Fors Clavigera (Volume 6 of 8) /

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTERS

TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN.

BY
JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,
HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART.

Vol. VI.
GEORGE ALLEN,
SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.
1876.

[[1]]

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTER LXI.

November 28th, 1875.

(In the house of a friend who, being ashamed of me and my words, requests that this Fors may not be dated from it.)

‘Live and learn.’ I trust it may yet be permitted me to fulfil the adage a few years longer, for I find it takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning. (Query, meaning of ‘deal’?—substantive of verb deal—as at whist?—no Johnson by me, and shall be sure to forget to look when I have.) But I have learned something this morning,—the use of the holes in the bottom of a fireshovel, to wit. I recollect, now, often and often, seeing my mother sift the cinders; but, alas, she never taught me to do it. Did not think, perhaps, that I should ever have occasion, as a Bishop, to occupy myself in that manner; nor understand,—poor sweet mother,—how advisable it might be to have some sort of holes in my shovel-hat, for sifting cinders of human soul. [[2]]

Howsoever, I have found out the art, this morning, in the actual ashes; thinking all the time how it was possible for people to live in this weather, who had no cinders to sift. My hostess’s white cat, Lily, woke me at half-past five by piteous mewing at my window; and being let in, and having expressed her thanks by getting between my legs over and over again as I was shaving, has at last curled herself up in my bed, and gone to sleep,—looking as fat as a little pillow, only whiter; but what are the cats to do, to-day, who have no one to let them in at the windows, no beds to curl up into, and nothing but skin and bones to curl?

‘It can’t be helped, you know;—meantime, let Lily enjoy her bed, and be thankful, (if possible, in a more convenient manner). And do you enjoy your fire, and be thankful,’ say the pious public: and subscribe, no doubt, at their Rector’s request, for an early dole of Christmas coals. Alas, my pious public, all this temporary doling and coaling is worse than useless. It drags out some old women’s lives a month or two longer,—makes, here and there, a hearth savoury with smell of dinner, that little knew of such frankincense; but, for true help to the poor, you might as well light a lucifer match to warm their fingers; and for the good to your own hearts,—I tell you solemnly, all your comfort in, such charity is simply, Christ’s dipped sop, given to you for signal to somebody else than Christ, that it is his hour to find the windows of your soul open—to the Night, [[3]]whence very doleful creatures, of other temper and colour than Lily, are mewing to get in.

Indeed, my pious public, you cannot, at present, by any coal or blanket subscription, do more than blind yourselves to the plain order “Give to him that asketh thee; and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.”

To him that asketh us, say the public,—but then—everybody would ask us.

Yes, you pitiful public,—pretty nearly everybody would: that is indeed the state of national dignity, and independence, and gushing prosperity, you have brought your England into; a population mostly of beggars, (at heart); or, worse, bagmen, not merely bearing the bag—but nothing else but bags;—sloppy star-fishy, seven-suckered stomachs of indiscriminate covetousness, ready to beg, borrow, gamble, swindle, or write anything a publisher will pay for.

Nevertheless your order is precise, and clear; ‘Give to him that asketh thee’—even to the half of your last cloak—says St. Martin; even to the whole of it, says Christ: ‘whosoever of you forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple.’

‘And you yourself, who have a house among the lakes, and rooms at Oxford, and pictures, and books, and a Dives dinner every day, how about all that?’

Yes, you may well ask,—and I answer very distinctly and frankly, that if once I am convinced (and it is [[4]]not by any means unlikely I should be so) that to put all these things into the hands of others, and live, myself, in a cell at Assisi, or a shepherd’s cottage in Cumberland, would be right, and wise, under the conditions of human life and thought with which I have to deal—very assuredly I will do so.

Nor is it, I repeat, unlikely that such conviction may soon happen to me; for I begin to question very strictly with myself, how it is that St. George’s work does not prosper better in my hands.

Here is the half-decade of years, past, since I began the writing of Fors, as a byework, to quiet my conscience, that I might be happy in what I supposed to be my own proper life of Art-teaching, at Oxford and elsewhere; and, through my own happiness, rightly help others.

But Atropos has ruled it quite otherwise. During these five years, very signal distress has visited me, conclusively removing all possibilities of cheerful action; separating and sealing a great space of former life into one wide field of Machpelah; and leaving the rest sunless. Also, everything I have set hand to has been unprosperous; much of it even calamitous;—disappointment, coupled with heavy money loss, happening in almost every quarter to me, and casting discredit on all I attempt; while, in things partly under the influence and fortune of others, and therefore more or less successful,—the schools at Oxford especially, which owe the greater part of their efficiency to the fostering zeal of Dr. Acland, [[5]]and the steady teaching of Mr. Macdonald,—I have not been able, for my own share, to accomplish the tenth part of what I planned.

Under which conditions, I proceed in my endeavour to remodel the world, with more zeal, by much, than at the beginning of the year 1871.

For these following reasons.

First, that I would give anything to be quit of the whole business; and therefore that I am certain it is not ambition, nor love of power, nor anything but absolute and mere compassion, that drags me on. That shoemaker, whom his son left lying dead with his head in the fireplace the other day,[1]—I wish he and his son had never been born;—but as the like of them will be born, and must so die, so long as things remain as they are, there’s no choice for me but to do all I know to change them, since others won’t.

Secondly. I observe that when all things, in early life, appeared to be going well for me, they were by no means going well, in the deep of them, but quite materially and rapidly otherwise. Whence I conclude that though things appear at present adverse to my work and me, they may not at all be adverse in the deep of them, but quite otherwise.

Thirdly. Though in my own fortune, unprosperous, and in my own thoughts and labour, failing, I find more and more every day that I have helped many persons [[6]]unknown to me; that others, in spite of my failures, begin to understand me, and are ready to follow; and that a certain power is indeed already in my hands, woven widely into the threads of many human lives; which power, if I now laid down, that line (which I have always kept the murmur of in my ears, for warning, since first I read it thirty years ago,)—

“Che fece per viltate’l gran rifiuto,”[2]

would be finally and fatally true of me.

Fourthly, not only is that saying of Bacon’s of great comfort to me, “therefore extreme lovers of their country, or masters, were never fortunate; neither can they be, for when a man placeth his thoughts without himself, he goeth not his own way,”[3] for truly I have always loved my masters, Turner, Tintoret, and Carlyle, to the exclusion of my own thoughts; and my country more than my own garden: but also, I do not find in the reading of history that any victory worth having was ever won without cost; and I observe that too open and early prosperity is rarely the way to it.

But lastly, and chiefly. If there be any truth in the vital doctrines of Christianity whatsoever,—and [[7]]assuredly there is more than most of us recognise, or than any of us believe,—the offences committed in this century by all the nations of Christendom against the law of Christ have been so great, and insolent, that they cannot but be punished by the withdrawal of spiritual guidance from them, and the especial paralysis of efforts intelligently made for their good. In times of more ignorant sinning, they were punished by plagues of the body; but now, by plagues of the soul, and widely infectious insanities, making every true physician of souls helpless, and every false effort triumphant. Nor are we without great and terrible signs of supernatural calamity, no less in grievous changes and deterioration of climate, than in forms of mental disease,[4] claiming distinctly to be necromantic, and, as far as I have examined the evidence relating to them, actually manifesting themselves as such. For observe you, my friends, countrymen, and brothers—Either, at this actual moment of your merry Christmas-time, that has truly come to pass, in falling London, which your greatest Englishman wrote of falling Rome, “the sheeted dead, do squeak and gibber in your English streets,”—Or, such a system of loathsome imposture and cretinous [[8]]blasphemy is current among all classes of England and America, as makes the superstition of all past ages divine truth in comparison!

One of these things is so—gay friends;—have it which way you will: one or other of these, to me, alike appalling; and in your principal street of London society, you have a picture of highly dressed harlots gambling, of naked ones, called Andromeda and Francesca of Rimini, and of Christ led to be crucified, exhibited, for your better entertainment, in the same room; and at the end of the same street, an exhibition of jugglery, professedly imitating, for money, what a large number of you believe to be the efforts of the returned Dead to convince you of your Immortality.

Meantime, at the other end—no, at the very centre of your great Babylon, a son leaves his father dead, with his head, instead of a fire, in the fireplace, and goes out himself to his day’s darg.

‘We are very sorry;—What can we do? How can we help it? London is so big, and living is so very expensive, you know.’

Miserables,—who makes London big, but you, coming to look at the harlotries in it, painted and other? Who makes living expensive, but you, who drink, and eat,[5] and dress, all you can; and never in your lives did one stroke of work to get your living,—never [[9]]drew a bucket of water, never sowed a grain of corn, never spun a yard of thread;—but you devour, and swill, and waste, to your fill, and think yourselves good, and fine, and better creatures of God, I doubt not, than the poor starved wretch of a shoemaker, who shod whom he could, while you gave him food enough to keep him in strength to stitch.

We, of the so-called ‘educated’ classes, who take it upon us to be the better and upper part of the world, cannot possibly understand our relations to the rest better than we may where actual life may be seen in front of its Shakespearean image, from the stalls of a theatre. I never stand up to rest myself, and look round the house, without renewal of wonder how the crowd in the pit, and shilling gallery, allow us of the boxes and stalls to keep our places! Think of it;—those fellows behind there have housed us and fed us; their wives have washed our clothes, and kept us tidy;—they have bought us the best places,—brought us through the cold to them; and there they sit behind us, patiently, seeing and hearing what they may. There they pack themselves, squeezed and distant, behind our chairs;—we, their elect toys and pet puppets, oiled, and varnished, and incensed, lounge in front, placidly, or for the greater part, wearily and sickly contemplative. Here we are again, all of us, this Christmas! Behold the artist in tumbling, and in painting with white and red,—our object of worship, and applause: here sit we [[10]]at our ease, the dressed dolls of the place, with little more in our heads, most of us, than may be contained inside of a wig of flax and a nose of wax; stuck up by these poor little prentices, clerks, and orange-sucking mobility, Kit, and his mother, and the baby—behind us, in the chief places of this our evening synagogue. What for? ‘They did not stick you up’ say you,—you paid for your stalls with your own money. Where did you get your money? Some of you—if any Reverend gentlemen, as I hope, are among us,—by selling the Gospel; others by selling Justice; others by selling their Blood—(and no man has any right to sell aught of these three things, any more than a woman her body,)—the rest, if not by swindling, by simple taxation of the labour of the shilling gallery,—or of the yet poorer or better persons who have not so much, or will not spend so much, as the shilling to get there? How else should you, or could you, get your money,—simpletons?

Not that it is essentially your fault, poor feathered moths,—any more than the dead shoemaker’s. That blasphemous blockheadism of Mr. Greg’s,[6] and the like of him, that you can swill salvation into other people’s bodies out of your own champagne-bottles, is the main root of all your national miseries. Indeed you are willing enough to believe that devil’s-gospel, you rich ones; or [[11]]most of you would have detected the horror of it before now; but yet the chief wrong lies with the assertors of it,—and once and again I tell you, the words of Christ are true,—and not their’s; and that the day has come for fasting, and prayer, not for feasting; but, above all, for labour—personal and direct labour—on the Earth that bears you, and buries—as best it can.

9th December.—I heard yesterday that the son of the best English portrait-painter we have had since Gainsborough, had learnt farming; that his father had paid two hundred pounds a year to obtain that instruction for him; and that the boy is gone, in high spirits, to farm—in Jamaica! So far, so good. Nature and facts are beginning to assert themselves to the British mind. But very dimly.

For, first, observe, the father should have paid nothing for that boy’s farming education. As soon as he could hold a hoe, the little fellow should have been set to do all he could for his living, under a good farmer for master; and as he became able to do more, taught more, until he knew all that his master knew,—winning, all the while he was receiving that natural education, his bread by the sweat of his brow.

‘But there are no farmers who teach—none who take care of their boys, or men.’

Miserables again, whose fault is that? The landlords choose to make the farmers middlemen between the peasants and themselves—grinders, not of corn, but of [[12]]flesh,—for their rent. And of course you dare not put your children under them to be taught.

Read Gotthelf’s ‘Ulric the Farm Servant’ on this matter. It is one of his great novels,—great as Walter Scott’s, in the truth and vitality of it, only inferior in power of design. I would translate it all in Fors, if I had time; and indeed hope to make it soon one of my school series, of which, and other promised matters, or delayed ones, I must now take some order, and give some account, in this opening letter of the year, as far as I can, only, before leaving the young farmer among the Blacks, please observe that he goes there because you have all made Artificial Blacks of yourselves, and unmelodious Christys,—nothing but the whites of your eyes showing through the unclean skins of you, here, in Merry England, where there was once green ground to farm instead of ashes.

And first,—here’s the woodcut, long promised, of a rose-leaf cut by the leaf-cutting bee, true in size and shape; a sound contribution to Natural History, so far as it reaches. Much I had to say of it, but am not in humour to-day. Happily, the letter from a valued Companion, Art. III. in Notes, may well take place of any talk of mine.[7]

Secondly, I promised a first lesson in writing, of which, [[13]]therefore, (that we may see what is our present knowledge on the subject, and what farther we may safely ask Theuth[8] to teach,) I have had engraved two examples, one of writing in the most authoritative manner, used for modern service, and the other of writing by a practised scribe of the fourteenth century. To make the comparison fair, we must take the religious, and therefore most careful, scripture of both dates; so, for example of modern sacred scripture, I take the casting up of a column in my banker’s book; and for the ancient, a letter A, with a few following words, out of a Greek Psalter, which [[14]]is of admirable and characteristic, but not (by any honest copyist,) inimitable execution.

Here then, first, is modern writing; in facsimile of which I have thought it worth while to employ Mr. Burgess’s utmost skill; for it seems to me a fact of profound significance that all the expedients we have invented for saving time, by steam and machinery, (not to speak of the art of printing,) leave us yet so hurried, and flurried, that we cannot produce any lovelier calligraphy than this, even to certify the gratifying existence of a balance of eleven hundred and forty-two pounds, thirteen shillings, and twopence, while the old writer, though required, eventually, to produce the utmost possible number of entire psalters with his own hand, yet has time for the execution of every initial letter of them in the manner here exhibited.

Respecting which, you are to observe that this is pure writing; not painting or drawing, but the expression of form by lines such as a pen can easily produce, (or a brush used with the point, in the manner of a pen;) and with a certain habitual currency and fluent [[15]]habit of finger, yet not dashing or flourishing, but with perfect command of direction in advance, and moment of pause, at any point.

You may at first, and very naturally, suppose, good reader, that it will not advance your power of English writing to copy a Greek sentence. But, with your pardon, the first need, for all beautiful writing, is that your hand should be, in the true and virtuous sense, free; that is to say, able to move in any direction it is ordered, and not cramped to a given slope, or to any given form of letter. And also, whether you can learn Greek or not, it is well, (and perfectly easy,) to learn the Greek alphabet, that if by chance a questionable word occur in your Testament, or in scientific books, you may be able to read it, and even look it out in a dictionary. And this particular manner of Greek writing I wish you to notice, because it is such as Victor [[16]]Carpaccio represents St. Jerome reading in his study; and I shall be able to illustrate by it some points of Byzantine character of extreme historical interest.

Copy, therefore, this letter A, and the following words, in as perfect facsimile as you can, again and again, not being content till a tracing from the original fits your copy to the thickness of its penstroke. And even by the time next Fors comes out, you will begin to know how to use a pen. Also, you may at spare times practise copying any clearly-printed type, only without the difference of thickness in parts of letters; the best writing for practical purposes is that which most resembles print, connected only, for speed, by the current line.

Next, for some elementary practice of the same kind in the more difficult art of Reading.

A young student, belonging to the working classes, who has been reading books a little too difficult or too grand for him, asking me what he shall read next, I have told him, ‘Waverley’—with extreme care.

It is true that, in grandeur and difficulty, I have not a whit really lowered his standard; for it is an achievement as far beyond him, at present, to understand ‘Waverley,’ as to understand the ‘Odyssey;’ but the road, though as steep and high-reaching as any he has travelled, is smoother for him. What further directions I am now going to give him, will be good for all young men of active minds who care to make such activity serviceable. [[17]]

Read your ‘Waverley,’ I repeat, with extreme care: and of every important person in the story, consider first what the virtues are; then what the faults inevitable to them by nature and breeding; then what the faults they might have avoided; then what the results to them of their faults and virtues, under the appointment of fate.

Do this after reading each chapter; and write down the lessons which it seems to you that Scott intended in it; and what he means you to admire, what to despise.

Secondly,—supposing you to be, in any the smallest real measure, a Christian,—begin the history of Abraham, as preparatory to that of the first Law-giver whom you have in some understanding to obey. And the history of Abraham must be led up to, by reading carefully from Genesis ix. 20th, forward, and learning the main traditions which the subsequent chapters contain.

And observe, it does not matter in the least to you, at present, how far these traditions are true. Your business is only to know what is said in Genesis. That does not matter to you, you think? Much less does it matter what Mr. Smith or Mr. Robinson said last night at that public meeting; or whether Mr. Black, or his brother, shot Mrs. White; or anything else whatever, small or great, that you will find said or related in the morning papers. But to know what is said in Genesis will enable you to understand, in some sort, the [[18]]effect of that saying on men’s minds, through at least two thousand years of the World’s History. Which, if you mean to be a scholar and gentleman, you must make some effort to do.

And this is the way to set about it. You see the tenth chapter of Genesis names to you the children, and children’s children, of Noah, from whom the nations of the world (it says) came, and by whom the lands of the world (it says) were divided.

You must learn them by rote, in order. You know already, I suppose, the three names, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; begin with Shem, and learn the names of his sons, thus:

[[19]]

Now, you see that makes a pretty ornamental letter T, with a little joint in the middle of its stalk.

And this letter T you must always be able to write, out of your head, without a moment’s hesitation. However stupid you may be at learning by rote, thus much can always be done by dint of sheer patient repetition. Read the centre column straight down, over and again, for an hour together, and you will find it at last begin to stick in your head. Then, as soon as it is fast there, say it over and over again when it is dark, or when you are out walking, till you can’t make a mistake in it.

Then observe farther that Peleg, in whose days the earth was divided, had a brother named Joktan, who had thirteen children. Of these, you need not mind the names of ten; but the odd three are important to you. Sheba, Ophir, and Havilah. You have perhaps heard of these before; and assuredly, if you go on reading Fors, you will hear of them again.

And these thirteen children of Joktan, you see, had their dwelling “from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the East.” I don’t know anything about Mesha and Sephar, yet; but I may: in the meantime, learn the sentence, and recollect that these people are fixed somewhere, at any rate, because they are to be Masters of Gold, which is fixed in Eastern, or Western, mountains; but that the children of the other brother, Peleg, can go wherever they like, [[20]]and often where they shouldn’t,—for “in his days was the earth divided.” Recollect also that the children of both brothers, or, in brief, the great Indian gold-possessing race, and the sacred race of prophets and kings of the higher spiritual world, are in the 21st verse of this chapter called “all the children of Eber.” If you learn so much as this well, it’s enough for this month: but I may as well at once give you the forms you have to learn for the other two sons.

The seventh verse is to be noted as giving the gold-masters of Africa, under two of the same names as those of Asia, but must not be learned for fear of confusion. The form above given must be amplified and commented on variously, but is best learned first in its simplicity.

[[21]]

I leave this blunt-stalked and flat-headed letter T, also, in its simplicity, and we will take up the needful detail in next Fors.

Together with which, (all the sheets being now printed, and only my editorial preface wanting,) I doubt not will be published the first volume of the classical series of books which I purpose editing for St. George’s library;—Xenophon’s Economist, namely, done into English for us by two of my Oxford pupils; this volume, I hope, soon to be followed by Gotthelf’s Ulric the Farm-servant, either in French or English, as the Second Fors, faithfully observant of copyright and other dues, may decide; meantime, our first historical work, relating the chief decision of Atropos respecting the fate of England after the Conquest, is being written for me by a friend, and Fellow of my college of Corpus Christi, whose help I accept, in St. George’s name,—all the more joyfully, because he is our head gardener, no less than our master-historian.

And for the standard theological writings which are ultimately to be the foundation of this body of secular literature, I have chosen seven authors, whose lives and works, so far as the one can be traced or the other certified, shall be, with the best help I can obtain from the good scholars of Oxford, prepared one by one in perfect editions for the St. George’s schools. These seven books will contain, in as many volumes as may be needful, the lives and writings of [[22]]the men who have taught the purest theological truth hitherto known to the Jews, Greeks, Latins, Italians, and English; namely, Moses, David, Hesiod, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and, for seventh, summing the whole with vision of judgment, St. John the Divine.

The Hesiod I purpose, if my life is spared, to translate myself (into prose), and to give in complete form. Of Virgil I shall only take the two first Georgics, and the sixth book of the Æneid, but with the Douglas translation;[9] adding the two first books of Livy, for completion of the image of Roman life. Of Chaucer, I take the authentic poems, except the Canterbury Tales; together with, be they authentic or not, the Dream, and the fragment of the translation of the Romance of the Rose, adding some French chivalrous literature of the same date. I shall so order this work, that, in such measure as it may be possible to me, it shall be in a constantly progressive relation to the granted years of my life. The plan of it I give now, and will explain in full detail, that my scholars may carry it out, if I cannot. [[23]]

And now let my general readers observe, finally, about all reading,—You must read, for the nourishment of your mind, precisely under the moral laws which, regulate your eating for the nourishment of the body. That is to say, you must not eat for the pleasure of eating, nor read, for the pleasure of reading. But, if you manage yourself rightly, you will intensely enjoy your dinner, and your book. If you have any sense, you can easily follow out this analogy: I have not time at present to do it for you; only be sure it holds, to the minutest particular, with this difference only, that the vices and virtues of reading are more harmful on the one side, and higher on the other, as the soul is more precious than the body. Gluttonous reading is a worse vice than gluttonous eating; filthy and foul reading, a much more loathsome habit than filthy eating. Epicurism in books is much more difficult of attainment than epicurism in meat, but plain and virtuous feeding the most entirely pleasurable.

And now, one step of farther thought will enable you to settle a great many questions with one answer.

As you may neither eat, nor read, for the pleasure of eating or reading, so you may do nothing else for the pleasure of it, but for the use. The moral difference between a man and a beast is, that the one acts primarily for use, the other for pleasure. And all acting for pleasure before use, or instead of use, is, in one word, ‘Fornication.’ That is the accurate meaning [[24]]of the words ‘harlotry,’ or ‘fornication,’ as used in the Bible, wherever they occur spoken of nations, and especially in all the passages relating to the great or spiritual Babylon.

And the Law of God concerning man is, that if he acts for use—that is to say, as God’s servant;—he shall be rewarded with such pleasure as no heart can conceive nor tongue tell; only it is revealed by the Spirit, as that Holy Ghost of life and health possesses us; but if we act for pleasure instead of use, we shall be punished by such misery as no heart can conceive nor tongue tell; but which can only be revealed by the adverse spirit, whose is the power of death. And that—I assure you—is absolute, inevitable, daily and hourly Fact for us, to the simplicity of which I to-day invite your scholarly and literary attention. [[25]]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

The St. George’s Company is now distinctly in existence; formed of about twenty accepted Companions, to whose number I am daily adding, and to whom the entire property of the Company legally belongs, and who have the right at any moment to depose the Master, and dispose of the property in any manner they may think fit. Unless I believed myself capable of choosing persons for Companions who might be safely entrusted with this power I should not have endeavoured to form the society at all. Every one of these Companions has a right to know the names and addresses of the rest, which the Master of the Company must furnish him with; and of course the roll of the names, which will be kept in Corpus Christi College, is their legal certificate. I do not choose to begin this book at the end of the year, but at the beginning of the next term it will be done; and as our lawyer’s paper, revised, is now—15th December—in my hands, and approved, the 1st of January will see us securely constituted. I give below the initials of the Companions accepted before the 10th of this month, thinking that my doing so will be pleasing to some of them, and right, for all.

Initials of Companions accepted before 10th December, 1875. I only give two letters, which are I think as much indication as is at present desirable:— [[26]]

• 1. D. L.
• 2. F. C.
• 3. L. B.
• 4. B. B.
• 5. F. T.
• 6. R. T.
• 7. G. S.
• 8. B. A.
• 9. A. H.
• 10. T. D.
• 11. M. K.
• 12. S. B.
• 13. G. A.

• 14. A. H.
• 15. W. S.
• 16. W. S.
• 17. J. B.
• 18. B. G.
• 19. H. L.
• 20. J. F.
• 21. J. M.
• 22. R. S.
• 23. H. C.
• 24. J. T.
• 25. J. S.

This ‘Fors’ is already so much beyond its usual limits, and it introduces subject-matter so grave, that I do not feel inclined to go into further business details this month; the rather because in the February ‘Fors,’ with the accounts of the Company, I must begin what the Master of the Company will be always compelled to furnish—statement of his own personal current expenditure. And this will require some explanation too long for to-day. I defer also the Wakefield correspondence, for I have just got fresh information about the destruction of Wakefield chapel, and have an election petition to examine:

I. Our notes for the year 1876 may, I think, best begin with the two pieces of news which follow; and which, by order of Atropos, also followed each other in the column of the ‘Morning Advertiser,’ from which I print them.

For, though I am by this time known to object to Advertisement in general, I beg the public to observe that my objection is only to bought or bribed Advertisement (especially if it be Advertisement of one’s self). But that I hold myself, and this book of mine, for nothing better than Morning, Noon, and [[27]]Evening Advertisers, of what things appear verily noteworthy in the midst of us. Whereof I commend the circumstances of the death, beneath related, very particularly to the attention of the Bishops of London and York.

Shocking Death from Starvation.—Last night Mr. Bedford, the Westminster coroner, held an inquest at the Board-room, Dean Street, Soho, on the body of Thomas Gladstone, aged 58, of 43, King Street, Seven Dials, a shoemaker, who was found dead on Thursday last.

William Gladstone, a lad of 15, identified the body as that of his father, with whom he and three other children lived. Deceased had been ailing for some time past, and was quite unable to do any work. The recent cold weather had such an effect upon him that he was compelled to remain in his room on Wednesday last, and at three the next morning witness found him sitting up in bed complaining of cold, and that he was dying. Witness went to sleep, and on awaking at eight that morning he found deceased with his head in the fireplace. Thinking he was only asleep, witness went to work, and on returning two hours later he was still in the same position, and it was then found that he was dead.

Coroner.—Why did you not send for a doctor?

Witness.—I didn’t know he wanted one until he was dead, and we found out amongst us that he was dead.

Jane Gladstone, the widow, said she had been living apart from her husband for some months, and first heard of his death at 2.30 on Thursday afternoon, and upon going to his room found him dead lying upon a mattress on the floor. He was always ailing, and suffered from consumption, for which he had received advice at St. George’s Hospital. They had had seven children, and for some time prior to the separation they had been in the greatest distress; and on the birth of her last child, on December 7, 1874, [[28]]they applied at the St. James’s workhouse for relief, and received two loaves and 2 lb. of meat per week for a month, and at the end of that time one of the relieving officers stopped the relief, saying that they were both able to work. They told the relieving officer that they had no work, and had seven children to keep, but he still refused to relieve them.

By the Coroner.—They did not ask again for relief, as deceased said “he had made up his mind that, after the way he had been turned away like a dog, he would sooner starve,” and she herself would also rather do so. Deceased was quite unable to earn sufficient to maintain the family, and their support fell mainly upon her, but it was such a hard life that she got situations for two of the boys, got a girl into a school, and leaving the other three boys with deceased, took the baby and separated from him. He was in great want at that time.

The Coroner.—Then why did you not go to the workhouse and represent his case to them?

Witness.—What was the good when we had been refused twice?

Mr. Green, the coroner’s officer, said that he believed the witness had been in receipt of two loaves a week from the St. James’s workhouse, but had not called lately for the loaves.

The Coroner said he hardly thought that so poor a woman would refuse or neglect to apply for so valuable a contribution to the needs of a family as two loaves of bread; and some of the jury said that Mr. Green must be mistaken, and that such a statement should be made upon oath if at all. The officer, however, was not sworn.

John Collins, of 43, King Street, said that about eleven o’clock on Thursday morning he met a gentleman on the stairs, who said that he had been up to the room of deceased to take him some work to do, but that the room door was locked, and a child had called out, “Father is dead, and you can’t come in.” Witness at [[29]]once went for the police, who came, and broke open the door. Upon going into the room witness found a piece of paper (produced) in which was written, “Harry, get a pint of milk for the three of you; father is dead. Tell your schoolmaster you can’t come to school any more. Cut your own bread, but don’t use the butter.” He believed that the eldest boy had returned home at ten o’clock in the morning, and finding two of the boys at school had left the note for them.

Police-constable Crabb, 18 C R., deposed to breaking open the door and finding deceased dead on the floor, with a little child crouching by him shivering with cold.

Dr. Howard Clarke, of 19, Lisle Street, Leicester Square, and Gerrard Street, Soho, said that he was called to see the deceased, and found him lying upon the floor of his room dead and cold, with nothing on him but stockings and a shirt, the room being nearly destitute of furniture. The place was in a most filthy condition, and deceased himself was so shockingly dirty and neglected, and so overrun with vermin, that he (witness) was compelled to wash his hands five times during the post-mortem examination. By the side of the corpse sat a little child about four years old, who cried piteously, “Oh, don’t take me away; poor father’s dead!” There was nothing in the shape of food but a morsel of butter, some arrowroot, and a piece of bread, and the room was cold and cheerless in the extreme. Upon making a post-mortem he found the brain congested, and the whole of the organs of the body more or less diseased. The unfortunate man must have suffered fearfully. The body was extremely emaciated, and there was not a particle of food or drop of liquid in the stomach or intestines. Death had resulted probably from a complication of ailments, but there was no doubt whatever that such death had been much accelerated by want of the common necessaries of life.

The Coroner.—Starvation, in short? [[30]]

Witness.—Precisely so. I never in all my experience saw a greater case of destitution.

The Coroner.—Then I must ask the jury to adjourn the case. Here is a very serious charge against workhouse officials, and a man dying clearly from starvation, and it is due alike to the family of the deceased, the parish officials, and the public at large, that the case should be sifted to the very bottom, and the real cause of this death elucidated.

Adjourned accordingly.

Shocking Discovery.—A painful sensation was, says the ‘Sheffield Telegraph,’ caused in the neighbourhood of Castleford, near Pontefract, on Friday evening, by the report made to a police-constable stationed at Allerton Bywater that a woman and child had been found dead in bed in Lock Lane, Castleford, under most mysterious circumstances, and that two small children were also found nearly starved to death beside the two dead bodies. The report, however, turned out to be correct. The circumstances surrounding the mystery have now been cleared up. An inquest, held on Saturday at Allerton Bywater, before Dr. Grabham, of Pontefract, reveals the following:—It appears on Sunday, the 28th ult., John Wilson, miner, husband of Emma Wilson, aged thirty-six years (one of the deceased), and father of Fred, aged eighteen months (the other deceased), left home to proceed to his employment at Street House Colliery, and would remain away all the week. Mrs. Wilson was seen going into her house on Monday evening, but was not seen again alive. There were besides the woman three children of very tender years in the house. The neighbours missed the woman and children from Monday night, but finding the blinds were drawn down, concluded that the family had gone to the husband. On Friday evening a neighbour, named Ann Foggett, rapped at the door, and hearing the faint bark of a dog, which was found to be fastened up in a [[31]]cupboard, continued to knock at the door, and ultimately heard the voice of a child. The door was subsequently burst open, and on proceeding upstairs the sight was horrifying. On the bed lay the mother and infant child dead, beside whom were two other small children in their night dresses. They, too, were nigh death’s door, having been without proper food and clothing evidently since their mother’s death, which must have occurred on the Monday night. Beside the corpse of the mother lay a knife and portions of a loaf of bread, which had been no doubt taken to her by the children to be supplied with some, but being unable to get an answer from her, they had nibbled the middle of the loaf clean away. A post-mortem examination showed that the mother had died from heart disease, and the child on the following day from starvation. The jury returned a verdict to that effect.—Morning Advertiser, December 7th, 1875.

II. The following is sent me by a correspondent. Italics mine throughout. The passage about threshing is highly curious; compare my account of the threshers at Thun. Poor Gilbert had been doubtless set to thresh, like Milton’s fiend, by himself, and had no creambowl afterwards.

24th October, 1800.

Gilbert Burns to James Currie, M.D.

The evils peculiar to the lower ranks of life derive their power to wound us from the suggestions of false pride, and the contagion of luxury, rather than from the refinement of our taste. There is little labour which custom will not make easy to a man in health, if he is not ashamed of his employment, or does not begin to compare his situation with those who go about at their ease. But the man of enlarged mind feels the respect due to him as a man; he has learnt that no employment is dishonourable in itself; that, while he performs aright the duties of the station in which God has placed him, he is as great as a [[32]]king in the eyes of Him whom he is principally desirous to please. For the man of taste, who is constantly obliged to labour, must of necessity be religious. If you teach him only to reason, you may make him an atheist, a demagogue, or any vile thing; but if you teach him to feel, his feelings can only find their proper and natural relief in devotion and religious resignation. I can say from my own experience that there is no sort of farm labour inconsistent with the most refined and pleasurable state of the mind, that I am acquainted with, threshing alone excepted. That, indeed, I have always considered insupportable drudgery, and think the man who invented the threshing-machine ought to have a statue among the benefactors of his country.

Perhaps the thing of most importance in the education of the common people is to prevent the intrusion of artificial wants. I bless the memory of my father for almost everything in the dispositions of my mind and the habits of my life, which I can approve of, and for none more than the pains he took to impress my mind with the sentiment that nothing was more unworthy the character of a man than that his happiness should in the least depend on what he should eat and drink.

To this hour I never indulge in the use of any delicacy but I feel a degree of reproach and alarm for the degradation of the human character. If I spent my halfpence in sweetmeats, every mouthful I swallowed was accompanied with shame and remorse. … Whenever vulgar minds begin to shake off the dogmas of the religion in which they have been educated, the progress is quick and immediate to downright infidelity, and nothing but refinement of mind can enable them to distinguish between the pure essence of religion and the gross systems which men have been perpetually connecting it with. Higher salaries for village schoolmasters, high English reading-classes, village libraries,—if once such high education were to become general, the [[33]]low delights of the public-house, and other scenes of riot, would be neglected; while industry, order, and cleanliness, and every virtue which taste and independence of mind could recommend, would prevail and flourish. Thus possessed of a virtuous and enlightened populace, with delight I should consider my country at the head of all the nations of the earth, ancient or modern.—From the ‘Life of Robert Burns.’

III. The following letter is, as I above said, from a valued, and, at present, my most valued,—Companion;—a poor person, suffering much and constant pain, confined to her room, and seeing from her window only a piece of brick wall and a little space of sky. The bit about the spider is the most delightful thing to me that has ever yet come of my teaching:—

I have told the only two children I have seen this summer, about the bees, and both were deeply interested, almost awe-stricken by the wonderful work. How could they do it without scissors? One, an intelligent boy of six years, is the well-cared-for child of well-to-do parents. He came into my room when I was sorting some of the cut leaves, and I gave him a very cleanly-cut specimen, saying, “What do you think cut this, Willie?” “It was somebody very clever, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Very clever indeed,” I said. “Then it was Miss Mildred!”—his governess. “No, not Miss Mildred,” I replied. He stood silent by the side of the bed for a minute, looking intently at the leaf in his hand, and evidently puzzling out some idea of his own; and I waited for it—a child’s own thoughts are lovely;—then my little visitor turned eagerly to me: “I know,—I know who did it: it was God.”

My second pupil is a girl of twelve years. She was a veritable “little ragamuffin” when—ten months back—we took her, [[34]]motherless, and most miserably destitute, into our home, in the hope of training her for service; and my sister is persistently labouring—with pleasing success, and disheartening failure—to mould her into an honest woman, while I try to supplement her efforts by giving the child—Harriett—lessons according to ‘Fors.’ But I regret to say it is only partially done, for I am but a learner myself, and sorely hindered by illness: still the purpose is always in my mind, and I do what I can.

Taking advantage of every trifle that will help to give Harriett a love for innocent out-of-door life, we told her—as soon as we could show her some of the cut leaves—of the work of the cutter bees, much to her delight. “And then she forgot all about them,” many persons would assert confidently, if they heard this story.

Not so, for some weeks after she told me with great pride that she had two of “the bees’ leaves,” thinking they were probably only eaten by caterpillars. I asked to see them; and then, how she obtained them. She had found them in a glass of withered flowers sent out of the parlour, and carefully dried them—(she had seen me press leaves); and she added, “all the girls” in her class in the Sunday-school “did want them.” I wondered why the leaves were taken there, until I discovered that she keeps them in her Testament.

So far the possibility; may I now give a proof of the utility of such teaching? When Harriett first came to us, she had an appetite for the horrible that quite frightened me, but it is gradually, I hope, dying out, thanks to the substitution of child-like pleasures. Imagine a child of eleven years coolly asking—as Harriett did a few days after she came—“If you please, has anybody been hanged, or anything, this week?” and she added, before I could reply, and looking quite wistfully at a newspaper lying near, “I should love to hear about it, please.” I could have cried, for I believe there are many lovable [[35]]young ladies in this town who are fretting out weary lives, to whom work would be salvation, and who can tell the number of such children all about them, who have not a soul to care how they live, or if they die.

Harriett used to catch and kill flies for pleasure, and would have so treated any living insect she saw; but she now holds bees in great respect, and also, I hope, some other insect workers, for one day she was much pleased to find one of the small spotted spiders, which had during the night spun its web across the fire-grate. She asked me many questions about it, (I permit her to do so on principle, at certain times, as a part of her education); she said it was “a shame” to break “such beautiful work,” and left it as long as she could; and then, (entirely of her own accord) she carefully slipped her dusting brush under web and spider, and so put the “pretty little dear” outside the window, with the gentle remark, “There, now you can make another.” Was not this hopeful? This child had lived all her life in one of the low, crowded courts in the centre of the town, and her ignorance of all green life was inconceivable. For instance, to give her a country walk I sent her last March with a parcel to a village near the town, and when she came back—having walked a mile through field-paths—she said she did not think there were “such a many trees and birds in the world.” And on that memorable day she first saw the lambs in the field—within two miles of the house where she was born. Yet she has the purest love for flowers, and goes into very real ecstasies over the commonest weeds and grasses, and is nursing with great pride and affection some roots of daisy, buttercup, and clover which she has brought from the fields, and planted in the little yard at the back of our house; and every new leaf they put forth is wonderful and lovely to her, though of course her ideas of “gardening” are as yet most elementary, and will be for some time, apparently. But it is really helpful to me to see her happiness [[36]]over it, and also when my friends send me a handful of cut flowers—we have no garden; and the eagerness with which she learns even their names, for it makes me feel more hopeful about the future of our working classes than some of your correspondents.

The despairing letter from Yorkshire in last ‘Fors’—on their incapacity to enjoy wholesome amusements—has prompted me, as I am writing to you, to tell you this as an antidote to the pain that letter must have given you. For if we can do nothing for this generation, cannot we make sure that the next shall be wiser? Have not young ladies a mighty power in their own hands here, if they but use it for good, and especially those who are Sabbath-school teachers? Suppose each one who has a garden felt it to be her duty to make all her scholars as familiar with all the life in it as she is herself, and every one who can take a country walk her duty to take her girls with her—two or three at a time—until they know and love every plant within reach; would not teacher and pupils learn with this much more that would also be invaluable?[10] And if our Sunday-school children were not left to killing flies and stoning cats and dogs during the week, would there be so many brutal murders and violent assaults? The little English heathen I have named has attended a Sunday-school for about six years, and the Sunday-school teachers of this town are—most of them—noble men and women, who devoutly labour year after year “all for love, and nothing for reward.” But even good people too often look on the degradation of the lower classes as a matter of course, and despise them for ignorance they cannot help. Here the sneer of “those low shoemakers” is for ever on the lip, yet few ask how they became so much lower than ourselves; still I have very pleasing proof of what may be done even for adults by a little wise guidance, but I must not enter into that subject. Pray forgive me for writing so [[37]]much: I have been too deeply interested, and now feel quite ashamed of the length of this.

Again thanking you most earnestly for all you have taught me to see and to do,

I remain, very faithfully yours.

IV. What the young ladies, old ladies, and middle aged-ladies are practically doing with the blessed fields and mountains of their native land, the next letter very accurately shows. For the sake of fine dresses they let their fathers and brothers invest in any Devil’s business they can steal the poor’s labour by, or destroy the poor’s gardens by; pre-eminently, and of all Devil’s businesses, in rushing from place to place, as the Gennesaret swine. And see here what comes of it.

A gentleman told me the other night that trade, chiefly in cotton from India, was going back to Venice. One can’t help being sorry—not for our sake, but Venice’s—when one sees what commercial prosperity means now.

There was a lovely picture of Cox’s of Dollwydellan (I don’t think it’s spelt right) at the Club. All the artists paint the Slidr valley; and do you know what is being done to it? It’s far worse than a railway to Ambleside or Grasmere, because those places are overrun already; but Dollwydellan is such a quiet out-of-the-way corner, and no one in the world will be any the better for a railway there. I went about two months ago, when I was getting better from my first illness; but all my pleasure in the place was spoiled by the railway they are making from Betwys. It is really melancholy to see the havoc it makes. Of course no one cares, and they crash, and cut, and destroy, like utter barbarians, as they are. Through the sweetest, wildest little glens, the line is cleared—rocks are blasted for it, trees lie cut—anything and everything is sacrificed—and for what? The tourists will see nothing if they [[38]]go in the train; the few people who go down to Betwys or Llanwrst to market, will perhaps go oftener, and so spend more money in the end, and Dollwydellan will get some more people to lodge there in the summer, and prices will go up.[11] In the little village, a hideous ‘traction engine’ snorted and puffed out clouds of black smoke, in the mornings, and then set off crunching up and down the roads, to carry coals for the works, I think; but I never in my life saw anything more incongruous than that great black monster getting its pipes filled at a little spring in the village, while the lads all stood gaping round. The poor little clergyman told us his village had got sadly corrupted since the navvies came into it; and when he pointed out to us a pretty old stone bridge that was being pulled down for the railway, he said, “Yes, I shall miss that, very much;” but he would not allow that things so orthodox as railways could be bad on the whole. I never intended, when I began, to trouble you with all this, but Cox’s picture set me off, and it really is a great wrong that any set of men can take possession of one of the few peaceful spots left in England, and hash it up like that. Fancy driving along the road up the Slidr valleys and seeing on boards a notice, to “beware when the horn was blowing,” and every now and then hearing a great blasting, smoke, and rocks crashing down. Well, you know just as well as I how horrible it all is. Only I can’t think why people sit still, and let the beautiful places be destroyed.

The owners of that property,—I forget their name, but they had monuments in the little old church,—never live there, [[39]]having another ‘place’ in Scotland,—so of course they don’t care.[12]

V. A fragment to illustrate the probable advantage of sulphurous air, and articles, in the country.

I did not think to tell you, when speaking of the fatality of broken limbs in our little dressmaker and her family, that when in St. Thomas’s Hospital with a broken thigh, the doctors said in all probability the tenderness of her bones was owing to the manufacture of sulphur by her mother’s grandfather. Dr. Simon knows her family through operating on the brother of our dressmaker, and often gave them kindly words at the hospital.

I am, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully.

[[41]]

[1] See first article in Notes. [↑]

[2] Inferno, III. 60. I fear that few modern readers of Dante understand the dreadful meaning of this hellish outer district, or suburb, full of the refuse or worthless scum of Humanity—such numbers that “non haverei creduto, che morte tanta n’ havesse disfatta,”—who are stung to bloody torture by insects, and whose blood and tears together—the best that human souls can give—are sucked up, on the hell-ground, by worms. [↑]

[3] Essay XI. [↑]

[4] I leave this passage as it was written: though as it passes through the press, it is ordered by Atropos that I should hear a piece of evidence on this matter no less clear as to the present ministry of such powers as that which led Peter out of prison, than all the former, or nearly all, former evidence examined by me was of the presence of the legion which ruled among the Tombs of Gennesaret. [↑]

[5] See second article in Notes. [↑]

[6] Quoted in last Fors, p. 341, lines 18–22, from ‘Contemporary Review.’ Observe that it is blasphemy, definitively and calmly uttered, first against Nature, and secondly against Christ. [↑]

[7] The most valuable notes of the kind correspondent who sent me this leaf, with many others, and a perfect series of nests, must be reserved till spring-time: my mind is not free for them, now. [↑]

[8] Compare Letter XVI. 11, and XVII. 7. [↑]

[9]

“A Bishop by the altar stood,

A noble Lord of Douglas blood,

With mitre sheen, and rocquet white,

Yet showed his meek and thoughtful eye

But little pride of prelacy;

More pleased that, in a barbarous age,

He gave rude Scotland Virgil’s page,

Than that beneath his rule he held

The bishopric of fair Dunkeld.”

[10] Yes, dear lady; see, therefore, the next article. [↑]

[11] Yes, my dear, shares down; and—it is some poor comfort for you and me to know that. For as I correct this sheet for press, I hear from the proprietor of the chief slate quarry in the neighbourhood, that the poor idiots of shareholders have been beguiled into tunnelling four miles under Welsh hills—to carry slates! and even those from the chief quarry in question, they cannot carry, for the proprietors are under contract to send them by an existing line. [↑]

[12] Will any charitable Christian tell me who the owners are?—in the meantime, “confusion on their banners wait.” [↑]

FORS CLAVIGERA

LETTER LXII.

There were more, and more harmful misprints in last ‘Fors’ than usual, owing to my having driven my printers to despair, after they had made all the haste they could, by late dubitation concerning the relative ages of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, which forced me to cut out a sentence about them, and displace corrected type. But I must submit to all and sundry such chances of error, for, to prevent them, would involve a complete final reading of the whole, with one’s eye and mind on the look-out for letters and stops all along, for which I rarely allow myself time, and which, had I a month to spare, would yet be a piece of work ill spent, in merely catching three t’s instead of two in a “[lettter].” The name of the Welsh valley is wrong, too; but I won’t venture on correction of that, which I feel to be hopeless; the reader must, however, be kind enough to transfer the ‘and,’ now the sixth word in the upper line of the [[42]]note at page 38, and make it the fourth word, instead; to put a note of interrogation at the end of clause in the fourth line of page 35, and to insert an s, changing ‘death’ into ‘deaths’ in the third line of page 27;—the death in Sheffield being that commended to the Episcopic attention of York, and that in London to the Episcopic attention of London.

And this commendation, the reader will I hope perceive to be made in sequel to much former talk concerning Bishops, Soldiers, Lawyers, and Squires;—which, perhaps, he imagined me to have spoken jestingly; or it may be, in witlessness; or it may be, in voluble incipient insanity. Admitting myself in no small degree open to such suspicion, I am now about to re-word some matters which madness would gambol from; and I beg the reader to observe that any former gambolling on my part, awkward or untimely as it may have seemed, has been quite as serious, and intentionally progressive, as Morgiana’s dance round the captain of the Forty Thieves.

If, then, the reader will look at the analysis of Episcopacy in ‘Sesame and Lilies,’ the first volume of all my works; next at the chapter on Episcopacy in ‘Time and Tide;’ and lastly, refer to what he can gather in the past series of ‘Fors,’ he will find the united gist of all to be, that Bishops cannot take, much less give, account of men’s souls unless they first take and give account of their bodies: and that, [[43]]therefore, all existing poverty and crime in their dioceses, discoverable by human observation, must be, when they are Bishops indeed, clearly known to, and describable by them, or their subordinates. Of whom the number, and discipline in St. George’s Company, if by God’s grace it ever take the form I intend, will be founded on the institution of the same by the first Bishop, or more correctly Archbishop, whom the Christian church professes to obey. For what can possibly be the use of printing the Ten Commandments which he delivered, in gold,—framing them above the cathedral altar,—pronouncing them in a prelatically sonorous voice,—and arranging the responsive supplications of the audience to the tune of an organ of the best manufacture, if the commanding Bishops institute no inquiry whatever into the physical power of—say this starving shoemaker in Seven Dials,—to obey such a command as ‘thou shalt not covet’ in the article of meat; or of his son to honour in any available measure either the father or mother, of whom the one has departed to seek her separate living, and the other is lying dead with his head in the fireplace.

Therefore, as I have just said, our Bishops in St. George’s Company will be constituted in order founded on that appointed by the first Bishop of Israel, namely, that their Primate, or Supreme Watchman, shall appoint under him “out of all the people, able men, such as [[44]]fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers (or, at the least, observers) of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens;”[1] and that of these episcopic centurions, captains of fifty, and captains of ten, there will be required clear account of the individual persons they are set over;—even a baby being considered as a decimal quantity not to be left out of their account by the decimal Bishops,—in which episcopacy, however, it is not improbable that a queenly power may be associated, with Norman caps for mitres, and for symbol of authority, instead of the crosier, (or crook, for disentangling lost sheep of souls from among the brambles,) the broom, for sweeping diligently till they find lost silver of souls among the dust.

You think I jest, still, do you? Anything but that; only if I took off the Harlequin’s mask for a moment, you would say I was simply mad. Be it so, however, for this time.

I simply and most utterly mean, that, so far as my best judgment can reach, the present Bishops of the English Church, (with only one exception, known to me,—the Bishop of Natal,) have forfeited and fallen from their Bishoprics by transgression; and betrayal of their Lord, first by simony, and secondly, and chiefly, by lying for God with one mouth, and contending for their own personal interests as a professional body, as [[45]]if these were the cause of Christ. And that in the assembly and Church of future England, there must be, (and shall be so far as this present body of believers in God and His law now called together in the name of St. Michael and St. George are concerned,) set up and consecrated other Bishops; and under them, lower ministering officers and true “Dogs of the Lord,” who, with stricter inquisition than ever Dominican, shall take knowledge—not of creeds, but of every man’s way and means of life; and shall be either able to avouch his conduct as honourable and just, or bound to impeach it as shameful and iniquitous, and this down to minute details;—above all, or before all, particulars of revenue, every companion, retainer, or associate in the Company’s work being bound to keep such accounts that the position of his affairs may be completely known to the Bishops at any moment: and all bankruptcies or treacheries in money matters thus rendered impossible. Not that direct inquisition will be often necessary; for when the true nature of Theft, with the other particulars of the Moral Law, are rightly taught in our schools, grown-up men will no more think of stealing in business than in burglary. It is merely through the quite bestial ignorance of the Moral Law in which the English Bishops have contentedly allowed their flocks to be brought up, that any of the modern English conditions of trade are possible.

Of course, for such work, I must be able to find [[46]]what Jethro of Midian assumes could be found at once in Israel, these “men of truth, hating covetousness,” and all my friends laugh me to scorn for thinking to find any such.

Naturally, in a Christian country, it will be difficult enough; but I know there are still that kind of people among Midianites, Caffres, Red Indians, and the destitute, afflicted, and tormented, in dens and caves of the earth, where God has kept them safe from missionaries:—and, as I above said, even out of the rotten mob of money-begotten traitors calling itself a ‘people’ in England, I do believe I shall be able to extricate, by slow degrees, some faithful and true persons, hating covetousness, and fearing God.

And you will please to observe that this hate and fear are flat opposites one to the other; so that if a man fear or reverence God, he must hate covetousness; and if he fear or reverence covetousness, he must hate God; and there is no intermediate way whatsoever. Nor is it possible for any man, wilfully rich, to be a God-fearing person; but only for those who are involuntarily rich, and are making all the haste they prudently and piously can, to be poor; for money is a strange kind of seed; scattered, it is poison; but set, it is bread: so that a man whom God has appointed to be a sower must bear as lightly as he may the burden of gold and of possessions, till he find the proper places to sow them in. But persons desiring to be rich, and accumulating [[47]]riches, always hate God, and never fear Him; the idol they do fear—(for many of them are sincerely religious) is an imaginary, or mind-sculptured God of their own making, to their own liking; a God who allows usury, delights in strife and contention, and is very particular about everybody’s going to his synagogues on Sunday.

Indeed, when Adam Smith formally, in the name of the philosophers of Scotland and England, set up this opposite God, on the hill of cursing against blessing, Ebal against Gerizim; and declared that all men ‘naturally’ desired their neighbours’ goods; and that in the name of Covetousness, all the nations of the earth should be blessed,—it is true, that the half-bred and half-witted Scotchman had not gift enough in him to carve so much as his own calf’s head on a whinstone with his own hand; much less to produce a well molten and forged piece of gold, for old Scottish faith to break its tables of ten commandments at sight of. But, in leaving to every artless and ignorant boor among us the power of breeding, in imagination, each his own particular calf, and placidly worshipping that privately fatted animal; or, perhaps,—made out of the purest fat of it in molten Tallow instead of molten Gold,—images, which may be in any inventive moment, misshapen anew to his mind, Economical Theology has granted its disciples more perfect and fitting privilege.

From all taint or compliance with such idolatry, the [[48]]Companions of St. George have vowed to withdraw themselves; writing, and signing their submission to, the First and great Commandment, so called by Christ,—and the Second which is like unto it.

And since on these two hang all the Law and the Prophets, in signing these two promises they virtually vow obedience to all the Law of which Christ then spoke; and belief of all the Prophets of which Christ then spoke. What that law is; who those prophets are;—whether they only prophesied ‘until John,’ or whether St. Paul’s command to all Christians living, “Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy,”—is an important little commandment following the two great ones, I cannot tell you in a single letter, even if I altogether knew myself. Partly I do know;—and can teach you, if you will work. No one can teach you anything worth learning but through manual labour; the very bread of life can only be got out of the chaff of it by “rubbing it in your hands.”

You vow, then, that you will at least strive to keep both of these commandments—as far as, what some would call the corruption, but what in honest people is the weakness, of flesh, permits. If you cannot watch an hour, because you don’t love Christ enough to care about His agony, that is your weakness; but if you first sell Him, and then kiss Him, that is your corruption. I don’t know if I can keep either you or myself [[49]]awake; but at least we may put a stop to our selling and kissing. Be sure that you are serving Christ, till you are tired and can do no more, for that time: and then, even if you have not breath enough left to say “Master, Master” with,—He will not mind.

Begin therefore ‘to-day,’—(which you may, in passing, note to be your present leader’s signal-word or watch-word),—to do good work for Him—whether you live or die,—(see first promise asked of you, Letter II., page 21, explained in Letter VII., page 19, etc.,)—and see that every stroke of this work—be it weak or strong, shall therefore be done in love of God and your neighbour, and in hatred of covetousness. Which that you may hate accurately, wisely, and well, it is needful that you should thoroughly know, when you see it, or feel it. What covetousness is, therefore, let me beg you at once clearly to understand, by meditating on these following definitions.

Avarice means the desire to collect money, not goods. A ‘miser’ or ‘miserable person’ desires to collect goods only for the sake of turning them into money. If you can read French or German, read Molière’s l’Avare, and then get Gotthelf’s ‘Bernese Stories,’ and read ‘Schnitzfritz,’ with great care.

Avarice is a quite natural passion, and, within due limits, healthy. The addition of coin to coin, and of cipher to cipher, is a quite proper pleasure of human life, under due rule; the two stories I ask you to read [[50]]are examples of its disease; which arises mainly in strong and stupid minds, when by evil fortune they have never been led to think or feel.

Frugality. The disposition to save or spare what we have got, without any desire to gain more. It is constantly, of course, associated with avarice; but quite as frequently with generosity, and is often merely an extreme degree of housewifely habit. Study the character of Alison Wilson in ‘Old Mortality.’

Covetousness. The desire of possessing more than we have, of any good thing whatsoever of which we have already enough for our uses, (adding house to house, and field to field). It is much connected with pride; but more with restlessness of mind and desire of novelty; much seen in children who tire of their toys and want new ones. The pleasure in having things ‘for one’s very own’ is a very subtle element in it. When I gave away my Loire series of Turner drawings to Oxford, I thought I was rational enough to enjoy them as much in the University gallery as in my own study. But not at all! I find I can’t bear to look at them in the gallery, because they are ‘mine’ no more.

Now, you observe, that your creed of St. George says you believe in the nobleness of human nature—that is to say, that all our natural instincts are honourable. Only it is not always easy to say which of them are natural and which not. [[51]]

For instance, Adam Smith says that it is ‘natural’ for every person to covet his neighbour’s goods, and want to change his own for them; wherein is the origin of Trade, and Universal Salvation.

But God says, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods;’ and God, who made you, does in that written law express to you His knowledge of your inner heart, and instruct you in the medicine for it. Therefore on due consideration, you will find assuredly it is quite unnatural in you to covet your neighbour’s goods.

Consider, first, of the most precious, the wife. It is natural for you to think your own the best and prettiest of women; not at all to want to change her for somebody else’s wife. If you like somebody else’s better than yours, and this somebody else likes yours better than his, and you both want to change, you are both in a non-natural condition, and entirely out of the sphere of happy human love.

Again. It is natural for you to think your own house and garden the nicest house and garden that ever were. If, as should always be, they were your father’s before you, and he and you have both taken proper care of them, they are a treasure to you which no money could buy,—the leaving them is always pain,—the return to them, a new thrill and wakening to life. They are a home and place of root to you, as if you were founded on the ground like its walls, or grew into it like its flowers. You would no more [[52]]willingly transplant yourself elsewhere than the espalier pear-tree of your own graffing would pull itself out by the roots to climb another trellis. That is the natural mind of a man. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house.” You are in an entirely non-natural state if you do, and, properly speaking, never had a house in your life.

“Nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant.” It is a ‘natural’ thing for masters to get proud of those who serve them; and a ‘natural’ thing for servants to get proud of the masters they serve. (You see above how Bacon connects the love of the master with the love of the country.) Nay, if the service has been true, if the master has indeed asked for what was good for himself, and the servant has done what was good for his master, they cannot choose but like each other; to have a new servant, or a new master, would be a mere horror to both of them. I have got two Davids, and a Kate, that I wouldn’t change for anybody else’s servants in the world; and I believe the only quarrel they have with me is that I don’t give them enough to do for me:—this very morning, I must stop writing, presently, to find the stoutest of the Davids some business, or he will be miserable all day.

“Nor his ox, nor his ass.” If you have petted both of your own, properly, from calf and foal, neither these, nor anything else of yours, will you desire to change [[53]]for “anything that is his.” Do you really think I would change my pen for your’s, or my inkstand, or my arm-chair, or my Gainsborough little girl, or my Turner pass of St. Gothard? I would see you—— very uncomfortable—first. And that is the natural state of a human being who has taken anything like proper pains to make himself comfortable in God’s good world, and get some of the right good, and true wealth of it.

For, you observe farther, the commandment is only that thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods. It does not say that you are not to covet any goods. How could you covet your neighbour’s, if both your neighbour and you were forbidden to have any? Very far the contrary; in the first piece of genealogic geography I have given you to learn, the first descriptive sentence of the land of Havilah is,—“where there is gold;” and it goes on to say, “And the gold of that land is of the best: there is bdellium, and the onyx stone.” In the Vulgate, ‘dellium’ and ‘lapis onichinus.’ In the Septuagint, ‘anthrax,’ and the ‘prase-stone.’

Now, my evangelical friends, here is this book which you call “Word of God,” and idolatrously print for your little children’s reading and your own, as if your eternal lives depended on every word of it. And here, of the very beginning of the world—and the beginning of property—it professes to tell you something. [[54]]But what? Have you the smallest idea what ‘dellium’ is? Might it not as well be bellium, or gellium, or pellium, or mellium, for all you know about it? Or do you know what an onyx is? or an anthrax? or a prase? Is not the whole verse pure and absolute gibberish and gabble to you; and do you expect God will thank you for talking gibberish and gabble to your children, and telling them—that is His Word? Partly, however, the verse is only senseless to you, because you have never had the sense to look at the stones which God has made. But in still greater measure, it is necessarily senseless, because it is not the word of God, but an imperfectly written tradition, which, however, being a most venerable and precious tradition, you do well to make your children read, provided also you take pains to explain to them so much sense as there is in it, and yourselves do reverently obey so much law as there is in it. Towards which intelligence and obedience, we will now take a step or two farther from the point of pause in last Fors.

Remember that the three sons of Noah are, respectively,

The sons of Shem are the perceivers of Splendour;[[55]]—they see what is best in visible things, and reach forward to the invisible.

The sons of Japheth are the perceivers of Justice and Duty; and deal securely with all that is under their hand.

The sons of Ham are the perceivers of Evil or Nakedness; and are slaves therefore for ever—‘servants of servants’: when in power, therefore, either helpless or tyrannous.

It is best to remember among the nations descending from the three great sires, the Persians, as the sons of Shem; Greeks, as the sons of Japheth; Assyrians, as the sons of Ham. The Jewish captivity to the Assyrian then takes its perfect meaning.

This month, therefore, take the first descendant of Ham—Cush; and learn the following verses of Gen. x.:—

“And Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth.

“He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.

“And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel in the land of Shinar.

“Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh.”

These verses will become in future a centre of thought to you, whereupon you may gather, as on one root-germ, what you farther learn of the influence of hunting on [[56]]the minds of men; and of the sources of Assyrian power, and causes of the Assyrian ruin in Birs Nemroud, out of which you have had those hunting-pieces brought to the narrow passage in the British Museum.

For further subject of thought, this month, read of Carey’s Dante, the 31st canto of the ‘Inferno,’ with extreme care; and for your current writing lesson, copy these lines of Italics, which I have printed in as close resemblance as I can to the Italics of the Aldine edition of 1502.

The putting of the capital letters that begin the stanza, outside, is a remaining habit of the scribes who wrote for the illuminator, and indicated the letter to be enlarged with ornament at the side of the text.

Of these larger capitals, the A given in last Fors, is of a Byzantine Greek school, in which though there is much quiet grace, there is no elasticity or force in the lines. They are always languid, and without spring or evidence of nervous force in the hand. They are not, therefore, perfect models for English writers, though they are useful as exercises in tranquillity of [[57]]line: and I chose for that and many more reasons, that letter and sentence for our first exercise. But my letter B is to be given from the Northern Schools; and will have spring and power in it, which you cannot at once hope to imitate in a complete letter; and must be prepared for by copying a mere incipient fragment or flourish of ornamental line.

This line has been drawn for you, very leisurely indeed, by one of the gentlest of the animals living on our English south downs,—and yet, quietly done as it is, being the result of wholly consistent energy, it is a line which a Byzantine Greek would never have produced [[58]]in writing, nor even in architecture, except when he was imitating an Ionian one.

You are to draw a horizontal line through the point in the centre of this figure. Then measure the breadth of the six coils on each side, counting from the centre backwards and forwards.

Then draw a vertical line through centre, and measure the breadths above and below. Then draw the complete curve lightly through these fixed points—alter it to your mind—and then paint over it the determined line, with any dark colour and a camel’s hair brush.

The difficulty is to draw it so that there shall not be the smallest portion of it which is not approaching the inner curve, and narrowing the intermediate space. And you will find no trick of compasses will draw it. Choose any number of centres you like, and still I defy you to draw the curve mechanically; it can be done only as I have done it myself, with the free hand, correcting it and correcting till I got it right.[2]

When you have succeeded, to any moderate extent, in doing this, your hand will have begun to receive the power of executing a serene and dignified flourish instead of a vulgar ‘dash.’ And you may also begin to understand that the word ‘flourish’ itself, as applied to writing, means the springing of its lines into floral exuberance,—therefore, strong procession and growth, which must be in a spiral line, for the stems of plants [[59]]are always spirals. (See ‘Proserpina,’ Number IV.); and that this bursting out into foliage, in calm swiftness, is a totally different action from the impudent and useless sweeps and loops of vulgar writing.

Further. As your eyes get accustomed to the freely drawn, unmechanical, immeasurable line, you will be able, if you care about architecture, to know a Greek Ionic volute from a vulgar day-labourer’s copy of it—done with compasses and calculations. And you will know how the volute of the throne of Lippi’s Madonna, (though that is studied from the concave side of the shell) shows him to have been Etruscan-bred; and you will begin to see what his power was; and to laugh at the books of our miserable modern builders, filled with elaborate devices for drawing volutes with bits of circles:—the wretches might as well try to draw the lips of Sir Joshua’s Circe,—or the smile in her cat’s triangular eyes, in that manner. Only in Eleutheria of soul and body, shall any human creature draw so much as one rightly bending line.

Any human creature, I say. Little freedom, either of body or soul, had the poor architect who drew this our first model line for us; and yet and yet, simple as his life and labours may be, it will take our best wits to understand them. I find myself, at present, without any startpoint for attempt to understand them. I found the downs near Arundel, being out on them in a sunny day just after Christmas, sprinkled all over with [[60]]their pretty white shells, (none larger than a sixpence, my drawing being increased as about seven to one, in line, or fifty to one, square,) and all empty, unless perchance some spectral remnant of their dead masters remain inside;—and I can’t answer a single question I ask myself about them. I see they most of them have six whirls, or whorls. Had they six when they were young? have they never more when they are old? Certainly some shells have periodical passion of progress—and variously decorative stops and rests; but these little white continuities down to this woful time of their Christmas emptiness, seem to have deduced their spiral caves in peace.

But it’s of no use to waste time in ‘thinking.’ I shall go and ask some pupil of my dear old friend Dr. Gray at the British Museum, and rejoice myself with a glance at the volutes of the Erectheium—fair home of Athenian thought. [[61]]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. I am surprised to find that my Index to Vols. I. and II. of Fors does not contain the important article ‘Pockets’; and that I cannot therefore, without too much trouble, refer to the place where I have said that the Companions of St. George are all to have glass pockets; so that the absolute contents of them may be known of all men. But, indeed, this society of ours is, I believe, to be distinguished from other close brotherhoods that have been, or that are, chiefly in this, that it will have no secrets, and that its position, designs, successes, and failures, may at any moment be known to whomsoever they may concern.

More especially the affairs of the Master and of the Marshals, when we become magnificent enough to have any, must be clearly known, seeing that these are to be the managers of public revenue. For although, as we shall in future see, they will be held more qualified for such high position by contentment in poverty than responsibility of wealth; and, if the society is wise, be chosen always from among men of advanced age, whose previous lives have been recognized as utterly without stain of dishonesty in management of their private business,—the complete publication of their accounts, private as well as public, from the day they enter on the management of the Company’s funds, will be a most wholesome check on the glosses with which self-interest, in the minds even of the honestest people, sometimes may colour or [[62]]confuse their actions over property on a large scale; besides being examples to the accountants of other public institutions.

For instance, I am myself a Fellow of the Horticultural Society; and, glancing the other day at its revenue accounts for 1874, observed that out of an expenditure of eleven thousand odd pounds, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-two went to pay interest on debts, eleven hundred and ninety to its ‘salaries’—two hundred to its botanical adviser, a hundred and fifty to its botanical professor, a hundred and twenty-six to its fruit committee, a hundred and twenty to its floral committee, four hundred and twenty to its band, nine hundred and ten to its rates and taxes, a hundred and eighty-five to its lawyers, four hundred and thirty-nine to its printers, and three pounds fifteen shillings to its foreign importations’ account, (being interest on Cooper’s loan): whereupon I wrote to the secretary expressing some dissatisfaction with the proportion borne by this last item to the others, and asking for some further particulars respecting the ‘salaries’; but was informed that none could be had. Whereas, whether wisely or foolishly directed, the expenditure of the St. George’s Company will be always open, in all particulars, to the criticism not only of the Companions, but of the outside public. And Fors has so arranged matters that I cannot at all, for my own part, invite such criticism to-day with feelings of gratified vanity; my own immediate position (as I generally stated in last letter) being not in the least creditable to my sagacity, nor likely to induce a large measure of public confidence in me as the Company’s Master. Nor are even the affairs of the Company itself, in my estimate, very brilliant, our collected subscriptions for the reform of the world amounting, as will be seen, in five years, only to some seven hundred and odd pounds. However, the Company and its Master may perhaps yet see better days.

First, then, for the account of my proceedings in the Company’s affairs. Our eight thousand Consols giving us £240 a year, I [[63]]have appointed a Curator to the Sheffield Museum, namely, Mr. Henry Swan, an old pupil of mine in the Working Men’s College in London; and known to me since as an estimable and trustworthy person, with a salary of forty pounds a year, and residence. He is obliged at present to live in the lower rooms of the little house which is to be the nucleus of the museum:—as soon as we can afford it, a curator’s house must be built outside of it.

I have advanced, as aforesaid, a hundred pounds of purchase-money, and fifty for current expenses; and paid, besides, the lawyers’ bills for the transfer, amounting to £48 16s. 7d.; these, with some needful comments on them, will be published in next Fors; I have not room for them in this.

I have been advised of several mistakes in my subscribers’ list, so I reprint it below, with the initials attached to the numbers, and the entire sum, (as far as I can find out,) hitherto subscribed by each; and I beg of my subscribers at once to correct me in all errors.

The names marked with stars are those of Companions. The numbers 10, 17, 36, 43, and 48 I find have been inaccurately initialled, and are left blank for correction.

List of Subscriptions

II. Affairs of the Master.

When I instituted the Company by giving the tenth of my available property to it, I had, roughly, seventy thousand pounds in money or land, and thirty thousand[3] in pictures and books. The pictures and books I do not consider mine, but merely in my present keeping, for the country, or the persons I may leave them to. Of the seventy thousand in substance, I gave away fourteen thousand in that year of the Company’s establishment, (see above, Letter XLIX., p. 2,) and have since lost fifteen thousand by a relation whom I tried to support in business. As also, during my battle with the booksellers, I have been hitherto losing considerably by my books, (last year, for instance, paying three hundred and ninety-eight pounds to my assistant, Mr. Burgess, alone, for plates and woodcutting, and making a profit, on the whole year’s sales, of fifty pounds), and have been living much beyond my income besides, my seventy thousand is reduced to certainly not more than thirty; and it is very clear that I am too enthusiastically carrying out my own principles, and making more haste to be poor than is prudent, at my present date of possible life, for, at my current rate of expenditure, the cell at Assisi, above contemplated as advisably a pious mortification of my luxury, would soon [[66]]become a necessary refuge for my ‘holy poverty.’ The battle with the booksellers, however, is now nearly won; and the publishing accounts will soon show better balance: what changes in my mode of living may, nevertheless, be soon either exemplary or necessary will be better understood after I have given account of it for a year.

Here are my opening expenses, then, from 1st January to 20th, and in each following Fors they will be given from 20th to 20th of the month. I content myself, being pressed for space in this number, with giving merely the sums of cheques drawn; somewhat lengthy gossiping explanation of items being also needed, which will come in due place. The four first large sums are, of course, payments of Christmas accounts.

[[67]]

III. I am gradually rising into greater indignation against the baseness and conceit of the modern scientific mob, than even against the mere money-seekers. The following fragment of a letter from a Companion bears notably on this matter:—

“The only earnest folks I know are cold-hearted ‘Freethinkers,’ and not very earnest either. My church-going friends are not earnest, except about their form of sound words. But I get on best with them. They are warmer, and would be what I wish, were circumstances not so dead set against it. My ‘Freethinking’ acquaintances say that with Carlyle the last of the great dreamers who have impeded the advance of science will pass away, and that, in fact, he is dead already, for nobody minds him. I don’t heed such words now as I used to do. Had I lived when Socrates was condemned, I would have felt hope extinguished; yet Jesus came long after him, and I will not fear that God will fail to send His great and good men, any more than that the sun will forget to rise.

“My Freethinking friends sneer even at the mention of any God; and their talk of methods of reformation that infer any wisdom above their own has long since sickened me. One Sunday evening last year, I accompanied one of them to what they call the ‘Eclectic Hall’ here, to hear a Mrs. Law speak. There were from two to three hundred present,—few women—almost all toil-worn looking men. Mrs. Law, the lecturess—a stout, coarse-looking lady, or woman who might have been a lady—based her address on another by Mr. Gladstone, M.P. One thing she said will give you an idea of the spirit of her lecture, which was full of sadness to me, because highly appreciated by her audience: ‘Jesus tells you,’ she shouted, ‘ “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven,” but I tell you, Blessed are the rich, for theirs is no myth-world, but this substantial one with its tangible, satisfying joys.’

“I got one of them to read the October Letter—and then [[68]]Volumes I. and IV. of Fors. Another young fellow, a Londoner, read them too, and then at leisure moments there was a talk over them for some days. But, with the exception of the first referred to, they talked pitifully enough. Your incidental remark about destroying the new town of Edinburgh, and other items of dubious sort, blinded them to any good, and it was a blessing when something else came athwart their vacant minds, and they ceased to remember you.”

IV. I am grateful for the following note on the name ‘Sheffield’:—

“Leeds, 29th Dec, 1875.

“Sir,—The town, in all probability, took its name from the river ‘Sheaf,’ which flows into the Don.

“Doncaster is a case in point out of hundreds of others. It may be that the river has been named in recent times, but it is unlikely; for as a rule a river always has some name by which it is known before any settlements are made on its banks.”

V. I must now request my reader’s attention somewhat gravely to the questions in debate between my correspondents at Wakefield; not that these are in themselves of any importance, but they are of extreme importance in their general issue. In the first place, observe the extreme difficulty of writing history. You shall have one impertinent coxcomb after another in these days, writing constitutional Histories of England and the like, and telling you all the relationships and all the motives of Kings and Queens a thousand years dead; and here is question respecting the immediate ancestor of a living lady, which does not appear at once or easily determinable; and which I do not therefore pursue;—here again is question respecting the connection of her husband with the cases of bribery reported in the subjoined evidence on the Wakefield election petition, also indeterminable;—here are [[69]]farther two or three questions respecting the treatment of his workmen, respecting which the evidence is entirely conflicting; and finally, here is the chapel on Wakefield bridge pulled down,[4] a model of it built in its place, and the entire front of the historical building carried away to decorate a private boathouse; and I, quite as knowing in architecture as most people, am cheated into some very careful and quite useless work, and even into many false conclusions, by the sculpture of the sham front, decayed and broken enough in thirty years to look older than sculpture of 500 years B.C. would, or does, in pure air.

Observe, in the second place, how petulant and eager people are, the moment a single word touches themselves, while universal abuses may be set before them enough to bring all the stones in heaven but what serve for the thunder, down about their ears,—and they will go on talking about Shakspeare and the musical glasses undisturbed, to the end of their lives; but let a single word glance at their own windows, or knock at their own doors, and—instantly—‘If Mr. Ruskin is what I think him, he will retract,’ etc. etc. But, alas! Mr. Ruskin is not the least what Mrs. Green thinks him,—does not in the smallest degree care for a lady’s “Fie’s,” and, publishing the following letters and newspaper extracts for the general reader’s satisfaction and E. L.’s justification, very contentedly, for his part, ends the discussion, though of course Fors shall be open to any further communication, if not too long, which either Mrs. Green or her husband may desire to have inserted.

In the following letter I have left all the passages containing due apology, while I have removed some which contained matter of further debate, if not offence, thereby much weakening the whole.

“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—I have been away from home, and have only recently seen Mrs. Green’s letter in the Fors of last month. [[70]]

“I am sorry to have vexed her; I did not think that you would print the passages referring to her husband in the form in which they stood.[5]

“When you said that you would assume my permission to print passages from the letter, I supposed that they would be those relating to the general life of Wakefield. All that I have written is essentially true, but I do not wish to hold any controversy on the matter, for if I defended myself publicly I should have to wound still further the feelings of one who is no doubt a devoted wife.

“It is for your satisfaction alone that I write these lines. I have been inaccurate on two points, on which I wrote too hastily, from hearsay, gleaned on brief visits to Wakefield. Mr. Green has not a Scotch estate, only occasional shooting, and he is not concerned in the forges that stand near the bridge, as I was wrongly informed.

“I did not say, though I may have led your readers to infer it, that the so-called ‘American devil’ was his. I knew, or rather was told, that it belonged to Whithams, who have the largest foundry. He (Mr. Green) does not forge iron, it seems; he makes it into machines. He can hardly be classed as an engineer; he is a machine-maker. If he is not an ‘iron lord,’ on what is his wealth based?

“Robin the Pedlar is no myth. I often heard him mentioned, when a girl, as being Mrs. Green’s father. I dare say that Mrs. Edward Green never heard of him. She came into the family in its genteeler days; but there are old people in Wakefield who remember all about him. I send by this post a Wakefield paper containing some speeches highly illustrative of the town of which Mr. Green is the hero and model.” (These I do not think it necessary to publish.) “Party feeling still runs high at Wakefield, and when the next election occurs, Mrs. Green expects to find big yellow bills on the gate-pillars of Heath Common, [[71]]‘Professor Ruskin on Ned Green,’ and she is naturally angry.

“Of course he is not the sole offender. This case occurred to me because he is the most prominent type of the modern successful men who are to inaugurate a new era in the town’s history. It is the blind leader of the blind in the downward way that things are going. Everybody wants to get rich like him; everybody who has greed and competence pushes to the front. The town council promise them that they will make of Wakefield a second Bradford. Meanwhile they squabble about their duties, the streets are filthy, smallpox breeds there, and they set up a hospital in a tent. It catches fire, and nurse and patients are burnt together. I think that was eight or nine years since. Possibly arrangements are better now.

“You say truly that quickly acquired fortunes must be ill acquired, but you must live on my level to realize fully how the prospect and possibility of such gains are disorganizing middle-class life. English people do not lift their families along with them, as we reproach the ‘clannish’ Scotch with doing.

“Ignorant pride on the one hand, envy on the other, breed hate between those who should be a mutual stay. As classes are estranged, so are families.

“In conclusion, I must again say that I shall always feel regret at having pained Mrs. Green, but what I have said is true in all essentials.

“He is the hero of the men who are changing Wakefield so rapidly. I liked it better thirty years since, when, if it was poor, it was clean and honest.

“I am, dear Mr. Ruskin, yours truly,
“E. L.”

I print the following first portion (about the fourth part) of a column and a half of the evidence on the Wakefield election [[72]]petition, sent me by my correspondent; though I do not suppose it to indicate anything more than compliance on Mr. Green’s part with the ordinary customs of English electioneering.

“The trial of the petition against the return of Mr. Green, the Conservative member for Wakefield, was resumed this morning before Mr. Justice Grove. Mr. Hawkins, Q.C., and Mr. Chandos Leigh again appeared for the petitioners, and Mr. C. Russell, Q.C., and Mr. Forbes for the respondent. There was again a crowded attendance.

John Thompson, a tailor, and a voter in the Northgate Ward, said that about half-past six o’clock, on Sunday, the 1st February—the day before the polling—‘Councillor Joe’ (Mr. J. Howden) called at his house and solicited his vote for Mr. Green. Witness said he did not think that he could give it, but if he did he must ‘have something.’ Mr. Howden said, ‘If it’s worth anything I’ll let you know.’ About half-past one o’clock on the polling day witness again saw him. Mr. Howden said, ‘If you vote for Green, I’ll send you 10s. for your day’s wage.’ Witness said, ‘No;’ and they parted.

Cross-examined: Witness did not say to Mr. Howden that he had already been offered a couple of pounds. He was a strong Radical. Mr. Howden was at witness’s house several times, but he only saw him once. He (witness) voted about half-past two in the afternoon.

Elizabeth Thompson, wife of the last witness, said that on the Saturday and Sunday before the polling day Mr. J. Howden called to solicit her husband’s vote, and he said, ‘If he votes for Green, I’ll see that he is paid.’ On the Monday, when Mr. Howden called, he said, ‘If your husband votes for Green I’ll give him 5s. out of my own pocket, and see that he is ‘tipped’ in the committee room.’ Later in the day, her husband was at home when Howden called, and they left the house together. [[73]]

Henry Blades, a blacksmith’s striker, and a voter in the Westgate ward, said that on the day of the election Mr. Ough gave him £2 in the Finisher Off public-house, on condition that he voted for Mr. Green. Witness voted in the course of the day.

Cross-examined: Witness, since he received his subpœna, had met Mr. Gill, the respondent’s solicitor, and others, at the Bull Hotel, and put his name to a paper, of the nature of which he was ignorant.

Mr. Russell: Was it not a statement, made by yourself, and taken down in writing, to the effect that you had never received any bribe or offer of a bribe?

Witness: I don’t know. They asked me to sign the paper, and I signed it. I was not sober.

Re-examined by Mr. Hawkins: Witness was sent for to the Bull. He received there, after making his statement, two glasses of beer, and 5s. in money—the latter from Mr. Ough.

Henry Lodge said that on the afternoon of the election he was in Farrar’s beerhouse, in Westgate. Blade was there ‘fresh,’ and taking three half-sovereigns from his pocket, he threw them on the table, and said, ‘That’s the sort to have.’

James Meeghan, an Irish labourer, said that he was a voter for the borough, and on the polling day was canvassed by Mr. Kay for the Conservatives. He met Mr. Kay in the polling booth, and received from him 10s. Before voting, witness said to Mr. Kay that he was a poor man and could not afford to lose his day’s wage. Mr. Kay said, ‘I can’t give you a bribe—that’s against the law; but as you have had to pay your mates for doing your work, you shall have something.’ In the polling station Mr. Kay held a half-sovereign in his hand, behind him, and witness took it.

Cross-examined: Mr. Kay offered witness the 10s. out of his own pocket.

Mr. Russell (to the Judge): What this man says is quite true. [[74]]Mr. Kay does not deny that he gave him half a sovereign for his loss of time.

Patrick M’Hugh, an Irish labourer, and a voter in the Northgate Ward, said that on the polling day he visited the Conservative Committee-room at the Zetland School, and saw Mr. Tom Howden. Mr. Howden said, ‘Are you going to vote?’ Witness replied, ‘I suppose so;’ and Mr. Howden said, ‘Come this way and I’ll show you how.’ Witness was taken into a back room, and there Mr. Howden said, ‘Well, how much?’ Witness said, ‘Three,’ and Mr. Howden took them out of his pocket (three sovereigns), and said, ‘See there.’ Witness took the money and voted. He had, since receiving his subpœna, been away from Wakefield.

Cross-examined: Witness had visited Harrogate—staying a week there to take the waters—(laughter),—and afterwards Thirsk. He paid his own expenses and travelled alone, having been recommended by a doctor to go away for the benefit of his health.

Mr. Russell: Who was the doctor?

Witness: Mr. Unthank—(great laughter);—Mr. Unthank being a chemist, and a prominent Liberal. He said that if I could go, and was strong enough, a bit of an out would do me good. (Laughter.) The £3 that I received at the election supported me while I was away.

James Wright, a police officer of the borough of Wakefield, said that on the polling day he was acting as door-keeper at the Zetland Street polling station, and observed Mr. Priestly hand some money to one who presented himself as a voter. Witness followed the voter into the booth, and pointed him out to his superior officer. The man voted, and then left. Mr. Priestly was busily employed during the polling hours in conducting voters from the Conservative committee-room to the polling station. [[75]]

Cross-examined: At half-past three Priestly was ‘fresh’ in drink, and it was found necessary to keep him out of the polling station. He was in Mr. Green’s employment. Witness could not say what amount of money passed; but some one in the crowd, who also saw the transaction, said to Priestly, ‘You are doing it too brown.’ (Laughter.)”

The letters next following are from an entirely honest engineer workman, a Companion of St. George.

“Dear Master,—I read Mrs. Green’s letter in the November Fors two or three days ago, and yesterday I adopted the hint in it to inquire amongst the workmen. I asked one working beside me, who I knew came from Yorkshire, if he ever worked in Wakefield, and, curiously enough, he belongs there, and was apprenticed in a workshop close to Mr. Green’s. He says he knows the place well, and that certainly when he was there, ‘At six o’clock, or some approximate hour,’ the firm of Green and Son, ‘issued its counter-order’ with a horrible noise; and not only at six o’clock, but also after meals.

“He also tells me that the wages of a working engineer in the workshop of Green and Son average 22s. a week, and I know that here, in London, they average 38s. a week, and Wakefield is close to coal and iron, while London is not. It may be, as I once heard it, urged that the workmen in London are superior as workmen to those in the provinces; but my experience, which has been considerable in London and the provinces as a working engineer, enables me to assert that this is not the case. Also it may be urged that low wages prevail in the provinces, but in Glasgow I got 30s. a week two years ago, and this week meant fifty-one hours, while in Wakefield a week’s work means fifty-four hours.

“Since Mr. Green derives no pecuniary benefit from Wakefield, it is evident from the above that the London and Glasgow engineers are very ingenious persons indeed, if they contrive to get [[76]]pecuniary benefit from the cities in which they issue their ‘counter-order.’

“Moreover, my fellow-workman tells me that there is a system of piece-work carried on in the workshop of Green and Son, which is extended to the apprentices, so that the boys are set to think, not how to learn to work properly, but how to learn to get hold of the greatest number of shillings they can in a week. In the man the desire for more money is tempered with forethought: he knows that if he earns more than a certain amount the price of his job will be cut down; but the boy does not consider this, and his price, to use the language of the workshop, is cut down accordingly.

“Mrs. Green in her letter says Mr. Green never had a forge. This means that he never had a place which exclusively turned out forgings. But connected with Mrs. Green’s establishment, my fellow-workman tells me, are forges, as indeed there are in every engineering work I have seen. Besides, there is constantly carried on a process of moulding ‘pig iron’ at Mr. Green’s place, which requires the most intense heat, and to which the workmen are exposed, as they are at the forge Mrs. Green speaks of. (In your lectures to the students at Oxford in 1870, you say that work requiring the use of fire must be reduced to its minimum, and speak of its effects in Greek. I know some of its evil effects on the blacksmiths, but I wonder if it is desirable for me to know the meaning of the Greek language you use on that occasion.) (Yes; but you need not be in any hurry about it.)

“It would seem, then, that Mr. Green stays at Heath Hall, and cultivates an ideal refinement in art, while he is instrumental in causing two or three hundred men and boys in Wakefield, from whom he derives no pecuniary benefit, to cultivate there the fine art of music in the shriek and roar of machines all day, to cultivate a trader’s eagerness for bargaining, instead of a wish to do good [[77]]work, and to cultivate an acquaintance with the sort of work which, over ten years constant experience in it tells me, is the most effective in this country for qualifying themselves and others for admission to the Ophthalmic, Orthopedic, and other institutions mentioned by your correspondent, E. L.

“Last week I had intelligence of the death of a young engineer friend of mine. A boiler burst while he was standing by, and shot him a distance of 60 yards, killing him instantly.

“Dear Master, if I have made a mistake in troubling you with these notes on Mrs. Green’s letter, I am sorry, but I could not resist the impulse to write to you after what I learned from my fellow-workman. I believe the facts are reliable, and at any rate I can give the workman’s name who furnished them, if it is wanted.”

“Dear Master,—Since I wrote to you last I chanced on another workman, who has worked in Green’s shop. He tells me it is known among the workmen as ‘The Port in a Storm.’

“My first informant also, unasked, wrote to Wakefield for further information. He showed me the letter in reply, which says that Green’s whistle (it is also called a ‘buzzard’) was not stopped till force was applied.

“ ‘The Port in a Storm’ means that only when assailed by the fierce storm of hunger do the workmen think of applying for work at Green’s place; that is, when they can’t get work anywhere else in the neighbourhood.”

These letters appear to me entirely to justify the impression under which E. L. wrote; but of course I shall be most happy if Mr. Green will furnish me with more accurate indication of the persons who have made Wakefield the horrible spectacle that it is. For although many of my discreet friends cry out upon [[78]]me for allowing ‘personalities,’ it is my firm conviction that only by justly personal direction of blame can any abuse be vigorously dealt with. And, as I will answer for the sincerity and impartiality of attack, so I trust to make it always finally accurate in aim and in limitation. [[79]]

[1] Exodus xviii. 21. [↑]

[2] The law of its course will be given in the ‘Laws of Fésole,’ Plate V. [↑]

[3] An under-estimate, at present prices for Turner drawings, and I have hitherto insured for full thirty thousand, but am now going to lower the insurance, for no money would replace the loss of them, and I less and less regard them as exchangeable property. [↑]

[4] I have not space in this Fors to give the letter certifying me of this. [↑]

[5] See my reason stated, Letter LIX., p. 322. [↑]

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTER LXIII.

I find it wholly impossible to crush into one Fors what I have been gathering of Bible lesson, natural history lesson, and writing lesson, and to leave room enough for what I have to give of immediate explanation to the Companions, now daily increasing in number. My readers must bear with me—I cannot do more than I am doing, though every day I wonder more at there being so many things apparently my duty to do, while I have only two feeble hands for all of them.

But this much of general statement of the meaning of our Companionship is now absolutely necessary.

Of course, the first natural idea taken up by persons who merely hear talk, or read newspapers, about the Company, is that their domain is intended for a refuge for the persons who join it—that within its walls the poor are at once to be made rich, and the sorrowful happy.

Alas, this is not by any means the notion of the St. George’s Company. It is to be a band of delivering [[80]]knights—not of churls needing deliverance; of eager givers and servants—not of eager beggars,[1] and persons needing service. It is only the Rich, and the Strong, whom I receive for Companions,—those who come not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Rich, yet some of them in other kind of riches than the world’s; strong, yet some in other than the world’s strength. But this much at least of literal wealth and strength they must have,—the power, and formed habit, of self-support. I accept no Companion by whom I am not convinced that the Society will be aided rather than burdened; and although I value intelligence, resolution, and personal strength, more than any other riches, I hope to find, in a little while, that there are people in the world who can hold money without being blinded, by their possession of it, to justice or duty.

The Companions whom I accept will be divided, according to their means and circumstances, into three classes.

The first and highest class will be called “Comites Ministrantes,” “Companions Servant.” It will be composed of the few who devote their main energy to the work of the Company; and who, as I do myself, and as the Master must always, pursue their private avocations only in subjection to its interests, being at the same time in positions absolutely independent, and openly shown to be so. [[81]]

The second, or middle class, will be called “Comites Militantes,” “Companions Militant.”

These will be persons occupied actually in manual labour on the ground, or in any work which the Master may order, for the fulfilment of the Society’s functions; being dependent on such labour for their maintenance, under the conditions fixed by the Company’s statutes.

The third and lowest order will be called “Comites Consilii,” (Friends of, or in, Council,) “Companions Consular,” who will form the general body of the Society, being occupied in their own affairs as earnestly as before they joined it; but giving it the tenth of their income; and in all points, involving its principles, obeying the orders of the Master. Thus almost any tradesman may continue his trade, being a Companion; but, if a jeweller, he must not sell false jewels; or if a butcher, (I have one accepted already, and I very much want to get a butcher’s daughter, if I could; but she won’t come,) must not sell bad meat.

I at first meant them to be called Censors, or Companions Estimant, because when the Society comes into real work, the sentences of fine, or other disgrace, pronounced by the marshals’ officers, and the general modes of determining quality and value of goods, must be always ratified by majority of this order, of the Companions, in whom also, by virtue of their number, the election, and therefore censorship, of the Master, will necessarily be vested. [[82]]

To these last, especially, I have now some special matters to write.

Will you please look back to the Fors of December 24th, last year, p. 278, and tell me,—or rather, which is chiefly needful, answer to yourselves, how far you have reflected, since reading it, on the nature of “unfruitful works of darkness;” how many you have abandoned, and how many reproved. It is too probable that you have not, even yet, the slightest idea what works of darkness are. You know,—they can’t mean merely murder, or adultery, or theft. You don’t, when you go to church, mean to pray that you may have grace to give up committing murder or adultery, or that you may ‘rather reprove them’? But what then is it that you pray to give up? If you don’t know, are you not, yet, in the least, ashamed of yourselves, for going every Sunday, if not every day, to pray to God, without having the dimmest idea what you mean to ask Him for?

Well,—not to be farther teazing about it,—in the first and simple sense, works of darkness are useless, or ill-done, or half-done, things, which pretend to be good, or to be wholly done; and so mislead or betray.

In the deeper and final sense, a work of darkness is one that seeks concealment, and conceals facts; or even casts disdain and disgrace on facts.

A work of light is one that seeks light, and that, not for its own sake, but to light all men; so that all workers [[83]]of good work delight in witnesses; only with true desire that the witnesses’ pleasure may be greater than theirs; and that the Eternal witnesses—the Cloud around us, and Powers above—may have chief pleasure of all:—(see on this matter, ‘Eagle’s Nest,’ page 54). So that, of these works, what was written of St. Bernard must be always true, “Opera sancti Patris velut Sol in conspectu Dei;” for indeed they are a true Light of the world, infinitely better in the Creator’s sight than its dead sunshine; and the discovery by modern science that all mortal strength is from the Sun, while it has thrown foolish persons into atheism, is, to wise ones, the most precious testimony to their faith yet given by physical nature; for it gives us the arithmetical and measurable assurance that men vitally active are living sunshine, having the roots of their souls set in sunlight, as the roots of a tree are in the earth; not that the dust is therefore the God of the tree, but the Tree is the animation of the dust, and the living Soul, of the sunshine. And now you will understand the meaning of the words on our St. George’s wealth,—“Sit splendor.”

And you must take care that your works do shine before men, if it may be, as a lamp; but at least, as a shield;—nay, if your Captain in Heaven wills it, as a sword.

For the failure of all good people nowadays is that, associating politely with wicked persons, countenancing them in their wickedness, and often joining in [[84]]it, they think to avert its consequences by collaterally labouring to repair the ruin it has caused; and while, in the morning, they satisfy their hearts by ministering to the wants of two or three destitute persons, in the evening they dine with, envy, and prepare themselves to follow the example of, the rich speculator who has caused the destitution of two or three thousand. They are thus destroying more in hours than they can amend in years; or, at the best, vainly feeding the famine-struck populations, in the rear of a devouring army, always on the increase in mass of numbers, and rapidity of march.

Now I call on the St. George’s Company, first, to separate themselves clearly, as a body, from persons who practise recognized, visible, unquestionable iniquity. They are to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of Darkness; but to walk as Children of Light.

Literally, observe. Those phrases of the Bible are entirely evaded, because we never apply them to immediate practice.

St. George’s Companions are to have no fellowship with works of darkness; no companionship whatsoever with recognizable mischief, or mischievous men. Of every person of your acquaintance, you are solemnly to ask yourselves, ‘Is this man a swindler, a liar, a gambler, an adulterer, a selfish oppressor, and task-master?’ [[85]]

Don’t suppose you can’t tell. You can tell with perfect ease; or, if you meet any mysterious personage of whom it proves difficult to ascertain whether he be rogue or not, keep clear of him till you know. With those whom you know to be honest, know to be innocent, know to be striving, with main purpose, to serve mankind and honour their God, you are humbly and lovingly to associate yourselves: and with none others.

“You don’t like to set yourself up for being better than other people? You dare not judge harshly of your fellow-creatures?”

I do not tell you to judge them. I only tell you not to dine with them, and not to deal with them. That they lose the pleasure of your company, or the profit on your custom, is no crushing punishment. To their own Master they stand or fall; but to your Master, Christ,[2] you must stand, with your best might; and in this manner only, self-asserting as you may think it, can you confess Him before men. Why do you suppose that thundrous word of His impends over your denial of Him, “Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before Angels,” but because you are sure to be constantly tempted to such denial?

How, therefore, observe, in modern days, are you so tempted. Is not the temptation rather, as it seems, [[86]]to confess Him? Is it difficult and shameful to go to church?—would it not require more courage to stay away? Is it difficult or shameful to shut your shop on Sunday, in the East,—or, to abstain from your ride in the Park on Sunday, in the West? Is it dangerous to hold family worship in your house, or dishonourable to be seen with a cross on your Prayer Book? None of these modes or aspects of confession will bring any outcry against you from the world. You will have its good word, on the contrary, for each and all of them. But declare that you mean to speak truth,—and speak it, for an hour; that you mean to abstain from luxury,—and abstain from it, for a day; that you, obeying God’s law, will resolutely refuse fellowship with the disobedient;—and be ‘not at home’ to them, for a week: and hear then what the High Priests’ servants will say to you, round the fire.

And observe, it is in charity for them, much more than by duty to others, that you are required to do this. For half, at least, of these Caiaphas’ servants sin through pure ignorance, confirmed by custom. The essential difference in business, for instance, between a man of honour and a rogue, is that the first tries to give as much to his customer for his money as he can, and the second to give as little; but how many are at present engaged in business who are trying to sell their goods at as high a price as possible, supposing that effort to be the very soul and vital principle of [[87]]business! Now by simply asserting to these ignorant persons that they are rogues, whether they know it or not; and that, in the present era of general enlightenment, gentlemen and ladies must not only learn to spell and to dance, but also to know the difference between cheating their neighbours and serving them; and that, as on the whole it is inexpedient to receive people who don’t know how to express themselves grammatically, in the higher circles of society, much more is it inexpedient to receive those who don’t know how to behave themselves honestly. And by the mere assertion, practically, of this assured fact to your acquaintance’ faces, by the direct intervention of a deal door between theirs and yours, you will startle them out of their Rogues’ Paradise in a most healthful manner, and be the most orthodox and eloquent evangelical preacher to them that they have ever heard since they were born.

But all this must, of course, be done with extreme tenderness and modesty, though with absolute decision; and under much submission to their elders by young people—especially those living in their father’s houses. I shall not, of course, receive any Companions under age; but already there are some names on my list of young unmarried women: and, while I have shown in all former writings that I hold the power of such to be the greatest, because the purest, of all social ones, I must as definitely now warn them against any manifestation [[88]]of feeling or principle tending to break the unity of their home circles. They are bound to receive their father’s friends as their own, and to comply in all sweet and subjected ways with the wishes and habits of their parents; remaining calmly certain that the Law of God, for them, is that while they remain at home they shall be spirits of Peace and Humility beneath its roof. In all rightly ordered households, the confidence between the parent and child is such that in the event of a parent’s wish becoming contrary to a child’s feeling of its general duty, there would be no fear or discomfort on the child’s part in expressing its thoughts. The moment these are necessarily repressed, there is wrong somewhere; and in houses ordered according to the ways of modern fashionable life, there must be wrong, often, and everywhere. But the main curse of modern society is that, beginning by training its youth to be ‘independent’ and disobedient, this carefully cultivated independence shows itself, of course, by rejecting whatever is noble and honourable in their father’s houses, and never by healing or atoning what is faultful.

Of all St. George’s young Companions, therefore, he requires first the graces of gentleness and humility; nor, on the whole, much independent action of any kind; but only the quiet resolve to find out what is absolutely right, and so far as it may be kindly and inoffensively practised to fulfil it, at home; and so [[89]]far as it may be modestly and decorously uttered, to express the same abroad. And a well-bred young lady has always personal power enough of favour and discouragement, among persons of her own age, to satisfy the extremest demands of conscience in this direction.

And now let me see what room I have left for talk of present matters. Here is a piece printed a fortnight since, which I can’t be plagued to keep in type till next month.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
8th February, 1876.

I am fifty-seven to-day: and may perhaps be allowed to talk a little of myself.

Among several pretty love-letters from my pets, which only make me sorrier that I’m fifty-seven—but I really don’t think some of the letters could be nicer if I were only twenty-seven—there’s one with a ghost story in it, more precious to me than all the others, seeing I draw more quickly[3] near, now, daily, to the Loyal land.

I may as well write it as I read, thus;

“I heard such a pretty story last night of something that happened at a school in Germany, not long since. It was the custom of one of the masters to go round every night to the dormitories to see that the boys were asleep, all right. One night he was astonished to see a lady go up to one of the boys, stoop over [[90]]him and kiss him, and then vanish. Next morning, news came that the mother of that particular boy had died at the time. Isn’t it lovely? Even A. believes that.”

Yes; and A. does wisely; and so may B., and C.: but yet I should much like to know what particular boy, in what particular school in Germany.

Nevertheless, the story has more value for me because it is written to me by a person who herself saw the shade—or rather light—of her sister, at the time of that sister’s death on the other side of the world; being a member of that branch of my family in which some gift of the Scottish second sight remains, inherited by my maternal grandmother, who ran away with my paternal grandfather when she was not quite sixteen; and my aunt Jessie, (my father’s only sister,) was born a year afterwards; a few weeks after which event, my grandmother, not yet seventeen, was surprised, (by a friend who came into her room unannounced,) dancing a threesome reel, with two chairs for her partners, she having found at the moment no other way of adequately expressing the pleasure she took in this mortal life, and its gifts, and promises.

The latter failed somewhat afterwards; and my aunt Jessie, a very precious and perfect creature, beautiful in her dark-eyed, Highland way; utterly religious, in her quiet Puritan way, and very submissive to Fates mostly unkind, married, or was married to—I never could [[91]]make out exactly which, or why,—a somewhat rough tanner, with a fairly good business, in the good town of Perth; and, when I was old enough to be taken first to visit them, as aforesaid, my aunt and my uncle the tanner lived in a good square-built gray stone house at the ‘Bridge-End’ of Perth, some fifty yards north of the bridge; their garden sloping steeply to the Tay, which eddied, three or four feet deep of sombre crystal, round the steps where the servants dipped their pails.

My aggrieved correspondent of Wakefield thought to cure me with her delicate ‘Fie,’ of what she supposed my coarse habit of sneering at people of no ancestry. I have it not; yet might have fallen into it in my youth, for I remember now, with more grief and shame than I can speak, being once ashamed of my own father and mother in Mr. Ryman’s shop here in Oxford; nor am I entirely at ease, at this moment, in writing of my uncles the baker and the tanner; yet my readers may trust me when I tell them, that in now remembering my dreams in the house of the entirely honest chief baker of Market Street, Croydon; and of Peter—not Simon—the tanner, whose house was by the riverside of Perth, I would not change the dreams, far less the tender realities, of those early days, for anything I hear now remembered by lords or dames, of their days of childhood in castle halls, and by sweet lawns and lakes in park-walled forest. [[92]]

I do not mean this for a republican sentiment; quite the opposite. I hate republicans, as I do all other manner of fools. I love Lords and Ladies, (especially unmarried ones, with beautiful three-syllabled Christian-names. I know a simple two-syllabled one, also, very charming); and Earls, and Countesses, and Marquises and Marchionesses, and Honourables, and Sirs; and I bow down before them and worship them, in the way that Mr. Thackeray thought ‘snobs’ did; he never perceiving with all the wit of him, (being mostly spent in mean smell-fungus work which spoiled its scent,) that it is himself the snob truly worships, all the time, and not the Lord he looks at. But my way of worship was Walter Scott’s, which my father taught me (always excepting such recreance as that in Mr. Ryman’s shop). And therefore, when I say I would not change my dreams of Market Street, and Bridge End, and Rose Terrace, (where we used to live after my uncle died, briefly apoplectic, at Bridge End,) for anything that the Palatial and Maxime-Pontifical abodes of Nobles and Bishops give them—I mean simply that I had a home, being a child, and loved it, and did not then, and do not now, covet my neighbour’s house;[4] but cling to every likeness findable in these ruinous days to the places of peace given me in that lowly time.

Peace, and the knowledge of God it gave me. For, by the way, observe in that sacredest of benedictions, [[93]]which my Dean gave me in my own cathedral last Sunday, (I being an honorary student of Christ Church;—and there are only eight, if you please to look in the Oxford Calendar,) “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God;”—observe, I say, for we do not always think of this, it is not the knowledge that is to give peace; but the peace which is to give knowledge; so that as long as we fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness, and bite and devour one another, and are consumed one of another—every traveller paying an eight per cent. tax in his fare, for dividend to a consuming railroad company—we can’t know anything about God at all. And compare again ‘Eagle’s Nest,’ p. 194.

There, then, at Rose Terrace, I lived in peace in the fair Scotch summer days, with my widowed aunt, and my little cousin Jessie, then traversing a bright space between her sixth and ninth year; dark-eyed deeply, like her mother, and similarly pious; and she and I used to compete in the Sunday evening Scriptural examinations; and be as proud as two little peacocks because Jessie’s elder brothers, and sister Mary, used to get ‘put down,’ and either Jessie or I was always ‘Dux.’ We agreed upon this that we would be married, when we were a little older; not considering it preparatorily necessary to be in any degree wiser. [[94]]

9th February.

I couldn’t go on about my cousin Jessie, for I was interrupted by the second post with more birthday compliments, from young ladies now about Jessie’s age—letters which of course required immediate answer,—some also with flowers, which required to be immediately put into water, and greatly worried me by upsetting themselves among my books all day afterwards; but I let myself be worried, for love;—and, from a well-meaning and kindly feeling friend, some very respectful and respectable poetry, beautifully written, (and I read part of it, for love, but I had much rather he had sent me sixpence, for I hate poetry, mostly, and love pence, always); and to-day, half-past seven before chapel, my mind is otherwise set altogether, for I am reading Leviticus carefully now, for my life of Moses; and, in working out the law of the feast of harvest, chanced on the notable verse, xxiii. 24: “In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation;” and then flashed on me, all in a minute, the real meaning of Holbein’s introduction to the Dance of Death, (the third woodcut in the first edition), which till this moment I only took for his own symbol of the Triumph of Death, adopted from Orcagna and others, but which I see now, in an instant, to be the un-Holy Convocation; the gathering together to their temple of the Tribes of Death, and the blowing of trumpets on [[95]]their solemn feast day, and sabbath of rest to the weary in evil doing.

And, busy friends, in the midst of all your charming preparations for the Spring season, you will do well to take some method of seeing that design, and meditating, with its help, upon the grave question, what kind of weariness you will have to rest from. My own thoughts of it are disturbed, as I look, by that drummer-death, in front,[5] with his rattling and ringing kettledrums (he the chief Musician in the Psalm for the sons of Korah—Dathan and Abiram, because his sounding is on Skin, with sticks of Bone,) not only because of my general interest in drummers, but because, after being much impressed, when I was a child, by the verses I had to learn about the last trump, out of the 15th of 1st Corinthians,—when I became a man, and put away childish things, I used often to wonder what we should all say of any sacred Saga among poor Indians whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, if it told them that they were all to rise from the dead at the sound of the last drum. [[96]]

And here I’m interrupted again by a delightful letter about the resurrection of snails, Atropos really managing matters, at present, like the daintiest and watchfullest housewife for me,—everything in its place, and under my hand.

“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—As I have just read the last part of February ‘Fors,’ I want to say what I know about the little shells—(Helix virgata—I suppose). I think—indeed, am pretty sure, nearly, if not quite—all those shells had little live snails in them. I have found them in quantities on the South Downs near Lewes, on Roundway Hill near Devizes, near Lyme Regis, in North Wales; and before any of those places, on our own Hampton Common in Gloucestershire, where my sisters and myself used to gather those and other pretty ones when we were children. If you have any stored by, in a few months I think you will find them (if not shut up) walk away.

“When I was a girl I once had to choose a birthday present from one of my aunts, and asked for ‘Turton’s British Shells,’ for I always wanted to know the name and history of everything I found; then I collected all the land and freshwater shells I could find, as I could not get sea shells—one of my longings—for I never saw the sea till after I was twenty, except for a few hours at Munsley in Norfolk, when I was eight years old. I have my little shells still; and have four or five varieties of Helix virgata: I think the number of rings increases as the shell goes on growing.

‘In the autumn these shells are often suddenly observed in such great numbers as to give rise to the popular notion of their having fallen from the clouds. This shell is very hardy, and appears nearly insensible to cold, as it does not hybernate even when the ground is covered with snow.’ [[97]]

“I always fancied the Lord let them lie about in such numbers to be food for some little birds, or may be rooks and starlings, robins, etc., in cold weather when there was so little to eat.

“I dare say you know how the blackbirds and thrushes eat the larger snails. I have often seen in the woods a very pretty coloured shell lying on a white stone,—the birds had put it there to crack a hole in it and to take out the snail. The shell looked such a pretty clear colour because it was alive, and yet empty.”

Yes; the Holy Ghost of Life, not yet finally departed, can still give fair colours even to an empty shell. Evangelical friends,—worms, as you have long called yourselves, here is a deeper expression of humility suggested possible: may not some of you be only painted shells of worms,—alive, yet empty?

Assuming my shell to be Helix virgata, I take down my magnificent French—(let me see if I can write its title without a mistake)—“Manuel de Conchyliologie et de Paléontologie Conchyliologique,” or, in English, “Manual of Shell-talking and Old-body-talking in a Shell-talking manner.” Eight hundred largest octavo—more like folio—pages of close print, with four thousand and odd (nearly five thousand) exquisite engravings of shells; and among them I look for the creatures elegantly, but inaccurately, called by modern naturalists Gasteropods; in English, Belly-feet, (meaning, of course, to say Belly-walkers, for they haven’t got any feet); and among these I find, with much pains, one that is rather like mine, of which I am told that it belongs to the sixteenth sort in the second tribe of [[98]]the second family of the first sub-order of the second order of the Belly-walkers, and that it is called ‘Adeorbis subcarinatus,’—Adeorbis by Mr. Wood, and subcarinatus by Mr. Montagu; but I am not told where it is found, nor what sort of creature lives in it, nor any single thing whatever about it, except that it is “sufficiently depressed” (“assez déprimée”), and “deeply enough navelled” (assez profondement ombiliquée,—but how on earth can I tell when a shell is navelled to a depth, in the author’s opinion, satisfactory?) and that the turns (taken by the family), are ‘little numerous’ (peu nombreux). On the whole, I am not disposed to think my shell is here described, and put my splendid book in its place again.

I next try my English Cuvier, in sixteen octavo volumes; in which I find no notice whatever taken of these minor snails, except a list of thirty-three species, finishing with an etc.; out of which I mark ‘Cretacea,’ ‘Terrestris,’ and ‘Nivea,’ as perhaps likely to fit mine; and then I come, by order of Atropos, on this amazing account of the domestic arrangements of a little French snail, “Helix decollata” (Guillotined snail?) with references to “Cm. Chemn. cxxxvi. 1254–1257,” a species which “has the singular habit of successively fracturing the whorls at the top, (origin, that is,—snails building their houses from heaven towards earth,) of the spire, so that at a particular epoch, of all the whorls of the spire originally possessed by this bulimus, not a single [[99]]one remains.” Bulimus,—what’s a bulimus? Helix is certainly a screw, and bulimus—in my Riddle’s dictionary—is said to be “empty-bellied.” Then this French snail, revolutionary in the manner of a screw, appears to be a belly-walker with an empty belly, and no neck,—who literally “breaks up” his establishment every year! Query—breaks? or melts? Contraction or confusion?

I must put my fine English book back in its place, too;—but here, at last, comes a ‘work of light’ to help us, from my favourite pupil, who was out with me that day on the Downs, and nearly killed himself with keeping a fox in sight on foot, up and down them;—happily surviving, he has pursued the slower creature for me to its cave of silver earth; and writes thus.

“I have sent you two little boxes—one containing common garden snail shells of various ages, and the other black striped Down shells; and you will see that in Box 1 the full-grown ones, with the strong finished lip, have four whorls each, and all the full-grown garden shells I have noticed had the same number, though they varied a little in size. The next largest in the box have only three and a half turns, but if they had lived longer they would have added on another half turn, bigger than all the [[100]]rest of the shell put together. In fact, if one looks at this shell, one sees that any half whorl is half as large again as all the rest of the shell before it. Then, besides these, there are four or five younger shells, the smallest of which has only two and a half whorls, which exactly correspond to two and a half whorls taken from any of the larger shells; so I think we may conclude that a shell grows by adding on length only to the large end of a tapering tube, like a dunce’s cap, which, however, is curled up like a ram’s horn, to look prettier, take up less room, and allow the occupant to beat a retreat round the corner when a robin comes. By-the-bye, I wonder some birds don’t grow bills like corkscrews, to get at the snails with.

“Then in box No. 2 there are several black striped Down shells, and the full-grown ones have six whorls, and the smallest ones, which died young, some four and some five, according to age; but the dunce’s cap is longer, and so there are more whorls.

“I couldn’t get these facts clearly stated in two handbooks which I read. I suppose they took it for granted that one knew; but I found, what after all would lead one to infer the rest, that the young snail at birth corresponds to the colourless APEX of the shell, and that the colour only comes in that part which grows under the influence of light and air.”

“Wednesday, Feb. 9.

“Another fact is, that all the shells I ever remember looking at grow in the direction of the sun.

“Another fact. Since the shells have been in this room, my chimneypiece has been full of sleepy, small, long-bodied spiders, which had gone to sleep for the winter in these black and white caverns, out of the reach of flocks of half-starved larks and starlings.”

I drew the three advancing stages of the common snail’s houses, thus sent me, forthwith; and Mr. Burgess [[101]]swiftly and rightly engraves them. Note that the apparent irregularities in the spirals are conditions of perspective, necessarily affecting the deeply projecting forms; note also that each whorl is partly hidden by the subsequent one, built with its edge lapping over it; and finally, that there is really, I believe, a modification, to some extent, and enlargement, of the inner whorls; until the domestic creature is satisfied with its length of cave, and expresses its rest in accomplished labour and full age, by putting that binding lip round its border, and term to its hope.

Wherein, building for the earth, we may wisely imitate it. Of other building, not with slime for mortar, yet heavenward, we may perhaps conceive in due time.

I beg all my readers, but especially my Companions, to read with their best care the paper by Mr. Girdlestone, which, by the author’s kindly gift, I am enabled to send them with this Fors. It is the most complete and logical statement of Economic truth, in the points it touches, that I have ever seen in the English language: and to master it will be the best possible preparation for the study of personal duties to which I shall invite my Companions in my next letter. [[103]]

[1] See note at end of this letter. [↑]

[2] I have got no Turks yet in the Company: when any join it, I will give them Koran enough for what I ask of them. [↑]

[3] Every day taking more away than the one before it. [↑]

[4] Compare Letter XXI., p. 13. [↑]

[5] I have desired Mr. Ward to prepare small photographs of this design, in case any reader cares to have it,—but mind, it is not altogether done according to Mr. Stopford Brooke’s notion of the object of true art, “to please”—(see page 88 of the Manual of English Literature, just published by that omniscient divine—under the auspices of the all-and-sundry-scient Mr. T. R. Green, M.A.,—so, if you only want to be pleased, you had better not order it. But at any rate, order, if you wish to understand the next coming Fors, the Etruscan Leucothea, for comparison with your Lippi Madonna. Mr. Ward will have it ready with my signature about the time next Fors comes out;—or you can get it, unmounted, for a shilling, from Mr. Parker’s agent in Rome. [↑]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. Affairs of the Company.

I give below our banker’s account to the end of last year, drawn up by my friend Mr. W. Walker, whom I asked to take salary as the Company’s accountant, but who, as will be seen by the part of his letter I take leave here to print, gives us his work in true sympathy.

18, Yonge Park, Holloway, N., Nov. 11th, 1875.

Dear Sir,—I am of the same opinion as your printseller, and agree with him that “it is delightful to do business with you,”—so you must please let me volunteer to be of any practical service so far as keeping accounts, etc., can be useful to you or the St. George’s Company.

I readily accept the duties as honorary but not titled accountant, and as the labour is light, entailing very little trouble, my reward shall be the self-satisfaction in thinking I have done very little in the cause wherein you have done and are doing so very much.

Nevertheless, your kindly worded offer was gratefully received, and I was really pleased.

The enclosed accounts are a mere copy of the ledger items. I would have put all the names of the donors, (I found a few,) but you have a record, if I may judge from the notices in the December number of ‘Fors.’

With sincere respect, yours faithfully,

John Ruskin, Esq., LL.D. Wm. Walker.

[[104]]