to the Germans, beyond that river naturally falls to
-    the Magyars. The notion that Germany has an inclination to annex
-    more land, Prince Bismarck designated as a myth. God preserve the
-    Germans from such a wish! Whatever more territory they might
-    acquire would probably be undermined by Papal influence, and they
-    have enough of that already. Should the Germans of Austria want to
-    be annexed by Germany, the Chancellor would feel inclined to
-    declare war against them for that wish alone. A German Minister who
-    should conceive the desire to annex part of Austria would deserve
-    to be hanged—a punishment the Prince indicated by gesture. He does
-    not wish to annex even a square foot of fresh territory, not as
-    much as two pencils he kept on playing with during the conversation
-    would cover. Those pencils, however, M. Jokai remarks, were big
-    enough to serve as walking-sticks, and on the map they would have
-    reached quite from Berlin to Trieste. Prince Bismarck went on to
-    justify his annexation of Alsace-Loraine by geographical necessity.
-    Otherwise he would rather not have grafted the French twig upon the
-    German tree.
-
-
-The French are enemies never to be appeased. Take away from them the
-cook, the tailor, and the hairdresser, and what remains of them is a
-copper-coloured Indian.”
-
-Now it does not matter whether Prince Bismarck ever said this, or not.
-That the saying should be attributed to him in a leading journal,
-without indication of doubt or surprise, is enough to show what the
-German temper is publicly recognized to be. And observe what a sentence
-it is—thus attributed to him. The French are only copper-coloured
-Indians, finely dressed. This said of the nation which gave us
-Charlemagne, St. Louis, St. Bernard, and Joan of Arc; which founded the
-central type of chivalry in the myth of Roland; which showed the utmost
-height of valour yet recorded in history, in the literal life of
-Guiscard; and which built Chartres Cathedral!
-
-But the French are not what they were! No; nor the English, for that
-matter; probably we have fallen the farther of the two: meantime the
-French still retain, at the root, the qualities they always had; and of
-one of these, a highly curious and commendable one, I wish you to take
-some note to-day.
-
-Among the minor nursery tales with which my mother allowed me to
-relieve the study of the great nursery tale of Genesis, my favourite
-was Miss Edgeworth’s “Frank.” The authoress chose this for the boy’s
-name, because she meant him to be a type of Frankness, or openness of
-heart:—truth of heart, that is to say, liking to lay itself open. You
-are in the habit, I believe, some of you, still, of speaking
-occasionally of English Frankness;—not recognizing, through the hard
-clink of the letter K, that you are only talking, all the while, of
-English Frenchness. Still less when you count your cargoes of gold from
-San Francisco, do you pause to reflect what San means, or what Francis
-means, without the Co;—or how it came to pass that the power of this
-mountain town of Assisi, where not only no gold can be dug, but where
-St. Francis forbade his Company to dig it anywhere else—came to give
-names to Devil’s towns far across the Atlantic—(and by the way you may
-note how clumsy the Devil is at christening; for if by chance he gets a
-fresh York all to himself, he never has any cleverer notion than to
-call it ‘New York’; and in fact, having no mother-wit from his dam, is
-obliged very often to put up with the old names which were given by
-Christians,—Nombre di Dios, Trinidad, Vera Cruz, and the like, even
-when he has all his own way with everything else in the places, but
-their names).
-
-But to return. You have lately had a fine notion, have you not, of
-English Liberty as opposed to French Slavery?
-
-Well, whatever your English liberties may be, the French knew what the
-word meant, before you. For France, if you will consider of it, means
-nothing else than the Country of Franks;—the country of a race so
-intensely Free that they for evermore gave name to Freedom. The Greeks
-sometimes got their own way, as a mob; but nobody, meaning to talk of
-liberty, calls it ‘Greekness.’ The Romans knew better what Libertas
-meant, and their word for it has become common enough, in that
-straitened form, on your English tongue; but nobody calls it
-‘Romanness.’ But at last comes a nation called the Franks; and they are
-so inherently free and noble in their natures, that their name becomes
-the word for the virtue; and when you now want to talk of freedom of
-heart, you say Frankness, and for the last political privilege which
-you have it so much in your English minds to get, you haven’t so much
-as an English word, but must call it by the French one, ‘Franchise.’
-[43]
-
-“Freedom of heart,” you observe, I say. Not the English freedom of
-Insolence, according to Mr. B., (see above, Letter 29,) but pure French
-openness of heart, Fanchette’s and her husband’s frankness, the source
-of joy, and courtesy, and civility, and passing softness of human
-meeting of kindly glance with glance. Of which Franchise, in her own
-spirit Person, here is the picture for you, from the French Romance of
-the Rose,—a picture which English Chaucer was thankful to copy.
-
-
-            “And after all those others came Franchise,
-            Who was not brown, nor grey,
-            But she was white as snow.
-            And she had not the nose of an Orleanois.
-            Aussi had she the nose long and straight.
-            Eyes green, and laughing—vaulted eyebrows;
-            She had her hair blonde and long,
-            And she was simple as a dove.
-            The body she had sweet, and brightly bred;
-            And she dared not do, nor say
-            To any one, anything she ought not.
-            And if she knew of any man
-            Who was in sorrow for love of her,
-            So soon she had great pity for him,
-            For she had the heart so pitiful,
-            And so sweet and so lovely,
-            That no one suffered pain about her,
-            But she would help him all she could.
-            And she wore a surquanye
-            Which was of no coarse cloth;
-            There’s none so rich as far as Arras.
-            And it was so gathered up, and so joined together,
-            That there was not a single point of it
-            Which was not set in its exact place, rightly.
-            Much well was dressed Franchise,
-            For no robe is so pretty
-            As the surquanye for a demoiselle.
-            A girl is more gentle and more darling
-            In surquanye than in coat,
-            And the white surquanye
-            Signifies that sweet and frank
-            Is she who puts it on her.”
-
-
-May I ask you now to take to heart those two lines of this French
-description of Frenchness:
-
-
-            “And she dared not do, nor say
-            To any one, anything she ought not.”
-
-
-That is not your modern notion of Frenchness, or franchise, or
-libertas, or liberty—for all these are synonyms for the same virtue.
-And yet the strange thing is that the lowest types of the modern French
-grisette are the precise corruption of this beautiful Franchise: and
-still retain, at their worst, some of the grand old qualities; the
-absolute sources of corruption being the neglect of their childhood by
-the upper classes, the abandonment to their own resources, and the
-development therefore of “Liberty and Independence,” in your beautiful
-English, not French, sense.
-
-“Livrée à elle-meme depuis l’âge de treize ans, habituée à ne compter
-que sur elle seule, elle avait de la vie un expérience dont j’étais
-confondue. De ce Paris où elle était née, elle savait tout, elle
-connaissait tout.
-
-Je n’avais pas idée d’une si complete absence de sens moral, d’une si
-inconsciente dépravation, d’une impudeur si effrontément naïve.
-
-La règle de sa conduite, c’était sa fantaisie, son instinct, le caprice
-du moment.
-
-Elle aimait les longues stations dans les cafés, les mélodrames
-entremêlés de chopes et d’oranges pendant les entr’actes, les parties
-de canot à Asnières, et surtout, et avant tout, le bal.
-
-Elle était comme chez elle à l’Élysée—Montmartre et au Château-Rouge;
-elle y connaissait tout le monde, le chef d’orchestre la saluait, ce
-dont elle était extraordinairement fière, et quantité de gens la
-tutoyaient.
-
-Je l’accompagnais partout, dans les commencements, et bien que je
-n’étais pas précisément naïve, ni gênée par les scrupules de mon
-éducation, je fus tellement consternée de l’incroyable désordre de sa
-vie, que je ne pus m’empêcher de lui en faire quelques représentations.
-
-Elle se fâcha tout rouge.
-
-Tu fais ce qui te plaît, me dit-elle, laisse-moi faire ce qui me
-convient.
-
-C’est un justice que je lui dois: jamais elle n’essaya sur moi son
-influence, jamais elle ne m’engagea à suivre son exemple. Ivre de
-liberté elle respectait la liberté des autres.”
-
-Such is the form which Franchise has taken under republican
-instruction. But of the true Franchise of Charlemagne and Roland, there
-were, you must note also, two distinct forms. In the last stanzas of
-the Chant de Roland, Normandy and France have two distinct
-epithets,—“Normandie, la franche; France, la solue” (soluta). “Frank
-Normandy; Loose France. Solute;”—we, adding the dis, use the words
-loose and dissolute only in evil sense. But ‘France la solue’ has an
-entirely lovely meaning. The frankness of Normandy is the soldier’s
-virtue; but the unbinding, so to speak, of France, is the peasant’s.
-
-
-            “And having seen that lovely maid,
-              Why should I fear to say
-            That she is ruddy, fleet, and strong,
-            And down the rocks can leap along
-              Like rivulets in May?”
-
-
-It is curious that the most beautiful descriptive line in all Horace,
-
-
-                                “montibus altis
-            Levis crepante lympha desilit pede,”
-
-
-comes in the midst of the dream of the blessed islands which are to be
-won by following the founders of—what city, think you? The city that
-first sang the “Marseillaise.”
-
-
-            “Juppiter illa piae secrevit litora genti.”
-
-
-Recollect that line, my French readers, if I chance to find any, this
-month, nor less the description of those ‘arva beata’ as if of your own
-South France; and then consider also those prophetic lines, true of
-Paris as of Rome,—
-
-
-            “Nec fera coerulea domuit Germania pube.
-            Impia, perdemus devoti sanguinis aetas.”
-
-
-Consider them, I say, and deeply, thinking over the full force of those
-words, “devoti sanguinis,” and of the ways in which the pure blood of
-Normandie la franche, and France la solue, has corrupted itself, and
-become accursed. Had I but time to go into the history of that word
-‘devoveo,’ what a piece of philology it would lead us into! But, for
-another kind of opposition to the sweet Franchise of old time, take
-this sentence of description of another French maiden, by the same
-author from whom I have just quoted the sketch of the grisette:
-
-“C’était une vieille fille d’une cinquantaine d’années, sèche et jaune,
-avec un grand nez d’oiseau de proie, très noble, encore plus dévote,
-joueuse comme la dame de pique en personne, et médisante à faire battre
-des montagnes.”
-
-You see what accurate opposition that gives you of another kind, to
-Franchise. You even have the ‘nez d’Orleanois’ specified, which the
-song of the Rose is so careful to tell you Franchise had not.
-
-Here is another illustrative sentence:
-
-“La colère, à la fin, une de ces terribles colères blanches de dévote,
-chassait des flots de bile au cerveau de Mademoiselle de la
-Rochecardeau, et blêmissait ses lèvres.”
-
-These three sentences I have taken from two novels of Emile Gaboriau,
-“L’argent des autres,” and “La Degringolade.” They are average
-specimens of modern French light literature, with its characteristic
-qualities and defects, and are both of them in many respects worth
-careful study; but chiefly in the representation they give, partly with
-conscious blame, and partly in unconscious corruption, of the Devoti
-sanguinis aetas; with which, if you would compare old France
-accurately, read first Froude’s sketch of the life of Bishop Hugo of
-Lincoln, and think over the scene between him and Cœur de Lion.
-
-You have there, as in life before you, two typical Frenchmen of the
-twelfth century—a true king, and a true priest, representing the powers
-which the France of that day contrived to get set over her, and did, on
-the whole, implicitly and with her heart obey.
-
-They are not altogether—by taking the dancing-master and the
-hairdresser away from them—reduced to copper-coloured Indians.
-
-If, next, you will take the pains—and it will need some pains, for the
-book is long and occasionally tiresome—to read the Degringolade, you
-will find it nevertheless worth your while; for it gives you a modern
-Frenchman’s account of the powers which France in the nineteenth
-century contrived to get set over her; and obeyed—not with her heart,
-but restively, like an ill-bred dog or mule, which have no honour in
-their obedience, but bear the chain and bit all the same.
-
-But there is a farther and much more important reason for my wish that
-you should read this novel. It gives you types of existent Frenchmen
-and Frenchwomen of a very different class. They are, indeed, only
-heroes and heroines in a quite second-rate piece of literary work. But
-these stereotypes, nevertheless, have living originals. There is to be
-found in France, as truly the Commandant Delorge, as the Comte de
-Combelaine. And as truly Mademoiselle de Maillefert as the Duchesse de
-Maumussy. How is it, then, that the Count and Duchess command
-everything in France, and that the Commandant and Demoiselle command
-nothing?—that the best they can do is to get leave to live—unknown, and
-unthought-of? The question, believe me, is for England also; and a very
-pressing one.
-
-Of the frantic hatred of all religion developed in the French
-republican mind, the sentences I have quoted are interesting examples.
-I have not time to speak of them in this letter, but they struck me
-sharply as I corrected the press to-day; for I had been standing most
-part of the morning by St. Paul’s grave, thinking over his work in the
-world. A bewildered peasant, from some green dingle of Campagna, who
-had seen me kneel when the Host passed, and took me therefore to be a
-human creature and a friend, asked me ‘where St. Paul was’?
-
-‘There, underneath,’ I answered.
-
-‘There?’ he repeated, doubtfully,—as dissatisfied.
-
-‘Yes,’ I answered; ‘his body at least;—his head is at the Lateran.’
-
-‘Il suo corpo,’ again he repeated, still as in discontent. Then, after
-a pause, ‘E la sua statua?’
-
-Such a wicked thing to ask for that! wasn’t it, my Evangelical friends?
-You would so much rather have had him ask for Hudson’s!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-I have had by me, some time, three eager little fragments from one of
-Mr. Sillar’s letters:—too eager, always, in thinking this one sin of
-receiving interest on money means every other. I know many excellent
-people, happily, whose natures have not been spoiled by it: the more as
-it has been done absolutely without knowledge of being wrong. I did not
-find out the wrong of it myself, till Mr. Sillar showed me the way to
-judge of it.
-
-The passage which I have italicized, from Mr. Lecky, is a very precious
-statement of his sagacious creed. The chief jest of it is his having
-imagined himself to be of Aristotle’s ‘species’!
-
-“To get profit without responsibility has been a fond scheme as
-impossible of honest attainment as the philosopher’s stone or perpetual
-motion. Visionaries have imagined such things to exist, but it has been
-reserved for this mammon-worshipping generation to find it in that
-arrangement by which a man, without labour, can secure a permanent
-income with perfect security, and without diminution of the capital.
-
-“A view of it is evidently taken by Lord Bacon when he says that usury
-bringeth the treasure of a realm into few hands; for the usurer trading
-on a certainty, and other men on uncertainties, at the end of the game
-all the money will be in the box.
-
-“We have had now an opportunity of practically testing this theory; not
-more than seventeen years have elapsed since all restraint was removed
-from the growth of what Lord Coke calls this ‘pestilent weed’ and we
-see Bacon’s words verified, the rich becoming richer, and the poor
-poorer, is the cry throughout the whole civilized world. Rollin in his
-Ancient History, speaking of the Roman Empire, tells us that it has
-been the ruin of every state where it was tolerated. It is in a fair
-way to ruin this of ours, and ruin it it will, unless England’s sons
-calmly and candidly investigate the question for themselves, and
-resolutely act upon the conclusions to which the investigation must
-lead them.
-
-“There is such a thing as unlimited liability; of the justice of such
-laws I do not now speak, but the law exists, and as it was made by
-moneyed men in the interest of moneyed men they cannot refuse to be
-judged by it. The admission, therefore, of the fact that interest is a
-share of the profit, would throw upon the money-lender the burden of
-unlimited liability; this he certainly refuses to admit, consequently
-he has no alternative but to confess that interest has nothing whatever
-to do with profit, but that it is a certain inherent property of money,
-viz., that of producing money, and that interest is as legitimately the
-offspring of money as a Calf is that of a Cow. That this is really the
-stand now taken, may be shown from the literature and practice of the
-present day. Mr. Lecky, one of the latest champions of interest, boldly
-admits it. In his history of the rise and influence of rationalism in
-Europe, p. 284, after quoting Aristotle’s saying, that all money is
-sterile by nature, he says, ‘This is an absurdity of Aristotle’s, and
-the number of centuries during which it was incessantly asserted
-without being (so far as we know) once questioned, is a curious
-illustration of the longevity of a sophism when expressed in a terse
-form, and sheltered by a great name. It is enough to make one ashamed
-of his species to think that Bentham was the first to bring into notice
-the simple consideration that if the borrower employs the borrowed
-money in buying bulls and cows, and if these produce calves to ten
-times the value of the interest, the money borrowed can scarcely be
-said to be sterile.’
-
-“And now to remedy all this. Were there no remedy, to parade it in our
-view, would be cruel; but there is one, so simple, that like those of
-divine making, it may be despised for its simplicity. It consists in
-the recognition of the supreme wisdom which forbade the taking of
-usury. We should not reimpose the usury laws, which were in themselves
-a blunder and a snare, nor would we advocate the forcible repression of
-the vice any more than we do that of other vices, such as gambling or
-prostitution, but we would put them on precisely the same footing, and
-enact thus—
-
-
-    Whereas, usury is a sin detestable and abominable, the law will
-    refuse to recognize any contract in which it is an element.
-
-
-The first effect of this would be, that all those who had lent, taking
-security into their hands, would have no power of oppression beyond
-keeping the pledge,—the balance of their debts being on a similar
-footing to those of the men who had lent without security.
-
-“To these their chance of repayment would depend on their previous
-conduct. If they had lent their money to honourable men, they would
-surely be repaid; if to rogues, they surely would not; and serve them
-right. Those, and those only, who have lent without interest would have
-the power of an action at law to recover; and as such men must have
-possessed philanthropy, they could safely be trusted with that power.
-
-“Regarding the future employment of money, a usurer who intended to
-continue his unholy trade, would lend only to such men as would repay
-without legal pressure, and from such men trade would not have to fear
-competition. But to disreputable characters the money-market would be
-hermetically sealed; and then as commerce, freed from the competition
-of these scoundrels, began again to be remunerative, we should find it
-more to our advantage to take an interest in commerce than usury from
-it, and so gradually would equity supersede iniquity, and peace and
-prosperity be found where now abound corruption, riot, and rebellion,
-with all the host of evils inseparable from a condition of plethoric
-wealth on one hand, and on the other hopeless and despairing poverty.”
-
-
-
-II. I intended in this note to have given some references to the first
-use of the word Franc, as an adjective. But the best dictionary-makers
-seem to have been foiled by it. “I recollect,” (an Oxford friend writes
-to me,) “Clovis called his axe ‘Francisca’ when he threw it to
-determine by its fall where he should build a church,” and in Littré’s
-dictionary a root is suggested, in the Anglo-Saxon Franca, ‘javelin.’
-But I think these are all collateral, not original uses. I am not sure
-even when the word came to be used for the current silver coin of
-France: that, at least, must be ascertainable. It is curious that in no
-fit of Liberty and Equality, the anti-Imperialists have thought of
-calling their golden coins ‘Citizens’ instead of ‘Napoleons’; nor even
-their sous, Sansculottes.
-
-
-
-III. Some of my correspondents ask me what has become of my promised
-additional Fors on the glaciers. Well, it got crevassed, and split
-itself into three; and then relegated itself into a somewhat compact
-essay on glaciers; and then got jammed up altogether, because I found
-that the extremely scientific Professor Tyndall had never distinguished
-the quality of viscosity from plasticity, (or the consistence of honey
-from that of butter,) still less the gradations of character in the
-approach of metals, glass, or stone, to their freezing-points; and that
-I wasn’t as clear as could be wished on some of these matters myself;
-and, in fact, that I had better deal with the subject seriously in my
-Oxford lectures than in Fors, which I hope to do this next autumn,
-after looking again at the riband structure of the Brenva. Meantime,
-here—out of I don’t know what paper, (I wish my correspondents would
-always cross the slips they cut out with the paper’s name and date,)—is
-a lively account of the present state of affairs, with a compliment to
-Professor Tyndall on his style of debate, which I beg humbly to
-endorse.
-
-“An awful battle, we regret to say, is now raging between some of the
-most distinguished men of Science, Literature, and Art, for all those
-three fair sisters have hurtled into the Homeric fray. The combatants
-on one side are Professors G. Forbes, Tait, and Ruskin, with Mr. Alfred
-Wills, and on the other—alone, but fearless and undismayed—the great
-name of Tyndall. The causa teterrima belli is in itself a cold and
-unlikely one—namely, the glaciers of Switzerland; but fiercer the fight
-could not be, we grieve to state, if the question of eternal
-punishment, with all its fiery accessory scenery, were under
-discussion. We have no rash intention of venturing into that terrible
-battleground where Professor Ruskin is laying about him with his ‘Fors
-Clavigera,’ and where Professor Tait, like another Titan, hurls wildly
-into the affrighted air such epithets as ‘contemptible,’ ‘miserable,’
-‘disgusting,’ ‘pernicious,’ ‘pestilent.’ These adjectives, for anything
-that ignorant journalists can know, may mean, in Scotch scientific
-parlance, everything that is fair, chivalrous, becoming, and measured
-in argument. But, merely from the British instinct of fair play, which
-does not like to see four against one, and without venturing a single
-word about the glaciers, we cannot help remarking how much more
-consistent with the dignity of science appears Professor Tyndall’s
-answer in the last number of the Contemporary Review. If it be true
-that the man who keeps his temper is generally in the right, we shall
-decidedly back Mr. Tyndall and the late lamented Agassiz in the present
-dreadful conflict. Speaking, for instance, of those same furious
-adjectives which we have culled from the literary parterre of Professor
-Tait, Dr. Tyndall sweetly says, ‘The spirit which prompts them may,
-after all, be but a local distortion of that noble force of heart which
-answered the Cameron’s Gathering at Waterloo; carried the Black Watch
-to Coomassie; and which has furnished Scotland with the materials of an
-immortal history. Still, rudeness is not independence, bluster is not
-strength, nor is coarseness courage. We have won the human
-understanding from the barbarism of the past; but we have won along
-with it the dignity, courtesy, and truth of civilized life. And the man
-who on the platform or in the press does violence to this ethical side
-of human nature discharges but an imperfect duty to the public,
-whatever the qualities of his understanding may be.’ This, we humbly
-think, is how men of science ought to talk when they quarrel—if they
-quarrel at all.”
-
-
-
-I hope much to profit by this lesson. I have not my “School for
-Scandal” by me—but I know where to find it the minute I get home; and
-I’ll do my best. “The man who,” etc., etc.;—yes, I think I can manage
-it.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XLIV.
-
-
-                                                  Rome, 6th June, 1874.
-
-The poor Campagna herdsman, whose seeking for St. Paul’s statue the
-Professor of Fine Art in the University of Oxford so disgracefully
-failed to assist him in, had been kneeling nearer the line of
-procession of the Corpus Domini than I;—in fact, quite among the
-rose-leaves which had been strewed for a carpet round the aisles of the
-Basilica. I grieve to say that I was shy of the rose-bestrewn path,
-myself; for the crowd waiting at the side of it had mixed up the
-rose-leaves with spittle so richly as to make quite a pink pomatum of
-them. And, indeed, the living temples of the Holy Ghost which in any
-manner bestir themselves here among the temples,—whether of Roman gods
-or Christian saints,—have merely and simply the two great operations
-upon them of filling their innermost adyta with dung, and making their
-pavements slippery with spittle: the Pope’s new tobacco manufactory
-under the Palatine,—an infinitely more important object now, in all
-views of Rome from the west, than either the Palatine or the
-Capitol,—greatly aiding and encouraging this especial form of
-lustration: while the still more ancient documents of Egyptian
-religion—the obelisks of the Piazza del Popolo, and of the portico of
-St. Peter’s—are entirely eclipsed by the obelisks of our English
-religion, lately elevated, in full view from the Pincian and the
-Montorio, with smoke coming out of the top of them. And farther, the
-entire eastern district of Rome, between the two Basilicas of the
-Lateran and St. Lorenzo, is now one mass of volcanic ruin;—a desert of
-dust and ashes, the lust of wealth exploding there, out of a crater
-deeper than Etna’s, and raging, as far as it can reach, in one frantic
-desolation of whatever is lovely, or holy, or memorable, in the central
-city of the world.
-
-For there is one fixed idea in the mind of every European progressive
-politician, at this time; namely, that by a certain application of
-Financial Art, and by the erection of a certain quantity of new
-buildings on a colossal scale, it will be possible for society
-hereafter to pass its entire life in eating, smoking, harlotry, and
-talk; without doing anything whatever with its hands or feet of a
-laborious character. And as these new buildings, whose edification is a
-main article of this modern political faith and hope,—(being required
-for gambling and dining in on a large scale),—cannot be raised without
-severely increased taxation of the poorer classes, (here in Italy
-direct, and in all countries consisting in the rise of price in all
-articles of food—wine alone in Italy costing just ten times what it did
-ten years ago,) and this increased taxation and distress are beginning
-to be felt too grievously to be denied; nor only so, but—which is still
-less agreeable to modern politicians—with slowly dawning perception of
-their true causes,—one finds also the popular journalists, for some
-time back addressing themselves to the defence of Taxation, and Theft
-in general, after this fashion.
-
-“The wealth in the world may practically be regarded as infinitely
-great. It is not true that what one man appropriates becomes thereupon
-useless to others, and it is also untrue that force or fraud, direct or
-indirect, are the principal, or, indeed, that they are at all common or
-important, modes of acquiring wealth.”—Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 14th,
-1869. [44]
-
-The philosophical journalist, after some further contemptuous statement
-of the vulgar views on this subject, conveniently dispenses (as will be
-seen by reference to the end of the clause in the note) with the
-defence of his own. I will undertake the explanation of what was,
-perhaps, even to himself, not altogether clear in his impressions. If a
-burglar ever carries off the Editor’s plate-basket, the bereaved Editor
-will console himself by reflecting that “it is not true that what one
-man appropriates becomes thereupon useless to others:”—for truly, (he
-will thus proceed to finer investigation,) this plate of mine, melted
-down, after being transitionally serviceable to the burglar, will enter
-again into the same functions among the silver of the world which it
-had in my own possession; so that the intermediate benefit to the
-burglar may be regarded as entirely a form of trade profit, and a kind
-of turning over of capital. And “it is also untrue that force or fraud,
-direct or indirect, are the principal, or indeed that they are at all
-common or important, modes of acquiring wealth,”—for this poor thief,
-with his crowbar and jemmy, does but disfurnish my table for a day;
-while I, with my fluent pen, can replenish it any number of times over,
-by the beautiful expression of my opinions for the public benefit. But
-what manner of fraud, or force, there may be in living by the sale of
-one’s opinions, instead of knowledges; and what quantity of true
-knowledge on any subject whatsoever—moral, political, scientific, or
-artistic—forms at present the total stock in trade of the Editors of
-the European Press, our Pall Mall Editor has very certainly not
-considered.
-
-“The wealth in the world practically infinite,”—is it? Then it seems to
-me, the poor may ask, with more reason than ever before, Why have we
-not our share of Infinity? We thought, poor ignorants, that we were
-only the last in the scramble; we submitted, believing that somebody
-must be last, and somebody first. But if the mass of good things be
-inexhaustible, and there are horses for everybody,—why is not every
-beggar on horseback? And, for my own part, why should the question be
-put to me so often,—which I am sick of answering and answering
-again,—“How, with our increasing population, are we to live without
-Machinery?” For if the wealth be already infinite, what need of
-machinery to make more? Alas, if it could make more, what a different
-world this might be. Arkwright and Stephenson would deserve statues
-indeed,—as much as St. Paul. If all the steam engines in England, and
-all the coal in it, with all their horse and ass power put together,
-could produce—so much as one grain of corn! The last time this
-perpetually recurring question about machinery was asked me, it was
-very earnestly and candidly pressed, by a master manufacturer, who
-honestly desired to do in his place what was serviceable to England,
-and honourable to himself. I answered at some length, in private
-letters, of which I asked and obtained his leave to print some parts in
-Fors. They may as well find their place in this number; and for preface
-to them, here is a piece, long kept by me, concerning railroads, which
-may advisably now be read.
-
-Of modern machinery for locomotion, my readers, I suppose, thought me
-writing in ill-temper, when I said in one of the letters on the
-childhood of Scott, “infernal means of locomotion”? Indeed, I am always
-compelled to write, as always compelled to live, in ill-temper. But I
-never set down a single word but with the serenest purpose. I meant
-“infernal” in the most perfect sense the word will bear.
-
-For instance. The town of Ulverstone is twelve miles from me, by four
-miles of mountain road beside Coniston lake, three through a pastoral
-valley, five by the seaside. A healthier or lovelier walk would be
-difficult to find.
-
-In old times, if a Coniston peasant had any business at Ulverstone, he
-walked to Ulverstone; spent nothing but shoe-leather on the road, drank
-at the streams, and if he spent a couple of batz when he got to
-Ulverstone, “it was the end of the world.” But now, he would never
-think of doing such a thing! He first walks three miles in a contrary
-direction, to a railroad station, and then travels by railroad
-twenty-four miles to Ulverstone, paying two shillings fare. During the
-twenty-four miles transit, he is idle, dusty, stupid; and either more
-hot or cold than is pleasant to him. In either case he drinks beer at
-two or three of the stations, passes his time, between them, with
-anybody he can find, in talking without having anything to talk of; and
-such talk always becomes vicious. He arrives at Ulverstone, jaded, half
-drunk, and otherwise demoralized, and three shillings, at least, poorer
-than in the morning. Of that sum, a shilling has gone for beer,
-threepence to a railway shareholder, threepence in coals, and
-eighteenpence has been spent in employing strong men in the vile
-mechanical work of making and driving a machine, instead of his own
-legs, to carry the drunken lout. The results, absolute loss and
-demoralization to the poor, on all sides, and iniquitous gain to the
-rich. Fancy, if you saw the railway officials actually employed in
-carrying the countryman bodily on their backs to Ulverstone, what you
-would think of the business! And because they waste ever so much iron
-and fuel besides to do it, you think it a profitable one!
-
-And for comparison of the advantages of old times and new, for
-travellers of higher order, hear how Scott’s excursions used to be
-made.
-
-“Accordingly, during seven successive years, Scott made a raid, as he
-called it, into Liddesdale with Mr. Shortreed for his guide, exploring
-every rivulet to its source, and every ruined peel from foundation to
-battlement. At this time no wheeled carriage had ever been seen in the
-district; the first, indeed, that ever appeared there was a gig, driven
-by Scott himself for a part of his way, when on the last of these seven
-excursions. There was no inn nor public-house of any kind in the whole
-valley; the travellers passed from the shepherd’s hut to the minister’s
-manse, and again from the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the
-rough and jolly welcome of the homestead; gathering, wherever they
-went, songs and tunes, and occasionally more tangible relics of
-antiquity—even such ‘a rowth of auld nicknackets’ as Burns ascribes to
-Captain Grose. To these rambles Scott owed much of the materials of his
-‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’; and not less of that intimate
-acquaintance with the living manners of these unsophisticated regions,
-which constitutes the chief charm of the most charming of his prose
-works. But how soon he had any definite object before him in his
-researches seems very doubtful. ‘He was makin’ himsel’ a’ the time,’
-said Mr. Shortreed; ‘but he didna ken maybe what he was about, till
-years had passed. At first he thought o’ little, I dare say, but the
-queerness and the fun.’
-
-‘It was that same season, I think,’ says Mr. Shortreed, ‘that Sir
-Walter got from Dr. Elliot the large old border war horn, which ye may
-still see hanging in the armoury at Abbotsford. How great he was when
-he was made master o’ that! I believe it had been found in Hermitage
-Castle—and one of the doctor’s servants had used it many a day as a
-grease-horn for his scythe before they had discovered its history. When
-cleaned out, it was never a hair the worse; the original chain, hoop,
-and mouthpiece of steel were all entire, just as you now see them. Sir
-Walter carried it home all the way from Liddesdale to Jedburgh slung
-about his neck like Johnny Gilpin’s bottle, while I was entrusted with
-an ancient bridle-bit, which we had likewise picked up.
-
-
-        “‘The feint o’ pride—nae pride had he, ...
-        A lang kail-gully hung down by his side,
-        And a great meikle nowt-horn to rout on had he.’
-
-
-And meikle and sair we routed on’t, and ’hotched and blew wi’ micht and
-main.’ O what pleasant days! and then a’ the nonsense we had cost us
-nothing. We never put hand in pocket for a week on end. Toll-bars there
-were none, and indeed I think our haill charges were a feed o’ corn to
-our horses in the gangin’ and comin’ at Riccartoun mill.’”
-
-This absolute economy, [45] of course, could only exist when travelling
-was so rare that patriarchal hospitality could still be trusted for its
-lodging. But the hospitality of the inn need not be less considerate or
-true because the inn’s master lives in his occupation. Even in these
-days, I have had no more true or kind friend than the now dead Mrs.
-Eisenkraemer of the old Union Inn at Chamouni; and an innkeeper’s
-daughter in the Oberland taught me that it was still possible for a
-Swiss girl to be refined, imaginative, and pure-hearted, though she
-waited on her father’s guests, and though these guests were often
-vulgar and insolent English travellers. For she had been bred in the
-rural districts of happy olden days,—to which, as it chances, my
-thoughts first turned, in the following answer to my English
-manufacturing friend.
-
-On any given farm in Switzerland or Bavaria, fifty years ago, the
-master and his servants lived, in abundance, on the produce of their
-ground, without machinery, and exchanged some of its surplus produce
-for Lyons velvet and Hartz silver, (produced by the unhappy mechanists
-and miners of those localities,) whereof the happy peasant made jackets
-and bodices, and richly adorned the same with precious chain-work. It
-is not more than ten years since I saw in a farm-shed near Thun, three
-handsome youths and three comely girls, all in well-fitting, pretty,
-and snow-white shirt and chemisette, threshing corn with a steady
-shower of timed blows, as skilful in their—cadence, shall we,
-literally, say?—as the most exquisitely performed music, and as rapid
-as its swiftest notes. There was no question for any of them, whether
-they should have their dinner when they had earned it, nor the
-slightest chance of any of them going in rags through the winter.
-
-That is entirely healthy, happy, and wise human life. Not a theoretical
-or Utopian state at all; but one which over large districts of the
-world has long existed, and must, thank God, in spite of British
-commerce and its consequences, for ever, somewhere, exist.
-
-But the farm, we will say, gets over-populous, (it always does, of
-course, under ordinary circumstances;) that is to say, the ground no
-longer affords corn and milk enough for the people on it. Do you
-suppose you will make more of the corn, because you now thresh it with
-a machine? So far from needing to do so, you have more hands to employ
-than you had—can have twelve flails going instead of six. You make your
-twelve human creatures stand aside, and thresh your corn with a steam
-engine. You gain time, do you? What’s the use of time to you? did it
-not hang heavy enough on your hands before? You thresh your entire farm
-produce, let us say, in twelve minutes. Will that make it one grain
-more, to feed the twelve mouths? Most assuredly, the soot and stench of
-your steam engine will make your crop less next year, but not one grain
-more can you have, to-day. [46] But you don’t mean to use your engines
-to thresh with or plough with? Well, that is one point of common sense
-gained. What will you do with them, then?—spin and weave cotton, sell
-the articles you manufacture, and buy food? Very good; then somewhere
-there must be people still living as you once did,—that is to say,
-producing more corn and milk than they want, and able to give it to you
-in exchange for your cotton, or velvet, or what not, which you weave
-with your steam. Well, those people, wherever they are, and whoever
-they may be, are your lords and masters thenceforth. They are living
-happy and wise human lives, and are served by you, their mechanics and
-slaves. Day after day your souls will become more mechanical, more
-servile: also you will go on multiplying, wanting more food, and more;
-you will have to sell cheaper and cheaper, work longer and longer, to
-buy your food. At last, do what you can, you can make no more, or the
-people who have the corn will not want any more; and your increasing
-population will necessarily come to a quite imperative stop—by
-starvation, preceded necessarily by revolution and massacre.
-
-And now examine the facts about England in this broad light.
-
-She has a vast quantity of ground still food-producing, in corn, grass,
-cattle, or game. With that territory she educates her squire, or
-typical gentleman, and his tenantry, to whom, together, she owes all
-her power in the world. With another large portion of territory,—now
-continually on the increase,—she educates a mercenary population, ready
-to produce any quantity of bad articles to anybody’s order; population
-which every hour that passes over them makes acceleratingly avaricious,
-immoral, and insane. In the increase of that kind of territory and its
-people, her ruin is just as certain as if she were deliberately
-exchanging her corn-growing land; and her heaven above it, for a soil
-of arsenic, and rain of nitric acid.
-
-“Have the Arkwrights and Stephensons, then, done nothing but harm?”
-Nothing; but the root of all the mischief is not in Arkwrights or
-Stephensons; nor in rogues or mechanics. The real root of it is the
-crime of the squire himself. And the method of that crime is thus. A
-certain quantity of the food produced by the country is paid annually
-by it into the squire’s hand, in the form of rent, privately, and
-taxes, publicly. If he uses this food to support a food-producing
-population, he increases daily the strength of the country and his own;
-but if he uses it to support an idle population, or one producing
-merely trinkets in iron, or gold, or other rubbish he steadily weakens
-the country, and debases himself.
-
-Now the action of the squire for the last fifty years has been,
-broadly, to take the food from the ground of his estate, and carry it
-to London, where he feeds with it [47] a vast number of builders,
-upholsterers, (one of them charged me five pounds for a footstool the
-other day,) carriage and harness makers, dress-makers, grooms, footmen,
-bad musicians, bad painters, gamblers, and harlots, and in supply of
-the wants of these main classes, a vast number of shopkeepers of minor
-useless articles. The muscles and the time of this enormous population
-being wholly unproductive—(for of course time spent in the mere process
-of sale is unproductive, and much more that of the footman and groom,
-while that of the vulgar upholsterer, jeweller, fiddler, and painter,
-etc., etc., is not only unproductive, but mischievous,)—the entire mass
-of this London population do nothing whatever either to feed or clothe
-themselves; and their vile life preventing them from all rational
-entertainment, they are compelled to seek some pastime in a vile
-literature, the demand for which again occupies another enormous class,
-who do nothing to feed or dress themselves; finally, the vain disputes
-of this vicious population give employment to the vast industry of the
-lawyers and their clerks, [48] who similarly do nothing to feed or
-dress themselves.
-
-Now the peasants might still be able to supply this enormous town
-population with food, (in the form of the squire’s rent,) but it
-cannot, without machinery, supply the flimsy dresses, toys, metal work,
-and other rubbish, belonging to their accursed life. Hence over the
-whole country the sky is blackened and the air made pestilent, to
-supply London and other such towns [49] with their iron railings,
-vulgar upholstery, jewels, toys, liveries, lace, and other means of
-dissipation and dishonour of life. Gradually the country people cannot
-even supply food to the voracity of the vicious centre; and it is
-necessary to import food from other countries, giving in exchange any
-kind of commodity we can attract their itching desires for, and produce
-by machinery. The tendency of the entire national energy is therefore
-to approximate more and more to the state of a squirrel in a cage, or a
-turnspit in a wheel, fed by foreign masters with nuts and dog’s-meat.
-And indeed, when we rightly conceive the relation of London to the
-country, the sight of it becomes more fantastic and wonderful than any
-dream. Hyde Park, in the season, is the great rotatory form of the vast
-squirrel-cage; round and round it go the idle company, in their
-reversed streams, urging themselves to their necessary exercise. They
-cannot with safety even eat their nuts, without so much ‘revolution’ as
-shall, in Venetian language ‘comply with the demands of hygiene.’ Then
-they retire into their boxes, with due quantity of straw; the
-Belgravian and Piccadillian streets outside the railings being, when
-one sees clearly, nothing but the squirrel’s box at the side of his
-wires. And then think of all the rest of the metropolis as the creation
-and ordinance of these squirrels, that they may squeak and whirl to
-their satisfaction, and yet be fed. Measure the space of its entirely
-miserable life. Begin with that diagonal which I struck from Regent
-Circus to Drury Lane; examine it, house by house; then go up from Drury
-Lane to St. Giles’ Church, look into Church Lane there, and explore
-your Seven Dials and Warwick Street; and remember this is the very
-centre of the mother city,—precisely between its Parks, its great
-Library and Museum, its principal Theatres, and its Bank. Then conceive
-the East-end; and the melancholy Islington and Pentonville districts;
-then the ghastly spaces of southern suburb—Vauxhall, Lambeth, the
-Borough, Wapping, and Bermondsey. All this is the nidification of those
-Park Squirrels. This is the thing they have produced round themselves;
-this their work in the world. When they rest from their squirrellian
-revolutions, and die in the Lord, and their works do follow them, these
-are what will follow them. Lugubrious march of the Waterloo Road, and
-the Borough, and St. Giles’s; the shadows of all the Seven Dials having
-fetched their last compass. New Jerusalem, prepared as a bride, of
-course, opening her gates to them;—but, pertinaciously attendant, Old
-Jewry outside. “Their works do follow them.”
-
-For these streets are indeed what they have built; their inhabitants
-the people they have chosen to educate. They took the bread and milk
-and meat from the people of their fields; they gave it to feed, and
-retain here in their service, this fermenting mass of unhappy human
-beings,—news-mongers, novel-mongers, picture-mongers,
-poison-drink-mongers, lust and death-mongers; the whole smoking mass of
-it one vast dead-marine storeshop,—accumulation of wreck of the Dead
-Sea, with every activity in it, a form of putrefaction.
-
-Some personal matters were touched upon in my friend’s reply to this
-letter, and I find nothing more printable of the correspondence but
-this following fragment or two.
-
-“But what are you to do, having got into this mechanical line of life?”
-
-You must persevere in it, and do the best you can for the present, but
-resolve to get out of it as soon as may be. The one essential point is
-to know thoroughly that it is wrong; how to get out of it, you can
-decide afterwards, at your leisure.
-
-“But somebody must weave by machinery, and dig in mines: else how could
-one have one’s velvet and silver chains?”
-
-Whatever machinery is needful for human purposes can be driven by wind
-or water; the Thames alone could drive mills enough to weave velvet and
-silk for all England. But even mechanical occupation not involving
-pollution of the atmosphere must be as limited as possible; for it
-invariably degrades. You may use your slave in your silver mine, or at
-your loom, to avoid such labour yourself, if you honestly believe you
-have brains to be better employed;—or you may yourself, for the service
-of others, honourably become their slave; and, in benevolent
-degradation, dig silver or weave silk, making yourself semi-spade, or
-semi-worm. But you must eventually, for no purpose or motive
-whatsoever, live amidst smoke and filth, nor allow others to do so; you
-must see that your slaves are as comfortable and safe as their
-employment permits, and that they are paid wages high enough to allow
-them to leave it often for redemption and rest.
-
-Eventually, I say; how fast events may move, none of us know; in our
-compliance with them, let us at least be intelligently patient—if at
-all; not blindly patient.
-
-For instance, there is nothing really more monstrous in any recorded
-savagery or absurdity of mankind, than that governments should be able
-to get money for any folly they choose to commit, by selling to
-capitalists the right of taxing future generations to the end of time.
-All the cruellest wars inflicted, all the basest luxuries grasped by
-the idle classes, are thus paid for by the poor a hundred times over.
-And yet I am obliged to keep my money in the funds or the bank, because
-I know no other mode of keeping it safe; and if I refused to take the
-interest, I should only throw it into the hands of the very people who
-would use it for these evil purposes, or, at all events, for less good
-than I can. Nevertheless it is daily becoming a more grave question
-with me what it may presently be right to do. It may be better to
-diminish private charities, and much more, my own luxury of life, than
-to comply in any sort with a national sin. But I am not agitated or
-anxious in the matter: content to know my principle, and to work
-steadily towards better fulfilment of it.
-
-And this is all that I would ask of my correspondent, or of any other
-man,—that he should know what he is about, and be steady in his line of
-advance or retreat. I know myself to be an usurer as long as I take
-interest on any money whatsoever. I confess myself such, and abide
-whatever shame or penalty may attach to usury, until I can withdraw
-myself from the system. So my correspondent says he must abide by his
-post. I think so too. A naval captain, though I should succeed in
-persuading him of the wickedness of war, would in like manner, if he
-were wise, abide at his post; nay, would be entirely traitorous and
-criminal if he at once deserted it. Only let us all be sure what our
-positions are; and if, as it is said, the not living by interest and
-the resolutely making everything as good as can be, are incompatible
-with the present state of society, let us, though compelled to remain
-usurers and makers of bad things, at least not deceive ourselves as to
-the nature of our acts and life.
-
-Leaving thus the personal question, how the great courses of life are
-to be checked or changed, to each man’s conscience and discretion,—this
-following answer I would make in all cases to the inquiry, ‘What can I
-do?’
-
-If the present state of this so-called rich England is so essentially
-miserable and poverty-stricken that honest men must always live from
-hand to mouth, while speculators make fortunes by cheating them out of
-their labour, and if, therefore, no sum can be set aside for
-charity,—the paralyzed honest men can certainly do little for the
-present. But, with what can be spared for charity, if anything, do
-this; buy ever so small a bit of ground, in the midst of the worst back
-deserts of our manufacturing towns; six feet square, if no more can be
-had,—nay, the size of a grave, if you will, but buy it freehold, and
-make a garden of it, by hand-labour; a garden visible to all men, and
-cultivated for all men of that place. If absolutely nothing will grow
-in it, then have herbs carried there in pots. Force the bit of ground
-into order, cleanliness, green or coloured aspect. What difficulties
-you have in doing this are your best subjects of thought; the good you
-will do in doing this, the best in your present power.
-
-What the best in your ultimate power may be, will depend on the action
-of the English landlord; for observe, we have only to separate the
-facts of the Swiss farm to ascertain what they are with respect to any
-state. We have only to ask what quantity of food it produces, how much
-it exports in exchange for other articles, and how much it imports in
-exchange for other articles. The food-producing countries have the
-power of educating gentlemen and gentlewomen if they please,—they are
-the lordly and masterful countries. Those which exchange mechanical or
-artistic productions for food are servile, and necessarily in process
-of time will be ruined. Next Fors, therefore, will be written for any
-Landlords who wish to be true Workmen in their vocation; and, according
-to the first law of the St. George’s Company, ‘to do good work, whether
-they die or live.’
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-I commend the whole of the following letter to the reader’s most
-serious consideration:—
-
-
-                                     Broxbourn, Herts, 11th June, 1874.
-
-    My dear Sir,—You are so tolerant of correspondents with grievances,
-    that I venture to say a few more words, in reply to your note about
-    Law Reform. In November next the Judicature Bill will come into
-    operation. The preamble recites this incontestable fact, “that it
-    is expedient to make provision for the better administration of
-    justice in England.” Now, the two salient features of the incessant
-    clamour for Law Reform are these—1st, an increased conviction of
-    the sanctity of property; 2nd, a proportionate decrease in the
-    estimate of human life. For years past the English people have
-    spent incalculable money and talk in trying to induce Parliament to
-    give them safe titles to their land, and sharp and instant means of
-    getting in their debts: the Land Transfer Bill is in answer to this
-    first demand, and the Judicature Bill to the second. Meanwhile the
-    Criminal Code may shift for itself; and here we have, as the
-    outcome of centuries of vulgar national flourish about Magna
-    Charta, Habeas Corpus, and much else, the present infamous system
-    of punishing crime by pecuniary penalties. Now the spirit of this
-    evil system is simply this: “A crime is an offence against society.
-    Making the criminal suffer pain won’t materially benefit society,
-    but making him suffer in his pocket will;” and so society elects to
-    be battered about, and variously maltreated, on a sliding scale of
-    charges, adjusted more on medical than moral principles. No doubt
-    it is very desirable to have a title-deed to your thousand acres,
-    no bigger than the palm of your hand, to be able to put it in a
-    box, and sit upon it, and defy all the lawyers in the land to pick
-    a flaw in your title; quite a millenium-like state of things, but
-    liable to be somewhat marred if your next door neighbour may knock
-    you off your box, stab you with a small pocket-knife, and jump on
-    your stomach, all with grievous damage to you, but comparative
-    immunity to himself. We are one day to have cheap law, meanwhile we
-    have such cheap crime that injuries to the person are now within
-    the reach of all. I may be a villain of the first water, if I have
-    a few spare pounds in my pocket. From a careful survey of lately
-    reported cases, I find I can run away with my neighbour’s wife,
-    seduce his daughter, half poison his household with adulterated
-    food, and finally stab him with a pocket-knife, for rather less
-    than £1000. Stabbing is so ridiculously cheap that I can indulge in
-    it for a trifling penalty of £1. (See Southall’s case.) But woe be
-    to me if I dare to encroach on my neighbour’s land, prejudice his
-    trade, or touch his pocket; then the law has remedies, vast and
-    many, and I shall not only incur pecuniary penalties that are to
-    all effects and purpose limitless, but I shall be made to suffer in
-    person also. These two things are exactly indicative of the gradual
-    decay of the national mind under the influence of two schools. The
-    first teaches that man’s primary object in life is to “get on in
-    the world;” hence we have this exaggerated estimate of the value
-    and sanctity of property. The second school teaches that love can
-    exist without reverence, mercy without justice, and liberty without
-    obedience; and as the logical result of such teaching, we have lost
-    all clear and healthy knowledge of what justice really is, and
-    invent a system of punishments which is not even really punitive,
-    and without any element of retribution at all. Let us have instead
-    a justice that not only condones the crime, but also makes a profit
-    out of the criminal. And we get her; but note the irony of Fate:
-    when our modern goddess does pluck up heart to be angry, she seems
-    doomed to be angry in the wrong way, and with the wrong people.
-    Here is a late instance (the printed report of which I send you):—
-
-
-        William Hawkes, a blind man and very infirm, was brought up,
-        having been committed from Marlborough Street, to be dealt with
-        as a rogue and vagabond.
-
-        On being placed in the dock,
-
-        Mr. Montagu Williams, as amicus curiæ, said he had known the
-        prisoner for years, from seeing him sitting on Waterloo Bridge
-        tracing his fingers over a book designed for the blind to read,
-        and in no instance had he seen him beg from those who passed
-        by, so that he was practically doing no harm, and some time ago
-        the late Sir William Bodkin had dealt very mercifully with him.
-        Something ought to be done for him.
-
-        Mr. Harris said he could corroborate all that his learned
-        friend had stated.
-
-        The Assistant-Judge said he had been convicted by the
-        magistrate, and was sent here to be sentenced as a rogue and
-        vagabond, but the Court would not deal hardly with him.
-
-        Horsford, chief officer of the Mendicity Society, said the
-        prisoner had been frequently convicted for begging.
-
-        The Assistant-Judge sentenced him to be imprisoned for four
-        months.—May, 1874.
-
-
-    The other day I was reading a beautiful Eastern story of a certain
-    blind man who sat by the wayside begging; clearly a very
-    importunate and troublesome blind man, who would by no means hold
-    his peace, but who, nevertheless, had his heart’s desire granted
-    unto him at last. And yesterday I was also reading a very unlovely
-    Western story of another blind man, who was “very infirm,” not at
-    all importunate, did not even beg; only sat there by the roadside
-    and read out of a certain Book that has a great deal to say about
-    justice and mercy. The sequel of the two stories varies
-    considerably: in this latter one our civilized English Law clutches
-    the old blind man by the throat, tells him he is a rogue and a
-    vagabond, and flings him into prison for four months!
-
-    But our enlightened British Public is too busy clamouring for short
-    deeds and cheap means of litigation, ever to give thought or time
-    to mere “sentimental grievances.” Have you seen the strange comment
-    on Carlyle’s letter of some months ago, in which he prophesied evil
-    things to come, if England still persisted in doing her work “ill,
-    swiftly, and mendaciously”? Our export trade, for the first five
-    months of this year, shows a decrease of just eight millions! The
-    newspapers note, with a horrified amazement, that the continental
-    nations decline dealing any longer at the “old shop,” and fall back
-    on home products, and try to explain it by reference to the Capital
-    and Labour question. Carlyle foresaw Germany’s future, and told us
-    plainly of it; he foresees England’s decadence, and warns us just
-    as plainly of that; and the price we have already paid, in this
-    year of grace 1874, for telling him to hold his tongue, is just
-    eight millions.
-
-        Yours sincerely,
-
-
-Next, or next but one, to the Fors for the squires, will come that for
-the lawyers. In the meantime, can any correspondent inform me,
-approximately, what the income and earnings of the legal profession are
-annually in England, and what sum is spent in collateral expenses for
-juries, witnesses, etc.? The ‘Times’ for May 18th of this year gives
-the following estimate of the cost of the Tichborne trial, which seems
-to me very moderate:—
-
-
-    The Trial of the Tichborne Claimant.—On Saturday a return to the
-    House of Commons, obtained by Mr. W. H. Smith, was printed, showing
-    the amount expended upon the prosecution in the case of “Regina v.
-    Castro, otherwise Orton, otherwise Tichborne,” and the probable
-    amount still remaining to be paid out of the vote of Parliament for
-    “this service.” The probable cost of the trial is stated at £55,315
-    17s. 1d., of which £49,815 17s. 1d. had been paid up to the 11th
-    ult., and on the 11th of May inst. £5,500 remained unpaid. In
-    1872–3 counsels’ fees were £1,146 16s. 6d., and in 1873–4 counsels’
-    fees were £22,495 18s. 4d. The jury were paid £3,780, and the
-    shorthand writers £3,493 3s. The other expenses were witnesses,
-    agents, etc., and law stationers and printing. Of the sum to be
-    paid, £4,000 is for the Australian and Chili witnesses.—Times, May
-    18th, 1874.
-
-
-II. I reprint the following letter as it was originally published. I
-meant to have inquired into the facts a little farther, but have not
-had time.
-
-
-                                        21, Mincing Lane, London, E.C.,
-                                                      19th March, 1874.
-
-    Dear Sirs,—On the 27th March, 1872, we directed your attention to
-    this subject of Usury in a paper headed “Choose you this day whom
-    ye will serve.” We have since published our correspondence with the
-    Rev. Dr. Cumming, and we take his silence as an acknowledgment of
-    his inability to justify his teaching upon this subject. We have
-    also publicly protested against the apathy of the Bishops and
-    Clergy of the Established Church regarding this national sin. We
-    now append an extract from the ‘Hampshire Independent’ of the 11th
-    instant, which has been forwarded to us:—
-
-
-    “The Church of England in South Australia is in active competition
-    with the money changers and those who sell doves. The Church
-    Office, Leigh Street, Adelaide, advertises that ‘it is prepared to
-    lend money at current rates—no commission or brokerage charged,’
-    which is really liberal on the part of the Church of England, and
-    may serve to distinguish it as a lender from the frequenters of the
-    synagogues. [50] It has been suggested that the Church Office
-    should hang out the triple symbol of the Lombards, and that at the
-    next examination of candidates for holy orders a few apposite
-    questions might be asked, such as—‘State concisely the best method
-    of obtaining the highest rate of interest for Church moneys.
-    Demonstrate how a system of Church money-lending was approved by
-    the founder of Christianity.’”
-
-
-    As such perverseness can only end in sudden and overwhelming
-    calamity, we make no apology for again urging you to assist us in
-    our endeavours to banish the accursed element at least from our own
-    trade.
-
-        Your obedient servants,
-            J. C. Sillar and Co.
-
-
-I put in large print—it would be almost worth capital letters—the
-following statement of the principle of interest as “necessary to the
-existence of money.” I suppose it is impossible to embody the modern
-view more distinctly:—
-
-
-    “Money, the representation and measure of value, has also the power
-    to accumulate value by interest (italics not mine). This
-    accumulative power is essential to the existence of money, for no
-    one will exchange productive property for money that does not
-    represent production. The laws making gold and silver a public
-    tender impart to dead masses of metal, as it were, life and
-    animation. They give them powers which without legal enactment they
-    could not possess, and which enable their owner to obtain for their
-    use what other men must earn by their labour. One piece of gold
-    receives a legal capability to earn for its owner, in a given time,
-    another piece of gold as large as itself; or in other words, the
-    legal power of money to accumulate by interest compels the borrower
-    in a given period, according to the rate of interest, to mine and
-    coin, or to procure by the sale of his labour or products, another
-    lump of gold as large as the first, and give it, together with the
-    first, to the lender.”—Kellogg on Labour and Capital, New York,
-    1849.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XLV.
-
-
-                                               Lucca, 2nd August, 1874.
-
-The other day, in the Sacristan’s cell at Assisi, I got into a great
-argument with the Sacristan himself, about the prophet Isaiah. It had
-struck me that I should like to know what sort of a person his wife
-was: and I asked my good host, over our morning’s coffee, whether the
-Church knew anything about her. Brother Antonio, however, instantly and
-energetically denied that he ever had a wife. He was a ‘Castissimo
-profeta,’—how could I fancy anything so horrible of him! Vainly I
-insisted that, since he had children, he must either have been married,
-or been under special orders, like the prophet Hosea. But my Protestant
-Bible was good for nothing, said the Sacristan. Nay, I answered, I
-never read, usually, in anything later than a thirteenth century text;
-let him produce me one out of the convent library, and see if I
-couldn’t find Shearjashub in it. The discussion dropped upon
-this,—because the library was inaccessible at the moment; and no
-printed Vulgate to be found. But I think of it again to-day, because I
-have just got into another puzzle about Isaiah,—to wit, what he means
-by calling himself a “man of unclean lips.” [51] And that is a vital
-question, surely, to all persons venturing to rise up, as
-teachers;—vital, at all events, to me, here, and now, for these
-following reasons.
-
-Thirty years ago, I began my true study of Italian, and all other
-art,—here, beside the statue of Ilaria di Caretto, recumbent on her
-tomb. It turned me from the study of landscape to that of life, being
-then myself in the fullest strength of labour, and joy of hope.
-
-And I was thinking, last night, that the drawing which I am now trying
-to make of it, in the weakness and despair of declining age, might
-possibly be the last I should make before quitting the study of
-Italian, and even all other, art, for ever.
-
-I have no intent of doing so: quite the reverse of that. But I feel the
-separation between me and the people round me, so bitterly, in the
-world of my own which they cannot enter; and I see their entrance to it
-now barred so absolutely by their own resolves, (they having
-deliberately and self-congratulatingly chosen for themselves the
-Manchester Cotton Mill instead of the Titian,) that it becomes every
-hour more urged upon me that I shall have to leave,—not father and
-mother, for they have left me; nor children, nor lands, for I have
-none,—but at least this spiritual land and fair domain of human art and
-natural peace,—because I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the
-midst of a people of unclean lips, and therefore am undone, because
-mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.
-
-I say it, and boldly. Who else is there of you who can stand with me,
-and say the same? It is an age of progress, you tell me. Is your
-progress chiefly in this, that you cannot see the King, the Lord of
-Hosts, but only Baal, instead of Him?
-
-“The Sun is God,” said Turner, a few weeks before he died with the
-setting rays of it on his face.
-
-He meant it, as Zoroaster meant it; and was a Sun-worshipper of the old
-breed. But the unheard-of foulness of your modern faith in Baal is its
-being faith without worship. The Sun is—not God,—you say. Not by any
-manner of means. A gigantic railroad accident, perhaps,—a coruscant
-δινος,—put on the throne of God like a limelight; and able to serve
-you, eventually, much better than ever God did.
-
-I repeat my challenge. You,—Te Deum-singing princes, colonels, bishops,
-choristers, and what else,—do any of you know what Te means? or what
-Deum? or what Laudamus? Have any of your eyes seen the King, or His
-Sabaoth? Will any of you say, with your hearts, ‘Heaven and earth are
-full of His glory; and in His name we will set up our banners, and do
-good work, whether we live or die’?
-
-You, in especial, Squires of England, whose fathers were England’s
-bravest and best,—by how much better and braver you are than your
-fathers, in this Age of Progress, I challenge you: Have any of your
-eyes seen the King? Are any of your hands ready for His work, and for
-His weapons,—even though they should chance to be pruning-hooks instead
-of spears?
-
-Who am I, that should challenge you—do you ask? My mother was a
-sailor’s daughter, so please you; one of my aunts was a baker’s
-wife—the other, a tanner’s; and I don’t know much more about my family,
-except that there used to be a greengrocer of the name in a small shop
-near the Crystal Palace. Something of my early and vulgar life, if it
-interests you, I will tell in next Fors: in this one, it is indeed my
-business, poor gipsy herald as I am, to bring you such challenge,
-though you shall hunt and hang me for it.
-
-Squires, are you, and not Workmen, nor Labourers, do you answer next?
-
-Yet, I have certainly sometimes seen engraved over your family vaults,
-and especially on the more modern tablets, those comfortful words,
-“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” But I observe that you
-are usually content, with the help of the village stone-mason, to say
-only this concerning your dead; and that you but rarely venture to add
-the “yea” of the Spirit, “that they may rest from their Labours, and
-their Works do follow them.” Nay, I am not even sure that many of you
-clearly apprehend the meaning of such followers and following; nor, in
-the most pathetic funeral sermons, have I heard the matter made
-strictly intelligible to your hope. For indeed, though you have always
-graciously considered your church no less essential a part of your
-establishment than your stable, you have only been solicitous that
-there should be no broken-winded steeds in the one, without collateral
-endeavour to find clerks for the other in whom the breath of the Spirit
-should be unbroken also.
-
-As yet it is a text which, seeing how often we would fain take the
-comfort of it, surely invites explanation. The implied difference
-between those who die in the Lord, and die—otherwise; the essential
-distinction between the labour from which these blessed ones rest, and
-the work which in some mysterious way follows them; and the doubt—which
-must sometimes surely occur painfully to a sick or bereaved
-squire—whether the labours of his race are always severe enough to make
-rest sweet, or the works of his race always distinguished enough to
-make their following superb,—ought, it seems to me, to cause the verse
-to glow on your (lately, I observe, more artistic) tombstones, like the
-letters on Belshazzar’s wall; and with the more lurid and alarming
-light, that this “following” of the works is distinctly connected, in
-the parallel passage of Timothy, with “judgment” upon the works; and
-that the kinds of them which can securely front such judgment, are
-there said to be, in some cases, “manifest beforehand,” and, in no
-case, ultimately obscure.
-
-“It seems to me,” I say, as if such questions should occur to the
-squire during sickness, or funeral pomp. But the seeming is far from
-the fact. For I suppose the last idea which is likely ever to enter the
-mind of a representative squire, in any vivid or tenable manner, would
-be that anything he had ever done, or said, was liable to a judgment
-from superior powers; or that any other law than his own will, or the
-fashion of his society, stronger than his will, existed in relation to
-the management of his estate. Whereas, according to any rational
-interpretation of our Church’s doctrine, as by law established; if
-there be one person in the world rather than another to whom it makes a
-serious difference whether he dies in the Lord or out of Him; and if
-there be one rather than another who will have strict scrutiny made
-into his use of every instant of his time, every syllable of his
-speech, and every action of his hand and foot,—on peril of having hand
-and foot bound, and tongue scorched, in Tophet,—that responsible person
-is the British Squire.
-
-Very strange, the unconsciousness of this, in his own mind, and in the
-minds of all belonging to him. Even the greatest painter of him—the
-Reynolds who has filled England with the ghosts of her noble squires
-and dames,—though he ends his last lecture in the Academy with “the
-name of Michael Angelo,” never for an instant thought of following out
-the purposes of Michael Angelo, and painting a Last Judgment upon
-Squires, with the scene of it laid in Leicestershire. Appealing lords
-and ladies on either hand;—“Behold, Lord, here is Thy land; which I
-have—as far as my distressed circumstances would permit—laid up in a
-napkin. Perhaps there may be a cottage or so less upon it than when I
-came into the estate,—a tree cut down here and there imprudently;—but
-the grouse and foxes are undiminished. Behold, there Thou hast that is
-Thine.” And what capacities of dramatic effect in the cases of less
-prudent owners,—those who had said in their hearts, “My Lord delayeth
-His coming.” Michael Angelo’s St. Bartholomew, exhibiting his own skin
-flayed off him, awakes but a minor interest in that classic picture.
-How many an English squire might not we, with more pictorial advantage,
-see represented as adorned with the flayed skins of other people? Micah
-the Morasthite, throned above them on the rocks of the mountain of the
-Lord, while his Master now takes up His parable, “Hear, I pray you, ye
-heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for
-you to know judgment, who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay
-their skin from off them, and they break their bones, and chop them in
-pieces as for the pot.”
-
-And how of the appeals on the other side? “Lord, Thou gavest me one
-land; behold, I have gained beside it ten lands more.” You think that
-an exceptionally economical landlord might indeed be able to say so
-much for himself; and that the increasing of their estates has at least
-been held a desirable thing by all of them, however Fortune, and the
-sweet thyme-scented Turf of England, might thwart their best
-intentions. Indeed it is well to have coveted—much more to have
-gained—increase of estate, in a certain manner. But neither the
-Morasthite nor his Master have any word of praise for you in
-appropriating surreptitiously, portions, say, of Hampstead Heath, or
-Hayes Common, or even any bit of gipsy-pot-boiling land at the
-roadside. Far the contrary: In that day of successful appropriation,
-there is one that shall take up a parable against you, and say, “We be
-utterly spoiled. He hath changed the portion of my people; turning
-away, he hath divided our fields. Therefore thou shalt have none that
-shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the Lord.” In modern
-words, you shall have quite unexpected difficulties in getting your
-legal documents drawn up to your satisfaction; and truly, as you have
-divided the fields of the poor, the poor, in their time, shall divide
-yours.
-
-Nevertheless, in their deepest sense, those triumphant words, “Behold,
-I have gained beside it ten lands more,” must be on the lips of every
-landlord who honourably enters into his rest; whereas there will soon
-be considerable difficulty, as I think you are beginning to perceive,
-not only in gaining more, but even in keeping what you have got.
-
-For the gipsy hunt is up also, as well as Harry our King’s; and the hue
-and cry loud against your land and you; your tenure of it is in dispute
-before a multiplying mob, deaf and blind as you,—frantic for the
-spoiling of you. The British Constitution is breaking fast. It never
-was, in its best days, entirely what its stout owner flattered himself.
-Neither British Constitution, nor British law, though it blanch every
-acre with an acre of parchment, sealed with as many seals as the meadow
-had buttercups, can keep your landlordships safe, henceforward, for an
-hour. You will have to fight for them as your fathers did, if you mean
-to keep them.
-
-That is your only sound and divine right to them; and of late you seem
-doubtful of appeal to it. You think political economy and peace
-societies will contrive some arithmetical evangel of possession. You
-will not find it so. If a man is not ready to fight for his land, and
-for his wife, no legal forms can secure them to him. They can affirm
-his possession; but neither grant, sanction, nor protect it. To his own
-love, to his own resolution, the lordship is granted; and to those
-only.
-
-That is the first ‘labour’ of landlords, then. Fierce exercise of body
-and mind, in so much pugnacity as shall supersede all office of legal
-documents. Whatever labour you mean to put on your land, your first
-entirely Divine labour is to keep hold of it. And are you ready for
-that toil to-day? It will soon be called for. Sooner or later, within
-the next few years, you will find yourselves in Parliament in front of
-a majority resolved on the establishment of a Republic, and the
-division of lands. Vainly the landed millowners will shriek for the
-“operation of natural laws of political economy.” The vast natural law
-of carnivorous rapine which they have declared their Baal-God, in so
-many words, will be in equitable operation then; and not, as they
-fondly hoped to keep it, all on their own side. Vain, then, your
-arithmetical or sophistical defence. You may pathetically plead to the
-people’s majority, that the divided lands will not give much more than
-the length and breadth of his grave to each mob-proprietor. They will
-answer, “We will have what we can get;—at all events, you shall keep it
-no longer.” And what will you do? Send for the Life Guards and clear
-the House, and then, with all the respectable members of society as
-special constables, guard the streets? That answered well against the
-Chartist meeting on Kennington Common in 1848. Yes; but in 1880 it will
-not be a Chartist meeting at Kennington, but a
-magna-and-maxima-Chartist Ecclesia at Westminster, that you must deal
-with. You will find a difference, and to purpose. Are you prepared to
-clear the streets with the Woolwich infant,—thinking that out of the
-mouth of that suckling, God will perfect your praise, and ordain your
-strength? Be it so; but every grocer’s and chandler’s shop in the
-thoroughfares of London is a magazine of petroleum and percussion
-powder; and there are those who will use both, among the Republicans.
-And you will see your father the Devil’s will done on earth, as it is
-in hell.
-
-I call him your father, for you have denied your mortal fathers, and
-the Heavenly One. You have declared, in act and thought, the ways and
-laws of your sires—obsolete, and of your God—ridiculous; above all, the
-habits of obedience, and the elements of justice. You were made lords
-over God’s heritage. You thought to make it your own heritage; to be
-lords of your own land, not of God’s land. And to this issue of
-ownership you are come.
-
-And what a heritage it was, you had the lordship over! A land of
-fruitful vales and pastoral mountains; and a heaven of pleasant
-sunshine and kindly rain; and times of sweet prolonged summer, and
-cheerful transient winter; and a race of pure heart, iron sinew,
-splendid fame, and constant faith.
-
-All this was yours! the earth with its fair fruits and innocent
-creatures;—the firmament with its eternal lights and dutiful
-seasons;—the men, souls and bodies, your fathers’ true servants for a
-thousand years,—their lives, and their children’s children’s lives
-given into your hands, to save or to destroy; their food yours,—as the
-grazing of the sheep is the shepherd’s; their thoughts yours,—priest
-and tutor chosen for them by you; their hearts yours,—if you would but
-so much as know them by sight and name, and give them the passing grace
-of your own glance, as you dwelt among them, their king. And all this
-monarchy and glory, all this power and love, all this land and its
-people, you pitifullest, foulest of Iscariots, sopped to choking with
-the best of the feast from Christ’s own fingers, you have deliberately
-sold to the highest bidder;—Christ, and His Poor, and His Paradise
-together; and instead of sinning only, like poor natural Adam,
-gathering of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, you, who don’t want to
-gather it, touch it with a vengeance,—cut it down, and sell the timber.
-
-Judases with the big bag—game-bag to wit!—to think how many of your
-dull Sunday mornings have been spent, for propriety’s sake, looking
-chiefly at those carved angels blowing trumpets above your family
-vaults; and never one of you has had Christianity enough in him to
-think that he might as easily have his moors full of angels as of
-grouse. And now, if ever you did see a real angel before the Day of
-Judgment, your first thought would be,—to shoot it.
-
-And for your ‘family’ vaults, what will be the use of them to you? Does
-not Mr. Darwin show you that you can’t wash the slugs out of a lettuce
-without disrespect to your ancestors? Nay, the ancestors of the modern
-political economist cannot have been so pure;—they were not—he tells
-you himself—vegetarian slugs, but carnivorous ones—those, to wit, that
-you see also carved on your tombstones, going in and out at the eyes of
-skulls. And truly, I don’t know what else the holes in the heads of
-modern political economists were made for.
-
-If there are any brighter windows in your’s—if any audience chambers—if
-any council chambers—if any crown of walls that the pin of Death has
-not yet pierced,—it is time for you to rise to your work, whether you
-live or die.
-
-What are you to do, then? First,—the act which will be the foundation
-of all bettering and strength in your own lives, as in that of your
-tenants,—fix their rent; under legal assurance that it shall not be
-raised; and under moral assurance that, if you see they treat your land
-well, and are likely to leave it to you, if they die, raised in value,
-the said rent shall be diminished in proportion to the improvement;
-that is to say, providing they pay you the fixed rent during the time
-of lease, you are to leave to them the entire benefit of whatever
-increase they can give to the value of the land. Put the bargain in a
-simple instance. You lease them an orchard of crab-trees for so much a
-year; they leave you at the end of the lease, an orchard of golden
-pippins. Supposing they have paid you their rent regularly, you have no
-right to anything more than what you lent them—crab-trees, to wit. You
-must pay them for the better trees which by their good industry they
-give you back, or, which is the same thing, previously reduce their
-rent in proportion to the improvement in apples. “The exact contrary,”
-you observe, “of your present modes of proceeding.” Just so, gentlemen;
-and it is not improbable that the exact contrary in many other cases of
-your present modes of proceeding will be found by you, eventually, the
-proper one, and more than that, the necessary one. Then the second
-thing you have to do is to determine the income necessary for your own
-noble and peaceful country life; and setting that aside out of the
-rents, for a constant sum, to be habitually lived well within limits
-of, put your heart and strength into the right employment of the rest
-for the bettering of your estates, in ways which the farmers for their
-own advantage could not or would not; for the growth of more various
-plants; the cherishing, not killing, of beautiful living
-creatures—bird, beast, and fish; and the establishment of such schools
-of History, Natural History, and Art, as may enable your farmers’
-children, with your own, to know the meaning of the words Beauty,
-Courtesy, Compassion, Gladness, and Religion. Which last word,
-primarily, (you have not always forgotten to teach this one truth,
-because it chanced to suit your ends, and even the teaching of this one
-truth has been beneficent;)—Religion, primarily, means
-‘Obedience’—binding to something, or some one. To be bound, or in
-bonds, as apprentice; to be bound, or in bonds, by military oath; to be
-bound, or in bonds, as a servant to man; to be bound, or in bonds,
-under the yoke of God. These are all divinely instituted, eternally
-necessary, conditions of Religion; beautiful, inviolable captivity and
-submission of soul in life and death. This essential meaning of
-Religion it was your office mainly to teach,—each of you captain and
-king, leader and lawgiver, to his people;—vicegerents of your Captain,
-Christ. And now—you miserable jockeys and gamesters—you can’t get a
-seat in Parliament for those all but worn-out buckskin breeches of
-yours, but by taking off your hats to the potboy. Pretty classical
-statues you will make, Coriolanuses of the nineteenth century, humbly
-promising, not to your people gifts of corn, but to your potboys,
-stealthy sale of adulterated beer!
-
-Obedience!—you dare not so much as utter the word, whether to potboy,
-or any other sort of boy, it seems, lately; and the half of you still
-calling themselves Lords, Marquises, Sirs, and other such ancient
-names, which—though omniscient Mr. Buckle says they and their heraldry
-are nought—some little prestige lingers about still. You yourselves,
-what do you yet mean by them—Lords of what?—Herrs, Signors, Dukes of
-what?—of whom? Do you mean merely, when you go to the root of the
-matter, that you sponge on the British farmer for your living, and are
-strong-bodied paupers compelling your dole?
-
-To that extent, there is still, it seems, some force in you. Heaven
-keep it in you; for, as I have said, it will be tried, and soon; and
-you would even yourselves see what was coming, but that in your
-hearts—not from cowardice, but from shame,—you are not sure whether you
-will be ready to fight for your dole; and would fain persuade
-yourselves it will still be given, you for form’s sake, or pity’s.
-
-No, my lords and gentlemen,—you won it at the lance’s point, and must
-so hold it, against the clubs of Sempach, if still you may. No
-otherwise. You won ‘it,’ I say,—your dole,—as matters now stand. But
-perhaps, as matters used to stand, something else. As receivers of
-alms, you will find there is no fight in you. No beggar, nor herd of
-beggars, can fortify so very wide circumference of dish. And the real
-secret of those strange breakings of the lance by the clubs of Sempach,
-is—“that villanous saltpetre”—you think? No, Shakespearian lord; nor
-even the sheaf-binding of Arnold, which so stopped the shaking of the
-fruitless spiculæ. The utter and inmost secret is, that you have been
-fighting these three hundred years for what you could get, instead of
-what you could give. You were ravenous enough in rapine in the olden
-times; [52] but you lived fearlessly and innocently by it, because,
-essentially, you wanted money and food to give,—not to consume; to
-maintain your followers with, not to swallow yourselves. Your chivalry
-was founded, invariably, by knights who were content all their lives
-with their horse and armour and daily bread. Your kings, of true power,
-never desired for themselves more,—down to the last of them, Friedrich.
-What they did desire was strength of manhood round them, and, in their
-own hands, the power of largesse.
-
-‘Largesse.’ The French word is obsolete; one Latin equivalent,
-Liberalitas, is fast receiving another, and not altogether similar
-significance, among English Liberals. The other Latin equivalent,
-Generosity, has become doubly meaningless, since modern political
-economy and politics neither require virtue, nor breeding. The Greek,
-or Greek-descended, equivalents—Charity, Grace, and the like, your
-Grace the Duke of —— can perhaps tell me what has become of them.
-Meantime, of all the words, ‘Largesse,’ the entirely obsolete one, is
-the perfectly chivalric one; and therefore, next to the French
-description of Franchise, we will now read the French description of
-Largesse,—putting first, for comparison with it, a few more sentences
-[53] from the secretary’s speech at the meeting of Social Science in
-Glasgow; and remembering also the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’s’ exposition of
-the perfection of Lord Derby’s idea of agriculture, in the hands of the
-landowner—“Cultivating” (by machinery) “large farms for himself.”
-
-
-    “Exchange is the result, put into action, of the desire to possess
-    that which belongs to another, controlled by reason and
-    conscientiousness. It is difficult to conceive of any human
-    transaction that cannot be resolved, in some form or other, into
-    the idea of an exchange. All that is essential in production are,”
-    (sic, only italics mine,) “directly evolved from this source.”
-
-                                *   *   *
-
-    “Man has therefore been defined to be an animal that exchanges. It
-    will be seen, however, that he not only exchanges, but from the
-    fact of his belonging, in part, to the order carnivora, that he
-    also inherits, to a considerable degree, the desire to possess
-    without exchanging; or, in other words, by fraud and violence, when
-    such can be used for his own advantage, without danger to himself.”
-
-                                *   *   *
-
-    “Reason would immediately suggest to one of superior strength,
-    that, however desirable it might be to take possession, by
-    violence, of what another had laboured to produce, he might be
-    treated in the same way by one stronger than himself; to which he,
-    of course, would have great objection.”
-
-                                *   *   *
-
-    “In order, therefore, to prevent, or put a stop to, a practice
-    which each would object to in his own case, and which, besides,
-    would put a stop to production altogether, both reason and a sense
-    of justice would suggest the act of exchange, as the only proper
-    mode of obtaining things from one another.”
-
-                                *   *   *
-
-
-To anybody who had either reason or a sense of justice, it might
-possibly have suggested itself that, except for the novelty of the
-thing, mere exchange profits nobody, and presupposes a coincidence, or
-rather a harmonious dissent, of opinion not always attainable.
-
-Mr. K. has a kettle, and Mr. P. has a pot. Mr. P. says to Mr. K., ‘I
-would rather have your kettle than my pot;’ and if, coincidently, Mr.
-K. is also in a discontented humour, and can say to Mr. P., ‘I would
-rather have your pot than my kettle,’ why—both Hanses are in luck, and
-all is well; but is their carnivorous instinct thus to be satisfied?
-Carnivorous instinct says, in both cases, ‘I want both pot and kettle
-myself, and you to have neither,’ and is entirely unsatisfiable on the
-principle of exchange. The ineffable blockhead who wrote the paper
-forgot that the principle of division of labour underlies that of
-exchange, and does not arise out of it, but is the only reason for it.
-If Mr. P. can make two pots, and Mr. K. two kettles, and so, by
-exchange, both become possessed of a pot and a kettle, all is well. But
-the profit of the business is in the additional production, and only
-the convenience in the subsequent exchange. For, indeed, there are in
-the main two great fallacies which the rascals of the world rejoice in
-making its fools proclaim: the first, that by continually exchanging,
-and cheating each other on exchange, two exchanging persons, out of one
-pot, alternating with one kettle, can make their two fortunes. That is
-the principle of Trade. The second, that Judas’ bag has become a
-juggler’s, in which, if Mr. P. deposits his pot, and waits awhile,
-there will come out two pots, both full of broth; and if Mr. K.
-deposits his kettle, and waits awhile, there will come out two kettles,
-both full of fish! That is the principle of Interest.
-
-However, for the present, observe simply the conclusion of our social
-science expositor, that “the art of exchange is the only proper mode of
-obtaining things from one another;” and now compare with this theory
-that of old chivalry, namely, that gift was also a good way, both of
-losing and gaining.
-
-
-            “And after, in the dance, went
-            Largesse, that set all her intent
-            For to be honourable and free.
-            Of Alexander’s kin was she;
-            Her mostë joy was, I wis,
-            When that she gave, and said, ‘Have this.’ [54]
-            Not Avarice, the foul caitiff, [55]
-            Was half, to gripe, so ententive,
-            As Largesse is to give, and spend.
-            And God always enough her send, (sent)
-            So that the more she gave away,
-            The more, I wis, she had alway.
-
-            Largesse had on a robe fresh
-            Of rich purpure, sarlinish; [56]
-            Well formed was her face, and clear,
-            And open had she her colere, (collar)
-            For she right then had in present
-            Unto a lady made present
-            Of a gold brooch, full well wrought;
-            And certes, it mis-set her nought,
-            For through her smocke, wrought with silk,
-            The flesh was seen as white as milke.”
-
-
-Think over that, ladies, and gentlemen who love them, for a pretty way
-of being decolletée. Even though the flesh should be a little sunburnt
-sometimes,—so that it be the Sun of Righteousness, and not Baal, who
-shines on it—though it darken from the milk-like flesh to the colour of
-the Madonna of Chartres,—in this world you shall be able to say, I am
-black, but comely; and, dying, shine as the brightness of the
-firmament—as the stars for ever and ever. They do not receive their
-glories,—however one differeth in glory from another,—either by, or on,
-Exchange.
-
-
-
-                                     Lucca. (Assumption of the Virgin.)
-
-‘As the stars, for ever.’ Perhaps we had better not say that,—modern
-science looking pleasantly forward to the extinction of a good many of
-them. But it will be well to shine like them, if but for a little
-while.
-
-You probably did not understand why, in a former letter, the Squire’s
-special duty towards the peasant was said to be “presenting a celestial
-appearance to him.”
-
-That is, indeed, his appointed missionary work; and still more
-definitely, his wife’s.
-
-The giving of loaves is indeed the lady’s first duty; the first, but
-the least.
-
-Next, comes the giving of brooches;—seeing that her people are dressed
-charmingly and neatly, as well as herself, and have pretty furniture,
-like herself. [57]
-
-But her chief duty of all—is to be, Herself, lovely.
-
-
-        “That through her smocke, wrought with silk,
-        The flesh be seen as white as milke.” [58]
-
-
-Flesh, ladies mine, you observe; and not any merely illuminated
-resemblance of it, after the fashion of the daughter of Ethbaal. It is
-your duty to be lovely, not by candlelight, but sunshine; not out of a
-window or opera-box, but on the bare ground.
-
-Which that you may be,—if through the smocke the flesh, then, much
-more, through the flesh, the spirit, must be seen “as white as milke.”
-
-I have just been drawing, or trying to draw, Giotto’s ‘Poverty’ (Sancta
-Paupertas) at Assisi. You may very likely know the chief symbolism of
-the picture: that Poverty is being married to St. Francis, and that
-Christ marries them, while her bare feet are entangled in thorns, but
-behind her head is a thicket of rose and lily. It is less likely you
-should be acquainted with the farther details of the group.
-
-The thorns are of the acacia, which, according to tradition, was used
-to weave Christ’s crown. The roses are in two clusters,—palest red,
-[59] and deep crimson; the one on her right, the other on her left;
-above her head, pure white on the golden ground, rise the Annunciation
-Lilies. She is not crowned with them, observe; they are behind her: she
-is crowned only with her own hair, wreathed in a tress with which she
-had bound her short bridal veil. For dress, she has—her smocke only;
-and that torn, and torn again, and patched, diligently; except just at
-the shoulders, and a little below the throat, where Giotto has torn it,
-too late for her to mend; and the fair flesh is seen through, so white
-that one cannot tell where the rents are, except when quite close.
-
-For girdle, she has the Franciscan’s cord; but that also is white, as
-if spun of silk; her whole figure, like a statue of snow, seen against
-the shade of her purple wings: for she is already one of the angels. A
-crowd of them, on each side, attend her; two, her sisters, are her
-bridesmaids also. Giotto has written their names above them—Spes;
-Karitas;—their sister’s Christian name he has written in the lilies,
-for those of us who have truly learned to read. Charity is crowned with
-white roses, which burst, as they open, into flames; and she gives the
-bride a marriage gift.
-
-“An apple,” say the interpreters.
-
-Not so. It was some one else than Charity who gave the first bride that
-gift. It is a heart.
-
-Hope only points upwards; and while Charity has the golden nimbus round
-her head circular (infinite), like that of Christ and the eternal
-angels, she has her glory set within the lines that limit the cell of
-the bee,—hexagonal.
-
-And the bride has hers, also, so restricted: nor, though she and her
-bridesmaids are sisters, are they dressed alike; but one in red; and
-one in green; and one, robe, flesh and spirit, a statue of Snow.
-
-
-            “La terza parea neve, teste mossa.”
-
-
-Do you know now, any of you, ladies mine, what Giotto’s lilies mean
-between the roses? or how they may also grow among the Sesame of
-knightly spears?
-
-Not one of you, maid or mother, though I have besought you these four
-years, (except only one or two of my personal friends,) has joined St.
-George’s Company. You probably think St. George may advise some
-different arrangements in Hanover Square? It is possible; for his own
-knight’s cloak is white, and he may wish you to bear such celestial
-appearance constantly. You talk often of bearing Christ’s cross; do you
-never think of putting on Christ’s robes,—those that He wore on Tabor?
-nor know what lamps they were which the wise virgins trimmed for the
-marriage feast? You think, perhaps, you can go in to that feast in
-gowns made half of silk, and half of cotton, spun in your Lancashire
-cotton-mills; and that the Americans have struck oil enough—(lately, I
-observe also, native gas,)—to supply any number of belated virgins?
-
-It is not by any means so, fair ladies. It is only your newly adopted
-Father who tells you so. Suppose, learning what it is to be generous,
-you recover your descent from God, and then weave your household
-dresses white with your own fingers? For as no fuller on earth can
-white them, but the light of a living faith,—so no demon under the
-earth can darken them like the shadow of a dead one. And your modern
-English ‘faith without works’ is dead; and would to God she were buried
-too, for the stench of her goes up to His throne from a thousand fields
-of blood. Weave, I say,—you have trusted far too much lately to the
-washing,—your household raiment white; go out in the morning to Ruth’s
-field, to sow as well as to glean; sing your Te Deum, at evening,
-thankfully, as God’s daughters,—and there shall be no night there, for
-your light shall so shine before men that they may see your good works,
-and glorify—not Baal the railroad accident—but
-
-
-        “L’Amor che muove il Sole, e l’altre stelle.”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-I have had by me for some time a small pamphlet, “The Agricultural
-Labourer, by a Farmer’s Son,” [60] kindly sent me by the author. The
-matter of it is excellent as far as it reaches; but the writer speaks
-as if the existing arrangements between landlord, farmer, and labourer
-must last for ever. If he will look at the article on “Peasant Farming”
-in the ‘Spectator’ of July 4th of this year, he may see grounds for a
-better hope. That article is a review of Mr. W. T. Thornton’s “Plea for
-Peasant Proprietors;” and the following paragraph from it may interest,
-and perhaps surprise, other readers besides my correspondent. Its first
-sentence considerably surprises me to begin with; so I have italicized
-it:—
-
-“This country is only just beginning to be seriously roused to the fact
-that it has an agricultural question at all; and some of those most
-directly interested therein are, in their pain and surprise at the
-discovery, hurrying so fast the wrong way, that it will probably take a
-long time to bring them round again to sensible thoughts, after most of
-the rest of the community are ready with an answer.
-
-“The primary object of this book is to combat the pernicious error of a
-large school of English economists with reference to the hurtful
-character of small farms and small landed properties.... One would
-think that the evidence daily before a rural economist, in the
-marvellous extra production of a market garden, or even a peasant’s
-allotment, over an ordinary farm, might suffice to raise doubts whether
-vast fields tilled by steam, weeded by patent grubbers, and left
-otherwise to produce in rather a happy-go-lucky fashion, were likely to
-be the most advanced and profitable of all cultivated lands. On this
-single point of production, Mr. Thornton conclusively proves the small
-farmer to have the advantage.
-
-“The extreme yields of the very highest English farming are even
-exceeded in Guernsey, and in that respect the evidence of the greater
-productiveness of small farming over large is overwhelming. The Channel
-Islands not only feed their own population, but are large exporters of
-provisions as well.
-
-“Small farms being thus found to be more advantageous, it is but an
-easy step to peasant proprietors.”
-
-Stop a moment, Mr. Spectator. The step is easy, indeed;—so is a step
-into a well, or out of a window. There is no question whatever, in any
-country, or at any time, respecting the expediency of small farming;
-but whether the small farmer should be the proprietor of his land, is a
-very awkward question indeed in some countries. Are you aware, Mr.
-Spectator, that your ‘easy step,’ taken in two lines and a breath,
-means what I, with all my Utopian zeal, have been fourteen years
-writing on Political Economy, without venturing to hint at, except
-under my breath;—some considerable modification, namely, in the
-position of the existing British landlord?—nothing less, indeed, if
-your ‘step’ were to be completely taken, than the reduction of him to a
-‘small peasant proprietor’? And unless he can show some reason against
-it, the ‘easy step’ will most assuredly be taken with him.
-
-Yet I have assumed, in this Fors, that it is not to be taken. That
-under certain modifications of his system of Rent, he may still remain
-lord of his land,—may, and ought, provided always he knows what it is
-to be lord of anything. Of which I hope to reason farther in the Fors
-for November of this year.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XLVI.
-
-
-                                           Florence, 28th August, 1874.
-
-I intended this letter to have been published on my mother’s birthday,
-the second of next month. Fors, however, has entirely declared herself
-against that arrangement, having given me a most unexpected piece of
-work here, in drawing the Emperor, King, and Baron, who, throned by
-Simone Memmi beneath the Duomo of Florence, beside a Pope, Cardinal,
-and Bishop, represented, to the Florentine mind of the fourteenth
-century, the sacred powers of the State in their fixed relation to
-those of the Church. The Pope lifts his right hand to bless, and holds
-the crosier in his left; having no powers but of benediction and
-protection. The Emperor holds his sword upright in his right hand, and
-a skull in his left, having alone the power of death. Both have triple
-crowns; but the Emperor alone has a nimbus. The King has the diadem of
-fleur-de-lys, and the ball and globe; the Cardinal, a book. The Baron
-has his warrior’s sword; the Bishop, a pastoral staff. And the whole
-scene is very beautifully expressive of what have been by learned
-authors supposed the Republican or Liberal opinions of Florence, in her
-day of pride.
-
-The picture (fresco), in which this scene occurs, is the most complete
-piece of theological and political teaching given to us by the elder
-arts of Italy; and this particular portion of it is of especial
-interest to me, not only as exponent of the truly liberal and communist
-principles which I am endeavouring to enforce in these letters for the
-future laws of the St. George’s Company; but also because my maternal
-grandmother was the landlady of the Old King’s Head in Market Street,
-Croydon; and I wish she were alive again, and I could paint her Simone
-Memmi’s King’s head, for a sign.
-
-My maternal grandfather was, as I have said, a sailor, who used to
-embark, like Robinson Crusoe, at Yarmouth, and come back at rare
-intervals, making himself very delightful at home. I have an idea he
-had something to do with the herring business, but am not clear on that
-point; my mother never being much communicative concerning it. He
-spoiled her, and her (younger) sister, with all his heart, when he was
-at home; unless there appeared any tendency to equivocation, or
-imaginative statements, on the part of the children, which were always
-unforgiveable. My mother being once perceived by him to have distinctly
-told him a lie, he sent the servant out forthwith to buy an entire
-bundle of new broom twigs to whip her with. “They did not hurt me so
-much as one would have done,” said my mother, “but I thought a good
-deal of it.”
-
-My grandfather was killed at two-and-thirty, by trying to ride, instead
-of walk, into Croydon; he got his leg crushed by his horse against a
-wall; and died of the hurt’s mortifying. My mother was then seven or
-eight years old, and, with her sister, was sent to quite a fashionable
-(for Croydon) day-school, (Mrs. Rice’s), where my mother was taught
-evangelical principles, and became the pattern girl and best sewer in
-the school; and where my aunt absolutely refused evangelical
-principles, and became the plague and pet of it.
-
-My mother, being a girl of great power, with not a little pride, grew
-more and more exemplary in her entirely conscientious career, much
-laughed at, though much beloved, by her sister; who had more wit, less
-pride, and no conscience. At last my mother, being a consummate
-housewife, was sent for to Scotland to take care of my paternal
-grandfather’s house; who was gradually ruining himself; and who at last
-effectually ruined, and killed, himself. My father came up to London;
-was a clerk in a merchant’s house for nine years, without a holiday;
-then began business on his own account; paid his father’s debts; and
-married his exemplary Croydon cousin.
-
-Meantime my aunt had remained in Croydon, and married a baker. By the
-time I was four years old, and beginning to recollect things,—my father
-rapidly taking higher commercial position in London,—there was
-traceable—though to me, as a child, wholly incomprehensible—just the
-least possible shade of shyness on the part of Hunter Street, Brunswick
-Square, towards Market Street, Croydon. But whenever my father was
-ill,—and hard work and sorrow had already set their mark on him,—we all
-went down to Croydon to be petted by my homely aunt; and walk on Duppas
-Hill, and on the heather of Addington.
-
-(And now I go on with the piece of this letter written last month at
-Assisi.)
-
-My aunt lived in the little house still standing—or which was so four
-months ago—the fashionablest in Market Street, having actually two
-windows over the shop, in the second story; but I never troubled myself
-about that superior part of the mansion, unless my father happened to
-be making drawings in Indian ink, when I would sit reverently by and
-watch; my chosen domains being, at all other times, the shop, the
-bakehouse, and the stones round the spring of crystal water at the back
-door (long since let down into the modern sewer); and my chief
-companion, my aunt’s dog, Towzer, whom she had taken pity on when he
-was a snappish, starved vagrant; and made a brave and affectionate dog
-of: which was the kind of thing she did for every living creature that
-came in her way, all her life long.
-
-I am sitting now in the Sacristan’s cell at Assisi. Its roof is
-supported by three massive beams,—not squared beams, but tree trunks
-barked, with the grand knots left in them, answering all the purpose of
-sculpture. The walls are of rude white plaster, though there is a
-Crucifixion by Giottino on the back of one, outside the door; the
-floor, brick; the table, olive wood; the windows two, and only about
-four feet by two in the opening, (but giving plenty of light in the
-sunny morning, aided by the white walls,) looking out on the valley of
-the Tescio. Under one of them, a small arched stove for cooking; in a
-square niche beside the other, an iron wash-hand stand,—that is to say,
-a tripod of good fourteenth century work, carrying a grand brown
-porringer, two feet across, and half a foot deep. Between the windows
-is the fireplace, the wall above it rich brown with the smoke. Hung
-against the wall behind me are a saucepan, gridiron, and toasting-fork;
-and in the wall a little door, closed only by a brown canvas curtain,
-opening to an inner cell nearly filled by the bedstead; and at the side
-of the room a dresser, with cupboard below, and two wine flasks, and
-three pots of Raphael ware on the top of it, together with the first
-volume of the ‘Maraviglie di Dio nell’ anime del Purgatorio, del padre
-Carlo Gregorio Rosignoli, della Compagnia de Gesu,’ (Roma, 1841). There
-is a bird singing outside; a constant low hum of flies, making the ear
-sure it is summer; a dove cooing, very low; and absolutely nothing else
-to be heard, I find, after listening with great care. And I feel
-entirely at home, because the room—except in the one point of being
-extremely dirty—is just the kind of thing I used to see in my aunt’s
-bakehouse; and the country and the sweet valley outside still rest in
-peace, such as used to be on the Surrey hills in the olden days.
-
-And now I am really going to begin my steady explanation of what the
-St. George’s Company have to do.
-
-1. You are to do good work, whether you live or die. ‘What is good
-work?’ you ask. Well you may! For your wise pastors and teachers,
-though they have been very careful to assure you that good works are
-the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, have been so
-certain of that fact that they never have been the least solicitous to
-explain to you, and still less to discover for themselves, what good
-works were; content if they perceived a general impression on the minds
-of their congregations that good works meant going to church and
-admiring the sermon on Sundays, and making as much money as possible in
-the rest of the week.
-
-It is true, one used to hear almsgiving and prayer sometimes
-recommended by old-fashioned country ministers. But “the poor are now
-to be raised without gifts,” says my very hard-and-well-working friend
-Miss Octavia Hill; and prayer is entirely inconsistent with the laws of
-hydro (and other) statics, says the Duke of Argyll.
-
-It may be so, for aught I care, just now. Largesse and supplication may
-or may not be still necessary in the world’s economy. They are not, and
-never were, part of the world’s work. For no man can give till he has
-been paid his own wages; and still less can he ask his Father for the
-said wages till he has done his day’s duty for them.
-
-Neither almsgiving nor praying, therefore, nor psalm-singing, nor
-even—as poor Livingstone thought, to his own death, and our bitter
-loss—discovering the mountains of the Moon, have anything to do with
-“good work,” or God’s work. But it is not so very difficult to discover
-what that work is. You keep the Sabbath, in imitation of God’s rest.
-Do, by all manner of means, if you like; and keep also the rest of the
-week in imitation of God’s work.
-
-It is true that, according to tradition, that work was done a long time
-ago, “before the chimneys in Zion were hot, and ere the present years
-were sought out, and or ever the inventions of them that now sin, were
-turned; and before they were sealed that have gathered faith for a
-treasure.” [61] But the established processes of it continue, as his
-Grace of Argyll has argutely observed;—and your own work will be good,
-if it is in harmony with them, and duly sequent of them. Nor are even
-the first main facts or operations by any means inimitable, on a duly
-subordinate scale, for if Man be made in God’s image, much more is
-Man’s work made to be the image of God’s work. So therefore look to
-your model, very simply stated for you in the nursery tale of Genesis.
-
-
-    Day First.—The Making, or letting in, of Light.
-    Day Second.—The Discipline and Firmament of Waters.
-    Day Third.—The Separation of earth from water, and planting the
-            secure earth with trees.
-    Day Fourth.—The Establishment of time and seasons, and of the
-            authority of the stars.
-    Day Fifth.—Filling the water and air with fish and birds.
-    Day Sixth.—Filling the land with beasts; and putting divine life
-            into the clay of one of these, that it may have authority
-            over the others, and over the rest of the Creation.
-
-
-Here is your nursery story,—very brief, and in some sort
-unsatisfactory; not altogether intelligible, (I don’t know anything
-very good that is,) nor wholly indisputable, (I don’t know anything
-ever spoken usefully on so wide a subject that is); but substantially
-vital and sufficient. So the good human work may properly divide itself
-into the same six branches; and will be a perfectly literal and
-practical following out of the Divine; and will have opposed to it a
-correspondent Diabolic force of eternally bad work—as much worse than
-idleness or death, as good work is better than idleness or death.
-
-Good work, then, will be,—
-
-A. Letting in light where there was darkness; as especially into poor
-rooms and back streets; and generally guiding and administering the
-sunshine wherever we can, by all the means in our power.
-
-And the correspondent Diabolic work is putting a tax on windows, and
-blocking out the sun’s light with smoke.
-
-B. Disciplining the falling waters. In the Divine work, this is the
-ordinance of clouds; [62] in the human it is properly putting the
-clouds to service; and first stopping the rain where they carry it from
-the sea, and then keeping it pure as it goes back to the sea again.
-
-And the correspondent Diabolic work is the arrangement of land so as to
-throw all the water back to the sea as fast as we can; [63] and putting
-every sort of filth into the stream as it runs.
-
-C. The separation of earth from water, and planting it with trees. The
-correspondent human work is especially clearing morasses, and planting
-desert ground.
-
-The Dutch, in a small way, in their own country, have done a good deal
-with sand and tulips; also the North Germans. But the most beautiful
-type of the literal ordinance of dry land in water is the State of
-Venice, with her sea-canals, restrained, traversed by their bridges,
-and especially bridges of the Rivo Alto, or High Bank, which are, or
-were till a few years since, symbols of the work of a true
-Pontifex,—the Pontine Marshes being the opposite symbol.
-
-The correspondent Diabolic work is turning good land and water into
-mud; and cutting down trees that we may drive steam ploughs, etc., etc.
-
-D. The establishment of times and seasons. The correspondent human work
-is a due watching of the rise and set of stars, and course of the sun;
-and due administration and forethought of our own annual labours,
-preparing for them in hope, and concluding them in joyfulness,
-according to the laws and gifts of Heaven. Which beautiful order is set
-forth in symbols on all lordly human buildings round the semicircular
-arches which are types of the rise and fall of days and years.
-
-And the correspondent Diabolic work is turning night into day with
-candles, so that we never see the stars; and mixing the seasons up one
-with another, and having early strawberries, and green pease and the
-like.
-
-E. Filling the waters with fish, and air with birds. The correspondent
-human work is Mr. Frank Buckland’s and the like,—of which ‘like’ I am
-thankful to have been permitted to do a small piece near Croydon, in
-the streams to which my mother took me when a child, to play beside.
-There were more than a dozen of the fattest, shiniest, spottiest, and
-tamest trout I ever saw in my life, in the pond at Carshalton, the last
-time I saw it this spring.
-
-The correspondent Diabolic work is poisoning fish, as is done at
-Coniston, with copper-mining; and catching them for ministerial and
-other fashionable dinners when they ought not to be caught; and
-treating birds—as birds are treated, Ministerially and otherwise.
-
-F. Filling the earth with beasts, properly known and cared for by their
-master, Man; but chiefly breathing into the clayey and brutal nature of
-Man himself, the Soul, or Love, of God.
-
-The correspondent Diabolic work is shooting and tormenting beasts; and
-grinding out the soul of man from his flesh, with machine labour; and
-then grinding down the flesh of him, when nothing else is left, into
-clay, with machines for that purpose—mitrailleuses, Woolwich infants,
-and the like.
-
-These are the six main heads of God’s and the Devil’s work.
-
-And as Wisdom, or Prudentia, is with God, and with His children in the
-doing,—“There I was by Him, as one brought up with Him, and I was daily
-His delight,”—so Folly, or Stultitia, saying, There is No God, is with
-the Devil and his children, in the undoing. “There she is with them as
-one brought up with them, and she is daily their delight.”
-
-And so comes the great reverse of Creation, and wrath of God,
-accomplished on the earth by the fiends, and by men their ministers,
-seen by Jeremy the Prophet: “For my people is foolish, they have not
-known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding:
-they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. [Now
-note the reversed creation.] I beheld the Earth, and, lo, it was
-without form, and void; and the Heavens, and they had no light. I
-beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved
-lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the
-heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a
-wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence
-of the Lord, and by His fierce anger.”
-
-And so, finally, as the joy and honour of the ancient and divine Man
-and Woman were in their children, so the grief and dishonour of the
-modern and diabolic Man and Woman are in their children; and as the
-Rachel of Bethlehem weeps for her children, and will not be comforted,
-because they are not, the Rachel of England weeps for her children, and
-will not be comforted—because they are.
-
-Now, whoever you may be, and how little your power may be, and whatever
-sort of creature you may be,—man, woman, or child,—you can, according
-to what discretion of years you may have reached, do something of this
-Divine work, or undo something of this Devil’s work, every day. Even if
-you are a slave, forced to labour at some abominable and murderous
-trade for bread,—as iron-forging, for instance, or
-gunpowder-making,—you can resolve to deliver yourself, and your
-children after you, from the chains of that hell, and from the dominion
-of its slave-masters, or to die. That is Patriotism; and true desire of
-Freedom, or Franchise. What Egyptian bondage, do you suppose—(painted
-by Mr. Poynter as if it were a thing of the past!)—was ever so cruel as
-a modern English iron forge, with its steam hammers? What Egyptian
-worship of garlic or crocodile ever so damnable as modern English
-worship of money? Israel—even by the fleshpots—was sorry to have to
-cast out her children,—would fain stealthily keep her little Moses,—if
-Nile were propitious; and roasted her passover anxiously. But English
-Mr. P., satisfied with his fleshpot, and the broth of it, will not be
-over-hasty about his roast. If the Angel, perchance, should not pass
-by, it would be no such matter, thinks Mr. P.
-
-Or, again, if you are a slave to Society, and must do what the people
-next door bid you,—you can resolve, with any vestige of human energy
-left in you, that you will indeed put a few things into God’s fashion,
-instead of the fashion of next door. Merely fix that on your mind as a
-thing to be done; to have things—dress, for instance,—according to
-God’s taste, (and I can tell you He is likely to have some, as good as
-any modiste you know of); or dinner, according to God’s taste instead
-of the Russians’; or supper, or picnic, with guests of God’s inviting,
-occasionally, mixed among the more respectable company.
-
-By the way, I wrote a letter to one of my lady friends, who gives
-rather frequent dinners, the other day, which may perhaps be useful to
-others: it was to this effect mainly, though I add and alter a little
-to make it more general:—
-
-“You probably will be having a dinner-party to-day; now, please do
-this, and remember I am quite serious in what I ask you. We all of us,
-who have any belief in Christianity at all, wish that Christ were alive
-now. Suppose, then, that He is. I think it very likely that if He were
-in London, you would be one of the people whom He would take some
-notice of. Now, suppose He has sent you word that He is coming to dine
-with you to-day; but that you are not to make any change in your guests
-on His account; that He wants to meet exactly the party you have; and
-no other. Suppose you have just received this message, and that St.
-John has also left word, in passing, with the butler, that his Master
-will come alone; so that you won’t have any trouble with the Apostles.
-Now this is what I want you to do. First, determine what you will have
-for dinner. You are not ordered, observe, to make no changes in your
-bill of fare. Take a piece of paper, and absolutely write fresh orders
-to your cook,—you can’t realize the thing enough without writing. That
-done, consider how you will arrange your guests—who is to sit next
-Christ on the other side—who opposite, and so on; finally, consider a
-little what you will talk about, supposing, which is just possible,
-that Christ should tell you to go on talking as if He were not there,
-and never to mind Him. You couldn’t, you will tell me? Then, my dear
-lady, how can you in general? Don’t you profess—nay, don’t you much
-more than profess—to believe that Christ is always there, whether you
-see Him or not? Why should the seeing make such a difference?”
-
-But you are no master nor mistress of household? You are only a boy, or
-a girl. What can you do?
-
-We will take the work of the third day, for its range is at once lower
-and wider than that of the others: Can you do nothing in that kind? Is
-there no garden near you where you can get from some generous person
-leave to weed the beds, or sweep up the dead leaves? (I once allowed an
-eager little girl of ten years old to weed my garden; and now, though
-it is long ago, she always speaks as if the favour had been done to
-her, and not to the garden and me.) Is there no dusty place that you
-can water?—if it be only the road before your door, the traveller will
-thank you. No roadside ditch that you can clean of its clogged rubbish,
-to let the water run clear? No scattered heap of brickbats that you can
-make an ordinary pile of? You are ashamed? Yes; that false shame is the
-Devil’s pet weapon. He does more work with it even than with false
-pride. For with false pride, he only goads evil; but with false shame,
-paralyzes good.
-
-But you have no ground of your own; you are a girl, and can’t work on
-other people’s? At least you have a window of your own, or one in which
-you have a part interest. With very little help from the carpenter, you
-can arrange a safe box outside of it, that will hold earth enough to
-root something in. If you have any favour from Fortune at all, you can
-train a rose, or a honeysuckle, or a convolvulus, or a nasturtium,
-round your window—a quiet branch of ivy—or if for the sake of its
-leaves only, a tendril or two of vine. Only, be sure all your
-plant-pets are kept well outside of the window. Don’t come to having
-pots in the room, unless you are sick.
-
-I got a nice letter from a young girl, not long since, asking why I had
-said in my answers to former questions that young ladies were “to have
-nothing to do with greenhouses, still less with hothouses.” The new
-inquirer has been sent me by Fors, just when it was time to explain
-what I meant.
-
-First, then—The primal object of your gardening, for yourself, is to
-keep you at work in the open air, whenever it is possible. The
-greenhouse will always be a refuge to you from the wind; which, on the
-contrary, you ought to be able to bear; and will tempt you into
-clippings and pottings and pettings, and mere standing dilettantism in
-a damp and over-scented room, instead of true labour in fresh air.
-
-Secondly.—It will not only itself involve unnecessary expense—(for the
-greenhouse is sure to turn into a hothouse in the end; and even if not,
-is always having its panes broken, or its blinds going wrong, or its
-stands getting rickety); but it will tempt you into buying nursery
-plants, and waste your time in anxiety about them.
-
-Thirdly.—The use of your garden to the household ought to be mainly in
-the vegetables you can raise in it. And, for these, your proper
-observance of season, and of the authority of the stars, is a vital
-duty. Every climate gives its vegetable food to its living creatures at
-the right time; your business is to know that time, and be prepared for
-it, and to take the healthy luxury which nature appoints you, in the
-rare annual taste of the thing given in those its due days. The vile
-and gluttonous modern habit of forcing never allows people properly to
-taste anything.
-
-Lastly, and chiefly.—Your garden is to enable you to obtain such
-knowledge of plants as you may best use in the country in which you
-live, by communicating it to others; and teaching them to take pleasure
-in the green herb, given for meat, and the coloured flower, given for
-joy. And your business is not to make the greenhouse or hothouse
-rejoice and blossom like the rose, but the wilderness and solitary
-place. And it is, therefore, (look back to Letter 26th, p. 15,) not at
-all of camellias and air-plants that the devil is afraid; on the
-contrary, the Dame aux Camellias is a very especial servant of his; and
-the Fly-God of Ekron himself superintends—as you may gather from Mr.
-Darwin’s recent investigations—the birth and parentage of the
-orchidaceæ. But he is mortally afraid of roses and crocuses.
-
-Of roses, that is to say, growing wild;—(what lovely hedges of them
-there were, in the lane leading from Dulwich College up to Windmill (or
-Gipsy) Hill, in my aunt’s time!)—but of the massy horticultural-prize
-rose,—fifty pounds weight of it on a propped bush—he stands in no awe
-whatever; not even when they are cut afterwards and made familiar to
-the poor in the form of bouquets, so that poor Peggy may hawk them from
-street to street—and hate the smell of them, as his own imps do. For
-Mephistopheles knows there are poorer Margarets yet than Peggy.
-
-Hear this, you fine ladies of the houses of York and Lancaster, and
-you, new-gilded Miss Kilmanseggs, with your gardens of Gul,—you, also,
-evangelical expounders of the beauty of the Rose of Sharon;—it is a bit
-of a letter just come to me from a girl of good position in the
-manufacturing districts:—
-
-“The other day I was coming through a nasty part of the road, carrying
-a big bunch of flowers, and met two dirty, ragged girls, who looked
-eagerly at my flowers. Then one of them said, ‘Give us a flower!’ I
-hesitated, for she looked and spoke rudely; but when she ran after me,
-I stopped; and pulled out a large rose, and asked the other girl which
-she would like. ‘A red one, the same as hers,’ she answered. They
-actually did not know its name. Poor girls! they promised to take care
-of them, and went away looking rather softened and pleased, I thought;
-but perhaps they would pull them to pieces, and laugh at the success of
-their boldness. At all events, they made me very sad and thoughtful for
-the rest of my walk.”
-
-And, I hope, a little so, even when you got home again, young lady.
-Meantime, are you quite sure of your fact; and that there was no white
-rose in your bouquet, from which the “red one” might be distinguished,
-without naming? In any case, my readers have enough to think of, for
-this time, I believe.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-I. Together with the Spectator’s telescopic and daring views of the
-Land question, given in last Fors, I may as well preserve its immediate
-and microscopic approval of our poor little practice upon it at
-Hincksey:—
-
-“Adam and Jehu.—It is very vexatious, but one never gets fairly the
-better of Mr. Ruskin. Sometimes he lets his intellect work, and fires
-off pamphlet after pamphlet on political economy, each new one more
-ridiculous than the last, till it ceases to be possible even to read
-his brochures without condemning them as the utterances of a man who
-cannot lose a certain eloquence of expression, BUT WHO CANNOT THINK AT
-ALL; and then, again, he lets his genius work, and produces something
-which raises the admiration of the reader till every folly which
-preceded it is forgotten. There never was a more absurd paper published
-than his on the duty of the State towards unmarried couples, and never
-perhaps one wiser than his lecture on ‘Ambition,’ reviewed in our
-columns on the 18th of October, 1873. Just recently he has been pushing
-some plans for an agricultural Utopia, free of steam-engines and noises
-and everything modern, in which the inconsequence of his mind is as
-evident as its radical benevolence; and now he has, we believe, done
-the whole youth of Oxford a substantial service. He has turned, or
-rather tried to turn, the rage for athletics into a worthy
-channel.”—Spectator, May 30, 1874.
-
-The above paragraph may, I think, also be, some day, interesting as a
-summary of the opinions of the British press on Fors Clavigera; and if
-my last month’s letter should have the fortune to displease, or
-discomfort, any British landlord, my alarmed or offended reader may be
-relieved and pacified by receiving the Spectatorial warrant at once for
-the inconsequence of my mind, and for its radical benevolence.
-
-
-
-II. The following paragraphs from a leading journal in our greatest
-commercial city, surpass, in folly and impudence, anything I have yet
-seen of the kind, and are well worth preserving:—
-
-“The material prosperity of the country has, notwithstanding,
-increased, and the revenue returns, comparing as they do against an
-exceptionally high rate of production and consumption, show that we are
-fairly holding our own.” Production and consumption of what, Mr.
-Editor, is the question, as I have told you many a time. A high
-revenue, raised on the large production and consumption of weak cloth
-and strong liquor, does not show the material prosperity of the
-country. Suppose you were to tax the production of good pictures, good
-books, good houses, or honest men, where would your revenue be?
-“Amongst the middle classes, exceptionally large fortunes have been
-rapidly realized here and there, chiefly in the misty regions of
-‘finance,’ [What do you mean by misty, Mr. Editor? It is a Turnerian
-and Titianesque quality, not in the least properly applicable to any
-cotton-mill business.] and instances occur from day to day of almost
-prodigal expenditure in objects of art [Photographs of bawds, do you
-mean, Mr. Editor? I know no other objects of art that are
-multiplying,—certainly not Titians, by your Spectator’s decision.] and
-luxury, the display of wealth in the metropolis being more striking
-year by year.
-
-“Turning from these dazzling exhibitions, the real source of
-congratulation must be found in the existence of a broad and solid
-foundation for our apparent prosperity; and this, happily, is
-represented in the amelioration of the condition of the lower orders of
-society.”—Indeed!
-
-“The adjustment of an increasing scale of wages has not been reduced to
-scientific principles, and has consequently been more or less arbitrary
-and capricious. From time to time it has interfered with the even
-current of affairs, and been resented as an unfair and unwarranted
-interception of profits in their way to the manufacturer’s pockets.
-
-“Whilst ‘financial’ talent has reaped liberal results from its
-exercise, the steady productions of manufacturers have left only
-moderate returns to their producers, and importers of raw material
-have, as a rule, had a trying time. The difficulties of steamship
-owners have been tolerably notorious, and the enhancement of sailing
-vessels is an instance of the adage that ‘It is an ill wind that blows
-no one any good.’
-
-“For our railways, the effects of a most critical half-year can
-scarcely be forecast. Increased expenses have not, it is to be feared,
-been met by increased rates and traffics, and the public may not have
-fully prepared themselves for diminished dividends. With the Erie and
-the Great Western of Canada undergoing the ordeal of investigation, and
-the Atlantic and Great Western on the verge of insolvency, it is not
-surprising that American and colonial railways are at the moment out of
-favour. If, however, they have not made satisfactory returns to their
-shareholders, they have been the media of great profit to operators on
-the stock exchanges; and some day we shall, perhaps, learn the
-connection existing between the well or ill doing of a railway per se,
-and the facility for speculation in its stock.”—Liverpool Commercial
-News, of this year. I have not kept the date.
-
-
-
-III. A young lady’s letter about flowers and books, I gratefully
-acknowledge, and have partly answered in the text of this Fors; the
-rest she will find answered up and down afterwards, as I can; also a
-letter from a youth at New Haven in Connecticut has given me much
-pleasure. I am sorry not to be able to answer it more specially, but
-have now absolutely no time for any private correspondence, except with
-personal friends,—and I should like even those to show themselves
-friendly rather by setting themselves to understand my meaning in Fors,
-and by helping me in my purposes, than by merely expressing anxiety for
-my welfare, not satisfiable but by letters, which do not promote it.
-
-
-
-IV. Publishing the subjoined letter from Mr. Sillar, I must now wish
-him good success in his battle, and terminate my extracts from his
-letters, there being always some grave points in which I find myself at
-issue with him, but which I have not at present any wish farther to
-discuss:—
-
-“I am right glad to see you quote in your July Fors, from the papers
-which the Record newspaper refused to insert, on the plea of their
-‘confusing two things so essentially different as usury and interest of
-money.’
-
-“I printed them, and have sold two,—following your advice and not
-advertising them.
-
-“You wrong me greatly in saying that I think the sin of usury means
-every other. What I say is that it is the only sin I know which is
-never denounced from the pulpit; and therefore I have to do that part
-of the parson’s work. I would much rather be following the business to
-which I was educated; but so long as usury is prevalent, honourable and
-profitable employments in that business are impossible. It may be
-conducted honourably, but at an annual loss; or it may be conducted
-profitably at the expense of honour. I can no longer afford the former,
-still less can I afford the latter; and as I cannot be idle, I occupy
-my leisure, at least part of it, in a war to the knife with that great
-dragon ‘Debt.’ I war not with flesh and blood, but with principalities
-and powers of darkness in high places.”
-
-
-
-V. To finish, here is one of the pleasantest paragraphs I ever saw in
-print:—
-
-“Rope Cordage.—On Saturday last a very interesting experiment was made
-at Kirkaldy’s Testing Works, Southwark Street, as to the relative
-strength of hand-spun yarn rope, machine yarn rope, and Russian yarn
-rope. Mr. Plimsoll, M.P., Captain Bedford Pim, M.P., and others
-attended the test, which lasted over three hours. There were nine
-pieces of rope, each 10ft. long, being three of each of the above
-classes. The ultimate stress or breaking strain of the Russian rope was
-11,099 lb., or 1,934 lb. strength per fathom; machine rope, 11,527 lb.,
-or 2,155 lb. per fathom; hand-spun rope, 18,279 lb., or 3,026 lb. per
-fathom. The ropes were all of 5 in. circumference, and every piece
-broke clear of the fastenings. The prices paid per cwt. were: Russian
-rope, 47s.; machine yarn rope, 47s.; hand-spun yarn rope, 44s.—all
-described as best cordage and London manufacture. It will thus be seen
-that the hand-made was cheaper by 3s. per cwt., and broke at a testing
-strength of 7,180 lb. over Russian, and 6,752 lb. over
-machine-made.”—Times, July 20, 1874.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XLVII.
-
-
-                                     Hotel du Mont Blanc, St. Martin’s,
-                                                    12th October, 1874.
-
-We have now briefly glanced at the nature of the squire’s work in
-relation to the peasant; namely, making a celestial or worshipful
-appearance to him; and the methods of operation, no less than of
-appearance, which are generally to be defined as celestial, or
-worshipful.
-
-We have next to examine by what rules the action of the squire towards
-the peasant is to be either restrained or assisted; and the function,
-therefore, of the lawyer, or definer of limits and modes,—which was
-above generally expressed, in its relation to the peasant, as “telling
-him, in black letter, that his house is his own.” It will be necessary,
-however, evidently, that his house should be his own, before any lawyer
-can divinely assert the same to him.
-
-Waiving, for the moment, examination of this primal necessity, let us
-consider a little how that divine function of asserting, in perfectly
-intelligible and indelible letters, the absolute claim of a man to his
-own house, or castle, and all that it properly includes, is actually
-discharged by the powers of British law now in operation.
-
-We will take, if you please, in the outset, a few wise men’s opinions
-on this matter, though we shall thus be obliged somewhat to generalize
-the inquiry, by admitting into it some notice of criminal as well as
-civil law.
-
-My readers have probably thought me forgetful of Sir Walter all this
-time. No; but all writing about him is impossible to me in the impure
-gloom of modern Italy. I have had to rest awhile here, where human life
-is still sacred, before I could recover the tone of heart fit to say
-what I want to say in this Fors.
-
-He was the son, you remember, of a writer to the signet, and practised
-for some time at the bar himself. Have you ever chanced to ask yourself
-what was his innermost opinion of the legal profession?
-
-Or, have you even endeavoured to generalize that expressed with so much
-greater violence by Dickens? The latter wrote with a definitely
-reforming purpose, seemingly; and, I have heard, had real effects on
-Chancery practice.
-
-But are the Judges of England—at present I suppose the highest types of
-intellectual and moral power that Christendom possesses—content to have
-reform forced on them by the teazing of a caricaturist, instead of the
-pleading of their own consciences?
-
-Even if so, is there no farther reform indicated as necessary, in a
-lower field, by the same teazing personage? The Court of Chancery and
-Mr. Vholes were not his only legal sketches. Dodson and Fogg; Sampson
-Brass; Serjeant Buzfuz; and, most of all, the examiner, for the Crown,
-of Mr. Swiveller in the trial of Kit, [64]—are these deserving of no
-repentant attention? You, good reader, probably have read the trial in
-Pickwick, and the trial of Kit, merely to amuse yourself; and perhaps
-Dickens himself meant little more than to amuse you. But did it never
-strike you as quite other than a matter of amusement, that in both
-cases, the force of the law of England is represented as employed
-zealously to prove a crime against a person known by the accusing
-counsel to be innocent; and, in both cases, as obtaining a conviction?
-
-You might perhaps think that these were only examples of the ludicrous,
-and sometimes tragic, accidents which must sometimes happen in the
-working of any complex system, however excellent. They are by no means
-so. Ludicrous, and tragic, mischance must indeed take place in all
-human affairs of importance, however honestly conducted. But here you
-have deliberate, artistic, energetic dishonesty; skilfullest and
-resolutest endeavour to prove a crime against an innocent person,—a
-crime of which, in the case of the boy, the reputed commission will
-cost him at least the prosperity and honour of his life,—more to him
-than life itself. And this you forgive, or admire, because it is not
-done in malice, but for money, and in pride of art. Because the
-assassin is paid,—makes his living in that line of business,—and
-delivers his thrust with a bravo’s artistic finesse you think him a
-respectable person; so much better in style than a passionate one who
-does his murder gratis, vulgarly, with a club,—Bill Sykes, for
-instance? It is all balanced fairly, as the system goes, you think. ‘It
-works round, and two and two make four. He accused an innocent person
-to-day:—to-morrow he will defend a rascal.’
-
-And you truly hold this a business to which your youth should be
-bred—gentlemen of England?
-
-‘But how is it to be ordered otherwise? Every supposed criminal ought
-surely to have an advocate, to say what can be said in his favour; and
-an accuser, to insist on the evidence against him. Both do their best,
-and can anything be fairer?’
-
-Yes; something else could be much fairer; but we will find out what Sir
-Walter thinks, if we can, before going farther; though it will not be
-easy—for you don’t at once get at the thoughts of a great man, upon a
-great matter.
-
-The first difference, however, which, if you know your Scott well,
-strikes you, between him and Dickens, is that your task of
-investigation is chiefly pleasant, though serious; not a painful
-one—and still less a jesting or mocking one. The first figure that
-rises before you is Pleydell; the second, Scott’s own father, Saunders
-Fairford, with his son. And you think for an instant or two, perhaps,
-“The question is settled, as far as Scott is concerned, at once. What a
-beautiful thing is Law!”
-
-For you forget, by the sweet emphasis of the divine art on what is
-good, that there ever was such a person in the world as Mr. Glossin.
-And you are left, by the grave cunning of the divine art, which reveals
-to you no secret without your own labour, to discern and unveil for
-yourself the meaning of the plot of Redgauntlet.
-
-You perhaps were dissatisfied enough with the plot, when you read it
-for amusement. Such a childish fuss about nothing! Solway sands,
-forsooth, the only scenery; and your young hero of the story frightened
-to wet his feet; and your old hero doing nothing but ride a black
-horse, and make himself disagreeable; and all that about the house in
-Edinburgh so dull; and no love-making, to speak of, anywhere!
-
-Well, it doesn’t come in exactly with my subject, to-day;—but, by the
-way, I beg you to observe that there is a bit of love in Redgauntlet
-which is worth any quantity of modern French or English amatory novels
-in a heap. Alan Fairford has been bred, and willingly bred, in the
-strictest discipline of mind and conduct; he is an entirely strong,
-entirely prudent, entirely pure young Scotchman,—and a lawyer. Scott,
-when he wrote the book, was an old Scotchman; and had seen a good deal
-of the world. And he is going to tell you how Love ought first to come
-to an entirely strong, entirely prudent, entirely pure youth, of his
-own grave profession.
-
-How love ought to come, mind you. Alan Fairford is the real hero (next
-to Nanty Ewart) of the novel; and he is the exemplary and happy
-hero—Nanty being the suffering one, under hand of Fate.
-
-Of course, you would say, if you didn’t know the book, and were asked
-what should happen—(and with Miss Edgeworth to manage matters instead
-of Scott, or Shakespeare, nothing else would have happened,)—of course
-the entirely prudent young lawyer will consider what an important step
-in life marriage is; and will look out for a young person of good
-connections, whose qualities of mind and moral disposition he will
-examine strictly before allowing his affections to be engaged; he will
-then consider what income is necessary for a person in a high legal
-position, etc., etc., etc.
-
-Well, this is what does happen, according to Scott, you know;—(or more
-likely, I’m afraid, know nothing about it). The old servant of the
-family announces, with some dryness of manner, one day, that a ‘leddy’
-wants to see Maister Alan Fairford,—for legal consultation. The prudent
-young gentleman, upon this, puts his room into the most impressive
-order, intending to make a first appearance reading a legal volume in
-an abstracted state of mind. But, on a knock coming at the street door,
-he can’t resist going to look out at the window; and—the servant
-maliciously showing in the client without announcement—is discovered
-peeping out of it. The client is closely veiled—little more than the
-tip of her nose discernible. She is, fortunately, a little embarrassed
-herself; for she did not want Mr. Alan Fairford at all, but Mr. Alan
-Fairford’s father. They sit looking at each other—at least, he looking
-at the veil and a green silk cloak—for half a minute. The young
-lady—(for she is young; he has made out that, he admits; and something
-more perhaps,)—is the first to recover her presence of mind; makes him
-a pretty little apology for having mistaken him for his father; says
-that, now she has done it, he will answer her purpose, perhaps, even
-better; but she thinks it best to communicate the points on which she
-requires his assistance, in writing,—curtsies him, on his endeavour to
-remonstrate, gravely and inexorably into silence,—disappears,—“And put
-the sun in her pocket, I believe,” as she turned the corner, says
-prudent Mr. Alan. And keeps it in her pocket for him,—evermore. That is
-the way one’s Love is sent, when she is sent from Heaven, says the aged
-Scott.
-
-‘But how ridiculous,—how entirely unreasonable,—how unjustifiable, on
-any grounds of propriety or common sense!’
-
-Certainly, my good sir,—certainly: Shakespeare and Scott can’t help
-that;—all they know is,—that is the way God and Nature manage it. Of
-course, Rosalind ought to have been much more particular in her
-inquiries about Orlando;—Juliet about the person masqued as a
-pilgrim;—and there is really no excuse whatever for Desdemona’s
-conduct; and we all know what came of it;—but, again I say, Shakespeare
-and Scott can’t help that.
-
-Nevertheless, Love is not the subject of this novel of Redgauntlet; but
-Law: on which matter we will endeavour now to gather its evidence.
-
-Two youths are brought up together—one, the son of a Cavalier, or
-Ghibelline, of the old school, whose Law is in the sword, and the
-heart; and the other of a Roundhead, or Guelph, of the modern school,
-whose Law is in form and precept. Scott’s own prejudices lean to the
-Cavalier; but his domestic affections, personal experience, and sense
-of equity, lead him to give utmost finish to the adverse character. The
-son of the Cavalier—in moral courage, in nervous power, in general
-sense and self-command,—is entirely inferior to the son of the Puritan;
-nay, in many respects quite weak and effeminate; one slight and
-scarcely noticeable touch, (about the unproved pistol,) gives the true
-relation of the characters, and makes their portraiture complete, as by
-Velasquez.
-
-The Cavalier’s father is dead; his uncle asserts the Cavalier’s law of
-the Sword over him: its effects upon him are the first clause of the
-book.
-
-The Puritan’s father—living—asserts the law of Precept over him: its
-effects upon him are the second clause of the book.
-
-Together with these studies of the two laws in their influence on the
-relation of guardian and ward—or of father and child, their influence
-on society is examined in the opposition of the soldier and hunter to
-the friend of man and animals,—Scott putting his whole power into the
-working out of this third clause of the book.
-
-Having given his verdict in these three clauses, wholly in favour of
-the law of precept,—he has to mark the effects of its
-misapplication,—first moral, then civil.
-
-The story of Nanty Ewart, the fourth clause, is the most instructive
-and pathetic piece of Scott’s judgment on the abuse of the moral law,
-by pride, in Scotland, which you can find in all his works.
-
-Finally, the effects of the abuse of the civil law by sale, or simony,
-have to be examined; which is done in the story of Peter Peebles.
-
-The involution of this fifth clause with that of Nanty Ewart is one of
-the subtlest pieces of heraldic quartering which you can find in all
-the Waverley novels; and no others have any pretence to range with them
-in this point of art at all. The best, by other masters, are a mere
-play of kaleidoscope colour compared to the severe heraldic delineation
-of the Waverleys.
-
-We will first examine the statement of the abuse of Civil Law.
-
-There is not, if you have any true sympathy with humanity, extant for
-you a more exquisite study of the relations which must exist, even
-under circumstances of great difficulty and misunderstanding, between a
-good father and good son, than the scenes of Redgauntlet laid in
-Edinburgh. The father’s intense devotion, pride, and joy, mingled with
-fear, in the son; the son’s direct, unflinching, unaffected obedience,
-hallowed by pure affection, tempered by youthful sense, guided by high
-personal power. And all this force of noble passion and effort, in
-both, is directed to a single object—the son’s success at the bar. That
-success, as usually in the legal profession, must, if it be not wholly
-involved, at least give security for itself, in the impression made by
-the young counsel’s opening speech. All the interests of the reader (if
-he has any interest in him) are concentrated upon this crisis in the
-story; and the chapter which gives account of the fluctuating event is
-one of the supreme masterpieces of European literature.
-
-The interests of the reader, I say, are concentrated on the success of
-the young counsel: that of his client is of no importance whatever to
-any one. You perhaps forget even who the client is—or recollect him
-only as a poor drunkard, who must be kept out of the way for fear he
-should interrupt his own counsel, or make the jury laugh at him. His
-cause has been—no one knows how long—in the courts; it is good for
-practising on, by any young hand.
-
-You forget Peter Peebles, perhaps: you don’t forget Miss Flite, in the
-Dickens’ court? Better done, therefore,—Miss Flite,—think you?
-
-No; not so well done; or anything like so well done. The very primal
-condition in Scott’s type of the ruined creature is, that he should be
-forgotten! Worse;—that he should deserve to be forgotten. Miss Flite
-interests you—takes your affections—deserves them. Is mad, indeed, but
-not a destroyed creature, morally, at all. A very sweet, kind
-creature,—not even altogether unhappy,—enjoying her lawsuit, and her
-bag, and her papers. She is a picturesque, quite unnatural and unlikely
-figure,—therefore wholly ineffective except for story-telling purposes.
-
-But Peter Peebles is a natural ruin, and a total one. An accurate type
-of what is to be seen every day, and carried to the last stage of its
-misery. He is degraded alike in body and heart;—mad, but with every
-vile sagacity unquenched,—while every hope in earth and heaven is taken
-away. And in this desolation, you can only hate, not pity him.
-
-That, says Scott, is the beautiful operation of the Civil Law of Great
-Britain, on a man whose affairs it has spent its best intelligence on,
-for an unknown number of years. His affairs being very obscure, and his
-cause doubtful, you suppose? No. His affairs being so simple that the
-young honest counsel can explain them entirely in an hour;—and his
-cause absolutely and unquestionably just.
-
-What is Dickens’ entire Court of Chancery to that? With all its dusty
-delay,—with all its diabolical ensnaring;—its pathetic death of
-Richard—widowhood of Ada, etc., etc.? All mere blue fire of the stage,
-and dropped footlights; no real tragedy.—A villain cheats a foolish
-youth, who would be wiser than his elders, who dies repentant, and
-immediately begins a new life,—so says, at least, (not the least
-believing,) the pious Mr. Dickens. All that might happen among the
-knaves of any profession.
-
-But with Scott, the best honour—soul—intellect in Scotland take in hand
-the cause of a man who comes to them justly, necessarily, for plain,
-instantly possible, absolutely deserved, decision of a manifest cause.
-
-They are endless years talking of it,—to amuse, and pay, themselves.
-
-And they drive him into the foulest death—eternal—if there be, for such
-souls, any Eternity. On which Scott does not feel it his duty, as
-Dickens does, to offer you an opinion. He tells you, as Shakespeare,
-the facts he knows,—no more.
-
-There, then, you have Sir Walter’s opinion of the existing method and
-function of British Civil Law.
-
-What the difference may be, and what the consequences of such
-difference, between this lucrative function, and the true duty of Civil
-Law,—namely, to fulfil and continue in all the world the first mission
-of the mightiest Lawgiver, and declare that on such and such
-conditions, written in eternal letters by the finger of God, every
-man’s house, or piece of Holy land, is his own,—there does not, it
-appears, exist at present wit enough under all the weight of curled and
-powdered horsehair in England, either to reflect, or to define.
-
-In the meantime, we have to note another question beyond, and greater
-than this,—answered by Scott in his story.
-
-So far as human laws have dealt with the man, this their ruined client
-has been destroyed in his innocence. But there is yet a Divine Law,
-controlling the injustice of men.
-
-And the historian—revealing to us the full relation of private and
-public act—shows us that the wretch’s destruction was in his refusal of
-the laws of God, while he trusted in the laws of man.
-
-Such is the entire plan of the story of Redgauntlet,—only in part
-conscious,—partly guided by the Fors which has rule over the heart of
-the noble king in his word, and of the noble scribe in his scripture,
-as over the rivers of water. We will trace the detail of this story
-farther in next Fors; meantime, here is your own immediate lesson,
-reader, whoever you may be, from our to-day’s work.
-
-The first—not the chief, but the first—piece of good work a man has to
-do is to find rest for himself,—a place for the sole of his foot; his
-house, or piece of Holy land; and to make it so holy and happy, that if
-by any chance he receive order to leave it, there may be bitter pain in
-obedience; and also that to his daughter there may yet one sorrowful
-sentence be spoken in her day of mirth, “Forget also thy people, and
-thy father’s house.”
-
-‘But I mean to make money, and have a better and better house, every
-ten years.’
-
-Yes, I know you do.
-
-If you intend to keep that notion, I have no word more to say to you.
-Fare you—not well, for you cannot; but as you may.
-
-But if you have sense, and feeling, determine what sort of a house will
-be fit for you;—determine to work for it—to get it—and to die in it, if
-the Lord will.
-
-‘What sort of house will be fit for me?—but of course the biggest and
-finest I can get will be fittest!’
-
-Again, so says the Devil to you: and if you believe him, he will find
-you fine lodgings enough,—for rent. But if you don’t believe him,
-consider, I repeat, what sort of house will be fit for you.
-
-‘Fit!—but what do you mean by fit?’
-
-I mean, one that you can entirely enjoy and manage; but which you will
-not be proud of, except as you make it charming in its modesty. If you
-are proud of it, it is unfit for you,—better than a man in your station
-of life can by simple and sustained exertion obtain; and it should be
-rather under such quiet level than above. Ashesteil was entirely fit
-for Walter Scott, and Walter Scott was entirely happy there. Abbotsford
-was fit also for Sir Walter Scott; and had he been content with it, his
-had been a model life. But he would fain still add field to field,—and
-died homeless. Perhaps Gadshill was fit for Dickens; I do not know
-enough of him to judge; and he knew scarcely anything of himself. But
-the story of the boy on Rochester Hill is lovely.
-
-And assuredly, my aunt’s house at Croydon was fit for her; and my
-father’s at Herne Hill,—in which I correct the press of this Fors,
-sitting in what was once my nursery,—was exactly fit for him, and me.
-He left it for the larger one—Denmark Hill; and never had a quite happy
-day afterwards. It was not his fault, the house at Herne Hill was built
-on clay, and the doctors said he was not well there; also, I was his
-pride, and he wanted to leave me in a better house,—a good father’s
-cruellest, subtlest temptation.
-
-But you are a poor man, you say, and have no hope of a grand home?
-
-Well, here is the simplest ideal of operation, then. You dig a hole,
-like Robinson Crusoe; you gather sticks for fire, and bake the earth
-you get out of your hole,—partly into bricks, partly into tiles, partly
-into pots. If there are any stones in the neighbourhood, you drag them
-together, and build a defensive dyke round your hole or cave. If there
-are no stones, but only timber, you drive in a palisade. And you are
-already exercising the arts of the Greeks, Etruscans, Normans, and
-Lombards, in their purest form, on the wholesome and true threshold of
-all their art; and on your own wholesome threshold.
-
-You don’t know, you answer, how to make a brick, a tile, or a pot; or
-how to build a dyke, or drive a stake that will stand. No more do I.
-Our education has to begin;—mine as much as yours. I have indeed, the
-newspapers say, a power of expression; but as they also say I cannot
-think at all, you see I have nothing to express; so that peculiar
-power, according to them, is of no use to me whatever.
-
-But you don’t want to make your bricks yourself; you want to have them
-made for you by the United Grand Junction Limited Liability
-Brick-without-Straw Company, paying twenty-five per cent. to its idle
-shareholders? Well, what will you do, yourself, then? Nothing? Or do
-you mean to play on the fiddle to the Company making your bricks? What
-will you do—of this first work necessary for your life? There’s nothing
-but digging and cooking now remains to be done. Will you dig, or cook?
-Dig, by all means; but your house should be ready for you first.
-
-Your wife should cook. What else can you do? Preach?—and give us your
-precious opinions of God and His ways! Yes, and in the meanwhile I am
-to build your house, am I? and find you a barrel-organ, or a harmonium,
-to twangle psalm-tunes on, I suppose? Fight—will you?—and pull other
-people’s houses down; while I am to be set to build your barracks, that
-you may go smoking and spitting about all day, with a cockscomb on your
-head, and spurs to your heels?—(I observe, by the way, the Italian
-soldiers have now got cocks’ tails on their heads, instead of cocks’
-combs.)—Lay down the law to me in a wig,—will you? and tell me the
-house I have built is—NOT mine? and take my dinner from me, as a fee
-for that opinion? Build, my man,—build, or dig,—one of the two; and
-then eat your honestly-earned meat, thankfully, and let other people
-alone, if you can’t help them.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-The points suggested by the letter printed in the Fors of September,
-respecting the minor action of English Magistracy, must still be kept
-for subsequent consideration, our to-day’s work having been too general
-to reach them.
-
-I have an interesting letter from a man of business, remonstrating with
-me on my declaration that railroads should no more pay dividends than
-carriage roads, or field footpaths.
-
-He is a gentle man of business, and meshed, as moderately well-meaning
-people, nowadays, always are, in a web of equivocation between what is
-profitable and benevolent.
-
-He says that people who make railroads should be rewarded by dividends
-for having acted so benevolently towards the public, and provided it
-with these beautiful and easy means of locomotion. But my correspondent
-is too good a man of business to remain in this entanglement of
-brains—unless by his own fault. He knows perfectly well, in his heart,
-that the ‘benevolence’ involved in the construction of railways amounts
-exactly to this much and no more,—that if the British public were
-informed that engineers were now confident, after their practice in the
-Cenis and St. Gothard tunnels, that they could make a railway to
-Hell,—the British public would instantly invest in the concern to any
-amount; and stop church-building all over the country, for fear of
-diminishing the dividends.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-FORS CLAVIGERA.
-
-LETTER XLVIII.
-
-
-The accounts of the state of St. George’s Fund, given without any
-inconvenience in crowding type, on the last leaf of this number of
-Fors, will, I hope, be as satisfactory to my subscribers as they are to
-me. In these days of financial operation, the subscribers to anything
-may surely be content when they find that all their talents have been
-laid up in the softest of napkins; and even farther, that, though they
-are getting no interest themselves, that lichenous growth of vegetable
-gold, or mould, is duly developing itself on their capital.
-
-The amount of subscriptions received, during the four years of my
-mendicancy, might have disappointed me, if, in my own mind, I had made
-any appointments on the subject, or had benevolence pungent enough to
-make me fret at the delay in the commencement of the national felicity
-which I propose to bestow. On the contrary, I am only too happy to
-continue amusing myself in my study, with stones and pictures; and
-find, as I grow old, that I remain resigned to the consciousness of any
-quantity of surrounding vice, distress, and disease, provided only the
-sun shine in at my window over Corpus Garden, and there are no whistles
-from the luggage trains passing the Waterworks.
-
-I understand this state of even temper to be what most people call
-‘rational;’ and, indeed, it has been the result of very steady effort
-on my own part to keep myself, if it might be, out of Hanwell, or that
-other Hospital which makes the name of Christ’s native village dreadful
-in the ear of London. For, having long observed that the most perilous
-beginning of trustworthy qualification for either of those
-establishments consisted in an exaggerated sense of self-importance;
-and being daily compelled, of late, to value my own person and opinions
-at a higher and higher rate, in proportion to my extending experience
-of the rarity of any similar creatures or ideas among mankind, it
-seemed to me expedient to correct this increasing conviction of my
-superior wisdom, by companionship with pictures I could not copy, and
-stones I could not understand:—while, that this wholesome seclusion may
-remain only self-imposed, I think it not a little fortunate for me that
-the few relations I have left are generally rather fond of me;—don’t
-know clearly which is the next of kin,—and perceive that the
-administration of my inconsiderable effects [65] would be rather
-troublesome than profitable to them. Not in the least, therefore,
-wondering at the shyness of my readers to trust me with money of
-theirs, I have made, during these four years past, some few experiments
-with money of my own,—in hopes of being able to give such account of
-them as might justify a more extended confidence. I am bound to state
-that the results, for the present, are not altogether encouraging. On
-my own little piece of mountain ground at Coniston, I grow a large
-quantity of wood-hyacinths and heather, without any expense worth
-mentioning; but my only industrious agricultural operations have been
-the getting three pounds ten worth of hay, off a field for which I pay
-six pounds rent; and the surrounding, with a costly wall six feet high,
-to keep out rabbits, a kitchen garden, which, being terraced and trim,
-my neighbours say is pretty; and which will probably, every third year,
-when the weather is not wet, supply me with a dish of strawberries.
-
-At Carshalton, in Surrey, I have indeed had the satisfaction of
-cleaning out one of the springs of the Wandel, and making it pleasantly
-habitable by trout; but find that the fountain, instead of taking care
-of itself when once pure, as I expected it to do, requires continual
-looking after, like a child getting into a mess; and involves me
-besides in continual debate with the surveyors of the parish, who
-insist on letting all the roadwashings run into it. For the present,
-however, I persevere, at Carshalton, against the wilfulness of the
-spring and the carelessness of the parish; and hope to conquer both:
-but I have been obliged entirely to abandon a notion I had of
-exhibiting ideally clean street pavement in the centre of London,—in
-the pleasant environs of Church Lane, St. Giles’s. There I had every
-help and encouragement from the authorities; and hoped, with the staff
-of two men and a young rogue of a crossing-sweeper, added to the
-regular force of the parish, to keep a quarter of a mile square of the
-narrow streets without leaving so much as a bit of orange-peel on the
-footway, or an eggshell in the gutters. I failed, partly because I
-chose too difficult a district to begin with, (the contributions of
-transitional mud being constant, and the inhabitants passive,) but
-chiefly because I could no more be on the spot myself, to give spirit
-to the men, when I left Denmark Hill for Coniston.
-
-I next set up a tea-shop at 29, Paddington Street, W., (an
-establishment which my Fors readers may as well know of,) to supply the
-poor in that neighbourhood with pure tea, in packets as small as they
-chose to buy, without making a profit on the subdivision,—larger orders
-being of course equally acceptable from anybody who cares to promote
-honest dealing. The result of this experiment has been my ascertaining
-that the poor only like to buy their tea where it is brilliantly
-lighted and eloquently ticketed; and as I resolutely refuse to compete
-with my neighbouring tradesmen either in gas or rhetoric, the patient
-subdivision of my parcels by the two old servants of my mother’s, who
-manage the business for me, hitherto passes little recognized as an
-advantage by my uncalculating public. Also, steady increase in the
-consumption of spirits throughout the neighbourhood faster and faster
-slackens the demand for tea; but I believe none of these circumstances
-have checked my trade so much as my own procrastination in painting my
-sign. Owing to that total want of imagination and invention which makes
-me so impartial and so accurate a writer on subjects of political
-economy, I could not for months determine whether the said sign should
-be of a Chinese character, black upon gold; or of a Japanese, blue upon
-white; or of pleasant English, rose-colour on green; and still less how
-far legible scale of letters could be compatible, on a board only a
-foot broad, with lengthy enough elucidation of the peculiar offices of
-‘Mr. Ruskin’s tea-shop.’ Meanwhile the business languishes, and the
-rent and taxes absorb the profits, and something more, after the salary
-of my good servants has been paid.
-
-In all these cases, however, I can see that I am defeated only because
-I have too many things on hand: and that neither rabbits at Coniston,
-road-surveyors at Croydon, or mud in St. Giles’s would get the better
-of me, if I could give exclusive attention to any one business:
-meantime, I learn the difficulties which are to be met, and shall make
-the fewer mistakes when I venture on any work with other people’s
-money.
-
-I may as well, together with these confessions, print a piece written
-for the end of a Fors letter at Assisi, a month or two back, but for
-which I had then no room, referring to the increase of commercial,
-religious, and egotistic insanity, [66] in modern society, and delicacy
-of the distinction implied by that long wall at Hanwell, between the
-persons inside it, and out.
-
-‘Does it never occur to me,’ (thus the letter went on) ‘that I may be
-mad myself?’
-
-Well, I am so alone now in my thoughts and ways, that if I am not mad,
-I should soon become so, from mere solitude, but for my work. But it
-must be manual work. Whenever I succeed in a drawing, I am happy, in
-spite of all that surrounds me of sorrow. It is a strange feeling;—not
-gratified vanity: I can have any quantity of praise I like from some
-sorts of people; but that does me no vital good, (though dispraise does
-me mortal harm); whereas to succeed to my own satisfaction in a manual
-piece of work, is life,—to me, as to all men; and it is only the peace
-which comes necessarily from manual labour which in all time has kept
-the honest country people patient in their task of maintaining the
-rascals who live in towns. But we are in hard times, now, for all men’s
-wits; for men who know the truth are like to go mad from isolation; and
-the fools are all going mad in ‘Schwärmerei,’—only that is much the
-pleasanter way. Mr. Lecky, for instance, quoted in last Fors; how
-pleasant for him to think he is ever so much wiser than Aristotle; and
-that, as a body, the men of his generation are the wisest that ever
-were born—giants of intellect, according to Lord Macaulay, compared to
-the pigmies of Bacon’s time, and the minor pigmies of Christ’s time,
-and the minutest of all, the microscopic pigmies of Solomon’s time,
-and, finally, the vermicular and infusorial pigmies—twenty-three
-millions to the cube inch—of Mr. Darwin’s time, whatever that may be.
-How pleasant for Mr. Lecky to live in these days of the Anakim,—“his
-spear, to equal which, the tallest pine,” etc., etc., which no man
-Stratford-born could have lifted, much less shaken.
-
-But for us of the old race—few of us now left,—children who reverence
-our fathers, and are ashamed of ourselves; comfortless enough in that
-shame, and yearning for one word or glance from the graves of old, yet
-knowing ourselves to be of the same blood, and recognizing in our
-hearts the same passions, with the ancient masters of humanity;—we, who
-feel as men, and not as carnivorous worms; we, who are every day
-recognizing some inaccessible height of thought and power, and are
-miserable in our shortcomings,—the few of us now standing here and
-there, alone, in the midst of this yelping, carnivorous crowd, mad for
-money and lust, tearing each other to pieces, and starving each other
-to death, and leaving heaps of their dung and ponds of their spittle on
-every palace floor and altar stone,—it is impossible for us, except in
-the labour of our hands, not to go mad.
-
-And the danger is tenfold greater for a man in my own position,
-concerned with the arts which develope the more subtle brain
-sensations; and, through them, tormented all day long. Mr. Leslie
-Stephen rightly says how much better it is to have a thick skin and a
-good digestion. Yes, assuredly; but what is the use of knowing that, if
-one hasn’t? In one of my saddest moods, only a week or two ago, because
-I had failed twice over in drawing the lifted hand of Giotto’s
-‘Poverty;’ utterly beaten and comfortless, at Assisi, I got some
-wholesome peace and refreshment by mere sympathy with a Bewickian
-little pig in the roundest and conceitedest burst of pig-blossom. His
-servant,—a grave old woman, with much sorrow and toil in the wrinkles
-of her skin, while his was only dimpled in its divine thickness,—was
-leading him, with magnanimous length of rope, down a grassy path behind
-the convent; stopping, of course, where he chose. Stray stalks and
-leaves of eatable things, in various stages of ambrosial rottenness,
-lay here and there; the convent walls made more savoury by their
-fumigation, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says the Alpine pines are by his
-cigar. And the little joyful darling of Demeter shook his curly tail,
-and munched; and grunted the goodnaturedest of grunts, and snuffled the
-approvingest of snuffles, and was a balm and beatification to behold;
-and I would fain have changed places with him for a little while, or
-with Mr. Leslie Stephen for a little while,—at luncheon,
-suppose,—anywhere but among the Alps. But it can’t be.
-
-
-
-                                                  Hotel Meurice, Paris,
-                                                    20th October, 1874.
-
-I interrupt myself, for an instant or two, to take notice of two little
-things that happen to me here—arriving to breakfast by night train from
-Geneva.
-
-Expecting to be cold, I had ordered fire, and sat down by it to read my
-letters as soon as I arrived, not noticing that the little parlour was
-getting much too hot. Presently, in comes the chambermaid, to put the
-bedroom in order, which one enters through the parlour. Perceiving that
-I am mismanaging myself, in the way of fresh air, as she passes
-through, “Il fait bien chaud, monsieur, ici,” says she reprovingly, and
-with entire self-possession. Now that is French servant-character of
-the right old school. She knows her own position perfectly, and means
-to stay in it, and wear her little white radiant frill of a cap all her
-days. She knows my position also; and has not the least fear of my
-thinking her impertinent because she tells me what it is right that I
-should know. Presently afterwards, an evidently German-importation of
-waiter brings me up my breakfast, which has been longer in appearing
-than it would have been in old times. It looks all right at first,—the
-napkin, china, and solid silver sugar basin, all of the old régime.
-Bread, butter,—yes, of the best still. Coffee, milk,—all right too.
-But, at last, here is a bit of the new régime. There are no
-sugar-tongs; and the sugar is of beetroot, and in methodically similar
-cakes, which I must break with my finger and thumb if I want a small
-piece, and put back what I don’t want for my neighbour, to-morrow.
-
-‘Civilization,’ this, you observe, according to Professor Liebig and
-Mr. John Stuart Mill. Not according to old French manners, however.
-
-Now, my readers are continually complaining that I don’t go on telling
-them my plan of life, under the rule of St. George’s Company.
-
-I have told it them, again and again, in broad terms: agricultural
-life, with as much refinement as I can enforce in it. But it is
-impossible to describe what I mean by ‘refinement,’ except in details
-which can only be suggested by practical need; and which cannot at all
-be set down at once.
-
-Here, however, to-day, is one instance. At the best hotel in what has
-been supposed the most luxurious city of modern Europe,—because people
-are now always in a hurry to catch the train, they haven’t time to use
-the sugar-tongs, or look for a little piece among differently sized
-lumps, and therefore they use their fingers; have bad sugar instead of
-good, and waste the ground that would grow blessed cherry trees,
-currant bushes, or wheat, in growing a miserable root as a substitute
-for the sugar-cane, which God has appointed to grow where cherries and
-wheat won’t, and to give juice which will freeze into sweet snow as
-pure as hoar-frost.
-
-Now, on the poorest farm of the St. George’s Company, the servants
-shall have white and brown sugar of the best—or none. If we are too
-poor to buy sugar, we will drink our tea without; and have
-suet-dumpling instead of pudding. But among the earliest school
-lessons, and home lessons, decent behaviour at table will be primarily
-essential; and of such decency, one little exact point will be—the
-neat, patient, and scrupulous use of sugar-tongs instead of fingers. If
-we are too poor to have silver basins, we will have delf ones; if not
-silver tongs, we will have wooden ones; and the boys of the house shall
-be challenged to cut, and fit together, the prettiest and handiest
-machines of the sort they can contrive. In six months you would find
-more real art fancy brought out in the wooden handles and claws, than
-there is now in all the plate in London.
-
-
-
-Now, there’s the cuckoo-clock striking seven, just as I sit down to
-correct the press of this sheet, in my nursery at Herne Hill; and
-though I don’t remember, as the murderer does in Mr. Crummles’ play,
-having heard a cuckoo-clock strike seven—in my infancy, I do remember,
-in my favourite ‘Frank,’ much talk of the housekeeper’s cuckoo-clock,
-and of the boy’s ingenuity in mending it. Yet to this hour of seven in
-the morning, ninth December of my fifty-fifth year, I haven’t the least
-notion how any such clock says ‘Cuckoo,’ nor a clear one even of the
-making of the commonest barking toy of a child’s Noah’s ark. I don’t
-know how a barrel organ produces music by being ground; nor what real
-function the pea has in a whistle. Physical science—all this—of a kind
-which would have been boundlessly interesting to me, as to all boys of
-mellifluous disposition, if only I had been taught it with due
-immediate practice, and enforcement of true manufacture, or, in
-pleasant Saxon, ‘handiwork.’ But there shall not be on St. George’s
-estate a single thing in the house which the boys don’t know how to
-make, nor a single dish on the table which the girls will not know how
-to cook.
-
-By the way, I have been greatly surprised by receiving some letters of
-puzzled inquiry as to the meaning of my recipe, given last year, for
-Yorkshire Pie. Do not my readers yet at all understand that the whole
-gist of this book is to make people build their own houses, provide and
-cook their own dinners, and enjoy both? Something else besides,
-perhaps; but at least, and at first, those. St. Michael’s mass, and
-Christ’s mass, may eventually be associated in your minds with other
-things than goose and pudding; but Fors demands at first no more
-chivalry nor Christianity from you than that you build your houses
-bravely, and earn your dinners honestly, and enjoy them both, and be
-content with them both. The contentment is the main matter; you may
-enjoy to any extent, but if you are discontented, your life will be
-poisoned. The little pig was so comforting to me because he was wholly
-content to be a little pig; and Mr. Leslie Stephen is in a certain
-degree exemplary and comforting to me, because he is wholly content to
-be Mr. Leslie Stephen; while I am miserable because I am always wanting
-to be something else than I am. I want to be Turner; I want to be
-Gainsborough; I want to be Samuel Prout; I want to be Doge of Venice; I
-want to be Pope; I want to be Lord of the Sun and Moon. The other day,
-when I read that story in the papers about the dog-fight, [67] I wanted
-to be able to fight a bulldog.
-
-Truly, that was the only effect of the story upon me, though I heard
-everybody else screaming out how horrible it was. What’s horrible in
-it? Of course it is in bad taste, and the sign of a declining era of
-national honour—as all brutal gladiatorial exhibitions are; and the
-stakes and rings of the tethered combat meant precisely, for England,
-what the stakes and rings of the Theatre of Taormina,—where I saw the
-holes left for them among the turf, blue with Sicilian lilies, in this
-last April,—meant, for Greece, and Rome. There might be something
-loathsome, or something ominous, in such a story, to the old Greeks of
-the school of Heracles; who used to fight with the Nemean lion, or with
-Cerberus, when it was needful only, and not for money; and whom their
-Argus remembered through all Trojan exile. There might be something
-loathsome in it, or ominous, to an Englishman of the school of
-Shakespeare or Scott; who would fight with men only, and loved his
-hound. But for you—you carnivorous cheats—what, in dog’s or devil’s
-name, is there horrible in it for you? Do you suppose it isn’t more
-manly and virtuous to fight a bulldog, than to poison a child, or cheat
-a fellow who trusts you, or leave a girl to go wild in the streets? And
-don’t you live, and profess to live—and even insolently proclaim that
-there’s no other way of living than—by poisoning and cheating? And
-isn’t every woman of fashion’s dress, in Europe, now set the pattern of
-to her by its prostitutes?
-
-What’s horrible in it? I ask you, the third time. I hate, myself,
-seeing a bulldog ill-treated; for they are the gentlest and
-faithfullest of living creatures if you use them well. And the best dog
-I ever had was a bull-terrier, whose whole object in life was to please
-me, and nothing else; though, if he found he could please me by holding
-on with his teeth to an inch-thick stick, and being swung round in the
-air as fast as I could turn, that was his own idea of entirely
-felicitous existence. I don’t like, therefore, hearing of a bulldog’s
-being ill-treated; but I can tell you a little thing that chanced to me
-at Coniston the other day, more horrible, in the deep elements of it,
-than all the dog, bulldog, or bull fights, or baitings, of England,
-Spain, and California. A fine boy, the son of an amiable English
-clergyman, had come on the coach-box round the Water-head to see me,
-and was telling me of the delightful drive he had had. “Oh,” he said,
-in the triumph of his enthusiasm, “and just at the corner of the wood,
-there was such a big squirrel! and the coachman threw a stone at it,
-and nearly hit it!”
-
-‘Thoughtlessness—only thoughtlessness’—say you—proud father? Well,
-perhaps not much worse than that. But how could it be much worse?
-Thoughtlessness is precisely the chief public calamity of our day; and
-when it comes to the pitch, in a clergyman’s child, of not thinking
-that a stone hurts what it hits of living things, and not caring for
-the daintiest, dextrousest, innocentest living thing in the northern
-forests of God’s earth, except as a brown excrescence to be knocked off
-their branches,—nay, good pastor of Christ’s lambs, believe me, your
-boy had better have been employed in thoughtfully and resolutely
-stoning St. Stephen—if any St. Stephen is to be found in these days,
-when men not only can’t see heaven opened, but don’t so much as care to
-see it, shut.
-
-For they, at least, meant neither to give pain nor death without
-cause,—that unanimous company who stopped their ears,—they, and the
-consenting bystander who afterwards was sorry for his mistake.
-
-But, on the whole, the time has now come when we must cease throwing of
-stones either at saints or squirrels; and, as I say, build our own
-houses with them, honestly set: and similarly content ourselves in
-peaceable use of iron and lead, and other such things which we have
-been in the habit of throwing at each other dangerously, in
-thoughtlessness; and defending ourselves against as thoughtlessly,
-though in what we suppose to be an ingenious manner. Ingenious or not,
-will the fabric of our new ship of the Line, ‘Devastation,’ think you,
-follow its fabricator in heavenly places, when he dies in the Lord? In
-such representations as I have chanced to see of probable Paradise,
-Noah is never without his ark;—holding that up for judgment as the main
-work of his life. Shall we hope at the Advent to see the builder of the
-‘Devastation’ invite St. Michael’s judgment on his better style of
-naval architecture, and four-foot-six-thick ‘armour of light’?
-
-It is to-day the second Sunday in Advent, and all over England, about
-the time that I write these words, full congregations will be for the
-second time saying Amen to the opening collect of the Christian year.
-
-I wonder how many individuals of the enlightened public understand a
-single word of its first clause:
-
-
-    “Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of
-    darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of
-    this mortal life.”
-
-
-How many of them, may it be supposed, have any clear knowledge of what
-grace is, or of what the works of darkness are which they hope to have
-grace to cast away; or will feel themselves, in the coming year, armed
-with any more luminous mail than their customary coats and gowns, hosen
-and hats? Or again, when they are told to “have no fellowship with the
-unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them,”—what fellowship
-do they recognize themselves to have guiltily formed; and whom, or
-what, will they feel now called upon to reprove?
-
-In last Fors, I showed you how the works of darkness were
-unfruitful;—the precise reverse of the fruitful, or creative, works of
-Light;—but why in this collect, which you pray over and over again all
-Advent, do you ask for ‘armour’ instead of industry? You take your coat
-off to work in your own gardens; why must you put a coat of mail on,
-when you are to work in the Garden of God?
-
-Well; because the earthworms in it are big—and have teeth and claws,
-and venomous tongues. So that the first question for you is indeed, not
-whether you have a mind to work in it—many a coward has that—but
-whether you have courage to stand in it, and armour proved enough to
-stand in.
-
-Suppose you let the consenting bystander who took care of the coats
-taken off to do that piece of work on St. Stephen, explain to you the
-pieces out of St. Michael’s armoury needful to the husbandman, or
-Georgos, of God’s garden.
-
-
-    “Stand therefore; having your loins girt about with Truth.”
-
-
-That means, that the strength of your backbone depends on your meaning
-to do true battle.
-
-
-    “And having on the breastplate of Justice.”
-
-
-That means, there are to be no partialities in your heart, of anger or
-pity;—but you must only in justice kill, and only in justice keep
-alive.
-
-
-    “And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of Peace.”
-
-
-That means, that where your foot pauses, moves, or enters, there shall
-be peace; and where you can only shake the dust of it on the threshold,
-mourning.
-
-
-    “Above all, take the shield of Faith.”
-
-
-Of fidelity or obedience to your captain, showing his bearings, argent,
-a cross gules; your safety, and all the army’s, being first in the
-obedience of faith: and all casting of spears vain against such guarded
-phalanx.
-
-
-    “And take the helmet of Salvation.”
-
-
-Elsewhere, the hope of salvation, that being the defence of your
-intellect against base and sad thoughts, as the shield of fidelity is
-the defence of your heart against burning and consuming passions.
-
-
-    “And the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.”
-
-
-That being your weapon of war,—your power of action, whether with sword
-or ploughshare; according to the saying of St. John of the young
-soldiers of Christ, “I have written unto you, young men, because ye are
-strong, and the Word of God abideth in you.” The Word by which the
-heavens were of old; and which, being once only Breath, became in man
-Flesh, ‘quickening it by the spirit’ into the life which is, and is to
-come; and enabling it for all the works nobly done by the quick, and
-following the dead.
-
-And now, finish your Advent collect, and eat your Christmas fare, and
-drink your Christmas wine, thankfully; and with understanding that if
-the supper is holy which shows your Lord’s death till He come, the
-dinner is also holy which shows His life; and if you would think it
-wrong at any time to go to your own baby’s cradle side, drunk, do not
-show your gladness by Christ’s cradle in that manner; but eat your
-meat, and carol your carol in pure gladness and singleness of heart;
-and so gird up your loins with truth, that, in the year to come, you
-may do such work as Christ can praise, whether He call you to judgment
-from the quick or dead; so that among your Christmas carols there may
-never any more be wanting the joyfullest,—
-
-
-        O sing unto the Lord a new song:
-        Sing unto the Lord, all the earth.
-        Say among the heathen that the Lord is King:
-        The world also shall be stablished that it shall not be moved.
-        Let the heavens rejoice,
-        And let the earth be glad;
-        Let the sea shout, and the fulness thereof.
-        Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein:
-        Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice
-        Before the Lord:
-        For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth:
-        He shall judge the world with righteousness,
-        And the people with His truth.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
-
-I. I have kept the following kind and helpful letter for the close of
-the year:—
-
-
-                                                      “January 8, 1874.
-
-    “Sir,—I have been much moved by a passage in No. 37 of Fors
-    Clavigera, in which you express yourself in somewhat desponding
-    terms as to your loneliness in ‘life and thought,’ now you have
-    grown old. You complain that many of your early friends have
-    forgotten or disregarded you, and that you are almost left alone. I
-    cannot certainly be called an early friend, or, in the common
-    meaning of the word, a friend of any time. But I cannot refrain
-    from telling you that there are ‘more than 7,000’ in this very
-    ‘Christ-defying’ England whom you have made your friends by your
-    wise sympathy and faithful teaching. I, for my own part, owe you a
-    debt of thankfulness not only for the pleasant hours I have spent
-    with you in your books, but also for the clearer views of many of
-    the ills which at present press upon us, and for the methods of
-    cure upon which you so urgently and earnestly insist. I would
-    especially mention ‘Unto this Last’ as having afforded me the
-    highest satisfaction. It has ever since I first read it been my
-    text-book of political economy. I think it is one of the
-    needfullest lessons for a selfish, recklessly competitive,
-    cheapest-buying and dearest-selling age, that it should be told
-    there are principles deeper, higher, and even more prudent than
-    those by which it is just now governed. It is particularly
-    refreshing to find Christ’s truths applied to modern commercial
-    immorality in the trenchant and convincing style which
-    characterizes your much maligned but most valuable book. It has
-    been, let me assure you, appreciated in very unexpected quarters;
-    and one humble person to whom I lent my copy, being too poor to buy
-    one for himself actually wrote it out word for word, that he might
-    always have it by him.”
-
-    (“What a shame!” thinks the enlightened Mudie-subscriber. “See what
-    comes of his refusing to sell his books cheap.”
-
-    Yes,—see what comes of it. The dreadful calamity, to another
-    person, of doing once, what I did myself twice—and, in great part
-    of the book, three times. A vain author, indeed, thinks nothing of
-    the trouble of writing his own books. But I had infinitely rather
-    write somebody’s else’s. My good poor disciple, at the most, had
-    not half the pain his master had; learnt his book rightly, and gave
-    me more help, by this best kind of laborious sympathy, than twenty
-    score of flattering friends who tell me what a fine word-painter I
-    am, and don’t take the pains to understand so much as half a
-    sentence in a volume.)
-
-    “You have done, and are doing, a good work for England, and I pray
-    you not to be discouraged. Continue as you have been doing,
-    convincing us by your ‘sweet reasonableness’ of our errors and
-    miseries, and the time will doubtless come when your work, now
-    being done in Jeremiah-like sadness and hopelessness, will bear
-    gracious and abundant fruit.
-
-    “Will you pardon my troubling you with this note? but, indeed, I
-    could not be happy after reading your gloomy experience, until I
-    had done my little best to send one poor ray of comfort into your
-    seemingly almost weary heart.
-
-        “I remain,
-            “Yours very sincerely.”
-
-
-II. Next to this delightful testimony to my ‘sweet reasonableness,’
-here is some discussion of evidence on the other side:—
-
-
-                                                     November 12, 1872.
-
-    “To John Ruskin, LL.D., greeting, these.
-
-    “Enclosed is a slip cut from the ‘Liverpool Mercury’ of last
-    Friday, November 8. I don’t send it to you because I think it
-    matters anything what the ‘Mercury’ thinks about any one’s
-    qualification for either the inside or outside of any asylum; but
-    that I may suggest to you, as a working-man reader of your letters,
-    the desirability of your printing any letters of importance you may
-    send to any of the London papers, over again—in, say, the space of
-    ‘Fors Clavigera’ that you have set apart for correspondence. It is
-    most tantalizing to see a bit printed like the enclosed, and not
-    know either what is before or after. I felt similar feelings some
-    time ago over a little bit of a letter about the subscription to
-    Warwick Castle.
-
-    “We cannot always see the London papers, especially us provincials;
-    and we would like to see what goes on between you and the newspaper
-    world.
-
-    “Trusting that you will give this suggestion some consideration,
-    and at any rate take it as given in good faith from a disciple
-    following afar off,
-
-        “I remain, sincerely yours.”
-
-
-The enclosed slip was as follows:—
-
-
-    “Mr. Ruskin’s Tender Point.—Mr. John Ruskin has written a letter to
-    a contemporary on madness and crime, which goes far to clear up the
-    mystery which has surrounded some of his writings of late. The
-    following passage amply qualifies the distinguished art critic for
-    admission into any asylum in the country:—‘I assure you, sir,
-    insanity is a tender point with me.’” The writer then quotes to the
-    end the last paragraph of the letter, which, in compliance with my
-    correspondent’s wish, I am happy here to reprint in its entirety.
-
-
-                           MADNESS AND CRIME.
-
-               TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘PALL MALL GAZETTE.’
-
-    Sir,—Towards the close of the excellent article on the Taylor trial
-    in your issue for October 31, you say that people never will be,
-    nor ought to be, persuaded “to treat criminals simply as vermin
-    which they destroy, and not as men who are to be punished.”
-    Certainly not, sir! Who ever talked or thought of regarding
-    criminals “simply” as anything; (or innocent people either, if
-    there be any)? But regarding criminals complexly and accurately,
-    they are partly men, partly vermin; what is human in them you must
-    punish—what is vermicular, abolish. Anything between—if you can
-    find it—I wish you joy of, and hope you may be able to preserve it
-    to society. Insane persons, horses, dogs, or cats, become vermin
-    when they become dangerous. I am sorry for darling Fido, but there
-    is no question about what is to be done with him.
-
-    Yet, I assure you, sir, insanity is a tender point with me. One of
-    my best friends has just gone mad; and all the rest say I am mad
-    myself. But, if ever I murder anybody—and, indeed, there are
-    numbers of people I should like to murder—I won’t say that I ought
-    to be hanged; for I think nobody but a bishop or a bank director
-    can ever be rogue enough to deserve hanging; but I particularly,
-    and with all that is left me of what I imagine to be sound mind,
-    request that I may be immediately shot.
-
-        I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
-            J. Ruskin.
-
-                    Corpus Christi College, Oxford, November 2, (1872).
-
-
-
-III. I am very grateful to the friend who sends me the following note
-on my criticism of Dickens in last letter:—
-
-
-    “It does not in the least detract from the force of Fors, p. 253,
-    line 18 (November), that there was a real ‘Miss Flite,’ whom I have
-    seen, and my father well remembers; and who used to haunt the
-    Courts in general, and sometimes to address them. She had been
-    ruined, it was believed; and Dickens must have seen her, for her
-    picture is like the original. But he knew nothing about her, and
-    only constructed her after his fashion. She cannot have been any
-    prototype of the character of Miss Flite. I never heard her real
-    name. Poor thing! she did not look sweet or kind, but crazed and
-    spiteful; and unless looks deceived Dickens, he just gave careless,
-    false witness about her. Her condition seemed to strengthen your
-    statement in its very gist,—as Law had made her look like Peter
-    Peebles.
-
-    “My father remembers little Miss F., of whom nothing was known. She
-    always carried papers and a bag, and received occasional charity
-    from lawyers.
-
-    “Gridley’s real name was Ikey;—he haunted Chancery. Another, named
-    Pitt, in the Exchequer;—broken attorneys, both.”
-
-
-IV. I have long kept by me an official statement of the condition of
-England when I began Fors, and together with it an illustrative column,
-printed, without alteration, from the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of the
-previous year. They may now fitly close my four years’ work, of which I
-have good hope next year to see some fruit.
-
-Mr. Goschen on the Condition of England.—“The nation is again making
-money at an enormous rate, and driving every kind of decently secure
-investment up to unprecedented figures. Foreign Stocks, Indian Stocks,
-Home Railway Shares, all securities which are beyond the control of
-mere speculators and offer above four per cent. were never so dear;
-risky loans for millions, like that for Peru, are taken with avidity;
-the cup is getting full, and in all human probability some new burst of
-speculation is at hand, which may take a beneficial form—for instance,
-we could get rid of a hundred millions in making cheap country railways
-with immense advantage—but will more probably turn out to be a mere
-method of depletion. However it goes, the country is once more getting
-rich, and the money is filtering downwards to the actual workers. The
-people, as Mr. Goschen showed by unimpugnable figures, are consuming
-more sugar, more tea, more beer, spirits, and tobacco, more, in fact,
-of every kind of popular luxury, than ever. Their savings have also
-increased, while the exports of cotton, of wool, of linen, of iron, of
-machinery, have reached a figure wholly beyond precedent. By the
-testimony of all manner of men—factory inspectors, poor-law inspectors,
-members of great cities—the Lancashire trade, the silk trade, the
-flax-spinning trade, the lace trade, and, above all, the iron trade,
-are all so flourishing, that the want is not of work to be done, but of
-hands to do it. Even the iron shipbuilding trade, which was at so low a
-point, is reviving, and the only one believed to be still under serious
-depression is the building trade of London, which has, it is believed,
-been considerably overdone. So great is the demand for hands in some
-parts of the country, that Mr. Goschen believes that internal
-emigration would do more to help the people than emigration to America,
-while it is certain that no relief which can be afforded by the
-departure of a few workpeople is equal to the relief caused by the
-revival of any one great trade—relief, we must add, which would be more
-rapid and diffused if the trades’ unions, in this one respect at least
-false to their central idea of the brotherhood of labour, were not so
-jealous of the intrusion of outsiders. There is hardly a trade into
-which a countryman of thirty, however clever, can enter at his own
-discretion—one of the many social disqualifications which press upon
-the agricultural labourer.
-
-“The picture thus drawn by Mr. Goschen, and truly drawn—for the
-President of the Poor-Law Board is a man who does not manipulate
-figures, but treats them with the reverence of the born statist—is a
-very pleasant one, especially to those who believe that wealth is the
-foundation of civilization; but yet what a weary load it is that,
-according to the same speech, this country is carrying, and must carry!
-There are 1,100,000 paupers on the books, and not a tenth of them will
-be taken off by any revival whatever, for not a tenth of them are
-workers. The rest are children—350,000 of them alone—widows, people
-past work, cripples, lunatics, incapables, human drift of one sort or
-another, the detritus of commerce and labour, a compost of suffering,
-helplessness, and disease. In addition to the burden of the State, in
-addition to the burden of the Debt, which we talk of as nothing, but
-without which England would be the least-taxed country in the world,
-this country has to maintain an army of incapables twice as numerous as
-the army of France, to feed, and clothe, and lodge and teach them,—an
-army which she cannot disband, and which she seems incompetent even to
-diminish. To talk of emigration, of enterprise, even of education, as
-reducing this burden, is almost waste of breath; for cripples do not
-emigrate, the aged do not benefit by trade, when education is universal
-children must still be kept alive.”—The Spectator, June 25, 1870.
-
-
-
-V. The following single column of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ has been
-occasionally referred to in past letters:—
-
-
-    “It is proposed to erect a memorial church at Oxford to the late
-    Archbishop Longley. The cost is estimated at from £15,000 to
-    £20,000. The subscriptions promised already amount to upwards of
-    £2,000, and in the list are the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the
-    Bishops of Oxford, St. Asaph, and Chester.”
-
-
-
-    “An inquest was held in the Isle of Dogs by Mr. Humphreys, the
-    coroner, respecting the death of a woman named Catherine Spence,
-    aged thirty-four, and her infant. She was the wife of a labourer,
-    who had been almost without employment for two years and a half.
-    They had pledged all their clothes to buy food, and some time since
-    part of the furniture had been seized by the brokers for rent. The
-    house in which they lived was occupied by six families, who paid
-    the landlord 5s. 9d. for rent. One of the witnesses stated that
-    ‘all the persons in the house were ill off for food, and the
-    deceased never wanted it more than they did.’ The jury on going to
-    view the bodies found that the bed on which the woman and child had
-    died was composed of rags, and there were no bed-clothes upon it. A
-    small box placed upon a broken chair had served as a table. Upon it
-    lay a tract entitled ‘The Goodness of God.’ The windows were
-    broken, and an old iron tray had been fastened up against one and a
-    board up against another. Two days after his wife’s death the poor
-    man went mad, and he was taken to the workhouse. He was not taken
-    to the asylum, for there was no room for him in it—it was crowded
-    with mad people. Another juror said it was of no use to return a
-    verdict of death from starvation. It would only cause the distress
-    in the island to be talked about in newspapers. The jury returned a
-    verdict that the deceased woman died from exhaustion, privation,
-    and want of food.”
-
-
-
-    “The Rev. James Nugent, the Roman Catholic chaplain of the
-    Liverpool borough gaol, reported to the magistrates that crime is
-    increasing among young women in Liverpool; and he despairs of
-    amendment until effective steps are taken to check the open display
-    of vice which may now be witnessed nightly, and even daily, in the
-    thoroughfares of the town. Mr. Raffles, the stipendiary magistrate,
-    confesses that he is at a loss what to do in order to deter women
-    of the class referred to from offending against the law, as even
-    committal to the sessions and a long term of imprisonment fail to
-    produce beneficial effects. Father Nugent also despairs of doing
-    much good with this class; but he thinks that if they were
-    subjected to stricter control, and prevented from parading in our
-    thoroughfares, many girls would be deterred from falling into evil
-    ways.”
-
-
-
-    “At the Liverpool borough gaol sessions Mr. Robertson Gladstone
-    closely interrogated the chaplain (the Rev. Thomas Carter)
-    respecting his visitation of the prisoners. Mr. Gladstone is of
-    opinion that sufficient means to make the prisoners impressionable
-    to religious teaching are not used; whilst the chaplain asserts
-    that the system which he pursues is based upon a long experience,
-    extending over twenty-eight years, at the gaol. Mr. Gladstone, who
-    does not share the chaplain’s belief that the prisoners are
-    ‘generally unimpressionable,’ hinted that some active steps in the
-    matter would probably be taken.”
-
-
-
-    “Mr. Fowler, the stipendiary magistrate of Manchester, referring to
-    Mr. Ernest Jones’ death yesterday, in the course of the proceedings
-    at the City police-court, said: ‘I wish to say one word, which I
-    intended to have said yesterday morning, in reference to the taking
-    from amongst us of a face which has been so familiar in this court;
-    but I wished to have some other magistrates present in order that I
-    might, on the part of the bench, and not only as an individual,
-    express our regret at the unexpected removal from our midst of a
-    man whose life has been a very remarkable one, whose name will
-    always be associated in this country in connection with the
-    half-century he lived in it, and who, whatever his faults—and who
-    amongst us is free?—possessed the great virtues of undoubted
-    integrity and honour, and of being thoroughly consistent, never
-    flinching from that course which he believed to be right, though at
-    times at the cost of fortune and of freedom.’”
-
-
-
-    “A Chester tradesman named Meacock, an ex-town councillor, has been
-    arrested in that city on a charge of forging conveyances of
-    property upon which he subsequently obtained a mortgage of £2,200.
-    The lady who owns the property appeared before the magistrates, and
-    declared that her signature to the conveyance was a forgery. The
-    prisoner was remanded, and was sent to prison in default of
-    obtaining the bail which was required.”
-
-
-
-    “Mr. Hughes, a Liverpool merchant, was summoned before the local
-    bench for having sent to the London Dock a case, containing
-    hydrochloric acid, without a distinct label or mark denoting that
-    the goods were dangerous. A penalty of £10 was imposed.”
-
-
-
-    “A woman, named Daley, came before the Leeds magistrates, with her
-    son, a boy six years old, whom she wished to be sent to a
-    reformatory, as she was unable to control him. She said that one
-    evening last week he went home, carrying a piece of rope, and said
-    that he was going to hang himself with it. He added that he had
-    already attempted to hang himself ‘in the Crown Court, but a little
-    lass loosed the rope for him, and he fell into a tub of water.’ It
-    turned out that the mother was living with a man by whom she had
-    two children, and it was thought by some in court that her object
-    was merely to relieve herself of the cost and care of the boy; but
-    the magistrates, thinking that the boy would be better away from
-    the contaminating influence of the street and of his home,
-    committed him to the Certified Industrial Schools until he arrives
-    at sixteen years of age, and ordered his mother to contribute one
-    shilling per week towards his maintenance.”—Pall Mall Gazette,
-    January 29, 1869.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                   SUBSCRIPTIONS TO ST. GEORGE’S FUND
-
-                         TO CLOSE OF YEAR 1874.
-
-      (The Subscribers each know his or her number in this List.)
-
-
-                                                       £    s.   d.
-
-      1.   Annual, £4 0 0 (1871, ’72, ’73, ’74)       16    0    0
-      2.   Annual, £20 0 0 (1871, ’72, ’73, ’74)      80    0    0
-      3.   Gift                                        5    0    0
-      4.   Gifts (1871), £30 0 0; (1873), £20 0 0     50    0    0
-      5.   Gift (1872)                                20    0    0
-      6.   Annual, £1 1 0 (1872, ’73, ’74)             3    3    0
-      7.   Gift (1872)                                10    0    0
-      8.   Annual, £20 0 0 (1872, ’73, ’74)           60    0    0
-      9.   Gift (1872)                                25    0    0
-     10.   Annual, £5 0 0 (1872, ’73)                 10    0    0
-     11.   Annual, £1 1 0 (1873, ’74)                  2    2    0
-     12.   Gift (1873)                                 4    0    0
-     13.   Annual, £3 0 0 (1873, ’74)                  6    0    0
-     14.   Gift (1873)                                13   10    0
-     15.   Gift (1873)                                 5    0    0
-     16.   Gift (1874)                                25    0    0
-     17.    ,,    ,,                                   1    0    0
-     18.    ,,    ,,                                  10    0    0
-     19.    ,,    ,,                                   5    0    0
-     20.    ,,    ,,                                   2    0    0
-     21.    ,,    ,,                                  10   10    0
-     22.    ,,    ,,                                   1    1    0
-     23.    ,,    ,,                                   5    0    0
-     24.    ,,    ,,                                   1    1    0
-                                                    ==============
-                                                    £370    7    0
-
-
-
-One or two more subscriptions have come in since this list was drawn
-up; these will be acknowledged in the January number, and the subjoined
-letter from Mr. Cowper-Temple gives the state of the Fund in general
-terms.
-
-
-                                                    Broadlands, Romsey,
-                                                      December 9, 1874.
-
-    Dear Ruskin,
-
-    The St. George’s Fund, of which Sir Thomas Acland and I are
-    Trustees, consists at present of £7,000 [68] Consolidated Stock,
-    and of £923 standing to the credit of our joint account at the
-    Union Bank of London, Chancery Lane Branch. Contributions to this
-    fund are received by the Bank and placed to the credit of our joint
-    account.
-
-        Yours faithfully,
-            W. Cowper-Temple.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NOTES
-
-
-[1] Of 6th March, not long ago, but I have lost note of the year.
-
-[2] The close of the ninth book of Plato’s Republic. I use for the most
-part Mr. Jowett’s translation, here and there modifying it in my own
-arbitrarily dogged or diffuse way of Englishing passages of complex
-significance.
-
-[3] Plato does not mean here, merely dissipation of a destructive kind,
-(as the next sentence shows,) but also healthy animal stupidities, as
-our hunting, shooting, and the like.
-
-[4] Not quite so, gentlemen of the Royal Commission. Harvests, no less
-than sales, and fishermen no less than salesmen, need regulation by
-just human law. Here is a piece of news, for instance, from Glasgow,
-concerning Loch Fyne:—“Owing to the permission to fish for herring by
-trawling, which not only scrapes up the spawn from the bottom, but
-catches great quantities of the fry which are useless for market, and
-only fit for manure, it is a fact that, whereas Loch Fyne used to be
-celebrated for containing the finest herrings to be caught anywhere,
-and thousands and tens of thousands of boxes used to be exported from
-Inverary, there are not now enough caught there to enable them to
-export a single box, and the quantity caught lower down the loch, near
-its mouth (and every year the herring are being driven farther and
-farther down) is not a tithe of what it used to be. Such a thing as a
-Loch Fyne herring (of the old size and quality) cannot be had now in
-Glasgow for any money, and this is only a type of the destruction which
-trawling, and too short close-time, are causing to all the west-coast
-fishing. Whiting Bay, Arran, has been rid of its whiting by trawling on
-the spawning coast opposite. The cupidity of careless fishers,
-unchecked by beneficial law, is here also ‘killing the goose that lays
-the golden eggs,’ and herring of any kind are very scarce and very bad
-in Glasgow, at a penny and sometimes twopence each. Professor Huxley
-gave his sanction to trawling, in a Government Commission, I am told,
-some years ago, and it has been allowed ever since. I will tell you
-something similar about the seal-fishing off Newfoundland, another
-time.”
-
-[5] In my aunt’s younger days, at Perth, the servants used regularly to
-make bargain that they should not be forced to dine on salmon more than
-so many times a week.
-
-[6] As for instance, and in farther illustration of the use of
-herrings, here is some account of the maintenance of young painters and
-lawyers in Edinburgh, sixty years since, sent me by the third Fors; and
-good Dr. Brown, in an admirable sketch of the life of an admirable
-Scottish artist, says: “Raeburn (Sir Henry) was left an orphan at six,
-and was educated in Heriot’s Hospital. At fifteen he was apprenticed to
-a goldsmith; but after his time was out, set himself entirely to
-portrait painting. About this time he became acquainted with the famous
-cynic, lawyer, and wit, John Clerk, afterwards Lord Eldon, then a young
-advocate. Both were poor. Young Clerk asked Raeburn to dine at his
-lodgings. Coming in, he found the landlady laying the cloth, and
-setting down two dishes, one containing three herrings, and the other
-three potatoes. “Is this a’?” said John. “Ay, it’s a’.” “A’! didna I
-tell ye, woman, that a gentleman is to dine wi’ me, and that ye were to
-get six herrin and six potatoes?”
-
-[7] I don’t remember telling you anything of the sort. I should tell
-you another story now, my dear friend.
-
-[8] Very fine; but have all the children in Sheffield and Leeds had
-their pennyworth of gospel, first?
-
-[9] All I can say is, tastes differ; but I have not myself tried the
-degree of comfort which may be attained in winter by lying on one’s
-side in a coal-seam, and cannot therefore feel confidence in offering
-an opinion.
-
-[10] Very much so indeed, my good friend; and yet, the plague of it is,
-one never can get people to do anything that is wise or generous,
-unless they go and make monks of themselves. I believe this St.
-George’s land of mine will really be the first place where it has been
-attempted to get married people to live in any charitable and human
-way, and graft apples where they may eat them, without getting driven
-out of their Paradise.
-
-[11] There, again! why, in the name of all that’s natural, can’t decent
-men and women use their tongues, on occasion, for what God made them
-for,—talking in a civil way; but must either go and make dumb beasts of
-themselves, or else (far worse) let out their tongues for hire, and
-live by vomiting novels and reviews!
-
-[12] If to any reader, looking back on the history of Europe for the
-last four centuries, this sentence seems ironical, let him be assured
-that for the causes which make it seem so, during the last four
-centuries, the end of kinghood has come.
-
-[13] Untranslateable. It means, she made no false pretence of
-reluctance, and neither politely nor feebly declined what she meant to
-accept. But the phrase might be used of a person accepting with
-ungraceful eagerness, or want of sense of obligation. A slight sense of
-this simplicity is meant by our author to be here included in the
-expression.
-
-[14] “Trop bon.” It is a little more than ‘very good,’ but not at all
-equivalent to our English ‘too good.’
-
-[15] “Se trouva.” Untranslateable. It is very little more than ‘was’ in
-front. But that little more,—the slight sense of not knowing quite how
-she got there,—is necessary to mark the under-current of meaning; she
-goes behind the cart first, thinking it more modest; but presently,
-nevertheless, ‘finds herself’ in front; “the cart goes better, so.”
-
-[16] There used to be an avenue of tall trees, about a quarter of a
-mile long, on the Thun road, just at the brow of the descent to the
-bridge of the Aar, at the lower end of the main street of Berne.
-
-[17] “Cohue.” Confused and moving mass. We have no such useful word.
-
-[18] “Se revit.” It would not be right to say here ‘se trouva,’ because
-there is no surprise, or discovery, in the doing once again what is
-done every week. But one may nevertheless contemplate oneself, and the
-situation, from a new point of view. Hansli ‘se revit’—reviewed
-himself, literally; a very proper operation, every now and then, for
-everybody.
-
-[19] A slight difference between the Swiss and English peasant is
-marked here; to the advantage of the former. At least, I imagine an
-English Hansli would not have known, even in love, whether the road was
-ugly or pretty.
-
-[20] “Se requinquait a n’en plus finir.” Entirely beyond English
-rendering.
-
-[21] “Ça.” Note the peculiar character and value, in modern French, of
-this general and slightly depreciatory pronoun, essentially a
-republican word,—hurried, inconsiderate, and insolent. The popular
-chant ‘ça ira’ gives the typical power.
-
-[22] “C’est seulement pour dire.” I’ve been at least ten minutes trying
-to translate it, and can’t.
-
-[23] “On est toujours homme.” The proverb is frequent among the French
-and Germans. The modesty of it is not altogether easy to an English
-mind, and would be totally incomprehensible to an ordinary Scotch one.
-
-[24] “Assez brave.” Untranslateable, except by the old English sense of
-the word brave, and even that has more reference to outside show than
-the French word.
-
-[25] You are to note carefully the conditions of sentiment in family
-relationships implied both here, and in the bride’s reference, farther
-on, to her godmother’s children. Poverty, with St. Francis’ pardon, is
-not always holy in its influence: yet a richer girl might have felt
-exactly the same, without being innocent enough to say so.
-
-[26] I believe the reverend and excellent novelist would himself
-authorize the distinction; but Hansli’s mother must be answerable for
-it to my Evangelical readers.
-
-[27] “Poêle a frire.” I don’t quite understand the nature of this
-article.
-
-[28] Well said, the Viscount. People think me a grumbler; but I wholly
-believe this,—nay, know this. The world exists, indeed, only by the
-strength of its silent virtue.
-
-[29] Well said, Viscount, again! So few people know the power of the
-Third Fors. If I had not chanced to give lessons in drawing to Octavia
-Hill, I could have done nothing in Marylebone, nor she either, for a
-while yet, I fancy.
-
-[30] A lovely, classic, unbetterable sentence of Marmontel’s, perfect
-in wisdom and modesty.
-
-[31] Not for a dividend upon it, I beg you to observe, and even the
-capital to be repaid in work.
-
-[32] Or, worse still, as our public men do, upon the cost of
-non-compulsory measures!
-
-[33] These small “powers” of terminal letters in some of the words are
-very curious.
-
-[34] A lady high in the ranks of kindly English literature.
-
-[35] Italics mine, as usual.
-
-[36] Notes on Old Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1869. Things may
-possibly have mended in some respects in the last five years, but they
-have assuredly, in the country villages, got tenfold worse.
-
-[37] “Bernard the happy.” The Beato of Mont Oliveto; not Bernard of
-Clairvaux. The entire inscription is, “received St. Francis of Assisi
-to supper and bed”; but it I had written it so, it would have appeared
-that St. Francis’s ecstacy was in consequence of his getting his
-supper.
-
-[38] ‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ July 31st, 1873.
-
-[39] “Rigurgitava”—gushed or gorged up; as a bottle which you have
-filled too full and too fast.
-
-[40] Sensale, an interesting Venetian word. The fair on the Feast of
-the Ascension at Venice became in mellifluous brevity, ‘Sensa,’ and the
-most ornamental of the ware purchaseable at it, therefore, Sensale.
-
-A “Holy-Thursday-Fairing,” feeling herself unwell, would be the
-properest translation.
-
-[41] Observe, this is only asserted of its main principles; not of
-minor and accessory points. I may be entirely wrong in the explanation
-of a text, or mistake the parish schools of St. Matthias for St.
-Matthew’s, over and over again. I have so large a field to work in that
-this cannot be helped. But none of these minor errors are of the least
-consequence to the business in hand.
-
-[42] See first article in the Notes and Correspondence to this number.
-
-[43] See second note at end of this letter.
-
-[44] The passage continues thus, curiously enough,—for the parallel of
-the boat at sea is precisely that which I have given, in true
-explanation of social phenomena:—
-
-“The notion that when one man becomes rich he makes others poor, will
-be found upon examination to depend upon the assumption that there is
-in the world a fixed quantity of wealth; that when one man appropriates
-to himself a large amount of it, he excludes all others from any
-benefit arising from it, and that at the same time he forces some one
-else to be content with less than he would otherwise have had. Society,
-in short, must be compared to a boat at sea, in which there is a
-certain quantity of fresh water, and a certain number of shipwrecked
-passengers. In that case, no doubt, the water drunk by one is of no use
-to the rest, and if one drinks more, others must drink less, as the
-water itself is a fixed quantity. Moreover, no one man would be able to
-get more than a rateable share, except by superior force, or by some
-form of deceit, because the others would prevent him. The mere
-statement of this view ought to be a sufficient exposure of the
-fundamental error of the commonplaces which we are considering.”
-
-[45] The reader might at first fancy that the economy was not
-“absolute,” but that the expenses of the traveller were simply borne by
-his host. Not so; the host only gave what he in his turn received, when
-he also travelled. Every man thus carried his home with him, and to
-travel, was merely to walk or ride from place to place, instead of
-round one’s own house. (See Saunders Fairford’s expostulation with Alan
-on the charges incurred at Noble House.)
-
-[46] But what is to be done, then? Emigrate, of course; but under
-different laws from those of modern emigration. Don’t emigrate to
-China, poison Chinamen, and teach them to make steam engines, and then
-import Chinamen, to dig iron here. But see next Fors.
-
-[47] The writings of our vulgar political economists, calling money
-only a “medium of exchange,” blind the foolish public conveniently to
-all the practical actions of the machinery of the currency. Money is
-not a medium of exchange, but a token of right. I have, suppose, at
-this moment, ten, twenty, or thirty thousand pounds. That signifies
-that, as compared with a man who has only ten pounds, I can claim
-possession of, call for, and do what I like with a thousand, or two
-thousand, or three thousand times as much of the valuable things
-existing in the country. The peasant accordingly gives the squire a
-certain number of these tokens or counters, which give the possessor a
-right to claim so much corn or meat. The squire gives these tokens to
-the various persons in town, enumerated in the text, who then claim the
-corn and meat from the peasant, returning him the counters, which he
-calls “price,” and gives to the squire again next year.
-
-[48] Of the industry of the Magistrate against crime, I say nothing;
-for it now scarcely exists, but to do evil. See first article in
-Correspondence, at end of letter.
-
-[49] Compare, especially, Letter xxix., p. 11.
-
-[50] It is possible that this lending office may have been organised as
-a method of charity, corresponding to the original Monte di Pieta, the
-modern clergymen having imagined, in consequence of the common error
-about interest, that they could improve the system of Venice by
-ignoring its main condition—the lending gratis,—and benefit themselves
-at the same time.
-
-[51] Read Isaiah vi. through carefully.
-
-[52] The reader will perhaps now begin to see the true bearing of the
-earlier letters in Fors. Re-read, with this letter, that on the
-campaign of Crecy.
-
-[53] I wish I could find room also for the short passages I omit; but
-one I quoted before, “As no one will deny that man possesses
-carnivorous teeth,” etc., and the others introduce collateral
-statements equally absurd, but with which at present we are not
-concerned.
-
-[54] I must warn you against the false reading of the original, in many
-editions. Fournier’s five volume one is altogether a later text, in
-some cases with interesting intentional modifications, probably of the
-fifteenth century; but oftener with destruction of the older meaning.
-It gives this couplet, for instance,—
-
-            “Si n’avoit el plaisir de rien,
-            Que quant elle donnoit du sien.”
-
-The old reading is,
-
-            “Si n’avoit elle joie de rien,
-            Fors quant elle povoit dire, ‘tien.’
-
-Didot’s edition, Paris, 1814, is founded on very early and valuable
-texts; but it is difficult to read. Chaucer has translated a text some
-twenty or thirty years later in style; and his English is quite
-trustworthy as far as it is carried. For the rest of the Romanee,
-Fournier’s text is practically good enough, and easily readable.
-
-[55] Fr. ‘chetive,’ rhyming accurately to ‘ententive.’
-
-[56] Fr. Sarrasinesse.
-
-[57] Even after eighteen hundred years of sermons, the Christian public
-do not clearly understand that ‘two coats,’ in the brief sermon of the
-Baptist to repentance, mean also, two petticoats, and the like.
-
-I am glad that Fors obliges me to finish this letter at Lucca, under
-the special protection of St. Martin.
-
-[58] Fr.,
-
-            “Si que par oula la chemise
-            Lui blancheoit la char alise.”
-
-Look out ‘Alice,’ in Miss Yonge’s Dictionary of Christian Names and
-remember Alice of Salisbury.
-
-[59] I believe the pale roses are meant to be white, but are tinged
-with red that they may not contend with the symbolic brightness of the
-lilies.
-
-[60] Macintosh, 24, Paternoster Row.
-
-[61] 2 Esdras iv. 4.
-
-[62] See ‘Modern Painters,’ vol. iii., “The Firmament.”
-
-[63] Compare Dante, Purg., end of Canto V.
-
-[64] See the part of examination respecting communication held with the
-brother of the prisoner.
-
-[65] See statement at close of accounts.
-
-[66] See second letter in Notes and Correspondence.
-
-[67] I don’t know how far it turned out to be true,—a fight between a
-dwarf and a bulldog (both chained to stakes as in Roman days),
-described at length in some journals.
-
-[68] I have heard that some impression has got abroad that in giving
-this £7,000 stock to the St. George’s Company, I only parted with one
-year’s income. It was a fairly estimated tenth of my entire property,
-including Brantwood. The excess of the sum now at the credit of the
-Trustees, over the amount subscribed, consists in the accumulated
-interest on this stock. With the sum thus at their disposal, the
-Trustees are about to purchase another £1,000 of stock, and in the Fors
-of January will be a more complete statement of what we shall begin the
-year with, and of some dawning prospect of a beginning also to our
-operations.
-
-
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