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.