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"Be sure that you go to the author to get his meaning, not to find yours."--Sesame and Lilies (1864-1865) by John Ruskin You have put a railroad-bridge over the falls of Schaffhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell‘s chapel; you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva; there is not a quiet valley in England that you have not filled with bellowing fire; there is no particle left of English land which you have not trampled coal ashes into — nor any foreign city in which the spread of your presence is not marked among its fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers‘ shops."--Sesame and Lilies (1864-1865) by John Ruskin

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LIBRARY EDITION VOLUME XVIII SESAME AND LILIES THE ETHICS OF THE DUST THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE W I T H L E T T E R S O N P U B L I C A F F A I R S 1859–1866 T H E C O M P L E T E W O R K S O F J O H N R U S K I N Two thousand and sixty-two copies of this edition—of which two thousand are for sale in England and America—have been printed at the Ballantyne Press, Edingburgh, and the type has been distributed.

L I B R A R Y E D I T I O N THE WO RKS OF JOHN RUSKIN E D I T E D B Y E. T. COOK A N D A L E X A N D E R W E D D E R B U R N L O N D O N G E O R G E A L L E N , 1 5 6 , C H A R I N G C R O S S R O A D N E W Y O R K : L O N G M A N S , G R E E N , A N D C O 1 9 0 5 All rights reserved L I B R A R Y E D I T I O N V O L U M E X V I I I SESAME AND LILIES THE ETHICS OF THE DUST THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE W I T H L E T T E R S O N P U B L I C A F F A I R S 1859–1866 SESAME AND LILIES THE ETHICS OF THE DUST THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE WITH LETTERS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS 1859–1866 BY J O H N R U S K I N L O N D O N G E O R G E A L L E N , 1 5 6 , C H A R G I N G C R O S S R O A D N E W Y O R K : L O N G M A N S , G R E E N , A N D C O . 1 9 0 5 C O N T E N T S O F V O L U M E X V I I I PAGE LI S T O F I L L U S T R A T I O N S x i i i I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H I S V O L U M E x v P A R T I . ― S E S A M E A N D LI L I E S ‖ ( 1 8 6 5 ) :— B I B L I O G R A P H I C A L N O T E 5 C O N T E N T S 1 9 T E X T O F A L L T H E E D I T I O N S 2 1 P A R T I I . ―T H E ET H I C S O F T H E D U S T ‖ ( 1 8 6 6 ) :— B I B L I O G R A P H I C A L N O T E 1 9 3 D E D I C A T I O N 1 9 7 C O N T E N T S 1 9 9 T E X T 2 0 9 P A R T I I I . ―T H E CR O W N O F WI L D O L I V E ‖ ( 1 8 6 6 ) :— B I B L I O G R A P H I C A L N O T E 3 7 3 C O N T E N T S 3 8 3 T E X T O F A L L T H E E D I T I O N S 3 8 5 APPENDIX LET T ERS ON P UB LIC AFF AIR S (1 8 59 – 18 6 6 ) I . T H E I T A L I A N Q U E S T I O N ( 1 8 5 9 ) :— 1 . A L E T T E R T O T H E ― S C O T S M A N , ‖ J U L Y 2 0 5 3 7 2 . A L E T T E R T O T H E ― S C O T S M A N , ‖ J U L Y 2 3 5 4 1 3 . A L E T T E R T O T H E ― S C O T S M A N , ‖ A U G U S T 6 5 4 4 II. T H E F O R E I G N P O L I C Y O F E N G L A N D ( 1 8 6 3 ) :— A L E T T E R T O T H E ― L I V E R P O O L A L B I O N , ‖ N O V E M B E R 2 5 4 6 ix x CONTENTS PAGE I I I . T H E P O S I T I O N O F D E N M A R K ( 1 8 6 4 ) :— A L E T T E R T O T H E ― M O R N I N G P O S T , ‖ J U L Y 7 5 4 8 I V . T H E J A M A I C A I N S U R R E C T I O N ( 1 8 6 5 , 1 8 6 6 ) :— 1 . A L E T T E R T O T H E ― D A I L Y T E L E G R A P H , ‖ D E C E M B E R 2 0 , 1 8 6 5 5 5 0 2 . A S P E E C H A T T H E E Y R E D E F E N C E A N D A I D F U N D , S E P - T E M B E R 7 , 1 8 6 6 5 5 2 ______________________ V . A F E W WO R D S T O T H E B O Y S O F T H E M A N C H E S T E R GR A M M A R S C H O O L , D E C E M B E R 7 , 1 8 6 4 5 5 5 ______________________ T H E F O L L O W I N G M I N O R R U S K I N I A N A A R E A L S O I N C L U D E D I N T H I S V O L U M E : 1— E X T R A C T S F R O M R U S K I N ‘ S LE T T E R S T O H I S F A T H E R :— A DEPUTATION FROM WINNINGTON (MANCHESTER, FEBRUARY 22, 1859) l x i i i FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF WINNINGTON (MARCH 12, 1859) l x i v VENETIAN PICTURES IN REAL LIFE (WINNINGTON, MARCH 13 AND 14, 1859; AND DECEMBER 2, 1863) l x v , l x v i DANCING AT WINNINGTON (MARCH 22, 1861) l x v i THE PLACE OF GREEK IN EDUCATION (BONNEVILLE, OCTOBER 12, 1861) 6 8 THE ROCKS OF HOLYHEAD (AUGUST 25, 1862) 1 3 4 SCHOOL OR PLAYHOUSE (WINNINGTON, AUGUST 8, 1863) l x i x A READING CIRCLE IN THE PARK (WINNINGTON, AUGUST 31, 1863) l x i x A ―GLORIOUS LINE OF HORACE‖ (MORNEX, SEPTEMBER 16, 1863) 1 0 9 THE DISCIPLINE OF DANGER (CHAMOUNI, OCTOBER 3, 1863) 2 1 YOUTH AND AGE (WINNINGTON, NOVEMBER 23, 1863) l x x i AN EVENING WITH SIR CHARLES HALLÉ (WINNINGTON) l x x THE ASSIZE COURTS AT MANCHESTER (WINNINGTON, DECEMBER 9, 1863) l x x v ‖EGYPT‖ AT WINNINGTON (DECEMBER 10, 1863) l x x i i LETTER TO A YOUNG GIRL (WINNINGTON, MARCH 13, 1859) l x v i i ―RIFLEMEN, FORM‖: EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO MISS HEATON (MARCH 9, 1860) x x i v n . LETTERS TO SIR EDWARD AND LADY BURNE-JONES:— ON THE DEATH OF RUSKIN‘S FATHER (MARCH 4, 5, 9, 11, 1864) x x v i i , x x v i i i ON EGYPTIAN ART (SEPTEMBER 13, 1864) x x x i v 1 Short extracts from collections of Ruskin‘s letters (such as those to Professor Norton and C. A. Howell), which appear in extenso in a later volume, are not included in these lists. CONTENTS xi MINOR RUSKINIANA: Continued:— PAGE LETTERS TO ACLAND:— ON THE DEATH OF RUSKIN‘S FATHER (MARCH 9, 1864) xxviii ON EGYPTIAN STUDIES (1864) xxxiv LETTER TO MR. CHARLES H. L. WOODD ON THE DEATH OF RUSKIN‘S FATHER (MARCH 9, 1864) xxix LETTERS TO MRS. COWPER (LADY MOUNT-TEMPLE) ON A SPIRITUALIST SÉANCE (1864) xxxii LETTERS TO DANIEL DUNGLAS HOME (SEPTEMBER 4, 1864; DECEMBER 29, 1865) xxxi n. LETTER TO COVENTRY PATMORE, ON ―SESAME AND LILIES‖ (1865) liv LETTER TO ―VIOLET‖ ON ―ETHICS OF THE DUST‖ (APRIL 11, 1866) lxxii NOTES FROM RUSKIN‘S DIARY ON THE CONTINENT (1866) xxxix RUSKIN‘S LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER (18661 ):— IN TURNER‘S FOOTSTEPS (PARIS, MAY 2) xxxvii NIGHTINGALE VALLEY (DIJON, MAY 6) xxxvii RUSKIN AND ROUSSEAU (NEUCHÂTEL, MAY 8) xxxvii AN ALPINE PICNIC (NEUCHÂTEL, MAY 10) xxxviii RUSKIN‘S CHILDHOOD (MAY 24, JUNE 11: EXTRACTS) xl MORNING AT THE GIESSBACH (JUNE 6) xl THE BEAUTY OF THE FALL (GIESSBACH, JUNE 7) xl SWISS PEASANT LIFE (GIESSBACH, JUNE 11) xli TWILIGHT IN THE MEADOWS (LAUTERBRUNNEN, JUNE 13) xlii ―MARIE OF THE GIESSBACH‖ (INTERLAKEN, JUNE 14). xlii A DAY AT ROSENLAUI (LUCERNE, JUNE 17) xliii RUSKIN AND SWIFT (BAVENO, MAY 6, 1869) lxi ―DEATH AND THE NORTH WIND‖: A LETTER TO C. A. HOWELL (THUN, MAY 21, 1866) xxxix LETTERS TO RUSKIN FROM CARLYLE:— THE DEATH OF MRS. CARLYLE (CHELSEA, MAY 10, 1866) xlvii ―THE ETHICS OF THE DUST‖ (CHELSEA, DECEMBER 20, 1866) lxxiii LETTER TO MR. GEORGE ALLEN, ON THE NEW PREFACE TO ―SESAME AND LILIES‖ (AVALION, MAY 24, 1882) lxiii REMINISCENCES OF RUSKIN:— AT A SPIRITUALISTIC SÉANCE (1864): BY WILLIAM HOWITT xxxi n. HIS SPEECH ON BEHALF OF GOVERNOR EYRE (1866): BY CARLYLE xlvi HOW HE ―MANAGED CARLYLE‖: BY MRS. CARLYLE xlvii A MORNING AT DENMARK HILL (1869): BY MISS R. S. ROBERTS l A VISIT TO BRANTWOOD (1883): BY JOWETT lxi RUSKIN AT WINNINGTON (1863): BY LADY BURNE-JONES lxiv 1 Except the letter of May 6, 1869. L I S T O F I L L U S T R A T I O N S DE S I G N F O R A TI T L E - P A G E T O ― S E S A M E A N D LI L I E S ‖ (Photogravure from a drawing by Sir Edward BurneJones) Frontispiece P HOT OGRAVU RES (Fro m Dra wi n gs b y t he Aut ho r) PLATE I. DAWN AT NEUCHÂTEL To face page xxxviii II. INTERLAKEN ‖ ‖ xl III. LAKE OF BRIENZ: FROM THE GIESSBACH HOTEL ‖ ‖ xlii IV. SCHAFFHAUSEN ‖ ‖ xliv ______________________ V. WINNINGTON HALL: THE SCENE OF ―THE ETHICS OF THE DUST‖ (From a photograph) ‖ ‖ lxiv F AC S I M I LE S A P A G E O F T H E MS. O F ― T H E MY S T E R Y O F LI F E A N D I T S AR T S ‖ ( S e s a m e a n d L il i e s, § 1 0 1 ) B e t w e e n p p . 1 4 8 , 1 4 9 A P A G E O F T H E MS. O F ― ET H I C S O F T H E DU S T ‖ ( § 119 ) , W I T H S T U D I E S O F HE A D S D R A W N B Y T H E AU T H O R O N T H E OP P O S I T E P A G E ‖ ‖ 3 5 8 , 3 5 9 A P A G E O F T H E MS. O F ― T H E CR O W N O F WI L D O L I V E ‖ ( § 9 6 ) T o f a c e p a g e 465 ______________________ Note.—None of the drawings given in this volume have hitherto been reproduc ed. The drawing of Plate I. was exhibited at Boston and New York in 1879 (see Vol. XIII. p. 584); that of Plate II. was No. 261 in the Ruskin Exhibition at the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1901; that of Plate III. was No. 333 in the same Exhibition; and that of Plate IV. was No. 171 (also No. 159 in the Coniston Exhibition of 1900). xiii INTRODUCTION TO VOL. XVIII IN this volume and the next are contained Ruskin‘s writings between the death of his father (1864) and his assumption of the duties of Slade Professor at Oxford (1870). The present volume contains the following books: I. Sesame and Lilies (first published in 1865), II. The Ethics of the Dust (1866), and III. The Crown of Wild Olive (1866). In these books there are many allusions to public affairs, and especially to questions of colonial and foreign policy. In an Appendix, therefore, Ruskin‘s letters and a speech made on such subjects during the years in question are included. The writings thus included in the present volume belong to the years 1864, 1865, and 1866; but other writings of the same years are given in the following volume, which, however, in the main, is occupied with work of a later date (1867–1869). In order to apporation the material more or less equally between the two volumes, and to preserve a general similarity of subject-matter in each of them, it has not been possible to observe an exclusively chronological distribution. The present volume contains Discourses on General Subjects; the next volume, Papers on Art and Greek Mythology. The following chronological list of all Ruskin‘s published work during the six years in question (with references to the volumes in which the various pieces are printed) will give the reader at a glance a striking idea of Ruskin‘s many-sided work:— 1864. April 21. ―Traffic‖: a Lecture at Bradford—Vol. XVIII. (Crown of Wild Olive. Lecture II.).

‖ October and November. Letters to the Daily Telegraph on

―Supply and Demand‖—Vol. XVII. Appendix iii.

‖ December 6. ―Kings‘ Treasuries‖: a Lecture at

Manchester—Vol. XVIII. (Sesame and Lilies, Lecture I.).

‖ December 7. A Few Words to the Boys of the Manchester

Grammar School—Vol. XVIII. Appendix v. xv xvi INTRODUCTION 1864. December 14. ―Queens‘ Gardens‖: a Lecture at Mancheste r—Vol. XVIII. (Sesame and Lilies, Lecture II.). 1865. January to July. Papers in the Art Journal on ―The Cestus of Aglaia‖—Vol. XIX.

‖ January 24. ―Work‖: a Lecture at Camberwell—Vol. XVIII. (Crown of

Wild Olive, Lecture I.).

‖ February and May. ―Notes on the Shape and Structure of some parts

of the Alps, with reference to Denudation‖: Papers in the Geological Magazine. Reserved for a later volume.

‖ February 18. An Address at the Working Men‘s College. Not

reported.

‖ April and May. Letters to the Pall Mall Gazette on ―Work and

Wages‖—Vol. XVII. Appendix iv.

‖ May 15. The Study of Architecture in Schools: a Paper read to the

Royal Institute of British Architects—Vol. XIX.

‖ June 21. Sesame and Lilies published.

……‖…September and October. Letters to the Daily Telegraph on ―Servants and Houses‖—Vol. XVII. Appendix v.

‖ October 2. Second Edition of Sesame and Lilies published (with a

new Preface).

‖ November 18. Competition and Mechanical Art: a Lecture at the

Working Men‘s College—Vol. XIX.

‖ November and December. Letters on Geology in the Reader.—

Reserved for a later volume.

‖ ―War‖: a Lecture at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.—Vol.

XVIII. (Crown of Wild Olive, Lecture III.).

‖ December. Ethics of the Dust published—Vol. XVIII.

1866. January to April. Papers in the Art Journal on ―The Cestus of Aglaia‖—Vol. XIX.

‖ May 14. The Crown of Wild Olive published—Vol. XVIII.
‖ September 5. ―The Eyre Defence Fund‖: a Speech delivered a t a

Committee Meeting of the Fund—Vol. XVIII. Appendix iv. INTRODUCTION xvii 1867. March to May. The letters, afterwards published as Time and Tide, appeared—Vol. XVII.

‖ May 24. ―The Relation of National Ethics to National Arts‖: the

Rede Lecture at Cambridge—Vol. XIX.

‖ June 7. ―The Present State of Modern Art‖: a Lecture at the Royal

Institution—Vol. XIX.

‖ August and November. ―Banded and Brecciated Concretions‖:

Papers in the Geological Magazine.—Reserved for a later volume. 1868. January, April, and May. Further papers in the same series.

‖ Easter. ―German Popular Stories‖: a Preface—Vol. XIX.
‖ May 13. ―The Mystery of Life and its Arts‖: a Lecture at

Dublin—Vol. XVIII. (Sesame and Lilies, Lecture III.).

‖ July 4 and 15. ―Trade-Unions and Strikes‖: Speeches at the Social

Science Association—Vol. XVII., Appendix vii.

‖ July 18. ―The Three-Legged Stool of Art‖: Remarks made at the

West London School of Art—Vol. XIX. ‖ August. Letters to the Daily Telegraph on ―Railways and the State‖—Vol. XVII., Appendix vi.

‖ December. ―Notes on the Destitute and Criminal Classes‖—Vol.

XVII., Appendix viii. 1869. January 29. ―The Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme‖: a Lecture at the Royal Institution—Vol. XIX.

‖ March 9. ―Greek Myths of Storm‖: a Lecture at University College,

London—Vol. XIX. (Queen of the Air).

‖ March 15. ―The Hercules of Camarina‖: a Lecture at the South

Lambeth Art School—Vol. XIX. (Queen of the Air).

‖ June 22. Queen of the Air published—Vol. XIX.
‖ December. ―Banded and Brecciated Concretions‖: a further paper

in the Geological Magazine.—Reserved for a later volume.

‖ December 14. ―The Future of England‖: a Lecture at the Royal

Artillery Institution, Woolwich—Vol. XVIII. (Crown of Wild Olive, Lecture IV.). XVIII. b xviii INTRODUCTION 1870. January. ―Banded and Brecciated Concretions‖: a further paper in the Geological Magazine.—Reserved for a later volume. ‖ February 4. ―Verona and its Rivers‖: a Lecture at the Royal Institution—Vol. XIX. The foregoing list will at once bring before the reader the general characteristics of Ruskin‘s work during the years under review. It largely took the form of lectures and letters—of appeals, that is, upon the platform and through the press. The impulse towards the platform seems to have returned strongly upon him after a period of comparative seclusion; he wanted once more to have his audience face to face, and to rouse them, if he might, to a sense of the evils which was burning within him.1 The books of this period were thus written mainly for oral delivery; repetitions, which we have previously discussed,2 sometimes occur, and a declamatory note is heard. 3 Next: these manifold lectures, speeches, articles and books tell of abounding activity and untiring industry; but the work is very discursive. He talks and writes of books and how to read them; of the sphere and education of women; of soldiers and their duties; architects and their functions; servants and their loyalties; masters and their duties. He discusses now the elements of crystallisation or the denudation of the Alps; and now the merits of the manner in which the Jamaica insurrection was suppressed or the policy of non-intervention in European quarrels. He treats of the mythology of Greece and of Egypt and devotes much attention to Greek art, but touches also upon the designs of Burne-Jones, the pictures of Phil Morris, the porches of Abbeville, the tombs of Verona. The laws of work divide his attention with the limitations of engraving; and he passes from the designs upon Greek coins to the management of railways and the prospects of co-operative industry. In looking over the list, one thinks—more than at any preceding period in Ruskin‘s life, though not more than at some later stages—of his reference in after years to ―the incurably desultory character which has brought on me the curse of Reuben, ‗Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.‘ ‖ 4 It was impossible that activity so far ranging, even though assisted by Ruskin‘s colossal industry, should exhaust, with excelling mastery, the many subjects upon which he 1 See the Preface of 1871 to Sesame and Lilies (below, pp. 32–33). 2 See Vol. XII. p. xxvii., and Vol. XVI. p. xx. 3 See the author‘s remarks in this connexion on pp. 33 and 466 n. 4 Fors Clavigera, Letter 51. INTRODUCTION xix touched. His literary work, now as throughout his life, was accompanied, it should be remembered, by corresponding activity with the pencil and the brush. ―It is strange,‖ he wrote to Professor Norton, ―that I hardly ever get anything stated without some grave mistake, however true in my main discoveries.‖ 1 Nay, not strange; but inevitable. And, in turning from our list to the actual contents of this and the succeeding volume—which comprise not a few of Ruskin‘s most beautiful passages, and which throw flashes of insight upon so many subjects, one hastens to correct ―the curse of Reuben‖ by the compensation which he also took to his comfort. ―But I reflect, hereupon, with resolute self-complacency, that water, when good, is a good thing, though it is not stable; and that it may be better sometimes to irrigate than to excel.‖ 2 Yet, scattered as were Ruskin‘s studies during the years now under review, there was in all his more important books of the period a common impulse, with a more orderly sequence, than may disclose itself to careless readers. The wide range over which he travelled was due not only to his intellectual and artistic curiosity, as boundless as it was desultory; it was caused also by the war which had now become chronic between two sides of his nature. The moral and active side was at strife with the artistic and contemplative. ―I am essentially,‖ he writes at one time, ―a painter and a leaf dissector. . . . My right work is to be out among the budding banks and hedges, outlining sprays of hawthorn and clusters of primrose.‖ 3 And so, he was always intending that this piece of writing or that should ―close his political work for many a day.‖4 But at other times the political side won the battle. ―I am weary of all writing and speaking about art,‖ he told the architects in 1865, ―and most, of my own. . . . I have seceded from the study not only of architecture, but nearly of all art; and have given myself, as I would in a besieged city, to seek the best modes of getting bread and water for its multitudes, there remaining no question, it seems to me, of other than such grave business for the time.‖ 5 Each side was defeated in turn. Having declared his secession from the study of architecture, he went to Abbeville to analyse and draw ―the flamboyant architecture of the valley of the Somme‖; having ―closed his political work for many a day‖ in 1867, he threw himself into it 1 Letters to Charles Eliot Norton, vol. ii. p. 20; reprinted in a later volume of this edition. 2 Fors Clavigera, Letter 51. 3 Time and Tide, §§ 117, 69 (Vol. XVII. pp. 415, 376). 4 Ibid., p. 377. 5 ―The Study of Architecture,‖ §§ 4, 18 (Vol. XIX.). xx INTRODUCTION with particular energy in 1868. 1 But if there was no complete victory for either side, there was reconciliation, and to each branch of his studies he brought the same analytical methods, the same earnest search for truth. His proper work of ―outlining sprays of hawthron‖ went on, but more and more he became insistent upon the foundation of noble art in ethical conditions. This is the note of all the discourses upon art contained in the next volume; it was the topic, as well as the title, of his hitherto unpublished Rede Lecture at Cambridge, which may be taken as the central work, in that field, of the years now under consideration. One sees the same overmastering moral impulse even in some of Ruskin‘s scientific studies. It was the Ethics of the Dust that he invited his readers to study; the ―Crystal Virtues‖ and the ―Crystal Rest‖ were the chief of ―the elements of crystallisation‖ which he taught ―to little housewives.‖ And so, again, though his proper work, in science and in art, was not allowed to drop, he was yet continually impelled to carry forward his social and political teaching, applying its lessons to fresh fields, or proclaiming it, in different language, to new audiences. He has himself noted, in a retrospect of his literary life, the connexion between one of the books contained in the pr esent volume and the economic writings contained in the preceding volume. ―The wealth of a country is in its good men and women, and in nothing else. . . . This is first, and more or less eloquently, stated in the close of the chapter, called the Veins of Wealth, of Unto this Last; and is scientifically, and in sifted terms, explained and enforced in Munera Pulveris. . . . It is taught, with all the faculty that I am possessed of, in Sesame and Lilies, that in a state of society in which men and women are as good as they can be, (under mortal limitation,) the women will be the guiding and purifying power.‖ 2 And so, again, ―in the one volume of Sesame and Lilies—nay, in the last forty pages of its central address to Englishwomen—everything is told that I know of vital truth, everything urged that I see to be needful of vital act.‖ 3 And thus, in the last Preface, which Ruskin wrote to the book (1882), he asks that it should be ―read in connection with Unto this Last.‖4 So, also, with regard to The Crown of Wild Olive, that volume is in large measure—as will be seen from the references to parallel passages here supplied—a reinforcement of 1 See in Vol. XVII. (pp. 537 seq.) his addresses on Strikes and his ―Notes on Employment.‖ 2 Fors Clavigera, Letter 90. This function of women is also the subject of several pages of The Crown of Wild Olive. 3 Fors Clavigera, Letter 57. 4 See below, p. 52. INTRODUCTION xxi economic, social, and political teaching contained in the author‘s earlier books.1 The lectures to young soldiers—with their appeal ―Educate or Govern‖2—were in turn, mutatis mutandis, reinforced in his inaugural lectures at Oxford, and another of Ruskin‘s harmonies of his various gospels thus becomes appropriate here: ―The Stones of Venice taught the laws of constructive art, and the dependence of all human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy life of the workman. Unto this Last taught the laws of that life itself, and its dependence on the Sun of Justice; the Inaugural Oxford Lectures, the necessity that it should be led, and the gracious laws of beauty and labour recognised, by the upper, no less than by the lower, classes of England.‖3 The conditions of the time at which Ruskin wrote the books contained in this volume should be borne in mind by its readers. He has much to say of books, and pleads for the establishment of public libraries ―in every considerable city.‖ 4 In these days of municipal enterprise and private munificence such pleading sounds familiar, and, in part, superfluous. But, writing forty years ago, Ruskin had to support his plea as savouring of the paradoxical and impracticable. Carlyle, two years later, took the same text for his Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, and introduced it in a tentative way, as of one about to travel on a strange sea.5 So, again, on the subject of women‘s education—in these days of High Schools, Higher Colleges, University Colleges and degrees—Ruskin may seem behind, rather than in front of, the times; but it was not so in the days when he wrote that ―a girl‘s education should be nearly in its course and material of study the same as a boy‘s,‖6 and when, alike in practice and in precept, he strove to increase the range and depth of teaching in ―Seminaries for young ladies.‖ His appeals to the hearts and consciences of readers, in the matter of the housing of the working-classes, will never, perhaps, be out of date; for while each generation somewhat raises its standard, each also falls short of it. But when Ruskin wrote Sesame and Lilies in 1864, the accommodation for the working-classes both in towns and in the country was very bad. It was not till the following year that the substitution of union for parochial chargeability was 1 See his note to § 1 of the Introduction; below, p. 385. 2 Crown of Wild Olive, § 144 (p. 502). 3 Fors Clavigera, Letter 78. 4 Sesame and Lilies, § 49 (p. 104). 5 ―Nay, I have sometimes thought, why should not there be a library in every county town?‖ etc. (Miscellanies, popular edition, vol. vii. p. 184). 6 Sesame and Lilies, § 74 (p. 128). xxii INTRODUCTION completed by enacting that the cost of the whole poor relief of the Union should be charged upon the common fund. This was a reform for which Ruskin‘s friend, Sir John Simon, strongly pleaded; the evil results of the old system, in the matter of housing accommodation, were pointed out in Simon‘s Report, to the Privy Council, to which Ruskin refers.1 Legislation to improve the conditions of the Public Health and facilitate the provision of better houses was still some way off. It was in the year of Sesame and Lilies that Disraeli suggested, as a variant upon the words of the wise King of Israel, ―Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas‖; but the Public Health Act and the Artisans‘ Dwellings Act were not passed till 1875. With regard to the re lations of capital and labour, the Trade Union Act, which gave freedom and indeed (until recent decisions of the House of Lords 2 ) immunity to labour combinations, dates from 1871; and, lastly, it was only in 1870 that the State set itself, in Mr. Forster‘s words, ―to complete the voluntary system and fill up the gaps‖ by establishing a general and national system of elementary education. These are dates which should be borne in mind by those who read Ruskin‘s references to social questions in the ‘sixties. Ruskin was also much interested in foreign questions, and here again it may be well, as an introduction to the volume, to carry our minds back to the circumstances of the time. The three earliest of the letters here collected in the Appendix (pp. 537–545) are dated 1859, and refer to the Italian question. On this question, his personal sympathies went partly in one direction, his reasoned convictions entirely in the other. He had been on very friendly terms with Austrian officers (including Radetzky himself) in Venice and Verona; and he thought some of the charges against ―Austrian oppression‖ overdone. But he was a warm friend to Italian aspirations; he was also, as we have seen, an admirer of the Emperor Napoleon III. He had been a strong supporter of the Crimean War, in which Cavour had ranged the Sardinian Government on the side of England and France. To Ruskin, France, almost more than Italy, was his second country. He knew the French language, and was fond of its literature; his early love had been a French girl, and he still had many friends in Paris; he had the artist‘s eye for the charm of French landscape, 3 and the very air of France came to him as if from Paradise; 4 the architecture and 1 Note to § 30 of Seasame and Lilies (below, p. 105 n.). 2 Such as Quinn v. Leathem, and The Taff Vale Railway Co. v. The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, in the session of 1901. 3 Modern Painters, vol. iii. (p. 237 and n.). 4 Vol. VII. p. xx. INTRODUCTION xxiii the illumination of France in the Middle Ages were very dear to him; from France, as he often said, could lessons best be learnt in chivalry, and in the graces of civilised life. 1 He was at all times, therefore, a warm advocate of a good understanding between England and France2—a note in his views of foreign policy which is heard very often in the present volume. 3 These several factors combined to make him an enthusiastic admirer of Napoleon when in 1859 France joined Sardinia in declaring war against Austria. At this moment England was in the midst of a political crisis at home; Lord Derby‘s Ministry was tottering; a General Election followed, and in the end Lord Palmerston returned to power. Ruskin, who never took any interest in the fortunes of parliamentary warfare, was indignant that at a time which was fraught with such grave issues for Italian freedom England should be absorbed in a domestic quarrel. 4 If he could have had his way, England would have thrown herself heartily, at the side of France and Sardinia, into the war of liberation. The actual state of opinion in this country was very different; the Tories were for the most part on the side of Austria, and among the Liberals platonic sympathy with Italy was not unmixed with suspicions of Louis Napoleon. The net result of these conflicting factors was wittily summed up by the late Lord Houghton. ―What,‖ he was asked by friends in Paris, ―do you English really want?‖ ―We want,‖ he answered, ―first, that the Austrians should beat you French thoroughly; next, we want that the Italians should be free; and then we want them to be very grateful to us for doing nothing towards it.‖ 5 This was the state of mind which Ruskin chastises in his letters on ―The Italian Question.‖ The Peace of Villafranca (July 1859), by which Louis Napoleon secured Savoy and Nice as the price of his intervention, did not wholly alienate Ruskin‘s sympathies from the Emperor. If he did not go as far as his friend Mrs. Browning, who still ―believed entirely in the Emperor‖ 6 and saw in him a great man whose ―great deed was too great,‖7 yet he made allowances and was ready to find compensation in the material benefits of the French occupation of Savoy. 8 But in England, the conduct of Louis Napoleon excited the utmost 1 Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. p. 416); Aratra Pentelici, Preface, § 1. 2 See the concluding passage of Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V.) 3 See pp. 104, 438–439, 540, 542. 4 See his letter to the Scotsman of August 1, 1859; below, p. 544. 5 Reported, on the authority of Odo Russell, in a letter of Mrs. Browning (Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, vol. ii. p. 376). 6 Ibid., p. 323. 7 ―A Tale of Villafranca.‖ 8 See his letter to Dr. John Brown in Vol. XVII. p. 270 n. xxiv INTRODUCTION indignation. It lashed the previous suspicion of French policy to fury. It is the turn of Austria to-day, men said, it may be ours to-morrow; if his alliance with Sardinia did not prevent the annexation of Savoy and Nice, why should his professed friendship for us save England from his ambitious rapacity? The invasion panic sprung up. In May, Tennyson had printed his ―Riflemen, Form‖ in the Times, and the movement now gathered much force; while Palmerston sanctioned the expenditure of millions upon coast fortifications. Ruskin sympathised with the formation of rifle clubs, 1 but deplored the panic; and it is this which forms the subject of repeated references in the present volume and other of his writings. ―France and England,‖ he said, ―buy panic of each other; they pay, each of them, for ten-thousand-pounds‘-worth of terror a year.‖2 It was for Ruskin the disappointment of enthusiastic hopes. ―If England and France,‖ he had written, three years before, of the alliance cemented, as he believed, by the Crimean War, ―fail of this, if again petty jealousies or selfish interests prevails to unknit their hands from the armoured grasp, then, indeed, their faithful children will have fallen in vain; there will be a sound as of renewed lamentation along those Euxine waves, and a shaking among the bones that bleach by the mounds of Sebastopol.‖3 This was not the only cause which Ruskin found for disappointment in the results of the Crimean War. In 1863 insurrection broke out in Poland. The cause of Polish freedom was very popular in this country; it enlisted friends among men of all parties in Great Britain and Ireland. The Manchester School—with its general doctrine of non-intervention, which Ruskin assails in this volume 4—was the only exception. In France the enthusiasm was yet greater, and the Emperor Napoleon was prepared to intervene if England would join him. The Polish insurrectionary leaders looked for foreign intervention to save them in an otherwise hopeless contest, and their hopes ran high when the British Government went so far as to despatch to Russia, in concert with France and Austria, a note containing six points for the pacification of Poland. But thus far and no further was England prepared to go; words, not deeds, were her policy; 1 ―Thanks for Mrs. Browning‘s noble letter,‖ he wrote to a friend (Miss Heaton, March 9, 1860), ―but she‘s wholly wrong (for the first time in her life, I believe) about the Rifles—the only thing to save us from our accursed commerce, and make us men again instead of gold shovels.‖ Among the riflemen who had formed was Ruskin‘s assistant, Mr. George Allen, and Ruskin took a keen interest in his proficiency as a shot. 2 Sesame and Lilies, § 48 (below, p. 104), and Vol. XVII. p. 104. 3 Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. p. 416). 4 See below, pp. 480, 540. INTRODUCTION xxv Palmerston had said that he regarded the Polish insurrection as ―the just punishment inflicted by Heaven on Russia,‖ but he absolutely declined to co-operate with France in making England an instrument of Providence. The insurrection was ruthlessly suppressed by Russia, now free from the dread of foreign intervention, and by May 1864 order once more reigned in Warsaw. It was order after unflinching severities; banishments, floggings, shootings, and hangings were remorselessly applied, and women were made subject to these instruments of repression impartially with men. Ruskin‘s indignation, alike at the action of Russia and at the inaction of England, finds expression in many pages of this volume. By subscribing to Russian loans, he says, people in England became accessories to the ―murd er of Polish women and children.‖ 1 And, again, speaking at Manchester soon after the final suppression of the insurrection, he deplores the coldness of heart which ―can look on and see noble nations murdered, man by man, without a tear.‖ 2 In a similar spirit was Ruskin‘s reference at Manchester to the non-intervention of England to protect the Circassians who, in the same year (1864), were being driven into exile.‖3 The next cause which enlisted Ruskin‘s sympathies and excited him to similar protests was that of the Danes. The reader would hardly care to embark even upon a short voyage in the stormy and complicated waters of the Schleswig-Holstein question. It will here suffice to say that there was a strong current of sympathy in this country with the Danes; that Palmerston, when he stated in Parliament4 that ―if any violent attempt were made to overthrow the rights and interfere with the independence of Denmark, those who made the attempt would find in the result that it would not be Denmark alone with which they would have to contend,‖ had not a united Cabinet behind him; that, when it came to the point, Palmerston and Russell were in favour of war against Prussia and Austria, but Gladstone and the majority were on the other side; 5 that the Queen was strongly against any anti-Prussian intervention; that the British Government made certain overtures to France for a joint protest; that the Emperor Napoleon, inclined perhaps to give tit-for-tat for England‘s refusal to join him in the case of Poland, rejected 1 Crown of Wild Olive, § 35 (below, p. 416). 2 Sesame and Lilies, § 29 (below, p. 81). 3 Ibid., § 72 n. (below, p. 127 n.). 4 July 23, 1863. 5 There is an interesting account of the Cabinet meeting which decided the question in Morley‘s Life of Gladstone, vol. ii. pp. 119–120. For the Queen‘s part in the matter, see Sidney Lee‘s Queen Victoria: a Biography, pp. 342 seq. xxvi INTRODUCTION the overtures; and that in the end Denmark was left to its fate. Ruskin‘s wrath at this result is energetically expressed in his letter on ―The Position of Denmark‖ (pp. 548, 549). In the era of European confusion, with some aspects of which we have been dealing, ―the English Cabinet,‖ says Gladstone‘s biographer, himself a non-intervention man, ―found no powerful or noble part to play.‖1 To Ruskin, writing in the midst of the events, the part of inaction seemed the more ignoble from its contrast with other scenes in which the English Government did play an active part. The first ―opium war‖ with China (1839–1842) was succeeded in 1857–1858 by further hostilities, which resulted in freedom of access to Chinese rivers. But in 1860 there was a renewal of disturbances, and the Summer Palace was, by way of punishment, levelled to the ground. Thus, stern action in China was simultaneous with non-intervention in Italy; and so, again, in 1863, when Poland was left to her fate, the British fleet bombarded Kagosima in Japan. Into the merits of these various policies of action and inaction, this is no occasion for entering; but it is necessary to bear the facts in mind in reading the present volume. Ruskin‘s sense of the contrast, thus indicated, finds expression in Sesame and Lilies and The Crown of Wild Olive, 2 and in his letter on ―The Foreign Policy of England‖ (pp. 546, 547). To his part in the controversy which raged round the Jamaica Insurrection of 1865, allusion is made at a later stage of this Introduction (pp. xliv.–xlvi.). 1864–1866 Having now defined the general characteristics of the well-marked period in Ruskin‘s work which is contained in this and the succeeding volume, and having described the conditions of the time which it is necessary to remember in reading the books and letters here collected, we now proceed to give some account (1) of his life during the years covered by the present volume, and (2) of the several books which are contained in it. One reason of the scattered nature of Ruskin‘s work in 1864 and succeeding years was the pressure of home duties caused by the death of his father. This cast upon Ruskin responsibilities from which he had been exempt. His father‘s house and his father‘s purse had 1 Morley‘s Life of Gladstone, vol. ii. p. 115. 2 See below, pp. 82, 480. INTRODUCTION xxvii hitherto been free to him; not without some resultant constraint and vexation, but also without the worry of business details. It seems from incidental allustions in Ruskin‘s letters that the father had been in the habit of placing to the son‘s bank account £1000 or £1500 a year; this was Ruskin‘s ordinary revenue, in addition to such sums as he might receive from his publisher. But he had an extraordinary revenue also; for, in the case of any special expenditure—as for pictures, or benevolent loans of an exceptionally large amount—he seems to have drawn on his father‘s purse. The administration of the fortune now passed into the son‘s hands, and he had, moreover, a widowed mother whose care was his first and constant duty. Ruskin sent to some of his more intimate friends full accounts of his father‘s last illness and of his own feelings in presence of the loss he had sustained. To Burne-Jones and his wife, with whom he had intended to go to Florence in the spring, he wrote (March 4) on the day after the old man‘s death:— ―I am at this moment more anxious about the effect upon you of this thing, than about anything else. My mother has behaved so wisely, as well as bravely, that my chief anxiety for her is passed. She slept a little last night, and this morning, when a woman who felt less would have insisted on staying beside the body, she let me take her away in five minutes; and has since been sitting quietly beside me, telling me directions of letters and talking just a little now and then, and I hope the deadliest of the shock is passed. ―But I‘m very anxious about you and your fretting for me—not to speak of the disappointment about Florence. I must have you and Georgie go as comfortably as if I were with you; that‘s the only thing you can do for me (that, and not drawing melancholy subjects, nor ill-made hands), so I mean to get you a courier who will insist on your doing things correctly. ―I‘m used to live in pain, and this kind of pain does not kill by withering as other sorts of pain do; I have no feeling of weakness, nor of fever, and slept without dreaming last night—though the last forty hours were enough to make one dream, one should have thought. The quite wonderful thing to me is the way that it changes one‘s notions of the past character. I had often measured my feeling to my father, as I thought; but I never had any conception of the way that I should have to mourn—not over what I lose, now, but over what I have lost until now.‖1 And so next day, ―I find a curious thing that natural sorrow does 1 This letter is quoted from the Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. i. p. 274. xxviii INTRODUCTION not destroy strength, but gives it; while an irregular, out-of-way, avoidable sorrow kills—according to its weight.‖ And, again, about the funeral (March 9): ―No, there‘s no day worse than the first. You don‘t suppose that the dramatic performances of upholsterers trouble me, worse than a nightmare—and I‘m the only person they can trouble.‖ Then he reverts (March 11) to a scheme of needlework which Burne-Jones was to design for the girls at Winnington to execute: 1— ―The tapestry is just as much to me as ever it was, and far more likely to come into direct use now, than it was before—not that I either have—or can form—any plans yet; my mother would live wherever I asked her to live, but I am not at all sure that I shall wish her to live elsewhere than here. Her old friends are useful to her—and I find that beautiful things don‘t make one happy (except only eyes, and hair, and Turner drawings—but there are more of those in England than elsewhere), but only one‘s own quiet order and work and progress.‖2 Among the letters of condolence which he received was one from Froude, who had seen a good deal during recent years of the home life at Denmark Hill, and had conceived a real admiration for ―the entirely honest merchant.‖ ―Such a fine, noble old man,‖ he wrote (March 8), ―or rather not old, for he seemed in his mental and moral prime. He struck me as being so true a man—true in word and in deed.‖3 It was characteristic of Ruskin that he spent little time in fond regrets, found nothing but impatient disgust in ―the trappings and the suits of woe,‖ and was able to analyse with strict impartiality the relations between himself and his father. To Acland, who had taken a different view of the case from Froude‘s, Ruskin wrote (March 9):— ―You never have had—nor with all your medical experience have you probably ever seen the loss of a father who would have sacrificed his life for his son, and yet forced his son to sacrifice his life to him, and sacrifice it in vain.‖ Truth in all things was the object of Ruskin‘s search; and ―To-day‖ 1 See Vol. XVII. p. lxxiv. 2 These passages also are reprinted from the Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. i. pp. 275–276. 3 Ruskin sent Froude‘s letter to Acland, from whose papers this passage is printed. INTRODUCTION xxix was his motto. To another friend (Mr. Charles H. L. Woodd) he wrote (March 9):— ―MY DEAR WOODD,—Many thanks for your letter. I thought you would like to come to this piece of business, as people think it respectful to see their friends buried. To me, it is, as it always has been of late years, one universal puzzle. To see you Christians as gay as larks while nothing touches you in your own affairs or friends—watching thousands of people massacred and tortured—helping to do it—selling them guns to shoot each other with, and talking civilities and protocols to men who are walking up to their loins in human blood. ―Presently God knocks you on the head with a coffin‘s end, and you suddenly perceive that something has gone wrong—scratch your heads—say—‗Dear me—here‘s one of my friends dead—really the world is a very sad world. How very extraordinary! let me improve the occasion!‘ ―You are funny people—vous autres. ―I wish you were not coming or would not come to-morrow, for you are real friends—and I don‘t care to associate you always with the Undertaker‘s Divina Commedia; however, if you must, you must. ―I thought I could have ended in that page—but you will be glad to know my mother keeps well. If the snow holds, she won‘t even hear the wheels on the gravel. ―Yours faithfully, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ The tragi-comedy was played, and Ruskin set himself to work. His father had left to his wife £37,000 and the house at Denmark Hill for life; and to his son £120,000, various leasehold and freehold properties, and his pictures, then valued at £10,000. 1 There was much business to be done, investments to be considered, stocks to be realised, leases to be renewed; and many of Ruskin‘s letters of this time are to his faithful friend W. H. Harrison, who rendered him much useful help in such matters. Then there was his mother‘s way of life to be considered—she was now 83 years of age; and though she bore with stern composure the loss of the husband who had been her constant companion for nearly 50 years, Ruskin felt that ―there was immediate need for some companionship which might lighten the burden of the days to her.‖2 It chanced that a young girl, the grand-daughter 1 See Fors Clavigera, Letter 76 (Notes and Correspondence). 2 Præterita, iii. § 60. xxx INTRODUCTION of Ruskin‘s paternal grandmother, came at this time on a visit to Denmark Hill. The old lady did not inspire this girl, as she did some other people, with awe; they became friends at first sight, and Ruskin fell no less under the spell of his cousin. He felt instinctively, he said, when he brought the girl to Denmark Hill, ―that the gift, both to my mother and me, was one which we should not easily bear to be again withdrawn.‖1 The ―gift‖ was Miss Joan Agnew. She came for a week; she stayed for seven years—not leaving till she married Mr. Arthur Severn, and then remaining close at hand, in Ruskin‘s old house at Herne Hill. Of what Ruskin himself owed to her, he has partly told in the chapter of Præterita (iii. ch. iv.), entitled ―Joanna‘s Care‖; of her care of his mother, he spoke in an earlier chapter when he described how ―she came, when my father had been laid to his rest under Croydon hills, to keep her faithful watch by my mother‘s side, while I was seeking selfish happiness far away in work which to-day has come to nought.‖2 Here, however, Ruskin does himself some injustice. With the exception of occasional visits, he remained constantly with his mother for two full years. The earliest of these visits was to Bradford, where on April 21, 1864, he delivered the lecture, afterwards printed as the second chapter in The Crown of Wild Olive. Other visits were to Winnington; to these we shall return presently under the head of ―The Ethics of the Dust.‖ But for the most part Ruskin stayed quietly at Denmark Hill from the beginning of 1864 to the spring of 1866. At this time a new element entered into his spiritual life which, though it perhaps left no very profound mark at the time, prepared the way for later developments. The polite world of the United States, o f London, and of some of the European capitals, was now much interested and exercised about the sènces of Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–1886), the renowned spiritualist medium. His table-turnings, automatic writings and ―levitations‖ made a great impression. Some of his phenomena had been attested by Sir David Brewster, and at a later time he satisfied the tests devised by Sir William Crookes. Literary men, politicians, and leaders of society attended his séances; many came away sceptical, others knew not what to think, while some were wholly convinced that Home had the key to an unknown known force. Ruskin‘s friend, Mrs. Browning, was of the latter number, while Robert Browning, on the other hand, believed himself to have 1 Præterita, iii. § 62. 2 Ibid., ii. § 232. INTRODUCTION xxxi witnessed mere trickery. His poem called Mr. Sludge the Medium was published in 1864. Among the votaries of the spiritualist faith was Ruskin‘s friend, Mrs. Cowper (afterwards Lady Mount Temple), and through her he became an occasional visitor at Home‘s séances. His letters to her contain many references to the subject; they are undated, but the earliest of them mentions his being at home with his father and mother, so that he must first have met Home early in 1864, before March.1 An account of one of the séances at which Ruskin assisted was published by William Howitt; and on the strength of this, and of two friendly letters to Home, he has been claimed as more or less of a convert.2 That he (like so many other men and women) was fascinated by Home‘s personality, and that he was keenly interested 1 Madame Home gives 1864 as the year of Ruskin‘s introduction to Home (The Gift of D. D. Home, p. 23). 2 At this séance Home recited a poem claimed to have been given him by the spirit of Southey, and while he recited the table ―seemed to beat time to the rhythm.‖ ―At the conclusion of the recitation,‖ continues Howitt, ―Mr. Ruskin asked whether he should recite a poem, and he was begged to do so. Whose the poem was I do not know, but it began with words to this effect: ‗O Christ, save my soul, if Thou think‘st it worth the saving.‘ As Mr. Ruskin commenced his recitation, the table reversed its action. Mr. Ruskin sat on the opposite side to Mr. Home; and the table, rising on the opposite feet, beat time to the rhythm of this poem, too. When it had ceased, I asked whether any one had noticed a peculiar beating of the time, besides that of the table -feet, namely, one with a metallic sound, as of a small bar of steel struck upon the metal. ‗Yes,‘ said Mr. Ruskin at once, ‗I know the meaning of that sound. It is descriptive of the state of my mind when I committed that poem to memory—when the earth was as iron and the heavens were as brass to me‘ ‖ (Spiritual Magazine, September 1872; cited in The Gift of D. D. Home, by Madame Dunglas Home, 1890, pp. 19, 20). Ruskin‘s published letters to Home are these:— ―DENMARK HILL, 4th September 1864. ―DEAR MR. HOME,—It is so nice of you to like me! I believe you are truly doing me the greatest service and help that one human being can do another in trusting me in this way, and indeed I hope I so far deserve your trust, that I can understand noble and right feeling and affection—though I have myself little feeling or affection left, being worn out with indignation as far as regards the general world. ―Till March is long to wait—and it really isn‘t all my fault. I did not write that week—for I was not sure if I could get into town for you on Monday—but you never told me you were going away before Monday, and I thou ght my Saturday‘s letter quite safe. ―Well, do please write me a line to say you are safe in America. And come to see me the moment you are back. I shall be every way, I hope, then more at leisure and peace. May you be preserved in that wild country, and b rought back to us better in health and happier. Ever affectionately yours, J. RUSKIN.‖ ―DENMARK HILL, 29th December 1865. ―DEAR MR. HOME,—This is only to thank you for your kind letter, and to wish you a happy new year. Your letter from America stayed by xxxii INTRODUCTION in the manifestations, is clear; more than this cannot, on the evidence, be asserted. His letters to Mrs. Cowper, written after the séance described by Howitt, hardly strike the note of a convinced believer:— ―I am very grateful to you for having set me in the sight and hearing of this new world. I don‘t see why one should be unhappy, about anything, if all this is indeed so. I can‘t quite get over this spiritual spelling, I always excepted—expected—I mean (that‘s very funny now: the ghosts are teaching me their ways, it seems)—I expected at least, when I got old, and to the hairy gown time, that at least I should be able to rightly spell. (There again two ‗at leasts‘; my head is certainly in the next world this morning.) But that story of the grapes pleased me best of all. I believe it on Captain Drayton‘s word1—and it is all I want—a pure and absolute miracle, such as that of the loaves. I was always ready to accept miracles—if only I could get clear and straight-forward forward human evidence of it. It was not the New or Old Testament that staggered me, but the (to my mind) absurd and improbable way of relating them. I could believe that Jesus stood on the shore and caused a miraculous draught of fishes, but I could not believe that the disciples thereupon would immediately have begun dining on the broiled fish. I was sorry I went away last night without saying good night to those two stranger gentlemen—but my head was full of things.‖ ―DEAR MRS. COWPER,—I am too much astonished to be able to think, or speak yet—yet observe, this surprise is a normal state with me; and has been so, this many a day. I am not now more surprised at perceiving spiritual presence, than I have been, since I was a youth, at not preceiving it. The wonder lay always to me, not in miracle, but in the want of it; and now it is more the manner and triviality of manifestation than the fact that amazes me. On the whole I am much happier for it, and very anxious for next time; but there is something also profoundly pitiful, it seems to me, in all that we can conceive of spirits who can‘t lift a ring me reproachfully day by day—it was the deep summer time, and I was out all day long, and came in at night too tired to write, and at last it was too late. But now I hope I may soon see you. Please say that I may, and believe me affectionately yours, J. RUSKIN.‖ These letters—both of them, it will be observed, of polite apologies—were published by Madame Dunglas Home in her D. D. Home: his Life and Mission, 1888, pp. 214, 215. 1 Captain Drayton is mentioned by Howitt as among those present at a séance with Ruskin. The spirits used at Home‘s request to give flowers to those present (The Gift of D. D. Home, p. 21). Apparently Captain Drayton had received grapes. INTRODUCTION xxxiii without more trouble than Aladdin took to carry his palace, and I suppose you felt that their artistical powers appear decidedly limited. I mean to ask, next time, for the spirit of Paul Veronese, and see whether it, if it comes, can hold a pencil more than an inch long. Thank Mr. Cowper for sending me the bits of paper. Why do you say ‗cold daylight‘? I should say ‗snuffy candlelight‘ if I were a ghost—I believe—and on the whole decline incense and ask for fresh air. My mind has been for months so entirely numb with pain, and so weary, that I am capable of no violent surprise even from all this, and I go about my usual work as if nothing had happened—but with a pleasant thrill of puzzlement and expectation, breaking into my thoughts every now and then. My Mother‘s Mother‘s name was Margaret Ruskin, unmarried; I haven‘t got at my father‘s mother yet. I was sorry not to have asked more questions of that disagreeable Bible-reading spirit. Partly, I was afraid of receiving some answer that would have hurt me, and partly I was dreamy and stupid with wonder—thinking more of the process of tearing the leaf than of enquiring of an oracle, which, besides, I was not altogether clear about its being desirable to do. But if I get Paul Veronese to come, won‘t I cross-examine him! ―Always gratefully, ―J. RUSKIN. ―The tables are very decidedly ‗turned‘ since I wrote to you in a doctorial tone as being able to help you.‖ To a devout believer like Mrs. Cowper, who was also his friend, Ruskin could not write less than sympathetically; yet these letters hardly show that he had as yet been more than interested and surprised. We shall have to return to the subject in another volume dealing with a much later time, when in some periods of stress and sorrow he was more profoundly impressed by spiritualist phenomena. For the present, these experiences with the spiritualists seem to have been but a passing episode; Ruskin‘s constant thoughts were fixed on communion, in another kind, with the souls of the great and wise. He spent much time at the British Museum, studying Greek coins and vases, and being much attracted also by the new study of Egyptian art and antiquities—a subject in which Wilkinson‘s book on The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (1837, 1841) had already interested him.1 ―When Ned begins again to paint,‖ he wrote 1 For Ruskin‘s references to this study, see in the present volume, The Ethics of the Dust, passim, and Crown of Wild Olive, § 88 (p. 461). For a reference to Wilkinson‘s book, see Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 279 n.). For further XVIII. c xxxiv INTRODUCTION to Mrs. Burne-Jones (Denmark Hill, September 13, 1864), ―he must do some Egyptian things. Fancy the corselet of the King fastened by two Golden Hawks across his breast, stretching each a wing up to his shoulder, and his quiver of gold inlaid with enamel; and his bow-gauntlet of gold, and his helmet twined round with a golden asp, and all his chariot of divers colours, and his sash of ‗divers colours of needlework on both sides,‘1 and a leopard running beside him, and the Vulture of Victory over his head.‖ To Acland (who was recovering at the time from an attack of scarlet-fever), Ruskin wrote, in the autumn of 1864, a full account of his thoughts and studies:— ―I can tell you in few words what I am mainly about. You know when I was last with you, on the last walk together, you said, pointing from above Hincksey to St. Mary‘s Spire—‗So the men who built that were all wrong!‘ to which the proper answer—if it had come definitely into my head at the time—would have been, ‗If those who built the Parthenon were, probably also, and a fortiori, these, but neither All wrong, only one at least as much as the other.‘ But you may suppose, from what we talked of then, that I was not likely to stay quiet in the mess I was in. So I am trying to understand what religions hitherto have been worth understanding, in some impartial manner—however little of each—and as I have strength and time, am endeavouring to make out how far Greeks and Egyptians knew God; or how far anybody ever may hope to know Him. ―If you know—and I think you know—much of Bunsen, you may guess how pleasant it is to me to have to wade and work through his masses of misarranged material; and if you know the state of Egyptian science in general—and contemplate a little the fact that the only two works of value on Rome and Greece are by a polished infidel, Gibbon, and a vulgar materialist, Grote2—you may wonder that I have not had fever of the very scarletest, long ago. However, one thing I know, that nothing can ever be done unquietly. So I do what I can—of course my hold on all these races is through their art, and so I am cast perforce into figure work,3 and quite independent notes on Egyptian art, see the Oxford Catalogues (Vol. XX.); and for passing allusions, Two Paths, § 6 (Vol. XVI. p. 264), Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (Vol. XI. p. 188), and other passages referred to in the General Index. Among Ruskin‘s note -books preserved at Brantwood is one devoted to notes, analyses, diagrams, and drawings of Egyptian art, history, and mythology. 1 Judges v. 30. 2 For Ruskin‘s dislike of Gibbon‘s tone, see Vol. XIV. p. 269 n. 3 On this subject, compare Vol. XVII. p. xxxvi. INTRODUCTION xxxv research. It was within an ace of being too late for me ever to get any grasp of figures—but I shall have enough yet for my purpose. I did a life-size fresco—single figure—from Luini, at Milan,1 which did me much good, and when I have time to master the outside main laws of bone perspective, I believe I shall make memoranda truly enough for the understanding of things. I send you—as you are more interested in figures, three rough studies—one from the Caryatid of the Dew-temple2 (Brit. Mus.)—(I shall break her arm as I go on—but leave her hands in her pockets for the present—till I‘ve got her hair right)—two, enlarged from coins, the black one, Terina, the one on the board, Syracuse—both of fine central time. They are drawn merely for disposition of hair, dolphins, etc.;3 when one goes for expression one must keep to marble. But you cannot distinguish invidiously, or otherwise, between figures and landscape. The great error of modern figure work in sculpture no less than painting has been the want of understanding that chiaroscuro, and mystery, as elements of visible expression, have inseparable functions and dignity in an eyelash as much as in a pine forest—and half the force and dignity of all Greek and Egyptian conception arise out of lower organism, and physical phenomena. The rising and setting of the sun—the Nile inundation and harvest—the sweep of sea in the Greek and Sicilian bays, are necessary swaddling clothes of all noble human conception and religion; that Church font by which I held Harry4 had Nile water in it, if we could have seen clearly.‖ In such thoughts and studies the years 1864 and 1865 were largely spent. ―I am quiet,‖ he writes to Professor Norton (October 10, 1865), ―and likely to be so for many a day at D. Hill, amusing myself as I may; it is a grand thing, and makes up for much, to be within reach of the B. Museum.‖5 The reader will notice in the address on ―The Study of Architecture,‖ delivered in May 1865 (Vol. XIX.), and in some of the papers in The Cestus of Aglaia, 1 See Vol. XIX., where this copy of Luini is reproduced. 2 For the Pandroseion, or sanctuary of Pandrosos, attached to the Erechtheum, see Queen of the Air, § 38. The study here mentioned may be the one which is now in the Ruskin Drawing School at Oxford; Educational Series, No. 36 (Vol. XX.). 3 The drawing of the coin of Terina, sent for Acland to see, is probably the one now reproduced in Aratra Pentelici (Vol. XX.): see § 193 of that book. From coins of Syracuse, Ruskin made several studies: see, for instance, in Vol. XX., Catalogue of the Educational Series, No. 37. 4 Acland‘s second son, to whom Ruskin was godfather. 5 Letters to Charles Eliot Norton, vol. i. p. 152. xxxvi INTRODUCTION written at the same time, many references to Greek coins, while Ruskin‘s Egyptian studies in the British Museum provided the background for much of The Ethics of the Dust. How multifarious and incessant were his lectures and writings during all this time, we have already seen. He was at Manchester in December 1864, delivering the lectures which he published, in June 1865, as Sesame and Lilies. Early in the following year he lectured at Camberwell, at the Working Men‘s College, and at the Institute of British Architects; he had a series of papers running in the Art Journal; and he let fly many ―arrows of the chace‖ upon economic and political subjects. Then, later in the year, he wrote a Preface for the second edition of Sesame and Lilies; and he lectured at the Working Men‘s College and at Woolwich. His main work during the autumn of 1865 was, however, the writing of The Ethics of the Dust. In the early part of 1866 he resumed his papers in the Art Journal, and prepared The Crown of Wild Olive for publication. But even the pursuits disclosed in this list did not exhaust his activities. He was hard at work also upon stones and flowe rs; there are many letters of this period to Mr. Allen discussing plans for engravings in a projected treatise upon Botany. His geological papers, published in 1865 and following years, were also elaborately illustrated. It is not surprising that, after this accumulation of work, Ruskin should have felt the need of change and rest. He broke off abruptly the papers in the Art Journal, and leaving W. H. Harrison to see The Crown of Wild Olive through the press, he started, on April 24, 1866, for a holiday in Switzerland. He took with him his cousin Joan and another young girl, Miss Constance Hilliard, a niece of Lady Trevelyan, who also, with her husband, Sir Walter, was of the party. Lady Trevelyan was keenly interested in wild flowers; Sir Walter also was a botanist, and he and Ruskin looked forward to many a ramble together. Ruskin‘s diary, which is missing from 1864 to April 1865, is now resumed, but the entries are very brief; there are, however, letters to his mother preserved at Brantwood, which afford us many glimpses of the tour.1 It is worth nothing, in view of Ruskin‘s increasing interest in Greek art, that he spent several hours 1 The itinerary was as follows: Boulogne (April 24), Paris (April 25), Chartres (May 2), Sens (May 3), Dijon (May 4), Neuchâtel (May 7), Thun (May 19), Interlaken (May 22), Giessbach (June 5), Interlaken (June 11), Lauterbrunnen (June 12), Meiringen (June 14), Lucerne (June 16), Schaffhausen (June 23), Baden (June 25), Brunnen (June 26), Lucerne (June 27), Berne (June 29), Vevay (July 2), Geneva (July 3), Paris (July 7), Rouen (July 9), Boulogne (July 12). INTRODUCTION xxxvi in the Louvre ―painting Greek vases‖ (May 1). The journey was undertaken partly for the sake of Lady Trevelyan‘s health, and Ruskin‘s letters to his mother record alternate hopes and fears: 1— ―PARIS, 2nd May 1866. ―Lady Trevelyan is much better to-day, but it is not safe to move her yet—till to-morrow. So I‘m going to take the children to look at Chartres Cathedral—we can get three hours there, and be back to seven o‘clock dinner. We drove round by St. Cloud and Sèvres yesterday; the blossomed trees being glorious by the Seine,—the children in high spirits. It reminds me always too much of Turner—every bend of these rivers is haunted by him.‖ ―DIJON, Sunday, 6th May 1866. ―Lady Trevelyan is much better, and we hope all to get on to Neufchâtel to-morrow. The weather is quite fine again, though not warm: and yesterday I took the children for a drive up the little valley which we used to drive through on leaving Dijon for Paris. There are wooded hills on each side, and we got into a sweet valley as full of nightingales as our garden is of thrushes, and with slopes of broken rocky ground above, covered with the lovely blue milkwort, and purple columbines, and geranium and wild strawberry blossom. The children were intensely delighted, and I took great care that Constance should not run about so as to heat herself, and we got up a considerable bit of hill quite nicely and with greatly increased appetite for tea, and general mischief. They have such appetites indeed, that I generally call them ‗my two little pigs.‘ There is a delightful French waiting-maid at dinner here—who says they are both ‗charmantes,‘ but highly approves of my title for them, nevertheless.‖ ―NEUFCHÂTEL, 8th May 1866. ―MY DEAREST MOTHER,—I have your two lovely letters, and our arrival, otherwise pleasant, was made far pleasanter by them. The approach to the lake by the new railroad line is the finest I have yet seen, though at all the best bits of it one plunges into a tunnel. But the comings out of tunnels were glorious, and the children were quite overwhelmed when the blue lake opened with its Alps. After the strong excitement they, like me, are a little 1 The extracts from the letters of May 2 and 6 and a part of the letter of May 10 were printed by Mr. W. G. Collingwood in his Life of Ruskin (pp. 227–228, ed. 1900). The letter of May 8 was marked by Ruskin at a later date ―Very important‖: on this, see below, p. lxii. xxxviii INTRODUCTION down this morning: it makes me entirely melancholy to be at places my father delighted in so much, and I myself am fitter now, in mind, for quiet work in my study, than for outdoor work or play which makes me too much regret my youth. Still I am very thankful to be as I am; and not dead like poor Keats, or Shelley, or Byron: but the intense resemblance between me and Rousseau, in mind, and even in many of the chances of life, increases upon my mind more and more; and as I look this morning through the bright sunshine to the lake of Bienne,1 or rather to the woods above it, I cannot help wondering if the end of my life is to be in seclusion or in ill temper like his. ―We are going out for a drive up one of the lovely Jura valleys, and I hope for a renewal of many pleasures in botanizing and sketching. I have no more time this morning,—I sent you a telegram, for we arrived just half-an-hour after the London post left, so you will be two days without a letter. ―Ever, my dearest Mother, ―Your most affectionate Son, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ ―NEUFCHÂTEL, 10th May 1866. ―MY DEAREST MOTHER,—This will be a sad day for you, and all days are rather sad for me, at this place which my father used to be so fond of, and which I never could at all understand his liking:—now, when I am old too, and have lost my love of scrambling and exploring, I can sympathise in his feelings too late. Everything seems to be too late, in this world. ―I have your nice letter to Pontarlier; and Joan is delighted by your being pleased with hers about Chartres. I must, I fear, send to Vevay for my letters, for Lady T. is still too weak to move. We had (the children and I) a delightful day yesterday at the Pierre à Bot, gathering vetches and lilies of the valley in the woods, and picnic afterwards on the lovely mossy grass, in view of all the Alps, Jungfrau, Eigers, Blumlis Alp, Altels, and the rest with intermediate lake and farmsteads and apple-blossom. Very heavenly, the people only showing, every year, steadier march to decline, and the youth of the towns, cigar in mouth and haggardfaced, and sullen-mouthed and evil-eyed, frightful to think of and anticipate the future of. 1 It was in the Ile de St. Pierre, on the lake of Bienne, that Rousseau sought refuge and seclusion in 1765: see below, p. lxii., where this passage about Ruskin‘s sympathy with Rousseau is discussed.

INTRODUCTION xxxix ―Joan has written another long letter to you with something about me in it, which she won‘t read to me. It‘s a shame, but I hope it may do you some good, as it won‘t me. ―Ever, my dearest Mother, ―Your most affectionate Son, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ At Neuchâtel, three days later, Lady Trevelyan passed away. Her death was a heavy blow to Ruskin, but he threw himself into the duty of doing all that was possible to console his friend. He persuaded Sir Walter, after the necessary arrangements had been concluded at Neuchâtel, to accompany him and the girls for a week at Thun and Interlaken. From Thun he was able to write:— ―THUN, 21st May [1866]. ―MY DEAR HOWELL, 1—‗Poste Restante, Interlachen, Suisse,‘ will find me, I hope, for some days to come. I‘ve had a rather bad time of it at Neuchâtel; what with Death and the North Wind; both devil‘s inventions as far as I can make out. But things are looking a little better now, and I had a lovely three hours‘ walk by the lake shore, in cloudless calm, from five to eight this morning, under hawthorn and chestnut—here just in full blossom—and among other pleasantnesses—too good for mortals, as the North Wind and the rest of it are too bad. We don‘t deserve either such blessing or cursing, it seems to poor moth me. ―Ever affectionately yours, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ Ruskin‘s stoicism may well have been, as Mr. Collingwood suggests, assumed, or partly assumed;2 but he had resources of distraction and of consolation in the common incidents, no less than in the majestic spectacles, of nature. He notes in his diary (May 31) some mischance in missing a carriage at Interlaken; but, he adds, ―sat and looked at tame swallows building nests, getting much out of the road close at our feet.‖ Interlaken itself (May 22) was even then ―all dust, misery, and casino‖; but, then as ever, ―the hills more and more divine.‖ Then, again, Ruskin found much interest in giving all the pleasure he co uld to his young companions, and in noting the workings of their minds. If they were like other young girls, one may hazard the conjecture that they did not find the shops and promenades ―all misery.‖ 1 Then his secretary; see below, p. xlviii. 2 Life of Ruskin, p. 228 (ed. 1900). xl INTRODUCTION ―In my time,‖ writes Ruskin, 1 ―I must have been very different from other children;‖ but ―a canary bird,‖ he reflects, ―can, as Carlyle says, hold only its own quantity of astonishment.‖ 2 At other times his own pleasure is deepened by the responsiveness of his young friends to the impressions of the scenery around him. At the hotel of the Giessbach, on the lake of Brienz, they spent a happy week, and Ruskin even pardoned the illumination of the falls: 3— ―HÔTEL DE GIESSBACH, Wednesday, 6th June 1866. ―MY DEAREST MOTHER,—Can you at all fancy walking out in the morning in a garden full of lilacs just in rich bloom, and pink hawthorn in masses; and along a little terrace with lovely pinks coming into cluster of colour all over the low wall beside it; and a sloping bank of green sward from it, and below that, the Giessbach! Fancy having a real Alpine waterfall in one‘s garden—seven hundred feet high. You see, we are just in time for the spring, here, and the strawberries are ripening on the rocks. Joan and Constance have been just scrambling about and gathering them for me. Then there‘s the blue-green lake below and Interlaken and the lake of Thun in the distance. I think I never saw anything so beautiful. Joan will write to you about the people, whom she has made great friends with already. ―I was in hopes this would have been longer, but I‘m so sleepy with the fresh air I can‘t write any more. ―Ever, my dearest Mother, ―Your most affectionate Son, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ ―HÔTEL DE GIESSBACH, 7th June 1866. ―MY DEAREST MOTHER,—I cannot tell you how much I am struck with the beauty of this fall: it is different from everything I have ever seen in torrents. There are so many places where one gets near it without being wet, for one thing, for the falls are mostly, not vertical so as to fly into mere spray, but over broken rock, which crushes the water into a kind of sugar-candy-like foam, white as snow, yet glittering and composed, not of bubbles, but of broken-up water. Then I had forgotten that it plunged straight into the lake; I got down to the lake shore on the other side of it yesterday, 1 Letter to his mother, May 24. 2 Ibid., June 11. 3 Of the following letters, those of June 6, 7, 11, and 13 were (printed in whole or in part) in W. G. Collingwood‘s Life (pp. 229–231, ed. 1900).

INTRODUCTION xli and to see it plunge clear into the blue water, with the lovely mossy rocks for its flank, and for the lake edge, was an unbelievable kind of thing; it is all as one would fancy cascades in fairyland. ―I do not often endure with patience any cockneyisms or showing off at these lovely places. But they do one thing here so interesting that I can forgive it. One of the chief cascades (about midway up the hill) falls over a projecting rock, so that one can walk under the torrent as it comes over. It leaps so clear that one is hardly splashed except at one place. Well, when it gets dark, they burn, for five minutes, one of the strongest steady fireworks of a crimson colour, behind the fall. The red light shines right through, turning the whole waterfall into a torrent of fire. ―I have your kind note with enclosed Bayne.1 Yes; the days must be sadly long. ―Ever, my dearest Mother, ―Your most affectionate Son, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ ―GIESSBACH, 11th June 1866. ―MY DEAREST MOTHER,—We leave, according to our programme, for Interlachen to-day—with great regret; for the peace and sweetness of this place are wonderful and the people are good, and though there is much drinking and quarrelling among the younger men, there appears to be neither distressful poverty nor deliberate crime; so that there is more of the sense I need and long for, of fellowship with human creatures, than in any place I have been at for years. I believe they don‘t so much as lock the house doors at night; and the faces of the older peasantry are really very beautiful. I have done a good deal of botany, and find that wild flower botany is more or less exhaustible, but the cultivated flowers are infinite in their caprice. The forget-me-nots and milkworts are singularly beautiful here, but there is quite as much variety in English fields as in these, as long as one does not climb much—and I‘m very lazy compared to what I used to be. ―We keep all Mrs. Hilliard‘s and every other interesting letter for you. ―Ever, my dearest Mother, ―Your most affectionate Son, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ 1 Peter Bayne (1830–1896), journalist and author; editor of the Edinburgh Witness, and of the Weekly Review; a frequent correspondent at this time of Ruskin‘s. He published in 1879 Letters from my Masters—Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin. xlii INTRODUCTION ―LAUTERBRUNNEN, 13TH JUNE 1866. ―MY DEAREST MOTHER,—We had a lovely evening here yesterday, and the children enjoyed and understood it better than anything they have yet seen among the Alps. Constance was in great glory in a little walk I took her in the twilight through the upper meadows; the Staubbach seen only as a grey veil suspended from its rock, and the great Alps pale above on the dark sky. She condescended nevertheless to gather a great bunch of the white catchfly to make ―pops‖ with, her friend Marie at the Giessbach having shown her how a startling detonation may be obtained, by skilful management, out of its globular calyx. ―This morning is not so promising—one of the provoking ones which will neither let you stay at home with resignation, nor go anywhere with pleasure. I‘m going to take the children for a little quiet exploration of the Wengern path to see how they like it, and if the weather betters, we may go on—at all events I hope to find an Alpine rose or two. But this must be posted before starting. ―Ever, my dearest Mother, ―Your most affectionate Son, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ ―INTERLAKEN, 14th June, Morning. ―MY DEAREST MOTHER,—We are down here again to breakfast—from Lauterbrunnen—and I find your beautifully steady and largely written letter about Battersea Park. I am so thankful that you are still able to see so much, and entirely glad that you feel with me the horror and mischief of that perpetual building and changing, and the misery of that loathsome, half-unconscious character which it inflicts on the inhabitants. It is the sense of this around me continually which depresses me so much and alters the whole tone of my writing. Mr. Richmond‘s letter is indeed a pleasant contrast, and so was the Giessbach, where the hotel is now very nearly at the height where the singing cottage was; but retired a little out of the hearing of the fall into a sort of dingle, out of which one looks to the lake, the spray of the fall rising between the pines on one side. Of the two daughters of the (present) house, one is a six months‘ widow, just eighteen; the other, not quite seventeen, unmarried, and both really little ladies, very quiet and modest, and waiting on us themselves, though they would sit down and talk afterwards if we asked them, speaking English perfectly. I gave the widow In Memoriam, sending it to her from here, and I enclose

INTRODUCTION xliii her letter of thanks, which perhaps Miss Fall will read to you some day (it is not easy to make out the sharp hand, but it is very nice). I promised to bring Miss Fall some leaves from Baveno. I wish I could have kept my promise. ―Ever, my dearest Mother, ―Your most affectionate Son, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ ―Marie of the Giessbach,‖ and her sister—―beautiful and consumptive, but brave as a Swiss girl should be‖ 1—are often referred to in Ruskin‘s letters in terms of affectionate remembrance; and in old age his memory recalled with foundness the impressions of this visit: one of the unwritten chapters of Præterita was to have been entitled ―The Rainbows of Giessbach.‖2 A sketch by Ruskin of the view from the hotel3 is given here. At Lucerne, also, Ruskin did much sketching; ―found my great view of Lucerne safe,‖ he notes in his diary—that view of the walls and towers which he drew so often. On the way to Lucerne they had stayed at Meiringen, and Ruskin gives his mother an account of a day‘s expedition to Rosenlaui:— ―LUCERNE, Sunday, 17th June 1866. ―MY DEAREST MOTHER,—I have your two sweet letters here about the springs which you would have thought too deep, and the Swiss girl and Mrs. Colvin, etc., all nice, and beautifully written. And I remember the Cumberland girl very well again. She was immensely nice, but not so poetical as this German one. I don‘t remember her knowing any fairy stories about the flowers. We had only bad weather on Friday—except a gleam in the evening, when Constance and I got a lovely walk among the rocks covered with wild roses; it was late, and Joan had a little cold, so I did not risk taking her out; but next morning we were all up early, and I got chaises-à-porteur for the two children, and carried them up to the top of the ascent by the Reichenbach, where we went up to get to Rosenlaui long ago. And it was a fine morning, and the Wellhorn and Wetterhorn were clear; and indeed there is nothing like that view in all the rest of Switzerland. I found a 1 W. G. Collingwood‘s Life, p. 229 (ed. 1900). 2 Præterita, iii. § 86 n. See also Eagle’s Nest, § 101, for a reference to another visit to the Giessbach in 1870. 3 The old hotel. It was purchased in 1870 by the brothers Hauser, who in 1872 replaced it by a new and larger one. xliv INTRODUCTION sloping meadow above the road from which they could be seen perfectly, and made the bearers take down a bit of fence, and carry the children up to it; opposite a waterfall over exquisitely shaped rocks, not a large stream, but of quite unimaginable height—higher than Staubbach—probably about eleven hundred feet in entire fall, fronting the east, so that we had a rainbow just across it at the bottom—and the meadow was covered with little, but exquisitely blue, milkworts, and the sun bright on it; and the chair carriers sat down in a group on the grass and sang Swiss songs one after another, really well—and I never saw anything so perfect as it all was; the girls really could not speak for wonder. Then we came down beside the Reichenbach and saw all its falls, and then the carriage was waiting at the bottom, and we got in and away for the Brüning Pass, where I verified Turner‘s subject which he once did for me, but failed in—but that made me sorrowful; and so we came on here by the lakes of Lungern and Sarnen, but I can‘t tell you any more to-day—only that the same landlord is here who was here in 1861, and the same chambermaid, but it makes me very melancholy and I want to get away—I have so many sad associations with the place from beginning to end. ―Ever, my dearest Mother, ―Your most affectionate Son, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ Ruskin returned by some more of his favourite sketching-haunts, such as Schaffhausen and Baden, and reached home in the middle of July. While he was in Switzerland, a requistion had reached him from Oxford, signed by Acland, Tyrwhitt, and others, asking him to allow his name to be brought forward for the Professorship of Poetry, in succession to Matthew Arnold. At first he had left the matter in the hands of his friends, but afterwards he requested them to withdraw his candidature, and Sir Francis Doyle was appointed. On reaching home he was soon immersed in work of a very different character. England at the time was much occupied over ―the Jamaica case‖; a controversy which caused almost unprecedented excitement, in which some of the most distinguished men in the country took opposite sides, and which caused both debates in Parliament and prosecutions in the courts. In October 1865 some disturbances had broken out in Jamaica, and many people believed that a negro insurrection was at hand. The Governor of the island was Mr. Edward John Eyre, an official whose previous experience in dealing with native races in other parts of the Empire, had earned for him a reputation for

INTRODUCTION xlv justice and humanity. Eyre, taking a very serious view of the situation, proclaimed martial law in a large part of the island; the city of Kingston was not included. Here lived a coloured man of some education, named George William Gordon; he was a member of the House of Assembly, and the chief advocate of ―the rights of the negroes.‖ The Governor, believing Gordon to be at the bottom of the disturbances, issued a warrant for his arrest. Gordon at once surrendered himself; but, instead of putting him on his trial at Kingston, where the ordinary courts were open, Eyre had him removed to a part of the island where martial law was in force. He was tried by court-martial, found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to death. The officer in command of the troops and the Governor approved the sentence, and on October 23, Gordon was hanged. The insurrection meanwhile was suppressed with ruthless severity. The news of these events caused great excitement in England, and men ranged themselves at once into parties. The one side, led by John Stuart Mill, formed the Jamaica Committee for the purpose of seeing that Governor Eyre was called to account; among those who joined the Committee were Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Mr. Goldwin Smith. Carlyle took a leading part on the other side; an Eyre Defence and Aid Fund was formed to sustain the Governor; and Carlyle joined it, among others who had the same sympathies being Tennyson, Kingsley, and Dickens. On the one side, it was held that, whether the Governor‘s acts were legal or not, he had stamped out a most instant danger, and saved the white population from the horrors of a successful negro insurrection. On the other side, it was argued that the danger had been grossly exaggerated, that the proceedings against Gordon were utterly illegal, and that the severity of the other acts of repression, sanctioned or ordered by the Governor, was at once barbarous and unnecessary. Ruskin at once ranged himself on the side of Carlyle, and in December 1865 sent a letter to the press (pp. 550, 551) in the defence of Governor Eye. The Government meanwhile appointed a Commission of Inquiry. It reported in April 1866, and pronounced, that though Gordon‘s share in the matter was not proved, and though the repression was unduly severe, yet Mr. Eyre deserved praise for the skill and vigour by which he had nipped the insurrection in the bud. On this finding the Government removed Mr. Eyre from his post, but declined to proceed otherwise against him. The Jamaica Committee thereupon decided on prosecuting Mr. Eyre and his subordinates. Into the prolonged and tangled controversies which ensued we need not enter. The xlvi INTRODUCTION legal proceedings proved abortive, for on every occasion the grand jury threw out the bill of indictment. Finally, in 1872, Parliament decided to pay to Mr. Eyre the expenses which he had incurred in defending himself against the various prosecutions. It was at the earlier stage of the affair, when Governor Eyre was first threatened with prosecution, that Ruskin interested himself most actively in it. He sent £100 to the Defence Fund; 1 and he made a speech (which, as his diary shows, he had carefully prepared) at a meeting of the Defence Committee (pp. 552–554). He also threw himself into the personal work which agitation of this kind involves—enlisting recruits, persuading waverers, combating objections. ―A day of various effort yesterday,‖ he notes in his diary (September 3); ―rewarded this morning by some messages and letters, all kind and helpful.‖ And again (September 5), ―Doing my duty as well as I can for Governor Eyre.‖ Carlyle‘s verdict was that Ruskin had done his duty right well. He sent a copy of Ruskin‘s speech to a friend, with this note (September 15):— ―The Eyre Committee is going on better. Indeed it is now getting fairly on its feet. Ruskin‘s speech—now don‘t frown upon it, but read it again till you understand it—is a right gallant thrust, I can assure you. While all the world stands tremulous, shilly-shallying from the gutter, impetuous Ruskin plunges his rapier up to the very hilt in the abominable belly of the vast blockheadism, and leaves it staring very considerably.‖2 Ruskin‘s sympathies went out whole-heartedly in this matter to the man who, in a moment of acute danger, as he maintained, had stood firm for the cause of order. His friendship for Carlyle, and his desire to share the burden of work with one who was now under the cloud of domestic sorrow, gave an additional spur to his activity. Ever sinc e Ruskin had entered the field against ―the dismal science,‖ 3 his relations with Carlyle had grown more and more intimate and affectionate. As each new shaft was hurled by Ruskin, Carlyle applauded and exhorted the younger man to fresh onslaughts. Ruskin was a frequent caller at Chelsea, and Carlyle was sometimes persuaded to ride out to Denmark Hill. He liked Ruskin‘s mother, and found many a link of Scottish association with the past in talks with Miss Joan. ―He used to take pleasure,‖ says Ruskin, ―in the quiet of 1 Time and Tide, § 116 (Vol. XVII. p. 413). 2 Froude‘s Carlyle’s Life in London, vol. ii. p. 330. 3 Carlyle‘s favourite phrase for Political Economy was first used by him in The Nigger Question (1853): see Miscellanies, vol. vii. p. 84 (Popular Edition). INTRODUCTION xlvii the Denmark Hill garden, and to use all his influence with me to make me contented in my duty to my mother.‖ 1 Carlyle often teased his disciple; but, as Mrs. Carlyle once said, ―No one managed Carlyle so well as Ruskin; it was quite beautiful to see him. Carlyle would say outrageous things, running counter to all Ruskin valued and cared for. Ruskin would treat Mr. Carlyle like a naughty child, lay his arms round him, and say, ‗Now, this is too bad!‘ ‖ 2 Carlyle‘s great loss drew the two men yet closer together. On the day of starting for his Swiss tour in April 1866, Ruskin had ―called at Cheyne Walk with the usual bouquet for Mrs. Carlyle, to learn that she had just met her death in trying to save her little dog, the gift of Lady Trevelyan. He rejoined his friends, and they crossed the Channel gaily, in spite of what they thought was rather a cloud over him. At Paris they read the news. ‗Yes,‘ he said, ‗I knew. But there was no reason why I should spoil your pleasure by telling you.‘ ‖ 3 Carlyle‘s letter,4 in reply to Ruskin‘s condolences, shows the relations between the two men:— ―CHELSEA, LONDON, 10th May 1866. ―DEAR RUSKIN,—Your kind words from Dijon were welcome to me: thanks. I did not doubt your sympathy in what has come; but it is better that I see it laid before me. You are yourself very unhappy, as I too well discern—heavy-laden, obstructed and dispirited; but you have a great work still ahead, and will gradually have to gird yourself up against the heat of the day, which is coming on for you,—as the Night too is coming. Think valiantly of these things. ―I cannot write to you; I do not wish yet even to speak to anybody; find it more tolerable to gaze steadily in silence on the blackness of the abysses that have suddenly opened round me, and as it were swallowed up my poor little world. Day by day the stroke that has fallen, like a thunderbolt out of skies all blue (as I often think), becomes more immeasurable to me; my life all laid in ruins, and the one light of it as if gone out.5 And yet there is an inexpressible beauty, and even an epic greatness (known only to God and me), in the Life of my victorious little Darling 1 Præterita, iii. § 65. 2 Anne Gilchrist: her Life and Writings, 1887, p. 82. 3 W. G. Collingwood‘s Life of Ruskin, p. 226 (ed. 1900). 4 A portion of this letter has been published by Mr. Collingwood (ibid., pp. 226–227). 5 Carlyle used these words in the epitaph which he composed for the tombstone of his wife‘s father in the chancel of Haddington Church: ―He re likewise now rests Jane Welsh Carlyle, Spouse of Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea, London. . . . She died at London 21st April, 1866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out.‖ xlviii INTRODUCTION whom I shall see no more. Silence about all that; every word I speak or write of it seems to desecrate it,—so unworthy of the Fact now wrapt in the Eternities, as God has willed. ―This day fortnight, about this hour (1 p.m.) we were lowering her dust to sleep with that of her Father, in the Abbey Kirk of Haddington, as was our covenant for forty years back: since that day my life has been as noiseless as I could make it; and ought to continue so till I see father. My Brother and Miss Welsh are still with me; everybody is and has been kind as Humanity could be; help me farther nobody can. If by slow degrees I can rally to some useful work for the poor remainder of my days, it shall be well and fit; if otherwise, I already seem to see I shall soon follow whither she has gone. That is yet all. ―Come and see me when you get home; come oftener and see me, and speak more frankly to me (for I am very true to your highest interests and you) while I still remain here. ―You can do nothing for me in Italy; except come home improved. If you pass through or near Montey (in the Valais, not far from Vevey, I think) you might call on (Dowager) Lady Ashburton, and bring me some report of her. Adieu, my friend, adieu. ―T. CARLYLE.‖ Ruskin obeyed the injunction, and immediately on his return went to see Carlyle. The diary records many visits during the latter part of 1866, and letters from Carlyle contain many references to work which Ruskin undertook for him in preparing statements of the case, revising circulars, and otherwise in aiding the propaganda of the Eyre Defence Committee. Another side of Ruskin‘s doings at this time—characteristic also of his doings at all times—is shown in a collection of letters, which has been published,1 to Charles Augustus Howell. The letters are reprinted in a later edition of this volume, where some account of Howell will be found. He was employed by Ruskin for some few years from 1865 onwards as secretary, assistant, and almoner. The reader will find in the present volume Ruskin‘s defence of ―indiscriminate charity.‖2 What he preached, he practised; he was not over-anxious to measure his gifts by the standard of deserts; but if in this sense his charity was in some cases ―indiscriminate,‖ it was never inconsiderate. He had been one day to a Bird Show at the Crystal Palace, and was interested in the owner of a canary; Howell is instructed to go and give a sovereign for it, ―in any name you like, 1 In the New Review, for March 1892, vol. vi. pp. 273–284. 2 Sesame and Lilies, § 136 (below, p. 182). INTRODUCTION xlix not mine, nor yours.‖ The case of a poor shop-boy with a turn for art is brought to Ruskin‘s notice; Howell is entrusted with funds for finding decent lodgings for the boy, and getting him into some school of art. A ―half-crazy old French lady‖ writes to Ruskin disclosing her sad ―perdicament‖; Howell is to inquire and, if he sees fit, to ―advance her twenty pounds without interest.‖ Howell comes across some promising sketches by a lad; Ruskin ―would like to be of any use I could to him.‖ Very characteristic, too, is the scheme Ruskin devised for helping George Cruikshank, for whose talent he had a strong admiration, and who in his old age had fallen into severe straits. Ruskin, as we have already read, 1 subscribed to the fund which was being collected to assist the old man; but he wanted to help him by work, as well as charity. The subject of Fairy Stories interested Ruskin deeply; and he said that his Preface to an edition of German Popular Stories (Vol. XIX.) was one of the best pieces he ever wrote. 2 So now, he set Howell to work to suggest to Cruikshank a series of plates to illustrate a volume of stories which Ruskin, with help from Burne-Jones and Rossetti, would collect and edit. The scheme came to nought, for when some sample plates had been done for him by Cruikshank, Ruskin felt that the old man ―can do fairy tales no more.‖ So Ruskin had to content himself, instead, with remitting an old loan which he had made to the artist. With such kindly thoughts and acts Ruskin occupied himself behind the scenes. His letters of advice, of encouragement, and sometimes of material assistance (always delicately proffered) to artists and amateurs during this period are numerous; examples of them will be found in a later volume. For the rest, the months passed in many quiet studies and pursuits. ―I am cutting down a bush here and a tree (or what we call one in England) there,‖ he wrote to Professor Norton,3 ―and making little fishponds and gutters and such like, and planting peach trees, for the blossom, and wildflowers, and anything that is bright and simple. And I am working at mythology and geology, and conchology and chemistry, and what else there is of the infinite and hopeless unknown to be stumbled among pleasantly.‖ In the evenings he read to his mother; for his own more careful daily reading, he had at this time (as often before and afterwards) Plato‘s 1 Time and Tide, § 116 (Vol. XVII. p. 413). 2 Letters to F. S. Ellis, p. 66; privately printed 1892, and reprinted in a later volume of this edition. 3 October 10, 1865. Letters to Charles Eliot Norton, vol. i. p. 152. XVIII. d l INTRODUCTION Laws, and now, too, Pindar, a poet who is often quoted in his later lectures. He went sometimes to Burne-Jones‘s studio to draw from the model, and the diary of this same date (1866–1867) records also his work upon some of the beautiful studies of pheasants and partridges which may now be seen in his Drawing School at Oxford. He found time, too, to see many friends, and to receive visits at Denmark Hill from young and ardent disciples. An account of one such visit, which has been communicated to the editors, 1 though it refers to a somewhat later date, may fitly close this account of Ruskin‘s home life at Denmark Hill, of which it gives an impression as pleasantly characteristic as it is vivid. The writer was the late Miss R. S. Roberts. She had made a collection of rare mosses of the Lake District, which she had sent, on an introduction from the Richmonds, to Ruskin:— ―Not that I am ever likely to forget the 16th of November 1869, but it will be such a pleasure to me to write the particulars of that bright day. ―It was as sunny and almost as warm as summer. On handing my card and asking for Miss White (Miss Agnew‘s friend, staying there during her absence) the servant was about to show me into the drawing-room, when another maid came forward and said, ‗If that‘s Miss Roberts, she is to be asked into the study.‘ So I followed my conductor upstairs, and found myself in John Ruskin‘s study—not his real work room, but where he evidently kept his choice sketches and pictures, books, etc.—a pleasant room with two windows looking over the garden at the back of the house, a large lawn with trees and clumps of shrubs, with a field beyond, and Sydenham in the distance. The maid reappeared in a minute. ‗Would I take a seat? Mr. Ruskin would be in directly.‘ So I waited perhaps another minute or two, and I looked round the room; but I don‘t think I was able to take in much—only I noticed the table was covered with pieces of Ethics of the Dust. There was a bookcase and other cases about the room—the door opened, and the dream and desire of so many years was fulfilled—John Ruskin stood before me. Taking my hand in both his, and with many kind words of greeting, he at once made me feel at ease and at home. Of course, older and more worn and thin than the portrait in the Selections, but the same beautiful—or as my darling mother calls it, celestial—face, the deep blue earnest kindly eyes, light brown hair, worn rather long, and wonderfully expressive mouth. I looked at him, tried to take him all in, yet sometimes I feel as if I had never seen him—though I do 1 By Mrs. Charles Lowry, School House, Sedberg; niece of the writer. INTRODUCTION li see him as he first came before me, and I hear his voice—very sweet and pleasant. Now I must try and put down in order all that he said, and first, after welcoming me and saying he was glad to see me, and all such kind and gracious things, he said, ‗But I was going to say I am disappointed in you. I expected to see you bronzed with the sun—hearty and robust—what I should expect from a young lady who lives in the country and takes long walks in search of mosses and flowers—but you look very delicate. I hope you are not ill.‘ I assured him I was very well, only never strong, but always strong enough to go anywhere in search of mosses or anything else for him. (I did not tell him that excitment never flushes me, but makes me turn pale, and that I had hardly slept all the night before, thinking of the morning.) Then he said he had a poor little school girl, whom he was trying to help, in another room—she was just going, but meanwhile he would bring Miss White to me, or I could take off my hat and then he would come and talk to me. So Miss White came—a pretty, simple, and very agreeable girl. She took me into her room, and then we returned to the study, where we chatted for perhaps ten minutes, when Mr. Ruskin came in again, when he said to her, ‗Now, Lizzie, we don‘t want you; you go down to the drawing-room and get on with your sketching. Miss Roberts and I have a great deal to say.‘ I had protested against staying to lunch—said I would not stay and take up his precious time; but he would not hear of my going—said lunch was ordered at two, and we had an hour before us. Ah me! When I heard those words, and found myself sitting in a chair he placed and drew forward for me, it seemed too good to be real indeed; all through I was in a dream, a beautiful dream, which now I am trying to put on paper—but I cannot do it. As if it were possible for me to write down his conversation—it can only be the merest shadow of the good thing itself. He first said, ‗So you are fond of botany and flowers?‘ ‗No,‘ I said, ‗not of botany. I love flowers, but I know nothing of botany.‘ ‗But,‘ he answered, ‗you sent me the names of fungi—how did you get them?‘ I told him ‗from Mrs. Loudon.‘ He said, ‗I have all the books necessary, but it takes me so much time, say, to look through five or six volumes, for the name of one little fungus.‘ ―Then he went on in a most beautiful strain to describe a kind of society he wished to form of right-minded, right-hearted people—men and women who would determine to try and do some good in the world; girls were all for vanity, or men for avarice, getting more, more. He wanted people to be content with what they had, and to live simply, and every day to do some good. Then he gave me his ideas of a scheme for benefiting the Swiss people. ‗I am thinking so much just now about the beauty and worth of the rain from heaven. We are apt to think of the sun as everything to us, but what would our earth be but for the rain? lii INTRODUCTION ―He sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.‖ But see in the Swiss valleys, the valley of the Rhone, and the town of Sion and others devastated by mountain torrents—whole villages swept away, and once fertile lands laid low with fever from the stagnant water left.‘ Then he tracked the tiny stream to its source up the mountain. There, in its infancy, the mountain stream was easily controlled—you could guide it, lead it where and how you would. So, he said, let each house—the chalets up the sides of the mountains—let each make an embankment of turf round a pond which they must dig out in the course of one tiny stream, and so catch it and keep it there—it would be wealth to them in time of drought. How eagerly men would rush to the ends of the earth to dig gold, but they think nothing of this rain gold—‘it is gold. But,‘ he said, ‗I mean to write to the Alpine Club and lay the plan before them.‘ ―I said something about the horror I had of London and all cities in answer to his remark, ‗So you very seldom come to London.‘ He said, ‗Have you never seen a beautiful city?‘ ‗No, I cannot think any city beautiful.‘ ‗Milan?‘ I said I had been there, but did not think the city beautiful. ‗Well, perhaps hardly beautiful, but very different from London.‘ ‗Yes,‘ I said; ‗I could not love cities—always wished the description of heaven had not been as a city, with streets‘; but he said, ‗Cannot you picture a city that we might love to dwell in—houses with plenty of garden ground around them—trees all down the streets—and then the intercourse with our fellow-men—we ought to care for this.‘ He said there were signs of decay in England, as of Rome before the fall; but Florence will rise somewhere, I cannot say where or when, but ‗Florence will rise.‘ I hear his voice saying ‗Florence will rise‘—such a sweet, quiet confidence in the tone. Then he spoke of the want of faith in God shown by most of our scientific men, and the want of principle among statesmen; and the want of courage and common-sense among the clergy; but spoke with admiration of Kingsley, Maurice, Stopford Brooke, and Tyrwhitt of Oxford. 1 Then he said he often wondered how men who would, and did, constantly go into miserable houses, to the sick and dying, do this which he should shrink from doing, yet were so afraid of speaking what they really thought from the pulpit. When did you hear the wrongs and falsenesses of—no, he did not use that word—people did not like to be told they were doing wrong—leading false lives—yet that was what we ought to have from the pulpit. Then he said, ‗I don‘t go to church—I cannot.‘ Something was said about inspiration and the Bible, that all the good and true things said now were 1 The Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, formerly Student and Tutor of Christ Church. To his Handbook of Pictorial Art Ruskin contributed a drawing (see Vol. XV., frontispiece, and p. xxx.); and in his Our Sketching Club Ruskin allowed much of The Elements of Drawing to be incorporated (ibid., p. 6). INTRODUCTION liii from God, and in their measure inspired. He said what a real idol many made of the Bible, calling it the Word of God—a great mistake—but how he admired and loved the Bible, and he added, ‗I often think I should so like to devote myself especially to try and bring out the meaning of many parts, but,‘ he said, ‗they would think me a hypocrite. I never go to church.‘ I said how I wished he would, and surely he did not care what people said of him, or thought. He said, ‗Oh, but I do care.‘ I told him I chiefly loved and valued his comments on the Bible, and I was sure numbers did the same. He showed me several lovely little woodcuts of flowers he had drawn, saying he had found a man who did them so well—just caught the spirit of the thing—a dandelion, very beautiful heaths, etc., and then a most exquisite sketch of the dear little ‗lady‘s tresses‘; 1 and when I said ‗Yes, I know it, we found it so much this summer,‘ he seemed surprised, saying, ‗How I prized it in Switzerland!‘ Then he spoke of the Island, and I told him how many rare flowers we had; he thought he must come some day. Then he showed me the original of one of the drawings in Modern Painters—a lovely branch, I quite remembered it in the book. This was framed, as were others—pencil drawings, with slight colouring on the stem—a little flake white, then some serpents‘ and birds‘ heads—evidently studies for Queen of the Air—and a lovely woman‘s face. Then he went to the window and lifted up the shelf of what would be the sill, and it seemed fitted up for these pictures. What he took out was one with two pages of an ancient missal, but also the letters were serpent-like, forked and wicked-looking, yet this was designed when the Christian faith was strong and pure.‖ This was a morning at Denmark Hill, as will be seen by readers of this volume, with the author of Sesame and Lilies and The Ethics of the Dust. ―SESAME AND LILIES‖ The book, which stands first in this volume, took at once the place, which it has ever since occupied, of the most popular of the author‘s writings (see Bibliographical Note). With its position in the body of his work we have dealt already (p. xx.); some particulars remain to be noticed with regard to its origin and its history. The 1 Popular name for quaking grasses of the genus Briza. liv INTRODUCTION book, in its original and in its most widely circulated form, consists of the two lectures entitled respectively ―Of Kings‘ Treasuries‖ and ―Of Queens‘ Gardens.‖ They contain some of Ruskin‘s best known and most beautiful passages; though carefully written, they were written, it should be remembered, for oral delivery. 1 The first lecture was delivered at the Rusholme Town Hall, near Manchester, in aid of a fund which was to be used for the formation of a library in connexion with the Rusholme Institute. The subject was thus appropriate to the occasion, the ―Kings‘ Treasuries‖ of which Ruskin spoke being libraries of good books. The second lecture was delivered a week later at the Town Hall, King Street, Manchester (now the Free Reference Library), and was in aid of a fund for opening and fitting up additional schools in a densely inhabited part of Ancoats. On the same visit to Manchester Ruskin was invited to address the boys of the Grammar School, and a report of his remarks is here included in an Appendix (pp. 555–557). In the following year Ruskin prepared the lectures for publication. He seems to have sent ―advance sheets‖ of them to his friend Coventry Patmore, from whose Angel in the House he had quoted in the lecture on ―Queens‘ Gardens.‖ He had taken some liberties with the poet‘s text, and Patmore seems to have been inclined to accept Ruskin‘s emendation. This, however, Ruskin dissuaded him from doing; the letter, from which these facts appear, shows also what Patmore thought of the book, and how Ruskin felt some satisfaction in having delivered his soul in it:— ―DENMARK HILL, S. [June 1865]. ―DEAR PATMORE,—I hope you‘ll have that ridiculous book of mine next week. I wish I could feel it a little ‗pearly‘ myself; for the rest, I entirely sympathise with you in that butterfly notion (capital in expression, by the way), only I feel it an Egyptian hailstorm, mingled with fire. The lectures were written for a couple of schoolgirls in reality, and only delivered to amuse them, not in the least expecting they were to be of any use to the public. But I‘ve got some Billingsgate spoken out in the first lecture, which relieves one‘s mind, like swearing, even when there‘s nobody to hear. Don‘t alter your line; I altered it indeed partly intentionally in reciting, because I didn‘t think people would understand 1 See the author‘s Preface of 1871, § 3 (below, p. 33). INTRODUCTION lv ‗spent,‘ etc., straight off lips, but it is much better in reading. A woman‘s influence is not all ‗granted‘; much of it is spent in small change here and there; nor is it all with sacred, but it is all with respectful thrift. ―Respectful and quite unthrifty love to your wife. ―Ever faithfully yours, ―J. RUSKIN.‖1 The book was accounted ―pearly‖ by other readers, and new editions were rapidly called for. In the first lecture (§ 35) Ruskin had made an incidental reference to Alpine climbing, and immediately after the appearance of the book the terrible accident on the Matterhorn occurred. This suggested to him the Preface to the Second Edition, which is now for the first time since 1867 reprinted (pp. 21–29).2 The title ―Sesame and Lilies‖ is often referred to as one of Ruskin‘s fanciful cryptograms. ―Sesame‖ and ―Lilies‖ were indeed, as the titles to lectures on the influence of good books and of good women respectively, a kind of shorthand, in which Ruskin compressed many ideas. The first and obvious meaning of ―Sesame‖ and of ―Kings‘ Treasuries‖ is explained in the words with which the lecture now closes (p. 105). ―Open Sesame‖ was, as everybody remembers, the charm that causes the doors of the robbers‘ cave to fly open in the tale of ―Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,‖ and Ruskin meant therefore by the title ―Sesame‖ to indicate that his lecture dealt with the cultivation of the spirit which opens the door to the secrets of good literature. He who can read a true book aright has an ―open Sesame‖ to audiences with the great and wise of all time. The key which unlocks the door has many wards—such as diligence, an understanding heart, and, above all, a sympathetic imagination. This is ―the open Sesame of a huge, obscure, endless cave, with inexhaustible treasure of pure gold scattered in it; the wandering about and gathering of the pieces may be left to any of us—all can accomplish that; but the 1 This letter has already appeared in the Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore, by Basil Champneys, vol. ii. p. 283. It refers to the quotation from The Angel in the House made by Ruskin in his lecture at Manchester on ―Queens‘ Gardens,‖ and printed in Sesame and Lilies, § 65 (p. 120 and n.). As that book was published on June 21, 1865, the date of this letter is approximately fixed. 2 For other references to Ruskin in connexion with the Alpine Club, see Vol. V. p. lviii. and n.; and compare below, p. 345. lvi INTRODUCTION first opening of that invisible door in the rock is of the imagination only.‖1 The sub-title of the lecture, ―Of Kings‘ Treasuries,‖ fits in with this meaning of ―Sesame.‖ Gold, as the author says (§ 13, p. 64), is ―the physical type of wisdom‖; and it is the pearl of great price. Hence the motto from the Septuagint which Ruskin put on the original title-page (p. 3): ―The kingdom of heaven is like into treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field‖ (Matthew xiii. 44). Then he plays further with the type; and, with reference in his mind to passages in Unto this Last (where the riches of a State are said to consist in its happy men and women), he connects his Kings‘ Treasuries with the work of social reform: ―the treasuries of true kings are the streets of their cities; and the gold they gather, which for others is as the mire of the streets, changes itself, for them and their people, into a crystalline pavement for evermore,‖ 2 with which passage should be compared the motto from the Book of Job, placed beneath the title of the lecture in the original editions (p. 53 n.). The only true and substantial kingship among men consists, he says further (§§ 51, 52), in the calm and beneficent rule of moral power, which it is the function of reading and of education to confirm. In later editions, Ruskin substituted a quotation from Lucian which introduces us to another train of thought that passed through his mind when he called the lecture ―Sesame.‖ Sesame is a leguminous plant, native in the East, from whose fruit an oil is still pressed, and the seeds of which are boiled and eaten like rice. A sesame-cake, in which the seeds were roasted and pounded with honey, was an Athenian delicacy, given to guests at a wedding. In Lucian‘s dialogue of The Fishermen; or, the Risen (i.e. Philosophers), this delicacy is promised as a bait to the philosophers who are to come up and be judged by Philosophy in person. ―You shall each have a cake of sesame—and ten pound.‖ Such are the rewards which Ruskin, too, holds out to those whom he is addressing: they shall find Wisdom, which is the true riches, and at the wedding-feast of each good woman the cakes shall be of enchanted grain. The thought that was in his mind is shown by a note which he pencilled beside the quotation from Lucian in one of his copies of the book: ―Wonderful passage: Arist. Av. 156–170.‖ The reference is to the passage in which the poet 1 Modern Painters, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. iii. § 4 (Vol. IV. p. 251). 2 See below, p. 105 n. INTRODUCTION lvii describes the ideal community of the Birds. The Hoopoe t ells the tale to the Athenian Euelpides:— Euelpides. But what‘s the style of living with the birds? You know it well no doubt. Hoopoe. Not disagreeable For daily wear and tear: to take an instance, You have to live without a purse. Euelpides. Good riddance Of one of life‘s most palpable corruptions! Hoopoe. We feed in gardens on white sesame grains, On myrtle-berries, poppy-seed, and water-mint.1 It is to the simpler life, far removed from the restless pursuit of material wealth, that Ruskin summons all those who hear him; and thus we may find in this book a connexion with The Eagle’s Nest: ―None of us yet know, for none of us have yet been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of beautiful thought—proof against all adversity: bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us—houses, built without hands, for our souls to live in.‖2 It is such a treasure-house that, by common consent of thousands of readers during four decades, Ruskin himself built up in this present book. The title of the second lecture—‖Lilies. Of Queens‘ Gardens‖—is simpler, and hardly needs any notice here. Ruskin explains his meaning clearly at the beginning of the lecture (§ 53). The territory over which a good woman exercises sway is as the garden of a Queen; the lily, emblem of purity, is the sceptre of her rule,—the type of the pure influence which she may wield both at home and in the world. For her ―the Lily whispers—I wait‖ (§ 94); and behind her steps, the flowers rise (§ 93). Hence Ruskin‘s question in Fors Clavigera: 3 ―Do you know now, any of you, ladies mine, what Giotto‘s lilies mean 1 B. H. Kennedy‘s translation. 2 Eagle’s Nest, § 205. 3 Letter 45. lviii INTRODUCTION between the roses? or how they may also grow among the Sesame of knightly spears?‖ Ruskin‘s successive mottoes (p. 109 n.) show how recollections of the Canticles, of Isaiah, and of Horace mingled in his thoughts as he chose the title. In revising and re-issuing Sesame and Lilies in 1871 Ruskin included a third lecture and wrote a new Preface. The third lecture, entitled ―The Mystery of Life and its Art,‖ was delivered in Dublin on May 13, 1868. It was one of a series of Afternoon Lectures on various subjects (religion excepted) arranged by a Committee of the principal residents in Dublin. The lectures were given in the theatre of the Royal College of Science; but in Ruskin‘s case, ―so great was the demand for tickets, that the place had to be changed to the Concert Hall of the Exhibition Palace.1 Long before the hour appointed for the lecture the hall was crowded, about 2000 persons being present.‖ 2 Ruskin had written his lecture with exceptional care, and as there were allusions in it to the intended place of delivery, 3 he still described the lecture as given ―in the theatre of the Royal College of Science.‖ Ruskin had reasons of his own, other than those which appear on the surface of the lecture, for throwing into it his very best work. ―I put into it,‖ he said once to an intimate friend, ―all that I knew‖; and to the like effect he says in the Preface (p. 34) that certain passages of it ―contain the best expression I have yet been able to put in words of what, so far as is within my power, I mean henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all over whom I have any influence to do according to their means.‖ From a different standpoint, a distinguished critic has endorsed Ruskin‘s preference for this piece of work. In Sesame and Lilies, wrote Sir Leslie Stephen, ―Ruskin‘s style was at its best. He can still be as eloquent as of old, though less ornate; and, though the argument wanders a little,4 he manages to give a regular and concentrated expression of his real convictions. The last section in that volume, ‗The Mystery of Life and its Arts,‘ is, to my mind, the most perfect of his essays. Perhaps,‖ adds that cheeriest of pessimists, ―I am a little prejudiced by its confession, franker than usua l, of the melancholy conviction that, after all, life is a mystery, and no solution really satisfactory. It is a good bit of pessimism, especially if you omit the 1 See the reference in § 104 (p. 151). 2 Daily Express, May 14, 1868. 3 In § 103 (below, p. 149). 4 This also was partly Ruskin‘s opinion. The two first lectures, he said, ―are fragmentary and ill-arranged‖ (Preface of 1871, § 5; p. 34). INTRODUCTION lix moral at the end.‖1 It was precisely in ―the moral at the end‖ that Ruskin afterwards found the saving salt of the essay: it contained, he said, ―the entire gist and conclusion‖ of the other lectures in the volume.2 And it was because of the partly pessimistic tone in the earlier portion of the lecture that in some later editions he omitted the whole discourse. ―One of my chief reasons,‖ he said, ―for withdrawing from the later edition of Sesame and Lilies the closing lecture, on ‗The Mystery of Life,‘ was the feeling that I had not with enough care examined3 the spirit of faith in God, and hope in Futurity, which, though unexpressed, were meant by the master of tragedy to be felt by the spectator, what they were to himself, the solution and consolation of all the wonderfulness of sorrow.‖ 4 But at the time when the lecture was written, its tone was characteristic partly of Ruskin‘s own thought, and wholly of the standpoint which he then took in addressing the public. (See on this subject the note on The Crown of Wild Olive, below, p. lxxvii.) The Preface which Ruskin added to Sesame and Lilies in 1871 was also a Preface to the whole series of his collected Works then contemplated. To the subject of his new arrangements with the publishing and bookselling trades, we shall have to return in a later volume; the various ―Advertisements‖ in which Ruskin explained his scheme to the public are here given in the Bibliographical Note (pp. 9–11). In announcing the intended ―Works‖ Edition, Ruskin says, it may here be noted, that he proposed to add some comments; to ―throw together the shorter fragments that bear on each other‖; and sometimes to ―fill in with such unprinted lectures or studies as seem worth preserving‖ (§ 2). This is the scheme, unfulfilled by Ruskin himself, which the editors have endeavoured to carry out in the present Complete Edition of his Works. The greater part of the Preface of 1871 is a supplementary Address to Girls, and needs no elucidation here; but at the end (p. 48) Ruskin gives, in concentrated form, a reading of his own character—a portrait of himself drawn in allusive colours—which may require some illustrative references. ―A man,‖ it is said, ―is known by the company he keeps.‖ Ruskin names three of the persons in past history with whom he had most sympathy. The first is an Italian poet. ―In all that is strongest and deepest in me,—that fits me for my work, 1 ―John Ruskin,‖ in the National Review, April 1900. 2 See, again, Preface of 1871, § 5. 3 See the passage on Shakespeare in § 115 (below, pp. 161–162). 4 Fors Clavigera, Letter 91. lx INTRODUCTION and gives light or shadow to my being, I have sympathy with Guido Guinicelli.‖1 Guido is one of the ―Early Italian Poets‖ (he died in 1276) from whom typical poems were translated by D. G. Rossetti in the volume so entitled. Rossetti had shown his translations in manuscript to Ruskin, who admired them so much that he advanced the money which was necessary for their publication in 1861. 2 It is, then, in Rossetti‘s volume3 that we may most surely find the clue to Ruskin‘s meaning here. To some extent his allusions are esoteric. Read Guinicelli‘s sonnet to his Lady— ―Yea, let me praise my lady whom I love, Likening her unto the lily and the rose‖— and compare with it the motto first given to ―Queens‘ Gardens‖—―As the lily among thorns, so is my love.‖ But in Guinicelli‘s canzone, ―Of the Gentle Heart,‖ there is an exoteric link of sympathy with Ruskin‘s character that all his readers may seize:— ―Let no man predicate That aught the name of gentleness should have, Even in a king‘s estate, Except the heart there be a gentle man‘s The star-beam lights the wave,— Heaven holds the star and the star‘s radiance.‖ It is to this poem that Dante refers in the Vita Nuova:— ―Love and the gentle heart are one same thing, Even as the wise man in his ditty saith.‖4 Ruskin‘s self-portraiture, in confessing his sympathy with the poet of ―The Gentle Heart,‖ recalls the simple words in which a wise judge of men recorded his impression of the author of Sesame and Lilies. ―I should wish,‖ wrote Jowett, after a visit to Brantwood, ―never to lose the impression of the kind welcome which I received 1 See below, p. 48. 2 See Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Letters and Memoir, by W. M. Rossetti, vol. i. p. 216. 3 At pp. 290 to 298 of the edition of 1874 (then entitled Dante and his Circle). 4 D. G. Rossetti‘s Dante and his Circle, p. 63. INTRODUCTION lxi from him. He is the gentlest and most innocent of mankind.‖ 1 But there were depths of stern and bitter feeling in Ruskin also. ―In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts of things and of people,‖ he adds, ―I have sympathy with Dean Swift.‖ Ruskin, ―the gentlest of mankind,‖ was one of the most vituperative of writers. ―I‘ve got some Billingsgate spoken,‖ he wrote to Patmore, as we have seen, of this very book; ―which relieves one‘s mind, like swearing.‖ ―I have been reading Dean Swift‘s Life,‖ Ruskin wrote to his mother (from Baveno, May 6, 1869), ―and Gulliver’s Travels again. Putting the delight in dirt, which is a mere disease, aside, Swift is very like me, in most things, in opinions exactly the same.‖ 2 When confronted by the shams and hypocrisies of the world, Ruskin felt to the full Swift‘s sæva indignatio, and the indignation lacerated his heart. The scorn which Ruskin poured, especially in his later years, upon the pursuits, ambitions, institutions of men and women around him, and the biting irony with which he tipped his sarcasms, link him—in other respects so unlike—with the author of the Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels. But Ruskin was never soured; the genial and kindly qualities of his nature were never killed; he never lost faith in human nature; even when most despairing, he was ready with schemes for conceivable regenerations of the world. ―In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of things and of people, I have sympathy with Marmontel.‖ Here the points of sympathy are easy to follow. In his Mémoires, Marmontel (1723–1799) describes ―the influence of natural surroundings upon his character; his close observation of nature; his strong sense of justice; his insistence upon the importance of the study of the exact meaning of words; his appreciation of the futility of mere worldly success as compared with a useful and honourable life, and his keen antipathy to religious persecution.‖ 3 These are all points of 1 Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, vol. ii. p. 257. The year of the visit was 1883. 2 There is a fine passage in Mr. Frederic Harrison‘s John Ruskin (p. 115) on this passage of Ruskin‘s autobiographical confession: ―Strange parallel, singular coincidences! The most drab-coloured with the most purple of all great masters of English; the most cynical with the most idealist maker of Utopias; the most foul with the most prudish of writers; the keenest politician with the most unpractical of dreamers; the bitterest hater with the most loving sentimentalist—and yet analogies in mind and in circumstance: they two so lonely in spirit, so like in their genius for sarcasm, so boiling with indignation for the people‘s wrong, so brave, so defiant, each gifted with such burning speech,‖ etc. And the parallel had also its tragic sequel. Mr. Wedderburn remembers Jowett remarking to him in 1890 how curiously Ruskin‘s later years of illness resembled those of Swift. 3 P. W. T. Warren, Reader’s Companion to Sesame and Lilies, p. 25. lxii INTRODUCTION close and obvious resemblance to Ruskin. With the author of ―the exquisitely finished‖1 Moral Tales, Ruskin was in sympathy alike for their style and for their substance. He admired Marmontel‘s ―fine tremulous‖ sayings and thoughts, ―like the blossoming heads of grass in May‖;2 in the tales of simple peasant life he found the most effective contrast to the mechanical and material conditions of modern life. 3 At other times Ruskin traced many points of resemblance between himself and Rousseau. We have read already, in a letter to his mother (above, p. xxxviii.), of his being impressed with this affinity; and similarly, in an earlier letter to his father (Milan, June 21, 1862), he says, ―I know no one whom I more entirely resemble than Rousseau. If I were asked whom of all men of any name in past time I thought myself to be grouped with, I should answer unhesitatingly, Rousseau. I judge by the Nouvelle Heloise, the Confessions, the writings on Politics, and the life in the Ile St. Pierre.‖ There are points of difference, many and obvious—in character, in conduct, and in circumstance—between the two men; yet in other respects, Ruskin—romanticist and reformer—may well be numbered among the intellectual descendants of Rousseau. Ruskin‘s reference to Rousseau‘s life in the isle of St. Peter will suggest to those who turn to the fifth of the Réveries, in which the sojourn is commemorated, many curious points of similarity between him who sought solace on the Lake of Bienne—in converse with the peasants, in study of the sights and sounds of nature, in botanical schemes ―enough to occupy me for the rest of my days‖—and him whose hermitage at Mornex has been described in a previous volume. 4 In 1882 Ruskin again wrote a new Preface for Sesame and Lilies. Between 1871 and 1882 the book had been always printed with the third lecture and with the Preface of 1871. He now decided, at the request of an aged friend (see p. 49 and n.) to re-issue the book in its original form—that is, with the first two lectures only. He gives 1 Vol. V. p. 67. 2 Fors Clavigera, Letter 14. 3 For a general notice of Marmontel, see Fors Clavigera, Letter 14; for a reference to Marmontel‘s Mémoires, see Vol. III. p. 166; to the Contes Moraux, Vol. V. p. 67, Cestus of Aglaia, § 48, and Fors Clavigera, Letters 14, 17, 21, 40. A translation of some of the Contes Moraux by Mr. George Saintsbury, with an introductory account of Marmontel, has been published by Mr. Allen (1895). 4 Mr. Morley‘s account of the island and translation of Rousseau‘s description of his life there might almost pass for pages of Ruskin‘s letters (Rousseau, vol. ii. pp. 108–115, ed. 1886). See also what Ruskin says of ―Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner and myself‖ in Fiction, Fair and Foul, § 73; and compare Vol. XII. pp. 120, 122, and Præterita, i. § 134; ii. §§ 84, 210. INTRODUCTION lxiii one of his reasons in the new Preface (p. 49), and another has been stated already (p. lix.). The Preface itself was slight, and not what he had intended. It was written during a tour in France. ―Here‘s your preface at last,‖ he wrote to Mr. Allen from Avallon, May 24. ―I am obliged to leave it as a mere preface, finding that if I engaged in the discussion of what made the difference between classic and common books, as I at first intended, I should not have got done till Christmas.‖1 In this ―original form‖ the book has had, and continues to have, very wide circulation. In the present edition the text is that last revised by the author; and for the first time all the contents, which at one time or another were included by Ruskin in Sesame and Lilies, are brought together. The full details are given in the Bibliographical Note. Of the first two lectures no manuscript is known to the editors; but the newspaper reports have been collated, and some interesting passages are added from them (e.g., on pp. 78–79, 127). The MS. of the third lecture, which is in the possession of Mr. Wedderburn, to whom Ruskin gave it, shows how carefully the lecture was written and revised. Here, again, additional passages are given (pp. 156, 159, 160, 163, 167, 169–172, 178, 185); and a facsimile of a page of the manuscript is included (between pp. 148, 149). “THE ETHICS OF THE DUST” Among the audience at Ruskin‘s lecture at Manchester in 1859 on ―The Unity of Art‖ was Miss Bell, then the Principal of a School for Girls at Winnington Hall, Cheshire. She was a great admirer of Ruskin‘s writings, and had already made his acquaintance, either personally or by correspondence. She now paid him the compliment of travelling with some of her pupils to hear him lecture, and she pressed him to come and see the school. ―Miss Bell came from Chester,‖ wrote Ruskin to his father (February 22, 1859), in describing the lecture, ―to hear me, with five of her young ladies, and I promised to pay them a visit on my way home—to their apparent great contentment—the first question she asked being, ‗When are you coming to us?‘ ‖ Ruskin accepted the invitation, 1 See, for another abandoned intention with regard to this Preface, his letters to Miss Mary Gladstone (Mrs. Drew) of Ash Wednesday and March 1, 1882 (reprinted in a later volume of this edition). lxiv INTRODUCTION and sent his first impressions of the place in the following letter to his father:— ―WINNINGTON, Friday [March 12, 1859]. I shall not fail to be home by Thursday, but I fear not before, for this is such a nice place that I am going to stay till Monday: an enormous oldfashioned house, full of galleries and up and down stairs, but with magnificently large rooms where wanted; the drawing-room is a huge octagon—I suppose at least forty feet high—like the tower of a castle (hung half-way up all round with large and beautiful Turner and Raphael engravings), and with a baronial fireplace; and in the evening, brightly lighted with the groups of girls scattered round it, it is a quite beautiful scene in its way. Their morning chapel, too, is very interesting: though only a large room, it is nicely fitted with reading desk and seats like a college chapel, and two pretty and rich stained glass windows and well-toned organ. They have morning prayers, with only one of the lessons, and without the psalms, but singing the Te Deum or the other hymn and other choral parts; and as out of the thirty-five or forty girls perhaps twenty-five or thirty have really available voices, well trained and divided, it was infinitely more beautiful than any ordinary church service—like the Trinità de‘ Monti Convent service more than anything else; and must be very good for them, quite different in its effect on their minds from our wretched penance of College chapel. ―The house stands in a superb park full of old trees, and sloping down to the river, with a steep bank of trees on the other side; just the kind of thing Mrs. Sherwood likes to describe;1 and the girls look all as healthy and happy as can be, down to the little six-year-old ones, who, I find, know me by the fairy tale, as the others do by my large books—so I am quite at home. They have my portrait in the library with three others—Maurice, the Bishop of Oxford, and Archdeacon Hare—so that I can‘t but stay over the Sunday.2 The staying over the Sunday was to be the first of many visits. ―Miss Bell,‖ writes Lady Burne-Jones, ―was an extremely clever woman, of a powerful and masterful turn of mind, evidently understanding that Ruskin was the greatest man she had ever seen, and that she must 1 For references to Mrs. Sherwood, see Vol. I. pp. 362, 491, and Vol. VI p. 406 n. 2 This letter has been published by Mr. Collingwood (Life of Ruskin, p. 216, ed. 1900).

INTRODUCTION lxv make the utmost use of the intimacy he accorded her and interest he took in her school.‖1 She was a brilliant talker, and was a pioneer in those ideas of the education of girls which have since become very general. The teachers and the girls alike were encouraged to pursue various interests; life was many-sided and strenuous; and out-door exercises were given a large place in the scheme. Miss Bell‘s was one of the first schools for girls where cricket was part of the curriculum; and to dancing also Miss Bell gave an important place in education. All this interested Ruskin greatly; at Winnington he saw many of his theories and ideals in practice. The school and its inmates, the old school-house and its surroundings, appealed also to his æsthetic sense; as may be seen in this further letter to his father:— ―March 14, 1859. ―I think I have made them all very happy here by what I have been able to show them, and I haven‘t enjoyed myself so much anywhere these many years. Miss Bell is both wise and cheerful—does not bore one with too much wisdom; nor yet is there ever, even among the girls, the bruyante gaiety which is oppressive—just right—and I have learned and heard a great deal that has been useful to me. ―I recollect I said in my yesterday‘s letter, ‗the dark dresses at dinner.‘ They are not a dark costume—merely the simple, everyday dresses of girls, more or less soberly coloured, and up to the throat, which, as contrasted with the white table-cloth, gives the kind of light and shade one sees in the pictures of the Venetians. In the evening they of course put on a little better dresses, but still up to the throat and low on the arms—so that the groups are incomparably more graceful, as well as more modest, than any that one can see in general society by the lustre of candlelight, which brings out brilliancy of complexion better than daylight. They sang me one of Mozart‘s masses or hymns after another in full choir last night for an hour and a half together, giving me no more trouble than just to ask for another when one was done—a very different kind of thing from attending on town ladies at the piano. ―I have amused them this morning mightily by painting one of their old dictionaries in a Titianesque manner, with glowing brown and softly touched edge. It came out very nicely, and they quarrelled who should have the dictionary afterwards—the drawing being public property.‖ 1 Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. i. p. 263. XVIII. e lxvi INTRODUCTION Ruskin came away delighted with everything he had heard and seen; and he returned on each successive visit with the same enjoyment. He spent some time there in the autumn of 1859, writing The Elements of Perspective. The next few years (1860–1863) were largely spent abroad, but on his visits to England Ruskin seldom failed to make occasion to fit in several days at Winnington. He was there in March 1861; perhaps in the early part of 1862; certainly in August, November, and December 1863; and again at various dates in later years. He was now established as the patron, and played the part of visiting lecturer as well as of earthly providence to the school. Miss Bell had a room specially set apart for him, and windows were opened in it so that it might look out in three directions on the river. Sometimes he took his artist-friends there. Lady Burne-Jones, in the passage already referred to, describes a visit which she and her husband paid there; Mr. Shields also was an occasional visitor. The school was sometimes in financial straits, and Ruskin‘s purse was open to relieve its necessities. His father threw out some words of caution about these loans or gifts, which were of pictures and drawings, as well as of money; and, in the end, the old man‘s warnings were to be justified by the event, and Ruskin‘s connexion with Winnington to be severed. But this was at a later date, and during the years with which we are now concerned, the gardens, the park, and the classrooms of Miss Bell‘s school witnessed some of Ruskin‘s most unclouded hours. The school was to him a picture in real life. ―Dinner,‖ he writes to his father (March 13, 1859), ―is very like one of the pictures of a Marriage in Cana; the dark dresses ranged round that shape of table‖; and so again, four years later (December 2, 1863), ―the long tables with the bright faces above them are so like Paul Veronese‘s great picture in the Louvre; the mere picturesqueness of the thing is worth a great deal.‖ Ruskin introduced some new notes into the harmony. Dancing, as we have said, was an important element in Miss Bell‘s scheme of education, and in the last volume we caught a glimpse of Ruskin joining in that class. 1 He describes one such occasion himself:2— ―Owing to their cricket, and the large park they have to run in, they dance like Dryads. I never saw any dancing at once so 1 Vol. XVII. p. lxxii. 2 In a letter to his father, March 22, 1861. INTRODUCTION lxvii finished and so full of life. Old Captain Leslie1 did a step or two; Mr. Cooke2 and his sister danced in nearly all the merry dances. I kept resolvedly to the wall for a long time; but at last a beautiful Irish girl of sixteen (the daughter, by the way, of Tennyson‘s first love, the lady of Locksley Hall)3 pulled me out into the middle of the floor; and I find that henceforward I acquitted myself to her satisfaction and that of the fair public; more especially in the course of a jig with little Dr. Acland4 which followed. To-day we have been playing at prisoners‘ base till I‘m stiff with running. The blossoms are coming out on the orchard walls, and the splendid red brick of the Cheshire sandstone clay looks like porphyry in the clear sunlight after rain.‖ The dancing was well, but in the ideal schooling of the Muses, which Ruskin learnt from Plato, 5 song and the dance went hand in hand. So Ruskin devised singing dances for the girls, with words—and perhaps also with tunes—of his own composition. This is the origin of some of the verses already printed.6 In connexion with them, we may here quote a letter which he wrote from Winnington to a little girl, 7 and which well illustrates his manner with his young friends:— ―WINNINGTON, 13th March [1859]. ―MY DEAR ALICE,—I have been travelling, and did not get your drawing of the sea till to-day. And though mamma rightly says it is not very well done,—yet, as it is very difficult to draw the sea well, I like it and am glad to have it; indeed it is better done than many drawings of sea by older people. As for birds, you are better off than I have been, for at Bolton Abbey, where I have been staying four days, the birds are so many, and sing so sweetly, that one would think all the choristers of the Abbey had been turned into birds when they died—the little choristers into linnets, the middle-sized choristers with red caps into bull-finches, 1 A friend who had come over to see Ruskin. 2 The Rev. S. H. Cooke, rector of Budworth, near Northwich, with whom Ruskin afterwards occasionally stayed; an old Christ Church friend. 3 This is a mistake. ―The poem was a simple invention as to place, incidents, and people‖ (Alfred Lord Tennyson: a Memoir by his Son, vol. ii. p. 379). 4 ―A little wild Irish girl of eleven,‖ says Ruskin in an earlier letter, ―as like Dr. Acland as a little girl can be to a middle-aged gentleman, which means that the face is very bright, open, and vigorous.‖ 5 Fors Clavigera, Letter 82. 6 Vol. II. pp. 245–249. 7 Miss Alice Donkin; Ruskin sent a copy of the letter to his father. lxviii INTRODUCTION and the fat old monk choristers in black hoods into blackbirds; and if they have been, I am sure they must enjoy twittering in the branches of the trees much more than they used to enjoy sitting in the damp stone niches in the dark. They have to get up terribly early still, but not at midnight. They used to be tired of singing and ready to come and breakfast with me at half-past eight, and ate up a quarter of my loaf every morning so fast that I was always afraid they would choke themselves. I am sorry to say they quarrelled over some of the large bits in an entirely unclerical manner. ―Another place I have been at is called Settle. It is in Yorkshire, and just above it are the sources of nearly all the Yorkshire rivers, in wild moors. Now when the rivers are young, they are very noisy—sometimes quite too noisy for rivers going to be bred up to respectable businesses as most English rivers are; and their education is conducted by a great mountain called Ingleborough in a very severe way. The rocks of Ingleborough are full of deep holes; and whenever a young river gets quite unruly, it is sent into a hole—as little girls used to be put in corners—and after running for a quarter of an hour or so in the dark, it comes out again, looking much subdued and quite quiet. Sometimes when two or three get in the dark together, one doesn‘t know which is which, when they come out again; perhaps if one could understand what they said with their little lisping lips of waves, we might hear them say— ‗I am—here, here again, I‘m the river Ure; And I‘m sure That I won‘t be any more loud or vain. There shall never Be a river So pure, and demure, As the little river Ure.‘ And then one would hear another say perhaps— ‗I‘m the river Ribble— Poor little Ribble By pebble and by nibble And by troubled little treble— Bibble, babble, babble, bibble— You may know the river Ribble; INTRODUCTION lxix Who always will be good Evermore, And flow only as I should When the sweet leaves of the wood Kiss me—(so that I‘m not rude)— From my shore.‘ No room for any other rich sayings—only for my saying, my dear Alice, that I‘m always affectionately yours, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ To many a talk such as this must the younger girls at Winnington have listened, when the day‘s play and lesson were done, and the shadows were long upon the grass. Play and lesson: which was it? ―What it‘s called a school for,‖ writes Ruskin (August 8, 1863), ―I can‘t think; except that if Miss Bell called it a playhouse, it might be mistaken for a theatre.‖ In another letter to his father (August 31, 1863) he describes the quiet hour when the girls came together in the Park and persuaded the ―old Lecturer‖ of The Ethics of the Dust to tell them a story or read them a book:— ―It was a most lovely day yesterday here—I hope you had as nice sunshine and calm air at Denmark Hill. We could all sit out upon the grass, and the younger children, and my old friends among the elder ones, and one or two new ones who are nice, came and made themselves into a close circle round me, as many as could hear reading—that‘s to say about two deep behind and three in front—a cluster of eighteen or twenty altogether,—five or six (say two of the tall ones and four of the little ones) as lovely as one could well see in a summer‘s day.‖ Sometimes Ruskin read to them, as he goes on to describe in the same letter:— ―So it was a pleasant sight to see and a pleasant audience to read to—first some children‘s stories for the little ones, and then—though also at the request of a little one—a grave story about the martyrdom of Polycarp; and then, to finish, the bit of the Cornhill about the Swiss châlet.1 I don‘t know whether I‘m fastidious, 1 ―How we slept at the Châlet des Chèvres,‖ in the Cornhill Magazine for September 1863 (but published in August), vol. viii. pp. 317–333, describing the adventures of ―A.,‖ ―M.,‖ and ―G.‖ The illustration of the milking stool, at p. 322, is from a drawing by Du Maurier. lxx INTRODUCTION but I was provoked (with my girl audience) at the ugliness and, to my mind, coarseness of the account and picture of the one-legged milking stool. I missed it all out, and it seemed to me a curious proof of the true delicate instinct of children, that little Isabelle, who was leaning on my shoulder and reading over it with me, all the time, never called out when she saw that I was missing, nor asked me to show the sketch to the others, nor noticed it herself, though she insisted on seeing all the others quite close when I came to them in the following pages. And for the M. and A. of the Cornhill we put in Marie and Annie out of our own group, and pretended to think they were the people whom it was all about, and asked them questions, and there was great laughing.‖ At other times Ruskin took a more formal part in the teaching of the school. We hear of him conducting ―a Bible class‖ and giving ―geology lessons.‖ He brought down his minerals, his books, and his portfolics, and would let the girls watch and question, while he sorted his specimens or washed in his drawings. In the evenings there was always music, and Miss Bell sometimes had distinguished performers among her visitors:— ―I like Mr. and Mrs. Hallé so very much,‖ wrote Ruskin, ―and am entirely glad to know so great a musician and evidently so good and wise a man. He was very happy yesterday evening, and actually sat down and played quadrilles for us to dance to—which is, in its way, something like Titian sketching patterns for ball-dresses. But afterwards he played ‗Home, sweet Home,‘ with three variations—quite the most wonderful thing I have ever heard in music. Though I was close to the piano, the motion of the fingers was entirely invisible—a mere mist of rapidity; the hands moving softly and slowly, and the variation, in the ear, like a murmur of a light fountain, far away. It was beautiful too to see the girls‘ faces round, the eyes all wet with feeling, and the little coral mouths fixed into little half open gaps with utter intensity of astonishment.‖1 Ruskin described the scene in The Cestus of Aglaia (§ 27). ―Only La Robbia himself,‖ he said, ―could have rendered some image of that listening‖—another instance of the artistic suggestiveness that Ruskin found around him at Winnington. The whole place seemed to realise 1 This letter has been published by Mr. Collingwood (Life of Ruskin, p. 217, ed. 1900). The editors are unable to give the date. INTRODUCTION lxxi Plato‘s ideal of a spot where, in the education of the young, fair sights and sounds should meet the sense like a breeze; 1 or Wordsworth‘s, where, among the human flowers, ―vital feelings of delight shall rear her form to stately height‖; or of Anatole France, in a passage marked with particular assent by Ruskin: ―Si cette enfant m‘était confiée je ferais d‘elle, non pas une savante, car je lui veux du bien, mais une enfant brillante d‘intelligence et de vie et en laquelle toutes les be lles choses de la nature et d‘art se refléteraient avec un doux éclat. Je la ferais vivre en sympathie avec les beaux paysages, avec les scènes idéales de la poésie et de l‘histoire, avec la musique noblement émue. Je lui rendrais aimable tout ce que je voudrais lui faire aimer.‖2 Sometimes Ruskin felt a shade come over the scene; as in this letter to his father (November 23, 1863):— ―The weary longing to begin life over again, and the sense of fate for ever forbidding it—here or hereafter—is terrible. I dare-say I shall get over it in a day or two, but I was out in the playground with them this afternoon, and the sun was on the grass, and on them, and the sense of loveliness in life, and overbrooding death, like winter, was too strong.‖ But this was only a passing mood. For the most part he was happy as ―a string for myrtle-wreath.‖ He joined even in the games and romps of the children, and took lively pleasure in ―The wishes dawning in the eyes, The softly murmured thanks.‖ 3 Such was the ―very pretty stage,‖ as Carlyle called it, on which Ruskin placed the dialogues entitled The Ethics of the Dust. The information given about Winnington in the preceding pages will enable the reader to read something between the lines of the author‘s first Preface (p. 201), and to read the book itself with, perhaps, some added interest. The dialogue is, as Ruskin says, for the most part imaginary; but it embodies the substance of many real talks, and the 1 Republic, iii. 401. 2 Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard; quoted by Mr. Collingwood, who adds that Ruskin ―was greatly interested in the book, not only for its literary charm and tender characterisation, but ‗as finding there some image of himself‘ in the old Membre de l‘Institut with his ‗bon dos rond‘ and his passion for missa ls, and Gothic architecture, and Benedictine monks, and natural scenery; and his defiance of the Code Napoléon and the ways of the modern world; with many another touch for which one could have sworn he had sat to the painter‖ (Life of Ruskin, p. 216 n., ed. 1900). 3 ―Academus‖ in W. Cory‘s Ionica. lxxii INTRODUCTION characters, though not in every respect ―historical,‖ were real persons. The lectures reflect more particularly the study of Egyptian antiquities, in which, as we have seen, Ruskin was now much interested. We may trace here,1 too, an outline of the interpretations of the myths of Athena, which he was to fill in afterwards in The Queen of the Air. ―The germ, or rather bulb‖ of the book in its principal subject, the ethics of crystallisation, is to be found, as Ruskin says, in the chapter on ―Compact Crystallines‖ in the fourth volume of Modern Painters. 2 If a date given in the book be strictly correct, 3 the lectures were delivered in 1863 or 1864; the book itself was written, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1865. Of the ―little housewives‖ to whom it was dedicated,4 and who were real girls,5 descriptions often occur in Ruskin‘s letters:— ―I have been making the girls arrange dances to simple music,‖ he wrote to his father (December 10, 1863), ―which can be sung to the words of really fine poems; it is getting to be very beautiful, as they know their verses and parts better. I do so wish you and my mother could see them. ―Egypt‖ astonished us all last night; crowned with dark ivy, she looked her name to the utmost. I never understood Horace‘s ‗Est hederæ vis Multa, qua crines religata fulges‘6 thoroughly before.‖ With some of the girls Ruskin kept up a sort of tutorial correspondence of the kind suggested in the following letter:— ―DENMARK HILL, S., 11th April 1866. ―MY DEAR VIOLET,—I did not answer at once, only because I was so sorry that I should not be able to come to Winnington to 1 See § 112. 2 See Vol. VI. p. 132, and Ruskin‘s note of 1885 there added. 3 See § 98 (p. 328), ―I was living last year in Savoy‖—that was in 1862 and 1863. 4 For Ruskin‘s explanation of the term, see § 103 (p. 337). 5 ―Florrie‖ was Miss Florrie White (Mrs. Arliss); ―Isabel,‖ Miss Isabel Marshall; ―May,‖ Miss Constance Oldham; ―Lily,‖ Miss Lily Armstrong (Mrs. Kev ill Davies); ―Kathleen,‖ Miss Matilda Delmege; ―Lucilla,‖ Miss Jessie Rowe; ―Violet,‖ Miss Violet Simpson (Mrs. Marsden); ―Dora,‖ Miss Dora Livesey (Mrs. Lees); ―Egypt,‖ Miss Asenath Stevenson (Mrs. M‘Neile); ―Sibyl,‖ Miss Sibyl Evelyn Herbert Noyes; ―Jessie,‖ Miss Jessie Dale; and ―Mary,‖ Miss Mary Leadbeater (Mrs. Capes). The editors are indebted to Mrs. Lees for these identifications. 6 Odes, iv. 11, 4, 5. INTRODUCTION lxxiii see you. I am obliged to go abroad this spring to look at some things I have forgotten, and I cannot do both. But do not think I shall be less willing to be of any use I can to you, though I can‘t see you yet. It is very nice and good of you not to be angry at some of the bits of Violet in the Ethics, but I did not mean it, or any other except Isabel and Lily, for real portrait, only I took your school name, and a memory of you—or memory and fancy mingled—because I thought you would like in that far-off way to be associated with your school-fellows, and also because there was a great deal that was nice in what I wanted to take of your little thoughts and ways, as representative of the feelings of young girls of enthusiastic temperament. So all that is nice in it you may think is you, and nothing that isn‘t. ―But how am I to write you a serious letter if I‘ve nothing to write of? I am too serious to-day to write anything, being both sad and weary; but I am glad to have your letter, and I liked papa‘s letters exceedingly, and I think it very good and trustful of him, knowing what differences of opinion on some grave points exist between him and me, to let you write to me at all, but he will not regret his trust, I am sure. ―Always, my dear Violet, ―Faithfully yours, ―J. RUSKIN.‖ The book in which ―Violet‖ was a dramatis persona was issued in December 1865, and found in Carlyle a very appreciative reader:— ―CHELSEA, 20th December 1865. ―DEAR RUSKIN,—Don‘t mind the Bewick; the indefatigable Dixon has sent me, yesterday, the Bewick‘s Life as well (hunted it up from the ‗Misses Bewick‘ or somebody, and threatens to involve me in still farther bother about nothing1 ), and I read the greater part of it last night before going to bed. Peace to Bewick: not a great man at all; but a very true of his sort, a well completed and a very enviable,—living there in communion with the skies and woods and brooks, not here in ditto with the London Fogs, the roaring witchmongeries, and railway yellings and howlings. ―The Ethics of the Dust, which I devoured without pause, and intend to look at again, is a most shining Performance! Not for a long while have I read anything tenth-part so radiant with talent, ingenuity, lambent fire (sheet and other lightnings) of all commendable kinds! Never was 1 For Dixon‘s habit of thus sending gifts, see Vol. XVII. p. lxxix. n. lxxiv INTRODUCTION such a Lecture on Crystallography before had there been nothing else in it, and there are all manner of things. In power of expression, I pronounce it to be supreme; never did anybody who had such things to explain, explain them better. And the bits of Egyptian Mythology, the cunning Dreams about Pthah, Neith, etc., apart from their elucidative quality, which is exquisite, have in them a poetry that might fill any Tennyson with despair. You are very dramatic, too; nothing wanting in the stage-directions, in the pretty little indications—a very pretty stage and dramatis personæ altogether. Such is my first feeling about your book, dear R. Come soon, and I will tell you all the faults of it, if I gradually discover a great many. In fact, come at any rate! ―Yours ever, ―T. CARLYLE.‖ The public, however, did not devour the book without pause; no second edition was called for; and the publishers, as Ruskin says, begged him to ―write no more in dialogue.‖ 1 When, however, some years later, Ruskin took the publishing of his books into his own hands, he reprinted The Ethics of the Dust, without alteration2 but with a new Preface (1877), and since then the book has enjoyed a constant and steady sale. Full particulars will be found in the Bibliographical Note (pp. 193–195). The MS. of the greater part of The Ethics of the Dust3—or rather a draft, for it is not the fair copy from which the book was set up—is in Mr. Allen‘s possession. It is written in a quarto note -book, ruled for accounts, which contains also part of The Crown of Wild Olive (see below), and of The Cestus of Aglaia. The collation that has been made of it for this edition shows evidence of the same careful revision that has marked all the author‘s earlier books. It may be said, gener ally speaking, that every page in the book as originally printed shows from twenty to thirty alterations when compared with the MS. Here, as everywhere, Ruskin spent much pains in choosing words and weighing the form of his sentences. Examples of his revision are cited in footnotes to pp. 220, 225, 283, 286, 287, and 347, while additional passages from the MS. are given on pp. 274, 290. The MS. is written on one side of the sheet only, and on the blank pages there are occasionally sketches; as in the facsimile here given (between pp. 358, 359). 1 See the Preface of 1877 (below, p. 203). 2 For a reason explained by him: see below, p. 204. 3 The portions not included are §§ 14–16, 29–34, 45–47, 49–53, 59–61, 75–82, 95–102, 115–119, and Notes i.–v. INTRODUCTION lxxv “THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE” The three lectures which were published in May 1866 under the title The Crown of Wild Olive, had been delivered by Ruskin in 1864 and 1865. The earliest of them in date is the Lecture (ii.) on ―Traffic.‖ The introductory passages in this lecture seem to have been somewhat revised; for at the time when Ruskin delivered this lecture (April 21, 1864) no design for the new Exchange at Bradford—about which he says he did not care (§§ 52, 53)—had been selected. The design, by Messrs. Lockwood and Mawson, was adopted afterwards, and the foundation-stone was laid by Lord Palmerston in August 1864. Publishing his lecture at a time when the design was well known, Ruskin was careful to dissociate himself from it; for it was in the Venetian Gothic style—of ambitious design but feeble execution, and was thus one of those buildings to which in general terms he refers elsewhere as adopting the form, without the spirit, of the architecture that he loved.1 He may have felt the more impelled to express his dislike of the design because in the original lecture he had advised the committee to adopt the Gothic style. The report of the lecture in the local paper contains the following passage:— ―If you want a model for your Exchange, I cannot tell you of a better than the new Assize Courts in Manchester, a very beautiful and noble building indeed, as lovely as it can be in general effect, containing a hall of exquisite proportions, beautifully lighted, the roof full of playful fancy, and the corridors and staircases thoroughly attractive and charming.‖ To like effect Ruskin had written to his father a few months before (December 9, 1863):— ―I have had a nice day at Manchester: the Assize Courts are much beyond everything yet done in England on my principles. The hall is one of the finest things I have ever seen: even the painted glass is good, and harmonises with the rest. It is vast, and full of sculpture, and very impressive. The workmen were pleased to see me; the clerk of the works, when he was a youth, copied out the whole three volumes of the Stones of Venice, and traced every illustration.‖ 1 See Vol. IX. p. 11. lxxvi INTRODUCTION The Assize Courts which Ruskin thus admired, and which owed something to his inspiration, are in the style of the thirteenth century, with an admixture of Italian Gothic in the details. The building was erected in the years 1859–1864 from the designs of Mr. Waterhouse, who established his reputation thereby. To his work Ruskin makes a sympathetic reference in the next volume.1 The second in date of the lectures is the one (i.) entitled ―Work‖; this was delivered on behalf of a Working Men‘s Institute in the immediate neighbourhood of Ruskin‘s home at Denmark Hill. In these two lectures he went over familiar ground, as we have already noticed (pp. xx.-xxi.). In the next lecture (iii.), delivered to the cadets of the Royal Military Academy, he entered upon a partly new field, his subject being the ethics of War—a subject on which, as he afterwards said (p. 515), he felt drawn in opposite directions; being impressed on the one side with the noble discipline of war and with the historical fact that war has been the foundation of art; yet being convinced on the other that war is opposed to the dictates of Christianity, caus es ―an incalculable amount of avoidable human suffering,‖ and is too often waged from ignoble motives and for ignoble ends. Ruskin framed for himself a working reconciliation. To nearly every actual war he was opposed; to the wars that were not waged he was sympathetic. And so again, the actual methods of modern warfare he denounced as barbarous; but he exhorted his hearers, perhaps half in play, to go into naval battle with oars and galleys, and into the field with the weapons of the Middle Ages or the heroic age of Greece. Ruskin‘s discussion in the present lecture of wars justifiable and wars unjustifiable should be read in connexion with his letters on Foreign Policy, here collected in an Appendix to the volume, upon which some elucidatory comments have already been made. In publishing the three lectures Ruskin added a Preface, or Introduction, as he preferred to call it (see below, p. 385 n.), which is of particular interest, not only as emphasising many of his economic doctrines, but as containing a characteristic expression of the religious phase through which he was passing at the time. The passage which ends the Preface is among the most beautiful in all his writings, and it reflects his mood and temper at the present period of his life. ―It is a difficult thing,‖ he had written a few years before, ―to live without 1 ―On the Study of Architecture,‖ § 4. An account (with illustration) of the building may be found in C. L. Eastlake‘s History of the Gothic Revival, pp. 312 seq. INTRODUCTION lxxvii hope of another world . . .; but by how much the more difficult, by so much it makes one braver and stronger.‖ 1 It is to this bravery and strength that he here calls his readers; not, indeed, wholly accepting the agnostic attitude, but pleading that ―fate may be bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered on either expectation.‖ 2 It is not necessary, he said in a later lecture, to ―share the degradation of the brute, because you are condemned to its mortality.‖ 3 And so, the title of his book took in his mind a double meaning, summing up alike its economic and its moral doctrine. The reward, for which honest men strive, is honour, not riches (see p. 398 n.); the crown for which brave men have lived and died, and yet may nobly live and die, need not be ―with harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace, and crowned and haloed hair‖;4 it may be but of wild olive, ―mixed with grey leaf and thorn-cut stem,‖ yet sweet for the victory by which it has been won. ―Type of grey honour, and sweet rest,‖ Ruskin calls his wreath of wild olive: ―Serviceable for the life which now is; nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.‖ For the influence of the olive -symbol has been Christian, no less than Greek. ―Think how strange it is,‖ he writes elsewhere, ―that the chief Agonia of humanity, and the chief giving of strength from heaven for its fulfilment, should have been under its night shadow in Palestine.‖5 In after years Ruskin did not retract the assertion, ―most carefully wrought out in the Preface to The Crown of Wild Olive, that human probity and virtue are indeed entirely independent of any hope in futurity‖; 6 but he had, for himself, recovered full confidence in the Christian hope, ―and those of you,‖ he wrote, ―who know with any care my former works, must feel a vivid contrast between the spirit in which the Preface to The Crown of Wild Olive was written,‖7 and that which inspired his later writings. The book, containing this Preface and the three first lectures, rapidly established itself in popular favour; but after 1867 Ruskin allowed it to go out of print. In including the book in the collected series of his Works, Ruskin added a fourth, and later, lecture, on ―The Future of England‖—a lecture which, in its appeal to the women of 1 See Vol. XVII. p. xxxviii. 2 See below, p. 394. 3 See Sesame and Lilies (below, p. 179). 4 Christina Rossetti: ―From House to Home.‖ 5 Queen of the Air, § 38. 6 Fors Clavigera, Letter 86 (1878). 7 Fors Clavigera, Letter 76 (1877). lxxviii INTRODUCTION England, recalls Sesame and Lilies. The general drift of the lecture is closely connected with the appeal which, in the following year, Ruskin addressed to the Oxford undergraduates; 1 so too he referred to The Crown of Wild Olive in one of his last lectures given in the University.2 In 1873 Ruskin added further to the volume an Appendix containing notes on Carlyle‘s Friedrich, calling attention, in the early history of Prussia, to characteristics of true kingship, whose crowning also must be ―with Wild Olive, not with gold‖ (p. 532). Some additional passages from Ruskin‘s manuscript notes on Carlyle‘s book are here given (pp. 532, 533). The text of The Crown of Wild Olive here printed is that last revised by the author (1873); but the earlier editions are collated, and the reader of this edition is put in a position to reconstruct the original text. The more interesting or important variations are given below the text; the others, in the Bibliographical Note (pp. 377–381). Students will there find something to interest them; the general reade r, by merely turning over the leaves, will perceive once more how much a great master of language finds to correct or alter when revising his printed words. The revisions made in 1873 were numerous; and Ruskin also added some footnotes: they are distinguished here by the addition of the date, thus: ―[1873].‖ The manuscript of the first lecture was formerly in the collection of Mr. T. J. Wise3 (who had acquired it from Ruskin‘s servant, Crawley), and afterwards in that of the late Mr. R. B. Adam, of Buffalo, U.S.A. A collation of it, made some time back, has been used for the purposes of this edition. The MS. shows that the lecture was in some part trusted to extempore delivery; the heads of the discourse being roughly jotted down, as in some of the earlier lectures already described (see Vol. XVI. p. 299 n.). The parts of the lecture which were fully written out were very largely revised for publication. The manuscript, or rather an early draft, of a large part of the third lecture is in Mr. Allen‘s possession, being written in the same book that contains The Ethics of the Dust: a page of this MS. is here given in facsimile (p. 465). The manuscript of that portion of the notes on Carlyle‘s Friedrich, which Ruskin used in his Appendix, is in the possession of Mr. F. Hilliard; it is dated 1869, and has been collated for this edition, and a few additional passages are here given 1 See above, p. xxi. 2 The Pleasures of England, § 3. 3 A page of it, much reduced, was given among the Illustrations to the Bibliography of Ruskin, edited by T. J. Wise (to face p. 144, vol. ii.). INTRODUCTION lxxix (pp. 517, 520, 523). The manuscript of the rest of Ruskin‘s notes is at Brantwood. The illustrations in this volume are now published for the first time. The frontispiece is a reproduction of an unfinished design made by Burne-Jones to serve as a title-page for Sesame and Lilies; in connexion with it reference may be made to Ruskin‘s scheme for designs which the artist was to make for Munera Pulveris (Vol. XVII. p. lxxvi.). The drawing is at Brantwood. The first four Plates are reproductions of drawings by Ruskin of places which he visited during the tour of 1866, described above. Plate I. is of ―Dawn at Neuchâtel‖; the drawing is in the collection of Professor Charles Eliot Norton. Plate II. is a ―View of Interlaken, with a storm gathering on the mountains.‖ The drawing (body-colour on grey colour, 8½ x 12½) is so entitled in the collection of the British Museum. Plate III. gives the ―View from the Giessbach Hotel, Lake of Brienz.‖ The drawing, which is in colour (7½ x 10½), is at Herne Hill. Plate IV. gives one of Ruskin‘s numerous views of Schaffhausen. The drawing, which is in water-colour (8¼ x 15¼), is at Brantwood. The last Plate (V.) is from a photograph of Winnington Hall, the scene of The Ethics of the Dust. E. T. C. I S E S A M E A N D L I LI ES (1865) XVIII. A S E S A M E A N D L I L I E S TWO LECTURES DELIVERED AT MANCHESTER IN 1864. BY JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. 1. OF KINGS‘ TREASURIES, 2. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS. ―άπό τήρ χαπάρ αύτοΰ ύπάγει, καί άγοπάξει τόν άγπόν έκεϊνον.‖ LONDON: SMITH, ELDER & CO., 65 CORNHILL. 1865. [The Right of Translation is reserved.] [Bibliographical Note.—Sesame and Lilies has been the most popular of all Ruskin‘s books (160,000 copies having been printed), and it has appeared in many forms. The following summary may be useful to readers who do not care to follow the minutiæ of the various editions. The book has appeared in four different forms (so far as the contents are concerned), viz.:— (1) With the two lectures, ―Of Kings‘ Treasuries‖ and ―Of Queens‘ Gardens‖ only, and without a Preface. This description applies to the First Edition (1865), and in this form the book has never been reprinted. (2) With the two lectures and with a Preface, written in 1865. This description applies to the Second (1865), Third (1866), and Fourth Editions (1867). This Preface of 1865 (on Alpine Climbing) has not been reprinted in any other edition until the present. A feature of the first four editions, and one which is absent from all later editions of the book, is the Greek motto on the title-page, from Matthew xiii. 44: ―Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy therefore goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.‖ (3) With an additional lecture on ―The Mystery of Life and its Arts,‖ and with a new Preface, written in 1871; this Preface, while dealing more particularly with Sesame and Lilies, applies also to the Collected ―Works‖ Series generally, in which series (as Volume I.) the book in this form made its first appearance. It has subsequently appeared with the same contents in numerous editions. (4) Without the additional lecture on ―The Mystery of Life and its Arts,‖ and with a Preface of 1882 instead of the Preface of 1871. Passing now to the detailed bibliography, we have to note that Sesame and Lilies, in its final and most complete form, consists of three lectures, which were variously reported and printed. We must describe, therefore, (1) the original reports of the several lectures; (2) editions of the book under the title Sesame and Lilies; (3) separate editions of one or other of the lectures. The first lecture, ―Of Kings‘ Treasuries,‖ was delivered at the Rusholme Town Hall, near Manchester, on December 6, 1864. Reports appeared on December 7, 1864, in the Manchester Courier (under the heading ―Mr. J. Ruskin on Literature‖); the Manchester Examiner and Times (―Mr. Ruskin‘s Lecture‖); and the Manchester Guardian (―Mr. J. Ruskin on ‗How and What to Read‘ ‖). The second lecture, ―Of Queens‘ Gardens,‖ was delivered in the Town Hall, King Street, Manchester, on December 14, 1864. Reported in the Manchester Guardian (―Mr. Ruskin on the Education of Women‖), December 15, 1864; the Manchester Courier, December 16; and, much more fully, in the Manchester Examiner and Times (―The Queen‘s Gardens‖), December 16. 5 6 SESAME AND LILIES This lecture has also been separately printed in pamphlet form—a spurious ―first edition‖: see below, pp. 13–14. The third lecture, ―The Mystery of Life and its Arts,‖ was delivered in the Concert Hall of the Exhibition Palace, Dublin, on May 13, 1868. It was reported in the Daily Express of May 14, 1868. This lecture was also printed in a volume containing lectures by other authors delivered under the same auspices: see below, p. 14. SESAME AND LILIES (TWO LECTURES) The first two lectures, above described, were printed by the author in the volume, of which the editions have been as follow:— First Edition (1865).—The title-page (enclosed in a plain ruled frame) is as shown here (p. 3): for the Greek motto, see Introduction, p. lvi. Foolscap 8vo, pp. iv.+196. Half-title (―Sesame and Lilies | Two Lectures‖), p. 1; in the centre of p. 2 is the imprint (repeated at the foot of p. 196): ―London: R. Clay, Son, and Taylor, Printers, Bread Street Hill.‖ The letterpress on every page is enclosed in a plain ruled frame. The headlines are as in this volume. Issued on June 21, 1865, in bevelled cloth boards of a deep claret colour, lettered across the back: ―Sesame | and | Lilies | Ruskin.‖ The edges of the leaves are cut and gilt. Price 3s. 6d. An extract from the Daily Telegraph included in the text, pp. 88–94 (here pp. 91–93), is printed in red ink, and this distinction has been retained in every English edition of the book. This and the next three editions consisted of 1000 copies each. Second Edition (1865).—This was in every respect identical with the First, except that on the title-page the words ―Second Edition, with Preface‖ were added, and that this new Preface occupied pp. v.–xxiii. (xxiv. being blank). Each page of the Preface is enclosed in a ruled frame. For this Preface, see here pp. 21–29. Four pages of advertisements of Mr. Ruskin‘s Works were inserted at the end. Issued on October 2, 1865, uniform in price and appearance with the First Edition. Third Edition (1866).—An exact reprint of the Second, except for the necessary alterations on the title-page. Issued on February 22, 1866. Fourth Edition (1867).—Again a reprint, except for the alterations on the title-page, and for a new imprint (at the foot of p. 196 only), thus: ―London: Printed by Smith, Elder and Co., Old Bailey, E.C.‖ Issued in January 1867. (For editions of the book, in an enlarged form, from 1871 to 1882, see below, pp. 9 seq.) ―Fifth Edition in Original Form‖ (1882).—After 1867 Sesame and Lilies was issued several times in a revised and enlarged form, with an additional lecture (see below); but in 1882 another edition was issued containing the first two lectures only, and therefore called ―Fifth Edition in Original Form.‖ But (1) in place of the Preface, which appeared in eds. 2–4, a new one (written in 1882) was substituted; and (2) the text of the two lectures BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 7 was that not of the original editions (1–4), but of the later ―revised and enlarged‖ editions. Thus at p. 77 (§ 36 n.) the words ―See the preface‖ remained, though the reference was to the Preface of 1871 omitted from the 1882 edition. This error has been reproduced in all issues up to the present time (1905). The title-page of the edition of 1882 is:— Sesame and Lilies. | Two Lectures by | John Ruskin, LL. D., Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Honorary Fellow | of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. | 1. Of Kings‘ Treasuries. | 2. Of Queens‘ Gardens. | Fifth Edition in Original Form. | With new Preface. | George Allen, | Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. | 1882. | [All rights reserved.] Small crown 8vo, pp. xi. +180. ―Preface to the Small Edition of 1882‖ (here pp. 49–52), pp. v.–xi. Imprint (at the foot of the reverse of the title-page and at the foot of the last page): ―Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury.‖ Issued in September 1882. Price 5s. 3000 copies. On Ruskin‘s reasons for issuing this edition, see the Introduction, above, p. lix. A few of the earliest copies had on the title-page ―Small Abridged Edition‖ instead of ―Fifth Edition in Original Form. With New Preface.‖ Ruskin, who was abroad while the book was passing through the press, at once noted the description of the book as ―abridged‖ as being ―a serious mistake.‖ Also, in these earliest copies, there was no comma after ―because‖ (in line 25 of p. 50 here), and ―there‖ was inserted after ―library‖ (in line 3 of p. 52). These minutiæ were also noticed by Ruskin; and a ―cancel‖ title-page, with the new Preface, was at once printed off. The few early copies, thus described, had been bound in cloth of a faded greyblue colour, with a white paper label on the back (―Ruskin. | Sesame | and | Lilies.‖). Ruskin, however, expressed his dislike of this colour, and the later copies were issued in rough red cloth with the same white paper label. Subsequently copies were issued in chocolate or dark green cloth, lettered across the back: ―Ruskin. | Sesame | and | Lilies.‖ Sixth Edition in Original Form (1884).—Issued in August 1884, and an exact reprint of the Fifth Edition, except for the necessary alterations on the title-page, and for a new imprint (on the reverse of the title-page and at the foot of p. 180): ―Chiswick Press:—C. Whittingham and Co., Took‘s Court, Chancery Lane.‖ 3000 copies. Seventh Edition in Original Form (1886).—An exact reprint of its predecessor (except for alterations on the title-page). 3000 copies. Eighth Edition in Original Form (1887).—The title-page had the necessary alterations, and the imprint was changed: ―Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.‖ 3000 copies. The Ninth (1888), Tenth (1889), Eleventh (1890), Twelfth (1891), and Thirteenth (1892) Editions in Original Form were reprints of the Eighth, with the necessary alterations on the title-page. Of the 12th and of the 13th, 5000 copies were printed; of each of the others, 3000. The next issues were called the Popular Edition. They were printed from the same plates as the foregoing, but the printers were now Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.; and the book was in foolscap 8vo, and the price was 8 SESAME AND LILIES 2s. 6d. The issues of it (the title-page being alone changed to suit the successive editions) were Fourteenth Edition (June 1894, 5000 copies); Fifteenth Edition (May 1896, 2000); Sixteenth Edition (June 1897, 2000); Seventeenth Edition (April 1898, 2000); Eighteenth Edition (December 1898, 2300); Fiftieth Thousand (February 1900, 2000); Fifty-second Thousand (October 1900, 2000); Fifty-sixth Thousand (July 1901, 4000); Fifty-eight Thousand (July 1902, 2000); and Sixtieth Thousand (November 1902, 2000). This issue had on the title-page ―Sixtieth Thousand in Original Form,‖ and ―London: | George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road. | 1902. | [All rights reserved.].‖ On the reverse: ―The Sixtieth Thousand of this Work in Original Form was issued in foolscap 8vo, at Two Shillings and Sixpence, in November 1902.‖ The next issue (1905) was made at a reduced price, and in pott 8vo. It is printed from the same plates as the foregoing, and has on the title-page ―Sixty-fifth thousand in original form.‖ Issued in smooth red cloth, lettered on the back, ―Ruskin | Sesame and Lilies | Original Edition | George | Allen‖; and on the front cover, ―Sesame and Lilies,‖ with the author‘s monogram in the centre. Issued on April 28. (5000 copies.) Price 1s. Re-issued in May (11,000 copies; completing the seventy-sixth thousand). The editions of the Two Lectures above described were all numbered consecutively and independently of the editions containing the Three Lectures. Special Edition (1902).—This is an Édition de Luxe, similar to that of Unto this Last (see Vol. XVII. p. 7). It was called the ―Coronation Edition,‖ and copies of it were presented to the King and Queen. Its contents are different from that of any other edition; for whereas (like ed. 1) it has no Preface, and whereas in some respects (e.g., in restoring a sentence from eds. 1–4 at the end of ―Kings‘ Treasuries‖ which was afterwards omitted) it follows the first edition, yet in other respects it follows the text of the Revised and Enlarged Edition. The edition is in two volumes (not sold separately). The title-page of Volume I. is:— Of Kings‘ Treasuries. By John Ruskin. Post octavo, pp. 1–100. The front pages (xiv.) are numbered. The reverse of the title-page (xi.) is blank; on the reverse of the next page (xiii.) is the motto from Lucian (as substituted in the edition of 1871). The text of the lecture, ―Of Kings‘ Treasuries,‖ follows, pp. 1–80. Each page is enclosed in an ornamental floral border (designed by C. Dean, who also designed all the initial letters); this is the same throughout. There are thus no headlines, and the pages are numbered at the foot. Each paragraph has an ornamental initial letter, printed in red. The terminal note, added by the author in 1871, follows pp. 80–84. Then come in an Appendix the author‘s footnotes, references to them (―see Appendix, Note A,‖ etc.) being inserted in the text, pp. 85–88. Index, 89–99. On p. 100 is the following colophon (with design as in the corresponding edition of Unto this Last: see Vol. XVII. p. 8): ―Here ends OF KINGS‘ TREASURIES by JOHN RUSKIN, Printed at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh, and Published by George Allen, London, in the year 1902.‖ BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 9 Of Volume II. the title-page is:— Of Queens‘ Gardens. | By John Ruskin. Post octavo, pp. 69. The arrangement is similar generally to that in vol. i. The page borders have a design of lilies (by C. Dean). The text of the lecture occupies pp. 1–55; the Appendix (containing the author‘s footnotes), pp. 57–58; Index, pp. 59–68. On p. 69 is the colophon, as in vol. i., with ―Of Queens‘ Gardens‖ for ―Of Kings‘ Treasuries.‖ Issued on June 20, 1902; uniform in size with the Kelmscott edition of The Nature of Gothic; in limp vellum, with silk ties. On the front cover, in the right-hand lower corner, of each volume is the motto and seal (as in this edition, but smaller) in gold. On the back the lettering is, in vol. i.: ―Of | Kings‘ | Treas- |-uries |By | John | Ruskin | 1902‖; in vol. ii.: ―Of | Queens‘ | Gardens | By | John | Ruskin | 1902.‖ Printed in Venetian type, on Arnold‘s unbleached hand-made paper, bearing watermark of Ruskin‘s seal and monogram. 310 copies were printed, price £3 net. Eleven copies were also printed on vellum, price £10, 10s. SESAME AND LILIES (THREE LECTURES) The edition next to be described comes, in order of time, after the Fourth Edition of the book in its original form. Revised and Enlarged, or “Works,” Edition (1871).—This was the first volume of Ruskin‘s series of his Collected Works. It was not, however, provided with a General Title-page until a later edition, although ―Vol. I.‖ was lettered on the back. The edition was described as ―Revised and Enlarged.‖ A new Preface was substituted for that which had appeared in the three preceding editions; the text of the two lectures was considerably revised, and a third lecture was added. The title-page is as follows:—

Sesame and Lilies. | Three Lectures by | John Ruskin, LL.D. | 1. Of Kings‘

Treasuries. | 2. Of Queens‘ Gardens. | 3. Of the Mystery of Life. | Revised and Enlarged Edition. | London: | Smith, Elder & Co., 15, Waterloo Place. | 1871. Octavo, pp. xxviii. +172. Preface (here pp. 31–48), pp. iii.–xxviii. The paragraphs in the Preface were not numbered; this was not done till the edition of 1893. Lecture i. (with a new motto), pp. 1–73; Lecture ii. (also with a new motto), pp. 74–121; Lecture iii., pp. 122–172. Imprint (at the foot of the last page): ―London: Printed by Smith, Elder and Co., Old Bailey, E.C.‖ Headlines as in previous editions. Issued on May 30, 1871, in purple calf with gilt edges, tooled after an ecclesiastical fashion, and lettered across the back: ―Ruskin. | Works. | Vol. | I. | Sesame | and | Lilies.‖ (1000 copies.) The calf has been called ―purple‖ in all the publisher‘s advertisements; it is, rather, very dark blue, and was chosen by Ruskin as the Oxford colour. It is known in the trade as ―Ruskin calf.‖ The published price to the trade (to whom only the volume was at first sold) was 7s., the retail bookseller being requested to add his own profit. In September 1872 (on which date Mr. George Allen began to sell the 10 SESAME AND LILIES book as Ruskin‘s agent) the price was raised to 9s. 6d., at which the book was supplied to the trade and to the public alike. On January 1, 1874, the price was increased to 18s. It was not until July 1882 that copies of the book were put up in boards, it being then in its Fourth Edition in this form. For particulars of the revisions and alterations in the text which were introduced in this edition, see below, under ―Variæ Lectiones.‖ Some of the earliest copies of this edition contained a half-page slip, inserted at the commencement before the blank fly-leaf, which reads as follows:— ―ADVERTISEMENT ―It has long been in my mind to make some small beginning of resistance to the existing system of irregular discount in the bookselling trade—not in hostility to booksellers, but, as I think they will find eventually, with a just regard to their interest, as well as to that of authors. Every volume of this series of my collected works will be sold to the trade, without any discount or allowance on quantity, at such a fixed price as will allow both author and publisher a moderate profit on each volume. It will be sold to the trade only; who can then fix such further profit on it, as they deem fitting, for retail. ―Every volume will be clearly printed and thoroughly well bound; on such conditions the price to the public, allowing full profit to the retailer, may sometimes reach, but ought never to exceed, half-a-guinea, nor do I wish it to be less. I will fully state my reasons for this procedure in the June number of Fors Clavigera. ―The price of this first volume to the trade is seven shillings.‖ In September 1872 the above slip was cancelled, and the following (occupying two pages, crown 8vo), was issued in its stead:— ―ADVERTISEMENT ―The series, of which this volume forms a part, will contain all that I think useful of my former writings, so joined to my present work as to form a consistent course of teaching—I do not mean by ‗consistent‘ that the progress or arrangement of it will be on any regular system, but that I will not, so far as I can help, say the same thing oftener than is necessary to gain attention for it; and that I will indicate the connection of each subject with the rest, as it, indeed, existed in my mind always, though I have been forced by mischance to write copiously sometimes on matters about which I cared little, and sparingly of what was, indeed, much in my thoughts. ―The volumes will each contain, on the average, two hundred pages of text, and those which are illustrated not more than twenty-one plates.1 1 A copy of this Advertisement which Mr. Allen has, with corrections by Ruskin, adds here: ―. . . plates, if line engravings; or etchings, not more than twelve.‖ And in the next line he corrects ―well‖ to ―clearly‖ before ―printed.‖ The other corrections (with one modification) were made in the ―Advertisement‖ next described. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 11 ―They will all be well printed and well bound; and I intend the price asked for them by the retail bookseller to be half-a-guinea for those without plates, and a guinea for the illustrated volumes. ―Some will be worth a little less than others; but I want to keep my business simple, and I do not care that anybody should read my books who grudges me a doctor‘s fee per volume. ―But I find, in the present state of trade, that when the retail price is printed on books, all sorts of commissions and abatements take place, to the discredit of the author, and I am convinced, in the end, to every one else‘s disadvantage. I mean, therefore, to sell my own books, at a price from which there shall be no abatement; namely, 9s. 6d. the plain volumes, and 19s. the illustrated ones. ―My publishers, Messers, Smith, Elder & Co., will sell all my books at that price over their counter; and my general agent, Mr. G. Allen, Heathfield Cottage, Keston, will supply this volume at the price of 9s. 6d., without abatement, carriage paid, to any person in town or country, on remittance of the price of the number of volumes required. He has my positive orders to attend to no letter requesting either credit or abatement.‖ In January 1874 this Advertisement was again revised. It was headed ―Advice,‖ and was increased to four pages. The prices in the third paragraph were altered to ―twenty shillings‖ and ―thirty shillings‖ respectively for the plain and illustrated volumes; and the paragraph concluded: ―of which, however, I fear there cannot be many. I find the trouble and difficulty of revising text and preparing plates much greater than I expected.‖ The prices in the fifth paragraph were altered to ―18s. the plain volumes, and £1, 7s. 6d. the illustrated ones.‖1 From this point the ―Advice‖ continues thus:— ―My publisher, Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, will supply the volumes as per list annexed, without abatement, carriage paid, to any person in town or country, on remittance of the price of the number of volumes required. He has my positive orders to attend to no letter requesting either credit or abatement. ―I hope in time that the system may be adopted by other authors, and that the public may gradually see its reasonableness, and pay their ten per cent., justly and openly, to the retail bookseller.2 How much more than ten per cent. he takes from them at present, by concealment or equivocation, they may judge by observing the eagerness of his endeavour to hinder the sale of these books on the terms conceded to him.‖ Collected Works—Third Edition (1876).—By mistake, this edition was called ―Third‖; there is no copy of the book in this form with ―Second 1 Original subscribers to the entire series were, however, supplied at the rate of 9s. 6d. and 19s. respectively. 2 Here the corrected Advertisement, mentioned in a foregoing note, adds: ―—rather than, as at present, fifty per cent. through concealment and equivocations.‖ 12 SESAME AND LILIES Edition‖ upon its title-page. This is a reprint of the 1871 edition, with the addition of a General Title-page, as follows:— The | Works of John Ruskin, | Honorary Student of Christ Church, | Oxford. | Volume I. | Sesame and Lilies. | [Rose.] | George Allen, | Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. | 1876. The particular title-page shown some differences, and reads:— Sesame and Lilies. | Three Lectures by | John Ruskin, LL.D., | Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Slade Professor of Fine Art. | 1. Of Kings‘ Treasuries. | 2. Of Queens‘ Gardens. | 3. Of the Mystery of Life. | Third Edition. | George Allen, | Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. | 1876. | The Right of Translation is reserved. The imprint (at foot of the reverse of the title-page and at the foot of the last page) is also different: ―Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney, London and Aylesbury.‖ Issued in January 1876 in Ruskin calf only; price 18s. (1000 copies.) Collected Works—Fourth Edition (1880).—The only variation in this edition is in the title-page, on which ―Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford,‖ is substituted for ―Slade Professor of Fine Art,‖ and the number and date are changed. Issued in August 1880 in Ruskin calf at 18s.; and afterwards (July 1882) in mottled-grey paper boards, with white paper back-label, which reads: ―Ruskin | Works. | Vol. I. | Sesame | and | Lilies.‖ (1000 copies.) Collected Works—Fifth Edition (1883).—Here again the variations are in minor matters only. On the title-page ―and Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford,‖ is added; the number and date are changed; and the words ―All rights reserved‖ are substituted. The imprint is ―Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury.‖ Issued in December 1883, in forms and prices as in the Fourth Edition. (1000 copies.) Collected Works—Sixth Edition (1887).—An exact reprint of the Fifth, except for the alteration of date and number on the title-page, and for the imprint, which now reads: ―Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.‖ Ruskin was still described on the title-page as Slade Professor (and so in the next edition), though he had resigned the post in 1885. Though dated 1887, this edition was issued in December 1886. (1000 copies.) Collected Works—Seventh Edition (1891).—An exact reprint of the Sixth, except for the alternation of date and number on the title-page, and for the publisher‘s imprint, which now became: ―George Allen, | 8, Bell Yard, Temple Bar, London; | and | Sunnyside, Orpington.‖ This was similarly altered on the General Title-page. Issued in June 1891 (1000 copies). This edition is still current. The price was reduced in March 1893 to 15s. (calf) and 9s. 6d. (cloth); and in July 1900 to 14s. 6d. and 7s. 6d. The Three Lectures were next issued in a form known as the ―Small BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 13 Complete Edition.‖ The first issue in this form was thus the Eighth Edition of the Complete Work; the title-page was:— Sesame and Lilies. | Three Lectures by | John Ruskin, LL.D., | Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Honorary Fellow | of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. | New Complete Edition. | George Allen, | Sunnyside, Orpington, | and | 156, Charing Cross Road, London | 1893. Crown 8vo, pp. xxxviii.+228. On the reverse of the title-page ―The first small complete edition was printed in September 1893,‖ and ―[All rights reserved].‖ Preface (in which the paragraphs were now numbered), pp. v.-xxxvi.; Contents, p. xxxvii.; Text, pp. 1–204; Index (by Mr. Wedderburn), pp. 205–228. Imprint (at foot of the last page): ―Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., Edinburgh & London.‖ Issued in October 1893 in green cloth boards; price 5s.; reduced in January 1904 to 3s. 6d. 5000 copies. The book in this form was electrotyped; and re-issues were printed from the plates, the title-page (with the necessary changes) being alone altered. In all of the issues there was a bibliographical note (recording successive issues of the Small Complete Edition) on the reverse of the title-page. The re-issues were as follow:— Ninth Edition (October 1894, 5000 copies); Tenth Edition (November 1895, 4000); Eleventh Edition (November 1896, 3000); Twelfth Edition (June 1897, 3000); Thirteenth Edition (April 1898, 4000); Thirty-fifth Thousand (December 1898, 4000); Fortieth Thousand (October 1899, 5000); Fortyfourth Thousand (June 1900, 4000); Forty-eight Thousand (December 1900, 4000); Fifty-second Thousand (October 1901, 4000); Fifty-sixth Thousand (June 1902, 4000); Sixtieth Thousand (December 1902, 4000); Sixty-fourth Thousand, still current (December 1903, 4000). (In the Thirteenth Edition a misprint in § 18, katatrinw for katakrinw, was corrected.) Pocket Edition (1904).—This is uniform with other volumes in the same edition, already described (see Vol. XV. p. 6). The title-page is:— Sesame and Lilies | By | John Ruskin | | London: George Allen. Printed from the same plates as the foregoing editions. Issued in February 1904 (10,000 copies); reprinted in August 1904 (6000), and again in December 1904 (5000, completing the so-called 85th thousand of the book in the complete form. These figures are, however, in excess of the actual numbers by one thousand; the accidental skipping of a Second Edition not having been allowed for). SEPARATE EDITIONS OF SINGLE LECTURES The second lecture has been issued separately in pamphlet form in what purports to be an issue of 1864, with the following title-page:— The | Queen‘s Gardens | A Lecture | delivered at the Town Hall, Manchester, | on Wednesday, December 14, 1864 | by | John Ruskin, M.A. | Manchester: | Printed in Aid of the St. Andrew‘s Schools Fund | 1864 | Price One Shilling. Octavo, pp. 19. The headline is ―The Queen‘s Gardens‖ throughout, on both sides of the page. At the foot of p. 19 is the imprint: ―Manchester: 14 SESAME AND LILIES R. Charleston and Sons, Ardwick Green.‖ Issued, stitched, and without wrappers. This pamphlet, which figures in dealers‘ language as ―of the extremest scarcity,‖ is—like the separate issues of Leoni (Vol. I. p. 288) and The National Gallery (Vol. XII. p. 396)—what is known in the trade as a ―fake.‖ It purports to have been ―printed in aid of the St. Andrew‘s School Fund‖; in which case the issue would obviously not have been limited to a few copies; yet until 1893 no copy of it ever came to light. It bears the imprint of a firm which now at any rate is ―not known‖ by the Post Office. The first copy of it to appear was elaborately described in the Bookman for February 1893, with a reduced facsimile of the title-page; the facsimile was also given among the illustrations accompanying the Bibliography, edited by T. J. Wise (to face p. 228, vol. ii.). Several copies of it subsequently appeared in the market, and changed hands at very high prices—copies in remarkably clean condition. According to the Bookman’s description (signed ―W.‖), ―the text varies very considerably from that contained in Sesame and Lilies, and may be taken to be the text of the lecture as it was actually delivered. It is this that lends unusual interest to the slender volume, and causes its recovery to be a matter of mutual congratulation by the student and the bibliographer. It displays the great care bestowed by Mr. Ruskin,‖ etc., etc. In fact, however, the variations in this pamphlet consist exclusively of the omission of various passages in the authentic text—for the most part the omissions are of parenthetical or subsidiary passages: e.g., in § 51, line 4, the pamphlet omits ―namely, How and What to Read‖; § 51, line 17, it omits ―(however distinguished by visible insignia or material power)‖; § 52, line 1, it omits ―—and as want to leave this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it—‖; § 53, line 6, it omits ―arising out of noble education‖; and so on throughout. Sometimes, however, complete passages are omitted (not always with much regard to the sense): e.g., in § 65, the passage from Conventry Patmore is omitted from the pamphlet, which nevertheless continues, ―Thus much, then, respecting the relations of lovers,‖ etc. The pamphlet omits the whole of §§ 60, 61, though in § 64 it retains the retrospective allusion to Dante and Homer. So again it omits the long passage about Wordsworth‘s conception of women‘s education (§§ 70, 71), but nevertheless goes on in § 72 to draw the conclusion which Ruskin made from that conception. It also omits the first paragraph of § 75, which nevertheless is required to support the following words—―And indeed,‖ etc. The pamphlet next omits the whole of §§ 79–85. Yet the newspaper reports show that these passages (some of them much elaborated) were delivered by the lecturer. What the pamphlet contains is equally remarkable. Wherever there are variations between the editions of 1865 and 1871, the pamphlet follows the text of 1871 and not that of 1865. It does so alike in typographical minutiæ and in textual differences. Thus in § 51, line 18, the 1865 edition has ―Spectral‖; the edition of 1871 and the pamphlet have ―spectral.‖ In the last lines of § 57 (see p. 114 n.) there is a passage which Ruskin entirely re-wrote in 1871; the pamphlet contains the revised passage, and the misprint in 1871 of a full stop for an interrogation mark is reproduced. In § 59, line 29, eds. 1–4 read ―infallible and inevitable‖; in revising the passage in 1871 Ruskin struck out the latter words, and the pamphlet follows this revision. In § 73, line 4, eds. 1–4 read ―one which let BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 15 them‖; in revising the book in 1871 Ruskin altered this to ―one which they must‖; the pamphlet follows the revised reading. Similarly in § 73, line 17, Ruskin in 1871 altered the word ―scrambling‖ to ―crawling‖; the pamphlet has ―crawling.‖ So in the next line, eds. 1–4 read ―Most strange‖; but the pamphlet, following the revision of 1871, ―Strangest.‖ Similarly in § 76, line 3; § 78, lines 5, 21, and last line; § 91, line 14; and § 94, line 18. It is thus clear that the pamphlet is not what it purports to be, but is a clumsy ―fake.‖ The person who put it upon the market, not knowing that Ruskin had revised the lecture in 1871, had his ―original edition of the utmost scarcity,‖ set up from the later editions. It may be added that the title ―The Queen’s Gardens‖ was certainly not Ruskin‘s. The third lecture was first printed together with lectures delivered at Dublin by other lecturers, in a volume with the following title-page:— The | afternoon Lectures on | Literature & Art. | Delivered in the | Theatre of the Royal College of Science, | S. Stephen‘s Green, Dublin, | in the years 1867 & 1868. | Dublin: | William McGee, 18 Nassau Street, | College, School, and Medical Bookseller, | London: Bell and Daldy. | 1869. Octavo, pp. vii. +348. Issued in green cloth boards, 5s. The same volume was subsequently issued, with a different title-page (no date), in blue cloth, lettered on the back: ―Lectures | on | Literature | and Art. | Ruskin | &c.‖ This issue had for London publisher Simpkin, Marshall and Co. In both issues Ruskin‘s lecture occupies pp. 91–137. Unauthorised American Editions of Sesame and Lilies (in both forms) have been very numerous, at prices ranging from 50 cents upwards. An authorised American (―Brantwood‖) Edition was issued by Messers. Charles E. Merrill & Co., of New York, in 1891, with an Introduction by Charles Eliot Norton, pp. v.-x. This edition contained the two lectures only, with the Preface of 1882. A Canadian Edition was published in 1897 with the following title-page:— Sesame and Lilies | Three Lectures | By | John Ruskin | The W. J. Gage Company, Limited | Toronto. 16mo, pp. 224. The Preface of 1871 is included with some excisions. A German translation of Sesame and Lilies is volume ii. in ―John Ruskin Ausgewählte Werke in Vollständiger Übersetzung.‖ The title-page is:— John Ruskin | Sesame und Lilien | Aus dem Englischen | von Hedwig Jahn | Verlegt bei Eugen Diederichs, Leipzig 1900. Octavo, pp. 266. Price 3 marks in paper covers, 4 marks in cloth. This contains the three lectures with the Preface of 1871. The passage which in the English editions is printed in red is here distinguished by being ―leaded.‖ 16 SESAME AND LILIES There is an Index, different from, though apparently founded upon, the English one. Extensive extracts from Sesame and Lilies, translated into French, are printed in the following work:— Gustave Ferdinand-Hue. Ruskin et La Femme. Paris: Société Française d‘Imprimerie et de Librairie, 15 Rue de Cluny, 1901. Foolscap 8vo, pp. 75, paper covers. An authorised Italian translation, by Dora Prunetti, to be published by Signor Solmi, of Milan, is now (1905) in preparation. The following is the title-page of a commentary upon Sesame and Lilies:— Notes | on | Ruskin‘s Sesame & Lilies | With an Epitome of the Lectures and of | The Preface to the Smaller Edition. | By | P. W. T. Warren, M. A., | Classical Lecturer at S. Andrew‘s College, | Grahamstown. | J. C. Juta & Co., | Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and | Stellenbosch. | 1898. Foolscap 8vo, pp. iv. +113. Preface, pp. iii., iv. ―Life of Ruskin,‖ pp. 5–8. Notes, pp. 1–74. ―Heads of Analysis,‖ pp. 75–77. Analysis, pp. 78–113. An English edition of this commentary was published in the following year, of which the title-page reads:— Readers‘ Companion | to | Sesame and Lilies | By | P. W. T. Warren, M. A. | Classical Lecturer at S. Andrew‘s College, | Grahamstown, South Africa | London | George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road | 1899 | [ All rights reserved]. Foolscap 8vo, pp. 106. In this edition the ―Life of Ruskin‖ and the ―Analysis‖ are omitted; and ―Additional Notes‖ are included (pp. 105–106). A series of ―Notes on Sesame and Lilies, by the Rev. J. B. Booth‖ appeared in Saint George, vol. iv. 1901, pp. 81–91, 172–186, 268–274 323–328; and vol. v. 1902, pp. 51–66. Reviews of the book in its original form appeared in the Saturday Review, July 15 (―Perhaps a more appropriate title for such a farrago would have been Thistles and Dead-sea Apples, or Fools’ Paradises and Wise Men’s Purgatories”); the Fortnightly Review, July 15, 1865, vol. 1, pp. 633–635 (by Anthony Trollope, who found the book ―hardly to be borne,‖ though admitting that ―the words are often arranged with surpassing beauty‖); the Victoria Magazine (conducted by Emily Faithfull), November and December 1865, vol. 6, pp. 67–76, 131–138 (―Mr. Ruskin on Books and Women‖); Guardian, July 19; the Contemporary Review, January 1866, vol. 1, pp. 176–178 (a review of the second edition); North American Review, January 1866, vol. 102, pp. 306–312 (also of the second edition: the review was by R. Sturgis, jun.). ______________________ BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 17 Variæ Lectiones.—The following is a list of the variations in the text, other than those already described, in the various editions of the book—a few differences of spelling, punctuation, and italicising alone excepted. In the case of Lectures i. and ii. the collation of the text as it now stands is (unless otherwise stated) with that of eds. 1–4; in the case of Lecture iii. it is with the first publication of the lecture in the volume of Dublin Lectures, described above (p. 14). The more important alterations are recorded in footnotes under the text; to these a reference only is given in the following list:— Preface to the Second Edition (1865).—§ 5, in the quotation from Dante, ―era uno sentiero ghembo‖ is here corrected to ―er‘ un sentiere sghembo.‖ Preface to Small Edition of 1882.—Fifth line from end, see p. 52 n. Lecture i.—For alteration in the motto, see p. 53 n. § 1, line 1, eds. 1–4, ―I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that my first duty . . .‖; line 3, see p. 53 n.; line 6, ―another‖ omitted; and in line 7, ―And‖ inserted before ―I had even‖; line 12, see p. 53 n.; line 17, ―the treasures hidden in‖ omitted; line 18, ―. . . the way we read them, and could or should, read them.‖ § 2, line 13, ―an education‖ repeated for ―which shall enable,‖ and in line 14, ―education‖ again repeated before ―which shall result‖; line 18, ―this . . . pray for‖ omitted. § 3, line 5, instead of ―May I ask you to consider with me,‖ ―My main purpose this evening is to determine, with you, what this idea . . .‖ § 4, line 9, ―a‖ omitted before ―few‖; line 24, ―the‖ for ―its.‖ § 5, line 47, ―their‖ before ―beneficent.‖ § 6, line 23, see p. 59 n.; line 25, ―not to grant audience, but to gain it‖ was placed before ―kings and statesmen lingering patiently.‖ § 10, the author‘s footnote was not in eds. 1–4. § 11, line 2, see p. 2 n.; line 12, ―hungry and‖ omitted. § 15, line 11, ―principle‖ for ―fact‖; line 30, ―any number of‖ for ―many.‖ § 16, line 6, ―, by all means, but‖ for ―and closely‖; line 8, ―well‖ repeated before ―distinguished.‖ § 17, see p. 66 n. § 18, line 3, see above, p. 13; line 10, ―John viii. 12‖ for ―John viii. 10–11‖; line 19, ―ecclesia‖ omitted. § 20, line 5, ―. . . yet nothing perhaps has been less read with sincerity.‖ § 21, line 1, ―Do not‖ for ―Never.‖ § 22, line 13, ―one‖ for ―a person.‖ The author‘s footnote on p. 73 was not in eds. 1–4. § 23, line 2, ―swollen‖ for ―swoln.‖ § 23, sixth line from end, the ed. of 1882 (and all subsequent issues in that form) misprint ―work‖ for ―word.‖ § 25, the author‘s footnote was not in eds. 1–4; ninth line from end, ed. 2 misprints ―elisio‖ for ―esilio‖; the references to Dante were in eds. 1–4 given as ―xix. 71; xxiii. 117‖; last line, ―that up into‖ for ―it up for trial by.‖ § 27, the author‘s footnote was not in eds. 1–4. § 29, line 3, ―Righteous‖ for ―just.‖ § 30, author‘s footnote, see p. 82 n. § 34, author‘s footnote, see p. 88 n.; sixth line from end, see p. 89 n. § 35, author‘s footnotes did not appear in eds. 1–4. § 36, lines 6, 10, see pp. 90, 91 n.; author‘s first footnote, see p. 91 n.; line 1, of author‘s second footnote, ―I do not know what this means. It is curiously . . .‖ § 37, author‘s first footnote not in eds. 1–4; author‘s second footnote, last lines, see p. 95 n. § 37, line 11, ―it‖ for ―the conditions.‖ § 38, line 18, XVIII. B 18 SESAME AND LILIES ―only‖ omitted; last lines, ―How literally . . . Amusements‖ added in 1871; line 20, the ―small editions in complete form‖ and the later issues of the editons ―in original form‖ misprint ―truth‖ for ―truth.‖ § 42, seventh line from end, ―but still only‖ omitted. § 45, line 21, ―diviner‖ for ―divine,‖ ―only‖ before ―to be mined‖; line 27, ―inescapable‖ for ―unerring.‖ § 50, end, see p. 105 n. for an additional passage. ―Note to § 30,‖ see p. 105 n.; line 24, see p. 106 n.; line 41, see p. 106 n.; line 45, ―other‖ omitted. Lecture ii.—For alteration in the motto, see p. 109 n. § 57, lines 16, 17, the quotation from Othello was not printed as verse in eds. 1–4; last lines, see p. 114 n. § 59, author‘s footnote not in eds. 1–4; line 29, see p. 116 n. § 60, in the tenth line of the quotation from Rossetti‘s Dante and his Circle, eds. 1–4 and the earlier editions in the ―Works‖ Series read ―A pain or regret‖ (instead of ―a regret‖); the mistake was corrected in 1893. § 65, author‘s footnote, see p. 120 n. The lines from The Angel in the House are in this edition (only) punctuated and indented in accordance with the original. § 70, author‘s footnote not in eds. 1–4. § 71, last line, see p. 125 n. § 73, line 4, ―let them‖ for ―they must‖; line 17, see p. 128 n.; line 18, ―Most strange‖ for ―Strangest of all.‖ § 75, line 4, see p. 129 n. § 76, line 3, ―but‖ for ―so much as.‖ § 78, line 5, see p. 130 n.; line 21, ―does‖ for ―will‖; last line, ―were‖ for ―would have been.‖ § 81, line 7, ―his‖ before ―college.‖ § 82, third line from end, ―think‖ for ―hope‖; § 82, in the quotation from De Quincey ―Lorraine‖ has hitherto been misprinted ―Tourraine.‖ § 91, line 14, ―lastly‖ before ―with you.‖ § 94, line 18, ―them‖ after ―guard.‖ Lecture iii.—§ 112, line 1, in the original publication, ―Do you know‖ for ―I tell you truly that.‖ § 116, line 1, ―Now observe: about . . .‖ for ―Be it so then. About . . .‖ § 117, the author‘s footnote was first added in 1871; so also the footnote to § 123. § 129, line 19, ―Why, in the very center . . .‖ for ―In the very centre . . .‖] C O N T E N T S PAGE P R E F A C E T O T H E S E C O N D E D I T I O N ( 1 8 6 5 ) 2 1

‖ ‖ ― WO R K S ‖ E D I T I O N ( 1 8 7 1 ) 3 1
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LE C T U R E I O F K I N G S ‘ T R E A S U R I E S 5 3 LE C T U R E I I O F Q U E E N S ‘ G A R D E N S 1 0 9 LE C T U R E I I I T H E M Y S T E R Y O F LI F E A N D I T S AR T S 1 4 5 19 PREFACE [TO THE SECOND EDITION: I865] 1. A PASSAGE in the eighty-fifth page of this book,1 referring to Alpine travellers, will fall harshly on the reader‘s ear, since it has been sorrowfully enforced by the deaths on Mont Cervin. I leave it, nevertheless, as it stood, for I do not now write unadvisedly, and think it wrong to cancel what has once been thoughtfully said; but it must not so remain without a few added words. No blame ought to attach to the Alpine tourist for incurring danger. There is usually sufficient cause, and real reward, for all difficult work; and even were it otherwise, some experience of distinct peril, and the acquirement of habits of quick and calm action in its presence, are necessary elements, at some period of life, in the formation of manly character.2 The blame of bribing guides into danger is a 1 [Of the first edition; now, § 35: below, p. 90. The first edition was published in June 1865. On July 14 the first ascent of the Matterhorn was made by Lord Francis Douglas, Mr. D. Hadow, Mr. Charles Hudson, and Mr. Edward Whymper, accompanied by the guides Michel Croz, Peter Taugwalder père, and Peter Taugwalder fils. On the descent there was a slip, and the whole party except Mr. Whymper and the two Taugwalders perished. Mr. Whymper gave an account of the accident in the Times, August 8, 1865, and afterwards in chapter xx. of his The Ascent of the Matterhorn (1880). For references to other passages in which Ruskin discusses Alpine climbing, see the Introduction, above, p. lv.] 2 [There is a passage on this subject in one of Ruskin‘s letters to his father (written at Chamouni, October 3, 1863):— ―That question of the moral effect of danger is a very curious one; but this I know and find, practically, that if you come to a dangerous place, and turn back from it, though it may have been perfectly right and wise to do so, still your character has suffered some slight deterioration; you are to that extent weaker, more lifeless, more effeminate, more liable to passion and error in future; whereas if you go through the danger, though it may have been apparently wrong and foolish to encounter it, 21 22 SESAME AND LILIES singular accusation, in behalf of a people who have made mercenary soldiers of themselves for centuries, without any one‘s thinking of giving their fidelity better employment: though, indeed, the piece of work they did at the gate of the Tuileries, however useless, was no unwise one; and their lion of flawed molasse at Lucerne,1 worthless in point of art though it be, is nevertheless a better reward than much pay; and a better ornament to the old town than the Schweizer Hof, or flat new quay, for the promenade of those travellers who do not take guides into danger. The British public are, however, at home, so innocent of ever buying their fellow-creatures‘ lives, that we may justly expect them to be punctilious abroad! They do not, perhaps, often calculate how many souls flit annually, choked in firedamp and sea-sand, from economically watched shafts, and economically manned ships; nor see the fiery ghosts writhe up out of every scuttlefull of cheap coals: nor count how many threads of girlish life are cut off and woven annually by painted Fates, into breadths of ball-dresses; or soaked away, like rotten hemp-fibre, in the inlet of Cocytus which overflows the Grassmarket where flesh is as grass.2 We need not, it seems to me, loudly blame any one for paying a guide to take a brave walk with him. Therefore, gentlemen of the Alpine Club, as much danger as you care to face, by all means; but, if it please you, not so much talk of it. The real ground for reprehension of Alpine climbing is that, with less cause, it excites more vanity than any other athletic skill. A good horseman knows what it has cost to you come out of the encounter a stronger and better man, fitter for every sort of work and trial, and nothing but danger produces this effect—it being apparently the intention of God that men should learn early to value their life lightly in comparison with its work and duty; and to scorn death, yet never despising life, so as not to care whether they endangered it or not. It is only those who do value their lives who can feel the power and force of danger, and its strengthening effect. If you don‘t value your life, you are a fool, and danger ceases to be danger to you then.‖] 1 [For a description of the ―Lion‖ monument to the Swiss who fell in defending the King of France in 1790, see Vol. I. pp. 252, 256. For the ―Schweizerhof quay‖ at Lucerne, Vol. VI. pp. 32, 456.] 2 [1 Peter i. 24, quoting Isaiah xl. 6.] PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDIT ION 23 make him one; everybody else knows it too, and knows that he is one; he need not ride at a fence merely to show his seat. But credit for practice in climbing can only be claimed after success, which, though perhaps accidental and unmerited, must yet be attained at all risks, or the shame of defeat borne with no evidence of the difficulties encountered. At this particular period, also, the distinction obtainable by first conquest of a peak is as tempting to a traveller as the discovery of a new element to a chemist, or of a new species to a naturalist. Vanity is never so keenly excited as by competitions which involve chance; the course of science is continually arrested, and its nomenclature fatally confused, by the eagerness of even wise and able men to establish their priority in an unimportant discovery, or obtain vested right to a syllable in a deformed word;1 and many an otherwise sensible person will risk his life for the sake of a line in future guide-books, to the effect that ―the ——horn was first ascended by Mr. X. in ―the year——‖;—never reflecting that of all the lines in the page, the one he has thus wrought for will be precisely the least interesting to the reader. 2. It is not therefore strange, however much to be regretted, that while no gentleman boasts in other cases of his sagacity or his courage—while no good soldier talks of the charge he led, nor any good sailor of the helm he held, —every man among the Alps seems to lose his senses and modesty with the fall of the barometer, and returns from his Nephelo-coccygia2 brandishing his ice-axe in everybody‘s face. Whatever the Alpine Club have done, or may yet accomplish, in a sincere thirst for mountain knowledge, and in happy sense of youthful strength and play of animal spirit, they have done, and will do, wisely and well; but whatever they are urged to by mere sting of competition and itch of praise, they will do, as all vain things must be done for 1 [On this subject, compare Vol. XI. pp. 71–72; Vol. XVI. p. 374 n.; and Eagle’s Nest, §§ 65–66, 74.] 2 [For cloud-cuckoo-town, see Aristophanes‘ Birds, 819, etc.] 24 SESAME AND LILIES ever, foolishly and ill. It is a strange proof of that absence of any real national love of science, of which I have had occasion to speak in the text,1 that no entire survey of the Alps has yet been made by properly qualified men; and that, except of the chain of Chamouni, no accurate maps exist, nor any complete geological section even of that. But Mr. Reilly‘s survey of that central group, and the generally accurate information collected in the guide-book published by the Club,2 are honourable results of English adventure; and it is to be hoped that the continuance of such work will gradually put an end to the vulgar excitement which looked upon the granite of the Alps only as an unoccupied advertisement wall for chalking names upon. 3. Respecting the means of accomplishing such work with least risk, there was a sentence in the article of our leading public journal, which deserves, and requires expansion. ―Their‖ (the Alpine Club‘s) ―ropes must not break.‖3 Certainly not! nor any one else‘s ropes, if they may be rendered unbreakable by honesty of make; seeing that more lives hang by them on moving than on motionless seas. The records of the last gale at the Cape4 may teach us that economy in the manufacture of cables is not always a matter for exultation; and, on the whole, it might even be well in an honest country, sending out, and up and down, various lines east and west, that nothing should break; banks,—words,—nor dredging tackle. 4. Granting, however, such praise and such sphere of exertion as we thus justly may, to the spirit of adventure, there is one consequence of it, coming directly under my 1 [See § 33; below, p. 36.] 2 [The Chain of Mont Blanc from an Actual Survey in1863–1864, by A. Adams-Reilly (scale 1/80000), was published in 1865. The ―Guide-book published by the Club‖ is The Alpine Guide, by John Ball, F.R.S. (1819–1889), first President of the Alpine Club (1857); first published in 1863. A new edition of one part of it (―The Western Alps‖) was issued by the Club (edited by W. A. B. Coolidge) in 1898.] 3 [See a leading article in the Times of July 27, 1865.] 4 [In July 1865.] PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDIT ION 25 own cognizance, of which I cannot but speak with utter regret,—the loss, namely, of all real understanding of the character and beauty of Switzerland, by the country‘s being now regarded as half watering-place, half gymnasium. It is indeed true that under the influence of the pride which gives poignancy to the sensations which others cannot share with us (and a not unjustifiable zest to the pleasure which we have worked for), an ordinary traveller will usually observe and enjoy more on a difficult excursion than on an easy one; and more in objects to which he is unaccustomed than in those with which he is familiar. He will notice with extreme interest that snow is white on the top of a hill in June, though he would have attached little importance to the same peculiarity in a wreath at the bottom of a hill in January. He will generally find more to admire in a cloud under his feet, than in one over his head; and, oppressed by the monotony of a sky which is prevalently blue, will derive extraordinary satisfaction from its approximation to black. Add to such grounds of delight the aid given to the effect of whatever is impressive in the scenery of the high Alps, by the absence of ludicrous or degrading concomitants; and it ceases to be surprising that Alpine excursionists should be greatly pleased, or that they should attribute their pleasure to some true and increased apprehension of the nobleness of natural scenery. But no impression can be more false. The real beauty of the Alps is to be seen, and seen only, where all may see it, the child, the cripple, and the man of grey hairs. There is more true loveliness in a single glade of pasture shadowed by pine, or gleam of rocky brook, or inlet of unsullied lake, among the lower Bernese and Savoyard hills, than in the entire field of jagged gneiss which crests the central ridge from the Schreckhorn to the Viso. The valley of Cluse,1 through 1 [For descriptions of the scenery of the Valley of Cluse, see Præterita, ii. § 214, and Deucalion, i. ch. v. ―Packed in baskets,‖ i.e., in chars-à-bane; the railway through the Valley of Cluse to St. Gervais and thence (electric) to Chamouni was opened betwee n 1891 and 1901. ―The Bells of Cluse,‖ dealing with Swiss Protestantism, was planned by Ruskin as part of Our Fathers have Told Us.] 26 SESAME AND LILIES which unhappy travellers consent now to be invoiced, packed in baskets like fish, so only that they may cheaply reach, in the feverous haste which has become the law of their being, the glen of Chamouni whose every lovely foreground rock has now been broken up to build hotels for them, contains more beauty in half a league of it, than the entire valley they have devastated, and turned into a casino, did in its uninjured pride;1 and that passage of the Jura by Olten (between Basle and Lucerne), which is by the modern tourist triumphantly effected through a tunnel in ten minutes,2 between two piggish trumpet grunts proclamatory of the ecstatic transit, used to show from every turn and sweep of its winding ascent, up which one sauntered, gathering wild-flowers, for half a happy day, diviner aspects of the distant Alps than ever were achieved by toil of limb, or won by risk of life. 5. There is indeed a healthy enjoyment both in engineers‘ work, and in schoolboys‘ play; the making and mending of roads has its true enthusiasms, and I have still pleasure enough in mere scrambling to wonder not a little at the supreme gravity with which apes exercise their superior powers in that kind, as if profitless to them. But neither macadamisation, nor tunnelling, nor rope ladders, will ever enable one human creature to understand the pleasure in natural scenery felt by Theocritus or Virgil;3 and I believe the athletic health of our schoolboys might be made perfectly consistent with a spirit of more courtesy and reverence, both for men and things, than is recognisable in the behaviour of modern youth. Some year or two back, I was staying at the Montanvert to paint Alpine roses,4 and went every day to watch the budding of a favourite bed, which was rounding into faultless bloom beneath a cirque 1 [For other passages on this destruction of Switzerland, see Vol. VI. pp. 455–456; and Vol. XII. p. 427.] 2 [This line was made about 1860.] 3 [For Ruskin‘s references to Virgil, see Vol. XII. p. 103 n. 4 [Perhaps in 1860: see Vol. XVII. p. xxiv.] PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDIT ION 27 of rock, high enough, as I hoped, and close enough, to guard it from rude eyes and plucking hands. But, ―Tra erto e piano er‘ un sentiere sghembo, Che ne condusse in fianco della lacca,‖1 and on the day it reached the fulness of its rubied fire, I was standing near when it was discovered by a forager on the flanks of a travelling school of English and German lads. He shouted to his companions, and they swooped down upon it; threw themselves into it, rolled over and over in it, shrieked, hallooed, and fought in it, trampled it down, and tore it up by the roots: breathless at last with rapture of ravage, they fixed the brightest of the remnant blossoms of it in their caps, and went on their way rejoicing. 6. They left me much to think upon; partly respecting the essential power of the beauty which could so excite them, and partly respecting the character of the youth which could only be excited to destroy. But the incident was a perfect type of that irreverence for natural beauty with respect to which I said in the text,2 at the place already indicated, ―You make railroads of the aisles of the cathedrals of the earth, and eat off their altars.‖ For indeed all true lovers of natural beauty hold it in reverence so deep, that they would as soon think of climbing the pillars of the choir of Beauvais3 for a gymnastic exercise, as of making a playground of Alpine snow: and they would not risk one hour of their joy among the hill meadows on a May morning, for the fame or fortune of having stood on every pinnacle of the silver temple, and beheld the kingdoms of the world from it.4 Love of excitement is so far from being love of beauty, that it ends always in a joy in its 1 [Purgatorio, vii. 70, translated by Cary:— ―Betwixt the steep and plain, a crooked path Led us transverse into the ridge‘s side.‖] 2 [§ 35 and n.; below, p. 89.] 3 [Drawn by Ruskin for Plate 66 in Modern Painters (Vol. VII. p. 154).] 4 [Matthew iv. 8.] 28 SESAME AND LILIES exact reverse;1 joy in destruction,—as of my poor roses,—or in actual details of death; until, in the literature of the day, ―nothing is too dreadful, or too trivial, for the greed of the public.‖* And in politics, apathy, irreverence, and lust of luxury go hand in hand, until the best solemnization which can be conceived for the greatest event in modern European history, the crowning of Florence capital of Italy, is the accursed and ill-omened folly of casting down her old walls, and surrounding her with a ―boulevard‖;2 and this at the very time when every stone of her ancient cities is more precious to her than the gems of a Urim breastplate, and when every nerve of her heart and brain should have been strained to redeem her guilt and fulfil her freedom. It is not by making roads round Florence, but through Calabria, that she should begin her Roman causeway work again; and her fate points her march, not on boulevards by Arno, but waist-deep in the lagoons at Venice. Not yet, indeed; but five years of patience and discipline of her youth would accomplish her power, and sweep the martello towers from the cliffs of Verona, and the ramparts from the marsh of Mestre. But she will not teach her youth that discipline on boulevards. 7. Strange, that while we both, French and English, can give lessons in war, we only corrupt other nations when they imitate either our pleasures or our industries. We English, had we loved Switzerland indeed, should have striven to elevate, but not to disturb, the simplicity of her people, by teaching them the sacredness of their fields and waters, the honour of their pastoral and burgher life, and the fellowship in glory of the grey turreted walls round their ancient cities, with the cottages in their fair groups by the forest and lake. Beautiful, indeed, upon the mountains, had been

• Pall Mall Gazette, August 15th, article on the Forward murders.

\ 1 [Compare Time and Tide, § 48 n. (Vol. XVII. p. 358 n.), where Ruskin refers to this passage.] 2 [See Time and Tide, Appendix iv. (Vol. XVII. p. 470), where this passage is referred to.] PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDIT ION 29 the feet1 of any who had spoken peace to their children;—who had taught those princely peasants to remember their lineage, and their league with the rocks of the field; that so they might keep their mountain waters pure, and their mountain paths peaceful, and their traditions of domestic life holy. We have taught them (incapable by circumstances and position of ever becoming a great commercial nation), all the foulness of the modern lust of wealth, without its practical intelligences; and we have developed exactly the weakness of their temperament by which they are liable to meanest ruin. Of the ancient architecture and most expressive beauty of their country there is now little vestige left; and it is one of the few reasons which console me for the advance of life, that I am old enough to remember the time when the sweet waves of the Reuss and Limmat (now foul with refuse of manufacture) were as crystalline as the heaven above them; when her pictured bridges and embattled towers ran unbroken round Lucerne; when the Rhone flowed in deep-green, softly dividing currents round the wooden ramparts of Geneva; and when from the marble roof of the western vault of Milan, I could watch the Rose of Italy flush in the first morning light, before a human foot had sullied its summit, or the reddening dawn on its rocks taken shadow of sadness from the crimson which, long ago, stained the ripples of Otterburn.2 1 [Isaiah lii. 7.] 2 [For the ―beryl-coloured water‖ of the Limmat, and ―the deeper blue of the Reuss and Rhone,‖ see Præterita, iii. § 37; and compare the ―Enquiries on the Causes of the Colour of the Water of the Rhine‖ in Vol. I. pp. 191 seq. For drawings by Ruskin of the Reuss, see Plate 9 in Vol. I. (p. 72), and Plate A in Vol. VI. (p. 394); of the towers of Lucerne, Plate I. in Vol. XVII. (p. xliv.); of the ―wooden ramparts of Geneva,‖ a Plate in a later volume; the ―Rose of Italy,‖ sketched from Milan Cathedral, is Plate 68 in Modern Painters, vol. v. (see Vol. VII. p. 441). For Otterburn, see Præterita, ii. ch. xii.] PREFACE1 [I87I] 1. BEING now fifty-one years old, and little likely to change my mind hereafter on any important subject of thought (unless through weakness of age), I wish to publish a connected series of such parts of my works as now seem to me right, and likely to be of permanent use. In doing so I shall omit much, but not attempt to mend what I think worth reprinting. A young man necessarily writes otherwise than an old one, and it would be worse than wasted time to try to recast the juvenile language: nor is it to be thought that I am ashamed even of what I cancel; for great part of my earlier work was rapidly written for temporary purposes, and is now unnecessary, though true, even to truism. What I wrote about religion, was, on the contrary, painstaking, and, I think, forcible, as compared with most religious writing; especially in its frankness and fearlessness: but it was wholly mistaken: for I had been educated in the doctrines of a narrow sect, and had read history as obliquely as sectarians necessarily must.2 Mingled among these either unnecessary or erroneous statements, I find, indeed, some that might be still of value; but these, in my earlier books, disfigured by affected language, partly through the desire to be thought a fine writer, and partly, as in the second volume of Modern Painters, in the notion of returning as far as I could to what I thought the better style of old English literature, 1 [The first two paragraphs of this Preface refer to the projected series of Ruskin‘s Works, of which the 1871 edition of Sesame and Lilies formed the first volume: see Bibliographical Notes (above, p. 9).] 2 [On this subject, compare Vol. IV. p. xlvii., and Vol. VIII. p. xlvi.] 31 32 SESAME AND LILIES especially to that of my then favourite, in prose, Richard Hooker.1 2. For these reasons,—though, as respects either art, policy, or morality, as distinct from religion, I not only still hold, but would even wish strongly to re-affirm the substance of what I said in my earliest books,—I shall reprint scarcely anything in this series out of the first and second volumes of Modern Painters; and shall omit much of the Seven Lamps and Stones of Venice; 2 but all my books written within the last fifteen years will be republished without change, as new editions of them are called for, with here and there perhaps an additional note, and having their text divided, for convenient reference, into paragraphs, consecutive through each volume. I shall also throw together the shorter fragments that bear on each other, and fill in with such unprinted lectures or studies as seem to me worth preserving, so as to keep the volumes, on an average, composed of about a hundred leaves each. 3. The first book of which a new edition is required chances to be Sesame and Lilies, from which I now detach the whole preface, about the Alps, for use elsewhere;3 and to which I add a lecture given in Ireland on a subject closely connected with that of the book itself. I am glad that it should be the first of the complete series, for many reasons; though in now looking over these two lectures, I am painfully struck by the waste of good work in them. They cost me much thought, and much strong emotion; but it was foolish to suppose that I could rouse my audiences in a little while to any sympathy with the temper into which I had brought myself by years of thinking over 1 [See on this subject Vol. IV. p. 334 (author‘s note of 1883); and compare Præterita, i. § 2; ii. § 184.] 2 [Modern Painters was never included in the ―Works‖ Series, of which Sesame formed the first volume, as in 1873 Ruskin agreed to its republication in the original form by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. The Seven Lamps was not included in the Series, but an edition of it with added (and, sometimes, deprecatory) notes was issued in 1880. Ruskin at one time intended to include The Stones of Venice in the ―Works‖ Series; but the intention was abandoned.] 3 [Ruskin intended to use it in Deucalion (see the next Preface, p. 49), but this intention was not carried out. Accordingly, in consequence of its references to the text of Sesame and Lilies, it is now included here, in the preceding pages.] PREFACE TO THE 1871 EDIT ION 33 subjects full of pain; while, if I missed my purpose at the time, it was little to be hoped I could attain it afterwards; wards; since phrases written for oral delivery become ineffective when quietly read. Yet I should only take away what good is in them if I tried to translate them into the language of books; nor, indeed, could I at all have done so at the time of their delivery, my thoughts then habitually and impatiently putting themselves into forms fit only for emphatic speech; and thus I am startled, in my review of them, to find that, though there is much, (forgive me the impertinence) which seems to me accurately and energetically said, there is scarcely anything put in a form to be generally convincing, or even easily intelligible: and I can well imagine a reader laying down the book without being at all moved by it, still less guided, to any definite course of action. I think, however, if I now say briefly and clearly what I meant my hearers to understand, and what I wanted, and still would fain have, them to do, there may afterwards be found some better service in the passionately written text. 4. The first lecture says, or tries to say, that, life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books; and that valuable books should, in a civilized country, be within the reach of every one, printed in excellent form, for a just price; but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason of smallness of type, physically injurious form, at a vile price. For we none of us need many books,1 and those which we need ought to be clearly printed, on the best paper, and strongly bound. And though we are, indeed, now, a wretched and poverty-struck nation, and hardly able to keep soul and body together, still, as no person in decent circumstances would put on his table confessedly bad wine, or bad meat, without being ashamed, so he need not have on his shelves ill-printed or loosely and wretchedly-stitched books; for 1 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 37 (Vol. XVII. p. 168).] XVIII. C 34 SESAME AND LILIES though few can be rich, yet every man who honestly exerts himself may, I think, still provide, for himself and his family, good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his cart or carriage horses, and stout leather binding for his books. And I would urge upon every young man, as the beginning of his due and wise provision for his household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily—however slowly—increasing, series of books for use through life; making his little library, of all the furniture in his room, the most studied and decorative piece; every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in its niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the children of the house being how to turn the pages of their own literary possessions lightly and deliberately, with no chance of tearing or dog‘s ears. That is my notion of the founding of Kings‘ Treasuries; and the first lecture is intended to show somewhat the use and preciousness of their treasures: but the two following ones have wider scope, being written in the hope of awakening the youth of England, so far as my poor words might have any power with them, to take some thought of the purposes of the life into which they are entering, and the nature of the world they have to conquer. 5. These two lectures are fragmentary and ill-arranged, but not, I think, diffuse or much compressible. The entire gist and conclusion of them, however, is in the last six paragraphs, 135 to the end, of the third lecture, which I would beg the reader to look over not once nor twice, (rather than any other part of the book,) for they contain the best expression I have yet been able to put in words of what, so far as is within my power, I mean henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all over whom I have any influence, to do also according to their means: the letters begun on the first day of this year, to the workmen of England,1 having the object of originating, if possible, 1 [The first letter of Fors Clavigera was dated January 1, 1871.] PREFACE TO THE 1871 EDIT ION 35 this movement among them, in true alliance with whatever trustworthy element of help they can find in the higher classes. After these paragraphs, let me ask you to read, by the fiery light of recent events,1 the fable at p. 163 (§ 117), and then §§ 129–131; and observe, my statement respecting the famine at Orissa2 is not rhetorical, but certified by official documents as within the truth. Five hundred thousand persons, at least, died by starvation in our British dominions, wholly in consequence of carelessness and want of forethought. Keep that well in your memory; and note it as the best possible illustration of modern political economy in true practice, and of the relations it has accomplished between Supply and Demand. Then begin the second lecture, and all will read clear enough, I think, to the end; only, since that second lecture was written, questions have arisen respecting the education and claims of women which have greatly troubled simple minds and excited restless ones. I am sometimes asked my thoughts on this matter, and I suppose that some girl readers of the second lecture may at the end of it desire to be told summarily what I would have them do and desire in the present state of things. This, then, is what I would say to any girl who had confidence enough in me to believe what I told her, or to do what I asked her.3 6. First, be quite sure of one thing, that, however much you may know, and whatever advantages you may possess, and however good you may be, you have not been singled out, by the God who made you, from all the other girls in the world, to be especially informed respecting His own nature and character. You have not been born in a luminous and character. You have not been born in a luminous point upon the surface of the globe, where a perfect theology might be expounded to you from your youth up, 1 [For other references to the Franco-German war of 1870–1871, see Munera Pulveris (Vol. XVII. pp. 135, 175 n.); Aratra Pentelici, §§ 153 n., 208; Val d’ Arno, § 247; and General Index.] 2 [See below, § 129 (p. 176), and the note there given.] 3 [Compare the Letter to Young Girls, reprinted in 1876, from Fors Clavigera, Letters 65 and 66.] 36 SESAME AND LILIES and where everything you were taught would be true, and everything that was enforced upon you, right. Of all the insolent, all the foolish persuasions that by any chance could enter and hold your empty little heart, this is the proudest and foolishest,—that you have been so much the darling of the Heavens, and favourite of the Fates, as to be born in the very nick of time, and in the punctual place, when and where pure Divine truth had been sifted from the errors of the Nations; and that your papa had been providentially disposed to buy a house in the convenient neighbourhood of the steeple under which that Immaculate and final verity would be beautifully proclaimed. Do not think it, child; it is not so. This, on the contrary, is the fact,—unpleasant you may think it; pleasant, it seems to me,—that you, with all your pretty dresses, and dainty looks, and kindly thoughts, and saintly aspirations, are not one whit more thought of or loved by the great Maker and Master than any poor little red, black, or blue savage, running wild in the pestilent woods, or naked on the hot sands of the earth: and that, of the two, you probably know less about God than she does; the only difference being that she thinks little of Him that is right, and you much that is wrong. That, then, is the first thing to make sure of;—that you are not yet perfectly well informed on the most abstruse of all possible subjects, and that if you care to behave with modesty or propriety, you had better be silent about it.1 7. The second thing which you may make sure of is, that however good you may be, you have faults; that however dull you may be, you can find out what some of them are; and that however slight they may be, you had better make some—not too painful, but patient—effort to get quit of them. And so far as you have confidence in me at all, trust me for this, that how many soever you may find or fancy your faults to be, there are only two that are of real consequence,—Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps you may be proud. Well, we can get much good out of pride, if only 1 [On women and theology, see below, § 73 (p. 128).] PREFACE TO THE 1871 EDIT ION 37 it be not religious. Perhaps you may be vain; it is highly probable; and very pleasant for the people who like to praise you. Perhaps you are a little envious: that is really very shocking; but then—so is everybody else. Perhaps, also, you are a little malicious, which I am truly concerned to hear, but should probably only the more, if I knew you, enjoy your conversation. But whatever else you may be, you must not be useless, and you must not be cruel. If there is any one point which, in six thousand years of thinking about right and wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon, or successively by experience discovered, it is that God dislikes idle and cruel people more than any others:—that His first order is, ―Work while you have light;‖1 and His second, ―Be merciful while you have mercy.‖ 8. ―Work while you have light,‖ especially while you have the light of morning. There are few things more wonderful to me than that old people never tell young ones how precious their youth is. They sometimes sentimentally regret their own earlier days; sometimes prudently forget them; often foolishly rebuke the young, often more foolishly indulge, often most foolishly thwart and restrain; but scarcely ever warn or watch them. Remember, then, that I, at least, have warned you, that the happiness of your life, and its power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass your days now. They are not to be sad days: far from that, the first duty of young people is to be delighted and delightful; but they are to be in the deepest sense solemn days. There is no solemnity so deep, to a rightly-thinking creature, as that of dawn. But not only in that beautiful sense, but in all their character and method, they are to be solemn days. Take your Latin dictionary, and look out ―solennis,‖ and fix the sense of the word well in your mind,2 and remember that 1 [John ix. 4. The second order is not an exact quotation; but see such passages as Matthew v. 7 and Luke vi. 36.] 2 [Derived from sollus (whole, unbroken); hence, ―that which takes place every year‖; in religious language, of annual ―solemnities‖; and hence, more generally, of what is established, appointed, accustomed: see Cestus of Aglaia, § 24 (Vol. XIX.).] 38 SESAME AND LILIES every day of your early life is ordaining irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom and practice of your soul; ordaining either sacred customs of dear and lovely recurrence, or trenching deeper and deeper the furrows for seed of sorrow. Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat better creature: and in order to do that, find out, first, what you are now. Do not think vaguely about it; take pen and paper, and write down as accurate a description of yourself as you can, with the date to it. If you dare not do so, find out why you dare not, and try to get strength of heart enough to look yourself fairly in the face in mind as well as body. I do not doubt but that the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and for that very reason it needs more looking at; so always have two mirrors on your toilet table, and see that with proper care you dress body and mind before them daily. After the dressing is once over for the day, think no more about it: as your hair will blow about your ears, so your temper and thoughts will get ruffled with the day‘s work, and may need, sometimes, twice dressing; but I don‘t want you to carry about a mental pocket-comb; only to be smooth braided always in the morning. 9. Write down then, frankly, what you are, or, at least, what you think yourself, not dwelling upon those inevitable faults which I have just told you are of little consequence, and which the action of a right life will shake or smooth away; but that you may determine to the best of your intelligence what you are good for and can be made into. You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. Thus, from the beginning, consider all your accomplishments as means of assistance to others; read attentively, in this volume, paragraphs 74, 75, 19, and 79, and you will understand what I mean, with respect to languages and music. In music especially you will soon find what personal benefit there is PREFACE TO THE 1871 EDIT ION 39 in being serviceable: it is probable that, however limited your powers, you have voice and ear enough to sustain a note of moderate compass in a concerted piece;—that, then, is the first thing to make sure you can do. Get your voice disciplined and clear, and think only of accuracy; never of effect or expression: if you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing; but most likely there are very few feelings in you, at present, needing any particular expression; and the one thing you have to do is to make a clear-voiced little instrument of yourself, which other people can entirely depend upon for the note wanted. So, in drawing, as soon as you can set down the right shape of anything, and thereby explain its character to another person, or make the look of it clear and interesting to a child, you will begin to enjoy the art vividly for its own sake, and all your habits of mind and powers of memory will gain precision: but if you only try to make showy drawings for praise, or pretty ones for amusement, your drawing will have little of real interest for you, and no educational power whatever.1 10. Then, besides this more delicate work, resolve to do every day some that is useful in the vulgar sense. Learn first thoroughly the economy of the kitchen; the good and bad qualities of every common article of food, and the simplest and best modes of their preparation: when you have time, go and help in the cooking of poorer families, and show them how to make as much of everything as possible, and how to make little, nice; coaxing and tempting them into tidy and pretty ways, and pleading for wellfolded table-cloths, however coarse, and for a flower or two out of the garden to strew on them. If you manage to get a clean table-cloth, bright plates on it, and a good dish in the middle, of your own cooking, you may ask leave to say a short grace; and let your religious ministries be confined to that much for the present. 11. Again, let a certain part of your day (as little as 1 [Compare Elements of Drawing, § 1 (Vol. XV. p. 25).] 40 SESAME AND LILIES you choose, but not to be broken in upon) be set apart for making strong and pretty dresses for the poor. Learn the sound qualities of all useful stuffs, and make everything of the best you can get, whatever its price.1 I have many reasons for desiring you to do this,—too many to be told just now,—trust me, and be sure you get everything as good as can be: and if, in the villainous state of modern trade, you cannot get it good at any price, buy it raw material, and set some of the poor women about you to spin and weave, till you have got stuff that can be trusted:2 and then, every day, make some little piece of useful clothing, sewn with your own fingers as strongly as it can be stitched; and embroider it or otherwise beautify it moderately with fine needlework, such as a girl may be proud of having done. And accumulate these things by you until you hear of some honest persons in need of clothing, which may often too sorrowfully be; and, even though you should be deceived, and give them to the dishonest, and hear of their being at once taken to the pawnbroker‘s, never mind that, for the pawnbroker must sell them to some one who has need of them. That is no business of yours; what concerns you is only that when you see a half-naked child, you should have good and fresh clothes to give it, if its parents will let it be taught to wear them. If they will not, consider how they came to be of such a mind, which it will be wholesome for you beyond most subjects of inquiry to ascertain. But after you have gone on doing this a little while, you will begin to understand the meaning of at least one chapter of your Bible, Proverbs xxxi.,3 without need of any laboured comment, sermon, or meditation. In these, then (and of course in all minor ways besides, 1 [See below, p. 91 n.] 2 [Ruskin was presently to take some part in a revival of the hand-spinning industry: see Fors Clavigera, Letter 95.] 3 [For notes by Ruskin on this chapter, see Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. p. 70); A Joy for Ever, §§ 9, 58, 60 (Vol. XVI. pp. 20, 55, 56); and the letter ―Proverbs on Right Dress,‖ in the Monthly Packet of November 1863 (reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. p. 226, and in a later volume of this edition). See also § 130 (b elow, p. 176); and compare Ethics of the Dust (§ 77), below, p. 297.] PREFACE TO THE 1871 EDIT ION 41 that you can discover in your own household), you must be to the best of your strength usefully employed during the greater part of the day, so that you may be able at the end of it to say, as proudly as any peasant, that you have not eaten the bread of idleness. 12. Then, secondly, I said, you are not to be cruel. Perhaps you think there is no chance of your being so; and indeed I hope it is not likely that you should be deliberately unkind to any creature; but unless you are deliberately kind to every creature, you will often be cruel to many. Cruel, partly through want of imagination, (a far rarer and weaker faculty in women than men,) and yet more, at the present day, through the subtle encouragement of your selfishness by the religious doctrine that all which we now suppose to be evil will be brought to a good end; doctrine practically issuing, not in less earnest efforts that the immediate unpleasantness may be averted from ourselves, but in our remaining satisfied in the contemplation of its ultimate objects, when it is inflicted on others. 13. It is not likely that the more accurate methods of recent mental education will now long permit young people to grow up in the persuasion that, in any danger or distress, they may expect to be themselves saved by the Providence of God, while those around them are lost by His improvidence: but they may be yet long restrained from rightly kind action, and long accustomed to endure both their own pain occasionally, and the pain of others always, with an unwise patience, by misconception of the eternal and incurable nature of real evil. Observe, therefore, carefully in this matter; there are degrees of pain, as degrees of faultfulness, which are altogether conquerable, and which seem to be merely forms of wholesome trial or discipline. Your fingers tingle when you go out on a frosty morning, and are all the warmer afterwards; your limbs are weary with wholesome work, and lie down in the pleasanter rest; you are tried for a little while by having to wait for 42 SESAME AND LILIES some promised good, and it is all the sweeter when it comes. But you cannot carry the trial past a certain point. Let the cold fasten on your hand in an extreme degree, and your fingers will moulder from their sockets. Fatigue yourself, but once, to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you shall not recover the former vigour of your frame. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life for ever. 14. Now, the very definition of evil is in this irremediableness. It means sorrow, or sin, which ends in death; and assuredly, as far as we know, or can conceive, there are many conditions both of pain and sin which cannot but so end. Of course we are ignorant and blind creatures, and we cannot know what seeds of good may be in present suffering, or present crime; but with what we cannot know we are not concerned. It is conceivable that murderers and liars may in some distant world be exalted into a higher humanity than they could have reached without homicide or falsehood; but the contingency is not one by which our actions should be guided. There is, indeed, a better hope that the beggar, who lies at our gates in misery, may, within gates of pearl,1 be comforted; but the Master, whose words are our only authority for thinking so, never Himself inflicted disease as a blessing, nor sent away the hungry unfed, or the wounded unhealed. 15. Believe me then, the only right principle of action here is to consider good and evil as defined by our natural sense of both; and to strive to promote the one, and to conquer the other, with as hearty endeavour as if there were, indeed, no other world than this. Above all, get quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will interfere to correct great errors, while allowing its laws to take their course in punishing small ones. If you prepare a dish of food carelessly, you do not expect Providence to make it palatable; neither if, through years of folly, you misguide your own life, need you expect Divine interference to bring round everything 1 [See Revelation xxi. 21.] PREFACE TO THE 1871 EDIT ION 43 at last for the best. I tell you, positively, the world is not so constituted: the consequences of great mistakes are just as sure as those of small ones, and the happiness of your whole life, and of all the lives over which you have power, depend as literally on your own common sense and discretion as the excellence and order of the feast of a day. 16. Think carefully and bravely over these things, and you will find them true: having found them so, think also carefully over your own position in life. I assume that you belong to the middle or upper classes, and that you would shrink from descending into a lower sphere. You may fancy you would not: nay, if you are very good, strong-hearted, and romantic, perhaps you really would not; but it is not wrong that you should. You have, then, I suppose, good food, pretty rooms to live in, pretty dresses to wear, power of obtaining every rational and wholesome pleasure; you are, moreover, probably gentle and grateful, and in the habit of every day thanking God for these things. But why do you thank Him? Is it because, in these matters, as well as in your religious knowledge, you think He has made a favourite of you? Is the essential meaning of your thanksgiving, ―Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other girls are,1 not in that I fast twice in the week while they feast, but in that I feast seven times a week while they fast,‖ and are you quite sure this is a pleasing form of thanksgiving to your Heavenly Father? Suppose you saw one of your own true earthly sisters, Lucy or Emily, cast out of your mortal father‘s house, starving, helpless, heartbroken; and that every morning when you went into your father‘s room, you said to him, ―How good you are, father, to give me what you don‘t give Lucy,‖ are you sure that, whatever anger your parent might have just cause for, against your sister, he would be pleased by that thanksgiving, or flattered by that praise? Nay, are you even sure that you are so much the favourite?—suppose that, all this while, he loves poor Lucy just as well as you, 1 [See Luke xviii. 11, 12.] 44 SESAME AND LILIES and is only trying you through her pain, and perhaps not angry with her in anywise, but deeply angry with you, and all the more for your thanksgivings? Would it not be well that you should think, and earnestly too, over this standing of yours; and all the more if you wish to believe that text, which clergymen so much dislike preaching on, ―How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God‖?1 You do not believe it now, or you would be less complacent in your state; and you cannot believe it at all, until you know that the Kingdom of God means,—―not meat and drink, but justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,‖2 nor until you know also that such joy is not by any means, necessarily, in going to church, or in singing hymns; but may be joy in a dance, or joy in a jest, or joy in anything you have deserved to possess, or that you are willing to give; but joy in nothing that separates you, as by any strange favour, from your fellow-creatures, that exalts you through their degradation—exempts you from their toil—or indulges you in time of their distress. 17. Think, then, and some day, I believe, you will feel also,—no morbid passion of pity such as would turn you into a black Sister of Charity, but the steady fire of perpetual kindness which will make you a bright one. I speak in no disparagement of them; I know well how good the Sisters of Charity are, and how much we owe to them; but all these professional pieties (except so far as distinction or association may be necessary for effectiveness of work) are in their spirit wrong, and in practice merely plaster the sores of disease that ought never to have been permitted to exist; encouraging at the same time the herd of less excellent women in frivolity, by leading them to think that they must either be good up to the black standard, or cannot be good for anything. Wear a costume, by all 1 [Mark x. 23.] 2 [Romans xiv. 17; quoted also in Crown of Wild Olive, § 46; The Lord’s Prayer and the Church, vii.; and Fors Clavigera, Letter 72.] PREFACE TO THE 1871 EDIT ION 45 means, if you like; but let it be a cheerful and becoming one; and be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, without either veiled or voluble declaration of it. 18. As I pause, before ending my preface—thinking of one or two more points that are difficult to write of—I find a letter in the Times, 1 from a French lady, which says all I want so beautifully, that I will print it just as it stands:— SIR,—It is often said that one example is worth many sermons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out one, which seems to me so striking just now, that, however painful, I cannot help dwelling upon it? It is the share, the sad and large share, that French society and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, of indulgence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay to its own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and humiliation. If our ménagères can be cited as an example to English housewives, so, alas! can other classes of our society be set up as an example—not to be followed. Bitter must be the feelings of many a French woman whose days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end, and whose bills of bygone splendour lie with a heavy weight on her conscience, if not on her purse! With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere have the examples given by the highest ladies in the land been followed but too successfully. Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertainments more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. Lower and lower became the tone of society, its good breeding, its delicacy. More and more were monde and demi-monde associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in scandalous gossip, on racecourses, in premières représentations, in imitation of each other‘s costumes, mobiliers and slang. Living beyond one‘s means became habitual—almost necessary—for every one to keep up with, if not to go beyond, every one else. What the result of all this has been we now see in the wreck of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed brightest and highest. Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my own country has incurred and is suffering, I cannot help feeling sorrowful when I see in England signs of our besetting sins appearing also. Paint and chignons, slang and vaudevilles, knowing ―Anonymas‖ by name, and reading doubtfully moral novels, are in themselves small offences, although not many years ago they would have appeared very heinous ones, yet they are quick and tempting conveyances on a very dangerous high-road. I would that all Englishwomen knew how they are looked up to from abroad—what a high opinion, what honour and reverence we foreigners have for their principles, their truthfulness, the fresh and pure innocence of their daughters, the healthy youthfulness of their lovely children. 1 [Times, December 30, 1870: published under the title ―A New Year‘s Wish to English Women.‖] 46 SESAME AND LILIES May I illustrate this by a short example which happened very near me? During the days of the émeutes of 1848, all the houses in Paris were being searched for firearms by the mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the master of the house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous Republicans. They were going to lay violent hands on him when his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came bravely forward and assured them that no arms were concealed. ―Vous êtes anglaise, nous vous croyons; les anglaises disent toujours la vérité,‖ was the immediate answer, and the rioters quietly left. Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjustified criticism if, loving and admiring your country, as these lines will prove, certain new features strike me as painful discrepancies in English life? Far be it from me to preach the contempt of all that can make life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love nothing better than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking her best in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can afford, or your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and perfectly sitting their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty [sic; it is not quite grammar, but it is better than if it were;] as care, trouble, and refinement can make them. It is the degree beyond that which to us has proved so fatal, and that I would our example could warn you from as a small repayment for your hospitality and friendliness to us in our days of trouble. May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a New-year‘s wish from A FRENCH LADY. Dec. 29. 19. That, then, is the substance of what I would fain say convincingly, if it might be, to my girl friends; at all events with certainty in my own mind that I was thus far a safe guide to them. For other and older readers it is needful I should write a few words more, respecting what opportunity I have had to judge, or right I have to speak, of such things; for, indeed, too much of what I have said about women has been said in faith only. A wise and lovely English lady1 told me, when Sesame and Lilies first appeared, that she was sure the Sesame would be useful, but that in the Lilies I had been writing of what I knew nothing about. Which was in a measure too true, and also that it is more partial than my writings are usually: for as Ellesmere spoke his speech on the——intervention, not, indeed, otherwise 1 [Probably Mrs. Cowper, afterwards Lady Mount-Temple: the filh of Ruskin‘s note on the next page.] PREFACE TO THE 1871 EDIT ION 47 than he felt, but yet altogether for the sake of Gretchen,1 so I wrote the Lilies to please one girl;2 and were it not for what I remember of her, and of few besides, should now perhaps recast some of the sentences in the Lilies in a very different tone: for as years have gone by, it has chanced to me, untowardly in some respects, fortunately in others (because it enables me to read history more clearly), to see the utmost evil that is in women, while I have had but to believe the utmost good. The best women are indeed necessarily the most difficult to know; they are recognized chiefly in the happiness of their husbands and the nobleness of their children; they are only to be divined, not discerned, by the stranger; and, sometimes, seem almost helpless except in their homes; yet without the help of one of them,* to whom this book is dedicated, the day would probably have come before now, when I should have written and thought no more. 20. On the other hand, the fashion of the time renders whatever is forward, coarse, or senseless, in feminine nature, too palpable to all men;—the weak picturesqueness of my earlier writings brought me acquainted with much of their emptiest enthusiasm; and the chances of later life gave me opportunities of watching women in states of degradation and vindictiveness which opened to me the gloomiest secrets of Greek and Syrian tragedy. I have seen them betray their household charities to lust, their pledged love to devotion; I have seen mothers dutiful to their children, as Medea; and children dutiful to their parents, as the daughter

• φίλη.

3 1 [Ellesmere, in Help‘s Companions of my Solitude (ch. vii. p. 132, ed. 1857): ―I busied myself more in politics than I had done; and I believe I must own that my speech on the——intervention, which had its merits and cost me great labour, was spok en for Gretchen.‖] 2 [See also the Introduction, above, p. liv., where in a letter written just before the publication of the first two lectures Ruskin says that he wrote them ―for a couple of schoolgirls‖; the one to whom he here refers was no doubt the ―Rosie‖ of Præterita (iii. ch. 3), for whom also the last lecture, delivered subsequently in Dublin and near her home, was given.] 3 [Lady Mount-Temple: see the Preface to Munera Pulveris (Vol. XVII. p. 145).] 48 SESAME AND LILIES of Herodias:1 but my trust is still unmoved in the preciousness of the natures that are so fatal in their error, and I leave the words of the Lilies unchanged; believing, yet, that no man ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a woman‘s love, strengthened by her courage, and guided by her discretion. 21. What I might myself have been, so helped, I rarely indulge in the idleness of thinking; but what I am, since I take on me the function of a teacher, it is well that the reader should know, as far as I can tell him. Not an unjust person; not an unkind one; not a false one; a lover of order, labour, and peace. That, it seems to me, is enough to give me right to say all I care to say on ethical subjects; more, I could only tell definitely through details of autobiography such as none but prosperous and (in the simple sense of the word) faultless lives could justify;—and mine has been neither. Yet, if any one, skilled in reading the torn manuscripts of the human soul, cares for more intimate knowledge of me, he may have it by knowing with what persons in past history I have most sympathy. I will name three.2 In all that is strongest and deepest in me,—that fits me for my work, and gives light or shadow to my being, I have sympathy with Guido Guinicelli. In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with Marmontel. In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with Dean Swift. Any one who can understand the natures of those three men, can understand mine; and having said so much, I am content to leave both life and work to be remembered or forgotten, as their uses may deserve. DE N M A R K HILL, 1st January, 1871. 1 [Matthew xiv. 1–12.] 2 [See above, Introduction, pp. lix.-lxii., for some remarks on the following passage.] P R EFAC E TO THE SMALL EDITION OF I882 THE present edition of Sesame and Lilies, issued at the request of an aged friend,1 is reprinted without change of a word from the first small edition of the book, withdrawing only the irrelevant preface respecting tours in the Alps, which however if the reader care to see, he will find placed with more propriety in the second volume of Deucalion. 2 The third lecture, added in the first volume of the large edition of my works, and the gossiping introduction prefixed to that edition, are withdrawn also, not as irrelevant, but as following the subject too far, and disturbing the simplicity in which the two original lectures dwell on their several themes,—the majesty of the influence of good books, and of good women, if we know how to read them, and how to honour. I might just as well have said, the influence of good men, and good women, since the best strength of a man is shown in his intellectual work, as that of a woman in her daily deed and character; and I am somewhat tempted to involve myself in the debate which might be imagined in illustrating these relations of their several powers, because only the other day one of my friends put me in no 1 [No doubt Miss Susan Beever, the compiler of Frondes Agrestes, and the friend to whom the letters in Hortus Inclusus were addressed.] 2 [This intention was not carried out (see above, p. 32 n.). Ruskin wrote this Preface away from home, and the statements here made are not strictly accurate. The ―preface respecting tours in the Alps‖ appeared not in ―the first small edition,‖ but only in the second, third, and fourth. Nor was the ―small edition of 1882‖ a reprint ―without change of a word‖ from the first edition; it was a reprint of the two original lectures in the revised form of the edition of 1871.] 49 XVIII. D 50 SESAME AND LILIES small pet by saying that he thought my own influence was much more in being amiable and obliging than in writing books. Admitting, for the argument‘s sake, the amiableness and obligingness, I begged him, with some warmth, to observe that there were myriads of at least equally goodnatured people in the world who had merely become its slaves, if not its victims, but that the influence of my books was distinctly on the increase, and I hoped—etc., etc.—it is no matter what more I said, or intimated; but it much matters that the young reader of the following essays should be confirmed in the assurance on which all their pleading depends, that there is such a thing as essential good, and as essential evil, in books, in art, and in character;—that this essential goodness and badness are independent of epochs, fashions, opinions, or revolutions; and that the present extremely active and ingenious generation of young people, in thanking Providence for the advantages it has granted them in the possession of steam whistles and bicycles, need not hope materially to add to the laws of beauty in sound or grace in motion, which were acknowledged in the days of Orpheus, and of Camilla.1 But I am brought to more serious pause than I had anticipated in putting final accent on the main sentences in this—already, as men now count time, old—book of mine, because, since it was written, not only these untried instruments of action, but many equally novel methods of education and systems of morality have come into vogue, not without a certain measure of prospective good in them;—college education for women,2—out-of-college education for men: positivism with its religion of humanity,3 and negativism with its religion of Chaos,—and the like, from the entanglement of which no young people can now escape, 1 [For references to the typical meaning of the legends of Orpheus, see Cestus of Aglaia, § 13 (Vol. XIX.); and The Tortoise of Ægina, § 21. And for ―Camilla‘s virginal force,‖ see Queen of the Air, § 32; (Vol. XIX.).] 2 [As in Cambridge at Girton (1869) and Newnham (1871), and in Oxford at Somerville and St. Margaret‘s—all of them comparatively a new departure in 1882. So also was the admission of ―unattached students.‖] 3 [For other references to Positivism, see Fors Clavigera, Letters 37, 66, 67, and 88.] PREFACE TO THE 1882 EDIT ION 51 if they would; together with a mass of realistic, or materialistic, literature and art, founded mainly on the theory of nobody‘s having any will, or needing any master;1 much of it extremely clever, irresistibly amusing, and enticingly pathetic; but which is all nevertheless the mere whirr and dust-cloud of a dissolutely reforming and vulgarly manufacturing age, which when its dissolutions are appeased, and its manufactures purified, must return in due time to the understanding of the things that have been, and are, and shall be hereafter, though for the present concerned seriously with nothing beyond its dinner and its bed. I must therefore, for honesty‘s sake, no less than intelligibility‘s, warn the reader of Sesame and Lilies, that the book is wholly of the old school; that it ignores, without contention or regret, the ferment of surrounding elements, and assumes for perennial some old-fashioned conditions and existences which the philosophy of to-day imagines to be extinct with the Mammoth and the Dodo. Thus the second lecture, in its very title, ―Queens‘ Gardens,‖ takes for granted the persistency of Queenship, and therefore of Kingship, and therefore of Courtliness or Courtesy, and therefore of Uncourtliness or Rusticity. It assumes, with the ideas of higher and lower rank, those of serene authority and happy submission; of Riches and Poverty without dispute for their rights, and of Virtue and Vice without confusion of their natures. And farther, it must be premised that the book is chiefly written for young people belonging to the upper, or undistressed middle, classes; who may be supposed to have choice of the objects and command of the industries of their life. It assumes that many of them will be called to occupy responsible positions in the world, and that they have leisure, in preparation for these, to play tennis, or to read Plato. 1 [For Ruskin‘s views on Free-will, see Fors Clavigera, Letter 37 (with which compare Præterita, i. § 148); and Pleasures of England, § 13. On ―the first duty of every man to find his true master,‖ see Cestus of Aglaia, § 82 (Vol. XIX.).] 52 SESAME AND LILIES Therefore also—that they have Plato to read if they choose, with lawns on which they may run, and woods in which they may muse. It supposes their father‘s library to be open to them, and to contain all that is necessary for their intellectual progress, without the smallest dependence on monthly parcels from town. These presupposed conditions are not extravagant in a country which boasts of its wealth, and which, without boasting, still presents, in the greater number of its landed households, the most perfect types of grace and peace which can be found in Europe. I have only to add farther, respecting the book, that it was written while my energies were still unbroken and my temper unfretted;1 and that, if read in connection with Unto this Last, 2 it contains the chief truths I have endeavoured through all my past life to display, and which, under the warnings I have received3 to prepare for its close, I am chiefly thankful to have learnt and taught. AV A L L O N , August 24th, 1882. 1 [This word was rightly printed in the earlier editions; but from 1887 up to the latest issue (1905) it has been misprinted ―unfettered.‖] 2 [On this passage, see the Introduction; above, p. xx.] 3 [His serious illnesses in 1871 at Matlock (see Aratra Pentelici, Preface, § 5, and Præterita, ii. § 207) and in 1878 (see Vol. XIII. p. liv.).] S E S A M E A N D L I L I E S LECTURE I.—SESAME OF KINGS‘ TREASURIES ―You shall each have a cake of sesame,—and ten pound.‖ L U C I A N : T h e F i s h e r m a n . 1 1. My first duty this evening is to ask your pardon for the ambiguity of title under which the subject of lecture has been announced:2 for indeed I am not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to contain wealth; but of quite another order of royalty, and another material of riches, than those usually acknowledged. I had even intended to ask your attention for a little while on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend 1 [In eds. 1–4, instead of this motto from Lucian, was the following from the Septuagint: ―ex anthsexelensetai artos . . . kai cwma crmsion,‖ with a footnote giving the reference to ―Job xxviii. 5, 6‖: ―As for the earth, out of it cometh bread; and under it is turned up as it were fire. The stones of it are the place of sapphires: and it hath dust of gold.‖ For a note on this motto and the substituted passage from Lucian, see above, Introduction, p. lvi. In Mr. Allen‘s copy Ruskin added the preceding words in Lucian: ―Every one who thinks himself a philosopher, come to the Acropolis. You shall each . . .‖] 2 [Editions 1–4 add: ―. . . announced; and for having endeavoured, as you may ultimately think, to obtain your audience under false pretences. For indeed . . .‖ And so in line 12, they add:— ―But since my good plain-spoken friend, Canon Anson, has already partly anticipated my reserved ‗trot for the avenue‘ in his first advertised title of subject, ‗How and What to Read‘—and as also . . .‖ The report in the Manchester Examiner gives the following exordium:— ―Mr. Ruskin, at the outset of his discourse, which extended for about an hour and a half, said he always came to Manchester in a somewhat nervous state of mind, feeling that he addressed an audience out of a most powerful city—powerful in its probable influence on the destinies of mankind, and representative of the commerce of England, which would certainly be, for evil or for good, the great influence that would conduct our destinies for the next 100 years. He also felt the fear of the recluse, who had got into the habit of looking rather upon the dark side, and if he seemed to speak with sourness or complaint, he must ask to be forgiven. 53 54 SESAME AND LILIES to see a favourite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I might, until we unexpectedly reached the best point of view by winding paths. But—and as also I have heard it said, by men practised in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as by the endeavour to follow a speaker who gives them no clue to his purpose,—I will take the slight mask off at once, and tell you plainly that I want to speak to you about the treasures hidden in books; and about the way we find them, and the way we lose them. A grave subject, you will say; and a wide one! Yes; so wide that I shall make no effort to touch the compass of it. I will try only to bring before you a few simple thoughts about reading, which press themselves upon me every day more deeply, as I watch the course of the public mind with respect to our daily enlarging means of education; and the answeringly wider spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of literature. 2. It happens that I have practically some connection with schools for different classes of youth;1 and I receive many letters from parents respecting the education of their children. In the mass of these letters I am always struck by the precedence which the idea of a ―position in life‖ takes above all other thoughts in the parents‘—more especially in the mothers‘—minds. ―The education befitting such and such a station in life‖ 2—this is the phrase, this the It was always his desire to make up for the dulness of a discourse by trying to excite curiosity in his hearers, whom he sought to lead on without knowing what it was about till near the end, making it a sort of conundrum. But to-night he found that the cat had been let out of the bag by his friend Canon Anson in his . . .‖ Ruskin, it will be seen, had meant not to disclose in his prefatory remarks that the ―Kings‘ Treasuries,‖ which he chose as the title of his lecture, were books, but to make this suddenly clear when he came into close contact with the subject. Canon Anson, however, had frankly announced the subject of the lecture as ―How and What to Read‖; thus making it impossible for Ruskin suddenly to disclose the meaning of his own title (or, as he puts it, to reserve his trot for the avenue).] 1 [As a Governor of Christ‘s Hospital, for instance, and as a patron of Miss Bell‘s school for girls at Winnington (see above, Introduction, p. lxvi.); perhaps also as an Examiner in the Oxford Examinations of Middle Class Schools (see Vol. XVI. p. xxxi.).] 2 [On the subject of ―station in life,‖ see below, § 135 (p. 181) and compare Vol. XVII. p. 320 n.] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 55 object, always. They never seek, as far as I can make out, an education good in itself; even the conception of abstract rightness in training rarely seems reached by the writers. But, an education ―which shall keep a good coat on my son‘s back;—which shall enable him to ring with confidence the visitors‘ bell at double-belled doors; which shall result ultimately in establishment of a double-belled door to his own house;—in a word, which shall lead to advancement in life;—this we pray for on bent knees—and this is all we pray for.‖ It never seems to occur to the parents that there may be an education which, in itself, is advancement in Life;—that any other than that may perhaps be advancement in Death; and that this essential education might be more easily got, or given, than they fancy, if they set about it in the right way; while it is for no price, and by no favour, to be got, if they set about it in the wrong. 3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the first—at least that which is confessed with the greatest frankness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to youthful exertion—is this of ―Advancement in life.‖ May I ask you to consider with me, what this idea practically includes, and what it should include? Practically, then, at present, ―advancement in life‖ means, becoming conspicuous in life; obtaining a position which shall be acknowledged by others to be respectable or honourable. We do not understand by this advancement, in general, the mere making of money, but the being known to have made it; not the accomplishment of any great aim, but the being seen to have accomplished it. In a word, we mean the gratification of our thirst for applause. That thirst, if the last infirmity of noble minds,1 is also the first infirmity of weak ones; and, on the whole, the strongest impulsive influence of average humanity: the greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to 1 [Lycidas, 71.] 56 SESAME AND LILIES the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure. 4. I am not about to attack or defend this impulse. I want you only to feel how it lies at the root of effort; especially of all modern effort. It is the gratification of vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil and balm of repose; so closely does it touch the very springs of life that the wounding of our vanity is always spoken of (and truly) as in its measure mortal; we call it ―mortification,‖ using the same expression which we should apply to a gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And although a few of us may be physicians enough to recognise the various effect of this passion upon health and energy, I believe most honest men know, and would at once acknowledge, its leading power with them as a motive. The seaman does not commonly desire to be made captain only because he knows he can manage the ship better than any other sailor on board. He wants to be made captain that he may be called captain. The clergyman does not usually want to be made a bishop only because he believes that no other hand can, as firmly as his, direct the diocese through its difficulties. He wants to be made bishop primarily that he may be called ―My Lord.‖ And a prince does not usually desire to enlarge, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because he believes no one else can as well serve the State, upon its throne; but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as ―Your Majesty,‖ by as many lips as may be brought to such utterance. 5. This, then, being the main idea of ―advancement in life,‖ the force of it applies, for all of us, according to our station, particularly to that secondary result of such advancement which we call ―getting into good society.‖ We want to get into good society, not that we may have it, but that we may be seen in it; and our notion of its goodness depends primarily on its conspicuousness. Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put what I fear you may think an impertinent question? I I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 57 never can go on with an address unless I feel, or know, that my audience are either with me or against me: I do not much care which, in beginning; but I must know where they are; and I would fain find out, at this instant, whether you think I am putting the motives of popular action too low. I am resolved, to-night, to state them low enough to be admitted as probable; for whenever, in my writings on Political Economy, I assume that a little honesty,1 or generosity,—or what used to be called ―virtue,‖—may be calculated upon as a human motive of action, people always answer me, saying, ―You must not calculate on that: that is not in human nature: you must not assume anything to be common to men but acquisitiveness and jealously; no other feeling ever has influence on them, except accidentally, and in matters out of the way of business.‖ I begin, accordingly, to-night low in the scale of motives; but I must know if you think me right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask those who admit the love of praise to be usually the strongest motive in men‘s minds in seeking advancement, and the honest desire of doing any kind of duty to be an entirely secondary one, to hold up their hands. (About a dozen hands held up—the audience, partly, not being sure the lecturer is serious, and, partly, shy of expressing opinion.)2 I am quite serious—I really do want to know what you think; however, I can judge by putting the reverse question. Will those who think that duty is generally the first, and love of praise the second, motive, hold up their hands? (One hand reported to have been held up behind the lecturer.) Very good: I see you are with me, and that you think I have not begun too near the ground. Now, without teasing you by putting farther question, I venture to assume that you will admit duty as at least a secondary or tertiary motive. You think 1 [See, for instance, the Preface to Unto this Last (Vol. XVII. p. 19).] 2 [The report in the Manchester Examiner says: ―Probably not a single hand out of all the hundreds was lifted up, though a very few, here and there, were for a moment raised, amid much laughter, and as quickly lowered, whether from diffidence or in hasty retreat from some mistake.‖] 58 SESAME AND LILIES that the desire of doing something useful, or obtaining some real good, is indeed an existent collateral idea, though a secondary one, in most men‘s desire of advancement. You will grant that moderately honest men desire place and office, at least in some measure for the sake of beneficent power; and would wish to associate rather with sensible and well-informed persons than with fools and ignorant persons, whether they are seen in the company of the sensible ones or not. And finally, without being troubled by repetition of any common truisms about the preciousness of friends, and the influence of companions, you will admit, doubtless, that according to the sincerity of our desire that our friends may be true, and our companions wise,—and in proportion to the earnestness and discretion with which we choose both,—will be the general chances of our happiness and usefulness. 6. But, granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice! Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, we cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; or put a question to a man of science, and be answered good-humouredly. We may intrude ten minutes‘ talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive; or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of a queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet; and spend our years, and passions, and powers, in pursuit of little more than these; while, meantime, there is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation;—talk to us in the I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 59 best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts.1 And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long,—kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it!—in those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, our bookcase shelves,—we make no account of that company,—perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long! 7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, who are praying us to listen to them; and the passion with which we pursue the company, probably of the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this,—that we can see the faces of the living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with which we desire to become familiar. But it is not so. Suppose you never were to see their faces;—suppose you could be put behind a screen in the statesman‘s cabinet, or the prince‘s chamber, would you not be glad to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond the screen? And when the screen is only a little less, folded in two instead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men;—this station of audience, and honourable privy council, you despise! 8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the living people talk of things that are passing, and are of immediate interest to you, that you desire to hear them. Nay; that cannot be so, for the living people will themselves tell you about passing matters much better in their writings than in their careless talk. Yet I admit that this motive does influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and enduring writings—books, properly so 1 [Editions 1–4 read: ―. . . choose, and with thanks if we listen to them. And this society . . .‖] 60 SESAME AND LILIES called. For all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. Mark this distinction—it is not one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and the good one that does. It is a distinction of species. There are good books for the hour, and good ones for all time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for all time. I must define the two kinds before I go farther. 9. The good book of the hour, then,—I do not speak of the bad ones,—is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend‘s present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels; good-humoured and witty discussions of question; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history;—all these books of the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar possession of the present age: we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books: for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend‘s letter may be delightful, or necessary, to-day: whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day. So, though bound up in a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, and weather, last year at such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances of such and such events, however valuable for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of the word, a ―book‖ at all, nor, in the real sense, to be ―read.‖ A book is essentially not a talking thing, but a written thing; and written, not with a view of mere communication, but of I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 61 permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if he could, he would—the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India; if you could, you would; you write instead: that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him;—this, the piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for ever; engrave it on rock, if he could; saying, ―This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour,1 and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.‖ That is his ―writing‖; it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a ―Book.‖ 10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so written? But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, or at all in kindness, or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man‘s work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art.* It is mixed always with evil fragments—ill-done, redundant, affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, and those are the book. 11. Now books of this kind have been written in all

• Note this sentence carefully, and compare the Queen of the Air, § 106.

1 [James iv. 14: see also § 97 (below, p. 146); Vol. VIII. p. 220; and Vol. XIII. p. 316.] 62 SESAME AND LILIES ages by their greatest men:—by great leaders,1 great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before;—yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that—that what you lose to-day you cannot gain tomorrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourself that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect, that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entrée here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead. 12. ―The place you desire,‖ and the place you fit yourself for, I must also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this:—it is open to labour and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portières of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question:—―Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms?—no. If you will not rise to 1 [In eds. 1–4 ―leaders‖; misprinted ―readers‖ in later editions.] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 63 us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain; but here we neither feign nor interpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if you would recognise our presence.‖ 13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and show your love in these two following ways. (1) First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to find your own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in many respects. (2) Very ready we are to say of a book, ―How good this is—that‘s exactly what I think!‖ But the right feeling is,‖How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some day.‖ But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards if you think yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be sure, also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning all at once;—nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words too; but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyse that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes them always hide their deeper thought.1 They do not give it you by way of help, but of reward; and will make themselves sure that 1 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 87 (Vol. XVII. p. 208), and Vol. VII. p. 249.] 64 SESAME AND LILIES you deserve it before they allow you to reach it. But it is the same with the physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no reason why the electric forces of the earth should not carry whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings and people might know that all the gold they could get was there; and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, nobody knows where: you may dig long and find none; you must dig painfully to find any. 14. And it is just the same with men‘s best wisdom. When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, ―Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?‖ And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author‘s mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good author‘s meaning without those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal. 15. And, therefore, first of all, I tell you earnestly and authoritatively (I know I am right in this), you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable—nay, letter by letter. For though it is only by reason of the opposition of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in the function of signs, that the study of books is called ―literature,‖ and that a man versed in it is called, by the consent of nations, a man of letters instead of a man of books, or I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 65 of words, you may yet connect with that accidental nomenclature this real fact:—that you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough), and remain an utterly ―illiterate,‖ uneducated person; but that if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter,—that is to say, with real accuracy,—you are for evermore in some measure an educated person. The entire difference between education and non-education (as regards the merely intellectual part of it), consists in this accuracy. A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages,—may not be able to speak any but his own,—may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the peerage of words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood, at a glance, from words of modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry, their intermarriages, distant relationships, and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held, among the national noblesse of words at any time, and in any country. But an uneducated person may know, by memory, many languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any,—not a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most ports; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for an illiterate person: so also the accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted, by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of inferior standing for ever. 16. And this is right; but it is a pity that the accuracy insisted on is not greater, and required to a serious purpose. It is right that a false Latin quantity should excite a smile in the House of Commons; but it is wrong that a false English meaning should not excite a frown there. Let the accent of words be watched; and closely: let their XVIII. E 66 SESAME AND LILIES meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer will do the work. A few words well chosen, and distinguished, will do work that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, equivocally, in the function of another. Yes; and words, if they are not watched, will do deadly work sometimes. There are masked words droning and skulking about us in Europe just now,—(there never were so many, owing to the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious ―information,‖ or rather deformation, everywhere, and to the teaching of catechisms and phrases at school instead of human meanings)—there are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this or that, or the other, of things dear to them: for such words wear chameleon cloaks—―ground-lion‖1 cloaks, of the colour of the ground of any man‘s fancy: on that ground they lie in wait, and rend them with a spring from it. There never were creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all men‘s ideas: whatever fancy or favourite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favourite masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have an infinite power over him,—you cannot get at him but by its ministry. 17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the English, there is a fatal power of equivocation put into men‘s hands, almost whether they will or no, in being able to use Greek or Latin words for an idea when they want it to be awful;2 and Saxon or otherwise common words when they 1 [A translation of chameleon (camailewn).] 2 [This passage was a good deal revised. Eds. 1–4 read:— ―. . . Latin forms for a word when they want it to be respectable; and Saxon or otherwise common forms when they want to discredit it. What a singular . . . the Form of the words they live by, for the Power of which those words tell them . . .‖ And a little lower down, eds. 1–4 read:— ―. . . and translating it everywhere else. How wholesome it would be I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 67 want it to be vulgar. What a singular and salutary effect, for instance, would be produced on the minds of people who are in the habit of taking the Form of the ―Word‖ they live by, for the Power of which that Word tells them, if we always either retained, or refused, the Greek form ―biblos,‖ or ―biblion,‖ as the right expression for ―book‖—instead of employing it only in the one instance in which we wish to give dignity to the idea, and translating it into English everywhere else. How wholesome it would be for many simple persons if, in such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 19, we retained the Greek expression, instead of translating it, and they had to read—―Many of them also which used curious arts, brought their bibles together, and burnt them before all men; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver‖! Or if, on the other hand, we translated where we retain it, and always spoke of ―The Holy Book,‖ instead of ―Holy Bible,‖ it might come into more heads than it does at present, that the Word of God, by which the heavens were, of old, and by which they are now kept in store,* cannot be made a present of to anybody in morocco binding; nor sown on any wayside by help either of steam plough or steam press; but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and by us with contumely refused; and sown in us daily, and by us, as instantly as may be, choked.1 18. So, again, consider what effect has been produced on the English vulgar mind by the use of the sonorous Latin form ―damno,‖ in translating the Greek katakrinw, when people charitably wish to make it forcible; and the substitution of the temperate ―condemn‖ for it, when they choose to keep it gentle; and what notable sermons have been

• 2 Peter iii. 5–7.

for the many simple persons who worship the Letter of God‘s Word instead of its Spirit, (just as other idolaters worship His picture instead of His presence,) if, in such places . . .‖] 1 [See Matthew xiii. 4, 7.] 68 SESAME AND LILIES preached by illiterate clergymen on—―He that believeth not shall be damned‖;1 though they would shrink with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, ―The saving of his house, by which he damned the world,‖ or John viii. 10–11, ―Woman, hath no man damned thee? She saith, No man, Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither do I damn thee: go and sin no more.‖ And divisions in the mind of Europe, which have cost seas of blood, and in the defence of which the noblest souls of men have been cast away in frantic desolation, countless as forest-leaves—though, in the heart of them, founded on deeper causes—have nevertheless been rendered practically possible, mainly, by the European adoption of the Greek word for a public meeting, ―ecclesia,‖ to give peculiar respectability to such meetings, when held for religious purposes; and other collateral equivocations, such as the vulgar English one of using the word ―priest‖ as a contraction for ―presbyter.‖2 19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the habit you must form. Nearly every word in your language has been first a word of some other language—of Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek; (not to speak of eastern and primitive dialects). And many words have been all these—that is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, French or German next, and English last: undergoing a certain change of sense and use on the lips of each nation; but retaining a deep vital meaning, which all good scholars feel in employing them, even at this day. If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn it; young or old—girl or boy3—whoever you may be, if you think of reading seriously 1 [Mark xvi. 16. In all the three passages referred to the Greek is katakrinw. In the Authorised Version it is translated ―damn‖ in the first case, ―condemn‖ in the others; in the Revised Version ―condemn‖ has been substituted in the former.] 2 [Compare the letters on The Lord’s Prayer and the Church, viii., and Fors Clavigera, Letter 49; and Milton‘s lines ―On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament‖: ―New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.‖] 3 [Ruskin carried his theory on this matter into practice, and insisted on a little girl, in whose education he was interested, learning Greek verbs. The following letter to his father is a reply to objections:— ―BONNEVILLE, October 12, 1861.—I think you (mama and you) are both wrong in thinking she shouldn‘t learn Greek. She shouldn‘t over-work at I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 69 (which, of course, implies that you have some leisure at command), learn your Greek alphabet; then get good dictionaries of all these languages, and whenever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. Read Max Müller‘s lectures1 thoroughly, to begin with; and, after that, never let a word escape you that looks suspicious. It is severe work; but you will find it, even at first, interesting, and at last endlessly amusing. And the general gain to your character, in power and precision, will be quite incalculable. Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, Greek or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to learn any language perfectly. But you can easily ascertain the meanings through which the English word has passed; and those which in a good writer‘s work it must still bear. 20. And now, merely for example‘s sake, I will, with your permission, read a few lines of a true book with you, carefully; and see what will come out of them. I will take a book perfectly known to you all. No English words are more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been read with less sincerity. I will take these few following lines of Lycidas:— ―Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake. Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, ‗How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, anything; but if she learns any language at all, it should be that;—on whatever ground you take it. If she is to be a Christian, she can only read her Bible with complete understanding in the Septuagint and Greek Testament. If she is to be a heathen, Greek is the greatest language of mankind, the chief utterance of the Nations. I have warned her against ‗smatterings‘ either of that or anything else; a ‗smattering‘ means an inaccurate knowledge, not a little knowledge. To have learned one Greek verb accurately will make a difference in her habits of thought for ever after.‖] [Lectures on the Science of Language, Series 1 and 2, 1861 and 1864; new edition, 2 vols., 1885. For other references to Max Müller, see Ethics of the Dust, § 71 (below, p. 288); Eagle’s Nest, § 3; Fors Clavigera, Letters 12, 37, 49; and Pleasures of England, § 67.] 70 SESAME AND LILIES Enow of such as for their bellies‘ sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers‘ feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn‘d aught else, the least That to the faithful herdman‘s art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said.‘ ‖ Let us think over this passage, and examine its words. First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St. Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the very types of it which Protestants usually refuse most passionately? His ―mitred‖ locks! Milton was no Bishop-lover; how comes St. Peter to be ―mitred‖? ―Two massy keys he bore.‖ Is this, then, the power of the keys claimed by the Bishops of Rome? and is it acknowledged here by Milton only in a poetical licence, for the sake of its picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the golden keys to help his effect? Do not think it. Great men do not play stage tricks with the doctrines of life and death: only little men do that. Milton means what he says; and means it with his might too—is going to put the whole strength of his spirit presently into the saying of it. For though not a lover of false bishops, he was a lover of true ones; and the Lakepilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head of true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, ―I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,‖1 quite honestly. Puritan though he be, he would not blot it out of the book because there have been bad bishops; nay, in order to understand him, we must understand that verse 1 [Matthew xvi. 19.] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 71 first; it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in mind by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to reason on it if we go on a little farther, and come back to it. For clearly this marked insistence on the power of the true episcopate is to make us feel more weightily what is to be charged against the false claimants of episcopate; or generally, against false claimants of power and rank in the body of the clergy; they who, ―for their bellies‘ sake, creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold.‖ 21. Never think Milton uses those three words to fill up his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the three;—especially those three, and no more than those—―creep,‖ and ―intrude,‖ and ―climb‖; no other words would or could serve the turn, and no more could be added. For they exhaustively comprehend the three classes, correspondent to the three characters, of men who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those who ―creep‖ into the fold; who do not care for office, nor name, but for secret influence, and do all things occultly and cunningly, consenting to any servility of office or conduct, so only that they may intimately discern, and unawares direct, the minds of men. Then those who ―intrude‖ (thrust, that is) themselves into the fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and stout eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self-assertion, obtain hearing and authority with the common crowd. Lastly, those who ―climb,‖ who, by labour and learning, both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause of their own ambition, gain high dignities and authorities, and become ―lords over the heritage,‖ though not ―ensamples to the flock.‖ 22. Now go on:— ―Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers‘ feast. Blind mouths—‖ 72 SESAME AND LILIES I pause again, for this is a strange expression; a broken metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly. Not so: its very audacity and pithiness are intended to make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries of right character, in the two great offices of the Church—those of bishop and pastor. A ―Bishop‖ means ―a person who sees.‖ A ―Pastor‖ means ―a person who feeds.‖ The most unbishoply character a man can have is therefore to be Blind. The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be fed,—to be a Mouth. Take the two reverses together, and you have ―blind mouths.‖ We may advisably follow out this idea a little. Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. They want authority, not outlook. Whereas their real office is not to rule; though it may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke: it is the king‘s office to rule; the bishop‘s office is to oversee the flock; to number it, sheep by sheep; to be ready always to give full account of it. Now it is clear he cannot give account of the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the bodies, of his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any moment, he can obtain the history, from childhood, of every living soul in his diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back street, Bill and Nancy, knocking each other‘s teeth out!—Does the bishop know all about it? Has he his eye upon them? Has he had his eye upon them? Can he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit of beating Nancy about the head? If he cannot, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury steeple; he is no bishop,—the has sought to be at the helm instead of the masthead; he has no sight of things. ―Nay,‖ you say, ―it is not his duty to look after Bill in the back street.‖ What! I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 73 the fat sheep that have full fleeces—you think it is only those he should look after while (go back to your Milton) ―the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw‖ (bishops knowing nothing about it), ―daily devours apace, and nothing said‖? ―But that‘s not our idea of a bishop.‖* Perhaps not; but it was St. Paul‘s;1 and it was Milton‘s. They may be right, or we may be; but we must not think we are reading either one or the other by putting our meaning into their words. 23. I go on. ―But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw.‖ This is to meet the vulgar answer that ―if the poor are not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls; they have spiritual food.‖ And Milton says, ―They have no such thing as spiritual food; they are only swollen with wind.‖ At first you may think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. But again, it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up your Latin and Greek dictionaries, and find out the meaning of ―Spirit.‖ It is only a contraction of the Latin word ―breath,‖ and an indistinct translation of the Greek word for ―wind.‖2 The same word is used in writing, ―The wind bloweth where it listeth‖; and in writing, ―So is every one that is born of the Spirit‖;3 born of the breath, that is; for it means the breath of God, in soul and body. We have the true sense of it in our words ―inspiration‖and ―expire.‖ Now, there are two kinds of breath with which the flock may be filled,—God‘s breath, and man‘s.

• Compare the 13th Letter in Time and Tide.

4 1 [See Acts xx. 28.] 2 [Compare Queen of the Air, § 52.] 3 [John iii. 8: to pnenma opon qelei pnei . . . ontws eoti pas o gegennhmenos ek ton pnenmaaton.] 4 [§ 72; in this edition, Vol. XVII. p. 378. See also Fors Clavigera, Letter 62.] 74 SESAME AND LILIES The breath of God is health, and life, and peace to them, as the air of heaven is to the flocks on the hills; but man‘s breath—the word which he calls spiritual—is disease and contagion to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly with it; they are puffed up by it, as a dead body by the vapours of its own decomposition. This is literally true of all false religious teaching; the first and last, and fatalest sign of it, is that ―puffing up.‖1 Your converted children, who teach their parents; your converted convicts, who teach honest men; your converted dunces, who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction half their lives, suddenly awaking to the fact of there being a God, fancy themselves therefore His peculiar people and messengers; your sectarians of every species, small and great, Catholic or Protestant, of high church or low, in so far as they think themselves exclusively in the right and others wrong; and, pre-eminently, in every sect, those who hold that men can be saved by thinking rightly instead of doing rightly, by word instead of act, and wish instead of work;—these are the true fog children—clouds, these, without water;2 bodies, these, of putrescent vapour and skin, without blood or flesh: blown bagpipes for the fiends to pipe with—corrupt, and corrupting,—―Swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw.‖ 24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power of the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the difference between Milton and Dante in their interpretation of this power:3 for once, the latter is weaker in thought;4 he supposes both the keys to be of the gate of heaven; one is of gold, the other of silver: they are given by St. Peter to the sentinel angel; and it is not easy to determine the meaning either of the substances of the three 1 [2 Corinthians viii. 1, etc.] 2 [Jude 12; quoted also in Vol. VII. p. 458, and Unto this Last, § 74 (Vol. XVII. p. 100).] 3 [See Purgatorio, ix. 117 seq.] 4 [See below, § 25 (p. 77), where Ruskin speaks of Dante as wider and deeper than Milton.] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 75 steps of the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes one, of gold, the key of heaven; the other, of iron, the key of the prison in which the wicked teachers are to be bound who ―have taken away the key of knowledge, yet entered not in themselves.‖1 We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to see, and feed; and of all who do so it is said, ―He that watereth, shall be watered also himself.‖2 But the reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be withered himself; and he that seeth not, shall himself be shut out of sight—shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that prison opens here, as well as hereafter: he who is to be bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. That command to the strong angels, of which the rock-apostle is the image, ―Take him, and bind him hand and foot, and cast him out,‖3 issues, in its measure, against the teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for every falsehood enforced; so that he is more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther outcast as he more and more misleads, till at last the bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as ―the golden opes, the iron shuts amain.‖ 25. We have got something out of the lines, I think, and much more is yet to be found in them; but we have done enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word examination of your author which is rightly called ―reading‖; watching every accent and expression, and putting ourselves always in the author‘s place, annihilating our own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able assuredly to say, ―Thus Milton thought,‖ not ―Thus I thought, in mis-reading Milton.‖ And by this process you will gradually come to attach less weight to your own ―Thus I thought‖ at other times. You will begin to perceive that what you thought was a matter of no serious importance;—that your thoughts on any subject are not perhaps 1 [Luke xi. 52.] 2 [Proverbs xi. 25.] 3 [Matthew xxii. 13.] 76 SESAME AND LILIES the clearest and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon:—in fact, that unless you are a very singular person, you cannot be said to have any ―thoughts‖ at all; that you have no materials for them, in any serious matters;*—no right to ―think,‖ but only to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, most probably all your life (unless, as I said, you are a singular person) you will have no legitimate right to an ―opinion‖ on any business, except that instantly under your hand. What must of necessity be done, you can always find out, beyond question, how to do. Have you a house to keep in order, a commodity to sell, a field to plough, a ditch to cleanse? There need be no two opinions about these proceedings; it is at your peril if you have not much more than an ―opinion‖ on the way to manage such matters. And also, outside of your own business, there are one or two subjects on which you are bound to have but one opinion. That roguery and lying are objectionable, and are instantly to be flogged out of the way whenever discovered;—that covetousness and love of quarrelling are dangerous dispositions even in children, and deadly dispositions in men and nations;—that, in the end, the God of heaven and earth loves active, modest, and kind people, and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones;—on these general facts you are bound to have but one, and that a very strong, opinion. For the rest, respecting religions, governments, sciences, arts, you will find that, on the whole, you can know NOTHING,—judge nothing; that the best you can do, even though you may be a well-educated person, is to be silent, and strive to be wiser every day, and to understand a little more of the thoughts of others, which so soon as you try to do honestly, you will discover that the thoughts even of the wisest are very little more than pertinent questions. To put the difficulty into a clear shape, and exhibit to you the grounds for in decision, that is all

• Modern ―Education‖ for the most part signifies giving people the faculty of

thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to them. I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 77 they can generally do for you!—and well for them and for us, if indeed they are able ―to mix the music with our thoughts and sadden us with heavenly doubts.‖1 This writer, from whom I have been reading to you, is not among the first or wisest: he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and therefore it is easy to find out its full meaning; but with the greater men, you cannot fathom their meaning; they do not even wholly measure it themselves,—it is so wide. Suppose I had asked you, for instance, to seek for Shakespeare‘s opinion, instead of Milton‘s, on this matter of Church authority?—or for Dante‘s? Have any of you, at this instant, the least idea what either thought about it? Have you ever balanced the scene with the bishops in Richard III. against the character of Cranmer?2 the description of St. Francis and St. Dominic against that of him who made Virgil wonder to gaze upon him,3—―disteso, tanto vilmente, nell‘ eterno esilio:‖ or of him whom Dante stood beside, ―come ‘I frate the confessa lo perfido assassin‖?* Shakespeare and Alighieri knew men better than most of us, I presume! They were both in the midst of the main struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers. They had an opinion, we may guess. But where is it? Bring it into court! Put Shakespeare‘s or Dante‘s creed into articles, and send it up for trial by the Ecclesiastical Courts!4

• Inf. xxiii. 125, 126; xix. 49, 50.

1 [From Emerson‘s lines ―To Rhea‖:— ―He mixes music with her thoughts, And saddens her with heavenly doubts.‖] 2 [That is, hypocrisy and mock humility (Richard III., iii. 7) against honesty and true humility (Henry VIII. v. 1 and 2).] 3 [For the description of St. Francis and St. Dominic, see Paradiso, cantos xi. and xii. He ―who made Virgil wonder‖ is the Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas, punished among hypocrites (―thus abjectly extended on the cross in banishment eternal‖); and he ―whom Dante stood beside‖ (―like the friar that both shrive a wretch for murder doom‘d‖) is Pope Nicholas III., among those punished for simony.] 4 [A reference to the cases arising out of Essays and Reviews, the decision of which by the Privy Council (reversing the judgment in the Arches Court) had excited much controversy in 1864 (see Vol. XVII. p. 360 n.).] 78 SESAME AND LILIES 26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for many and many a day, to come at the real purposes and teaching of these great men; but a very little honest study of them will enable you to perceive that what you took for your own ―judgment‖ was mere chance prejudice, and drifted, helpless, entangled weed of castaway thought; nay, you will see that most men‘s minds are indeed little better than rough heath wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, partly overgrown with pestilent brakes, and venomous, wind-sown herbage of evil surmise; that the first thing you have to do for them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to set fire to this; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash-heaps, and then plough and sow. All the true literary work before you, for life, must begin with obedience to that order, ―Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.‖1 27. (II.*) Having then faithfully listened to the great teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you have yet this higher advance to make;—you have to enter into their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear sight, so you must stay with them, that you may share at last their just and mighty Passion. Passion, or ―sensation.‖ I am not afraid of the word; still less of the thing. You have heard many outcries against sensation lately;2 but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation we want, but more. The ennobling difference between one man and another,—between one animal and another,—is precisely in this, that one feels more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps

• Compare § 13 above [p. 63.]

1 [Jeremiah iv. 3.] 2 [In the original lecture Ruskin here introduced a passage referring to the outcry in question. The Manchester Courier thus reports it:— ―Mr. Ruskin referred en passant to the recent speech of the Archbishop of York on sensational novels, remarking that many of these would live—for example, works such as the Mysteries of Paris—whilst works of higher moral culture would become unknown. He said it was a curious thing that in the same paper that contained the speech of the Archbishop (the Morning Post), there was a favourable review of a sensational novel—a portion of which the lecturer read—describing the impossible feats of some tiger hunter I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 79 sensation might not be easily got for us; if we were earthworms, liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much sensation might not be good for us. But being human creatures, it is good for us; nay, we are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honour is precisely in proportion to our passion.1 28. You know I said of that great and pure society of the Dead, that it would allow ―no vain or vulgar person to enter there.‖2 What do you think I meant by a ―vulgar‖ person? What do you yourselves mean by ―vulgarity‖?3 You will find it a fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple under equally impossible circumstances. This created some hilarity; but Mr. Ruskin said it was no laughing matter, and in fact he was grieved that such works could be printed, for there were other sensational works of a lighter and purer tendency.‖ The report in the Manchester Guardian continues:— ―After the extract he had just read he was almost ashamed of reading what had good sensation in it, but still he would do so. Was it not here?— ‗We watched her breathing thro‘ the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied— We thought her dying when she slept, And sleeping when she died. For when the morn came dim and sad And chill with early showers, Her quiet eyelids closed—she had Another morn than ours.‘ ‖ These are three stanzas from Hood‘s piece entitled ―The Death Bed.‖ The reference above is to the Morning Post of November 3, 1864, containing a report of a speech by the Archbishop of York (Thomson) on Fiction; and also a review of The Bee Hunters, by Gustave Aimard. The passage read by Ruskin was:—―Firmly planting his feet on the ground and leaning forward, he drew a revolver, and fired six shots in succession at the tiger cats. Six howls of agony followed,‖ etc., etc.] 1 [Compare Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 151), where Ruskin remarks that in the vegetable kingdom ―the amount of pleasure we receive is in exact proportion‖ to the sensibility in the plant.] 2 [See above, § 12, p. 62, where, however, the words are ―vile or vulgar,‖ not ―vain or vulgar.‖ This difference is common to all editions.] 3 [For Ruskin‘s discussions of the meaning of vulgarity, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. pp. 117–118), and vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vii. (more especially Vol. VII. pp. 345, 359), and Academy Notes, 1859 (Vol. XIV. pp. 243 seq.).] 80 SESAME AND LILIES and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a dreadful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that men become vulgar; they are for ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are incapable of sympathy,—of quick understanding,—of all that, in deep insistence on the common, but most accurate term, may be called the ―tact‖ or ―touch-faculty,‖ of body and soul: that tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above all creatures; fineness and fulness of sensation, beyond reason;—the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but determine what is true:—it is the God-given passion of humanity which alone can recognise what God has made good. 29. We come then to that great concourse of the Dead, not merely to know from them what is True, but chiefly to feel with them what is just. Now, to feel with them, we must be like them; and none of us can become that without pains. As the true knowledge is disciplined and tested knowledge,—not the first thought that comes, so the true passion is disciplined and tested passion,—not the first passion that comes. The first that come are the vain, the false, the treacherous; if you yield to them they will lead you wildly and far, in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, till you have no true purpose and no true passion left. Not that any feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but only wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force and justice; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry cause. There is a mean wonder, as of a child who sees a juggler tossing golden balls; and this is base, of you will. But do you think that the wonder is ignoble, or the sensation less, with which every human soul is called to watch the golden balls of heaven tossed through the night by the I.OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 81 Hand that made them? There is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her master‘s business;—and a noble curiosity, questioning, in the front of danger, the source of the great river beyond the sand,—the place of the great continents beyond the sea;—a nobler curiosity still, which questions of the source of the River of Life, and of the space of the Continent of Heaven,—things which ―the angels desire to look into.‖1 So the anxiety is ignoble, with which you linger over the course and catastrophe of an idle tale; but do you think the anxiety is less, or greater, with which you watch, or ought to watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with the life of an agonized nation? Alas! it is the narrowness, selfishness, minuteness, of your sensation that you have to deplore in England at this day;—sensation which spends itself in bouquets and speeches: in revellings and junketings; in sham fights and gay puppet shows, while you can look on and see noble nations murdered, man by man, without an effort or a tear.2 30. I said ―minuteness‖ and ―selfishness‖ of sensation, but it would have been enough to have said ―injustice‖ or ―unrighteousness‖ of sensation. For as in nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar person, so in nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have been) better to be discerned from a mob, than in this,—that their feelings are constant and just, results of due contemplation, and of equal thought.3 You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be—usually are—on the whole, generous and right; but it has no foundation for them, no hold of them; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on;—nothing so great 1 [1 Peter i. 12.] 2 [The reference is to the suppression by Russia of the Polish revolt in the year in which this lecture was delivered (1864). For other references to Poland, see below, p. 416; and compare the Introduction (above, p. xxiv.).] 3 [Compare Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vii. § 1 (Vol. VII. p. 343).] XVIII. F 82 SESAME AND LILIES but it will forget in an hour, when the fit is past. But a gentleman‘s, or a gentle nation‘s, passions are just, measured, and continuous. A great nation, for instance, does not spend its entire national wits for a couple of months in weighing evidence of a single ruffian‘s having done a single murder;1 and for a couple of years see its own children murder each other by their thousands or tens of thousands a day, considering only what the effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, and caring no wise to determine which side of battle is in the wrong.2 Neither does a great nation send its poor little boys to jail for stealing six walnuts; and allow its bankrupts to steal their hundreds of thousands with a bow, and its bankers, rich with poor men‘s savings, to close their doors ―under circumstances over which they have no control,‖ with a ―by your leave‖;3 and large landed estates to be bought by men who have made their money by going with armed steamers up and down the China Seas, selling opium at the cannon‘s mouth,4 and altering, for the benefit of the foreign nation, the common highwayman‘s demand of ―your money or your life,‖ into that of ―your money and your life.‖ Neither does a great nation allow the lives of its innocent poor to be parched out of them by fog fever, and rotted out of them by dunghill plague, for the sake of sixpence a life extra per week to its landlords;* and then debate, with drivelling tears, and diabolical sympathies, whether it ought not piously to save, and

• See note at end of lecture [p. 105]. I have put it in large type, because the course

of matters since it was written has made it perhaps better worth attention. 5 1 [The reference is to the popular interest, to which the newspapers of October and November 1864 bear testimony, manifested in the murder of Mr. Briggs by Müller on the North London Railway. Matthew Arnold makes fun of ―the demoralisation of our class caused by the Bow tragedy‖ in his Preface of 1865 to Essays in Criticism.] 2 [The reference is to the American Civil War, and to the interruption in the cotton supply caused by the blockade of the Southern ports.] 3 [Compare A Joy for Ever, § 151 (Vol. XVI. p. 139 and n.).] 4 [Here Ruskin refers to the wars of 1840 and 1856, caused by Chinese opposition to the Opium Trade: see the Introduction, above, p. xxvi.] 5 [In eds. 1–4 the note in question was printed here as a footnote, in small type.] I.OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 83 nursingly cherish, the lives of its murderers.1 Also, a great nation having made up its mind that hanging is quite the wholesomest process for its homicides in general, can yet with mercy distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homicides; and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood-track of an unhappy crazed boy, or grey-haired clodpate Othello, ―perplexed i‘ the extreme,‖2 at the very moment that it is sending a Minister of the Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting young girls in their fathers‘ sight, and killing noble youths in cool blood, faster than a country butcher kills lambs in spring.3 And, lastly, a great nation does not mock Heaven and its Powers, by pretending belief in a revelation which asserts the love of money to be the root of all evil,4 and declaring, at the same time, that it is actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief national deeds and measures, by no other love. 31. My friends, I do not know why any of us should talk about reading. We want some sharper discipline than that of reading; but, at all events, be assured, we cannot read. No reading is possible for a people with its mind in this state. No sentence of any great writer is intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impossible for the English public, at this moment, to understand any thoughtful writing,—so incapable of thought has it become in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our disease is, as yet, little worse than this incapacity of thought; it is not corruption of the inner nature; we ring true still, when anything strikes home to us; and though the idea that everything 1 [The particular reference is to a resolution passed by the House of Commons on May 3, 1864: ―That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that She will be graciously pleased to issue a Royal Commission to inquire into the provisions and operation of the Laws under which the Punishment of Death is now inflicted in the United Kingdom,‖ etc. For a later reference to the subject, see Vol. XVII. p. 542 and n.] 2 [Othello, v. 2, line 348.] 3 [A reference again to the Russian régime in Poland; and to the appointment of a new Ambassador (Sir Andrew Buchanan) to Russia (September 16, 1864).] 4 [1 Timothy vi. 10.] 84 SESAME AND LILIES should ―pay‖ has infected our every purpose so deeply, that even when we would play the good Samaritan, we never take out our two pence and give them to the host, without saying, ―When I come again, thou shalt give me fourpence,‖1 there is a capacity of noble passion left in our hearts‘ core. We show it in our work—in our war,—even in those unjust domestic affections which make us furious at a small private wrong, while we are polite to a boundless public one: we are still industrious to the last hour of the day, though we add the gambler‘s fury to the labourer‘s patience; we are still brave to the death, though incapable of discerning true cause for battle; and are still true in affection to our own flesh, to the death, as the seamonsters are, and the rock-eagles. And there is hope for a nation while this can be still said of it. As long as it holds its life in its hand, ready to give it for its honour (though a foolish honour), for its love (though a selfish love), and for its business (though a base business), there is hope for it. But hope only; for this instinctive, reckless virtue cannot last. No nation can last, which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. It must discipline its passions, and direct them, or they will discipline it, one day, with scorpion whips.2 Above all, a nation cannot last as a money-making mob: it cannot with impunity,—it cannot with existence,—go on despising literature, despising science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you think these are harsh or wild words? Have patience with me but a little longer. I will prove their truth to you, clause by clause. 32. (I.) I say first we have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad—a 1 [See Luke x. 35.] 2 [See 1 Kings xii. 11, 14.] I.OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 85 bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a horsemaniac,1 though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars? What position would its expenditure on literature take, as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body: now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly; it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it? Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men‘s dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity;2 for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy; and if public libraries were half so costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling: whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armoury, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book; and the family must be poor indeed, which, once in their lives, cannot, for such multipliable barley-loaves,3 pay their baker‘s bill. We call 1 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 65, Vol. XVII. p. 190.] 2 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 15 (Notes and Correspondence).] 3 [See John vi. 9.] 86 SESAME AND LILIES ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other‘s books out of circulating libraries! 33. (II.) I say we have despised science. ―What!‖ you exclaim, ―are we not foremost in all discovery,* and is not the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason, of our inventions?‖ Yes; but do you suppose that is national work? That work is all done in spite of the nation; by private people‘s zeal and money. We are glad enough, indeed, to make our profit of science; we snap up anything in the way of a scientific bone that has meat on it, eagerly enough; but if the scientific man comes for a bone or a crust to us, that is another story. What have we publicly done for science? We are obliged to know what o‘clock it is, for the safety of our ships, and therefore we pay for an observatory; and we allow ourselves, in the person of our Parliament, to be annually tormented into doing something, in a slovenly way, for the British Museum; sullenly apprehending that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to amuse our children. If anybody will pay for their own telescope, and resolve another nebula, we cackle over the discernment as if it were our own; if one in ten thousand of our hunting squires suddenly perceives that the earth was indeed made to be something else than a portion for foxes,1 and burrows in it himself, and tells us where the gold is, and where the coals, we understand that there is some use in that; and very properly knight him: but is the accident of his having found out how to employ himself usefully any credit to us? (The negation of such discovery among his brother squires may perhaps be some discredit to us, if we would consider of it.) But if you

• Since this was written, the answer has become definitely—No; we having

surrendered the field of Arctic discovery to the Continental nations, as being ourselves too poor to pay for ships. 2 1 [Psalms lxiii. 10.] 2 [Ruskin refers to the extinction of public zeal in this country for Arctic discovery which followed the expedition under Sir Edward Belcher in 1852–1854. There were in subsequent years Swedish, Norwegian, and German expeditions. Four years after Ruskin wrote the note above, another British expeditions, under Sir George Nares, was despatched (1875–1876). Compare p. 512, below.] I.OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 87 doubt these generalities, here is one fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of our love of science. Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria;1 the best in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfectness, and one unique as an example of a species (a whole kingdom of unknowns living creatures being announced by that fossil2 ). This collection, of which the mere market worth, among private buyers, would probably have been some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation for seven hundred: but we would not give seven hundred, and the whole series would have been in the Munich Museum at this moment, if Professor Owen* had not, with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting of the British public in person of its representatives, got leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become answerable for the other three! which the said public will doubtless pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the matter all the while; only always ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your annual expenditure for public purposes, (a third of it for military apparatus,) is at least 50 millions. Now £700 is to £50,000,000 roughly, as seven pence to two thousand pounds. Suppose, then, a gentleman of unknown income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that he spent two thousand a year on his park-walls and footmen only, professes himself fond of science; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection of fossils,

• I state this fact without Professor Owen‘s permission; which of course he could

not with propriety have granted, had I asked it; but I consider it so important that the public should be aware of the fact, that I do what seems to me right, though rude. 1 [Ruskin reprinted this passage (from ―Two years ago‖ to the end of § 33) as Appendix i. to Time and Tide; see Vol. XVII. pp. 330, 465.] 2 [The Archæopteryx, the first fossil bird, discovered in 1861 by Andreas Wagner in the lithographic slate of Solenhofen; the slab containing the fossil may be seen in the National History Museum. It is described by Owen in the Philosophical Transactions, 1863, p. 33.] 88 SESAME AND LILIES giving clue to a new era of creation, is to be had for the sum of seven pence sterling; and that the gentleman who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a year on his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting several months, ―Well! I‘ll give you fourpence for them, if you will be answerable for the extra threepence yourself, till next year!‖ 34. (III.) I say you have despised Art! ―What!‖ you again answer, ―have we not Art exhibitions, miles long? and do we not pay thousands of pounds for single pictures? and have we not Art schools and institutions, more than ever nation had before?‖ Yes, truly, but all that is for the sake of the shop. You would fain sell canvas as well as coals, and crockery as well as iron; you would take every other nation‘s bread out of its mouth if you could;* not being able to do that, your ideal of life is to stand in the thoroughfares of the world, like Ludgate apprentices, screaming to every passer-by, ―What d‘ye lack?‖1 You know nothing of your own faculties or circumstances; you fancy that, among your damp, flat, fat fields of clay, you can have as quick art-fancy as the Frenchman among his bronzed vines, or the Italian under his volcanic cliffs;—that Art may be learned, as bookkeeping is, and when learned, will give you more books to keep. You care for pictures, absolutely, no more than you do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. There is always room on the walls for the bills to be read,—never for the pictures to be seen. You do not know what pictures you have (by repute) in the country, nor whether they are false or true, nor whether they are taken care of or not; in foreign countries, you calmly see the noblest

• That was our real idea of ―Free Trade‖—―All the trade to myself.‖ You find now

that by ―competition‖ other people can manage to sell something as well as you—and now we call for Protection again. Wretches!2 1 [See the opening of The Fortunes of Nigel (ch. i.) with its account of David Ramsay‘s apprentices, though his shop was in Fleet Street.] 2 [Note added in 1871. For an explanation of the reference, see Munera Pulveris, Appendix iv. (Vol. XVII. p. 289).] I.OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 89 existing pictures in the world rotting in abandoned wreck—(in Venice you saw the Austrian guns deliberately pointed at the palaces containing them1 ), and if you heard that all the fine pictures2 in Europe were made into sand-bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, it would not trouble you so much as the chance of a brace or two of game less in your own bags, in a day‘s shooting. That is your national love of Art. 35. (IV.) You have despised Nature; that is to say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of France;3 you have made race-courses of the cathedrals of the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their altars.* You have put a railroad-bridge over the falls of Schaffhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell‘s chapel; you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva;4 there is not a quiet valley in England that you have not filled with bellowing fire; there is no particle left of English land which you have not trampled coal ashes into †—nor any foreign city in which the spread of your presence is not marked among its fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers‘ shops: the Alps themselves, which your own

• I meant that the beautiful places of the world—Switzerland, Italy, South

Germany, and so on—are, indeed, the truest cathedrals—places to be reverent in, and to worship in; and that we only care to drive through them: and to eat and drink at their most sacred places.5 † I was singularly struck, some years ago, by finding all the river shore at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth, from the mere drift of soot-laden air from places many miles away. 1 [See Vol. X. p. 422 n.] 2 [Eds. 1–4 read ―all the Titians‖; altered in 1871 to ―all the fine pictures‖—an indication that Ruskin‘s enthusiasm for that master was somewhat on the wane.] 3 [As, for instance, at St. Julien, Tours: see Vol. I. p. 430.] 4 [For the railway at Clarens, compare Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. p. 455); and for that at Schaffhausen, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 423 n.). The reference in 1864 to ―tunnelling the cliffs by Tell‘s chapel‖ was to the road; the cliffs have now been again tunnelled for the railway.] 5 [See the Preface of 1865 (above, p. 27), where Ruskin explains the passage in the text.] 90 SESAME AND LILIES poets used to love so reverently,1 you look upon as soaped poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again,2 with ―shrieks of delight.‖ When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine, by assembling in knots in the ―towers of the vineyards,‖3 and slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till evening.4 It is pitiful, to have dim conceptions of duty; more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions of duty; pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like these, of mirth. 36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There is no need of words of mine for proof of this. I will merely print one of the newspaper paragraphs which I am in the habit of cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer; here is one from a Daily Telegraph of an early date this year (18675 ); (date which, though by me carelessly left unmarked, is easily discoverable; for on the back of the slip there is the announcement that ―yesterday the seventh of the special services of this year was performed by the Bishop 1 [See, for instance, Coleridge‘s ―Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni,‖ referred to in Vol. IV. p. 392.] 2 [See the Preface added to the second edition; above, p. 21. Ruskin used the ―soaped poles‖ figures again in one of his latest Oxford lectures—on Landscape, reported in E. T. Cook‘s Studies in Ruskin, p. 292, and reprinted in a later volume of this edition.] 3 [See Isaiah v. 2.] 4 [Compare Time and Tide, § 47 (Vol. XVII. p. 356), where Ruskin again refers to this festival witnessed by him in 1863.] 5 [The year ―(1867)‖ was inserted in the edition of 1871 and has remained in all subsequent issues; it is, of course, an error, for the lecture was published in 18 65. The reference to the Daily Telegraph is also wrong; the cutting is from the Morning Post of February 13, 1865; and the date of the inquest, February 10. This passage, it will thus be seen, was not contained in the lecture as first written (1864).] I.OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 91 of Ripon in St. Paul‘s‖;1 ) it relates only one of such facts as happen now daily; this by chance having taken a form in which it came before the coroner. I will print the paragraph in red. Be sure, the facts themselves are written in that colour, in a book which we shall all of us, literate or illiterate, have to read our page of, some day. An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, deputy coroner, at the White Horse Tavern, Christ Church, Spitalfields, respecting the death of Michael Collins, aged 58 years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking woman, said that she lived with the deceased and his son in a room at 2, Cobb‘s Court, Christ Church. Deceased was a ―translator‖ of boots. Witness went out and bought old boots; deceased and his son made them into good ones, and then witness sold them for what she could get at the shops, which was very little indeed. Deceased and his son used to work night and day to try and get a little bread and tea, and pay for the room (2s. a week), so as to keep the home together. On Friday-night-week deceased got up from his bench and began to shiver. He threw down the boots, saying, ―Somebody else must finish them when I am gone, for I can do no more.‖ There was no fire, and he said, ―I would be better if I was warm.‖ Witness therefore took two pairs of translated boots* to sell at the shop,

• One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the good of all

classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear no ―translated‖ articles of dress. See the Preface.2 1 [Eds. 1–4 have an additional passage here, with a footnote, thus:— ―. . . St. Paul‘s‖;) and there is a pretty piece of modern political economy besides, worth preserving note of, I think, so I print it in the note below.* But my business is with the main paragraph, relating one of such facts as happen now daily, which, by chance, has taken . . .

• It is announced that an arrangement has been concluded between the

Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Credit for the payment of the eleven millions which the State has to pay to the National Bank by the 14th inst. This sum will be raised as follows: The eleven commercial members of the committee of the Bank of Credit will each borrow a million of florins for three months of this bank, which will accept their bills, which again will be discounted by the National Bank. By this arrangement the National Bank will itself furnish the funds with which it will be paid.‖ The reference in this cutting is to the affairs of Austria.] 2 [Note added in 1871; the reference being to the Preface of that date, above, p. 40.] 92 SESAME AND LILIES but she could only get 14d. for the two pairs, for the people at the shop said, ―We must have our profit.‖ Witness got 14 lb. of coal, and a little tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole night to make the ―translations,‖ to get money, but deceased died on Saturday morning. The family never had enough to eat.—Coroner: ―It seems to me deplorable that you did not go into the workhouse.‖ Witness: ―We wanted the comforts of our little home.‖ A juror asked what the comforts were, for he only saw a little straw in the corner of the room, the windows of which were broken. The witness began to cry, and said that they had a quilt and other little things. The deceased said he never would go into the workhouse. In summer, when the season was good, they sometimes made as much as 10s. profit in the week. They then always saved towards the next week, which was generally a bad one. In winter they made not half so much. For three years they had been getting from bad to worse.—Cornelius Collins said that he had assisted his father since 1847. They used to work so far into the night that both nearly lost their eyesight. Witness now had a film over his eyes. Five years ago deceased applied to the parish for aid. The relieving officer gave him a 4 lb. loaf, and told him if he came again he should ―get the stones.‖* That disgusted

• This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labour is curiously coincident in verbal

form with a certain passage which some of us may remember. 1 It may perhaps be well to preserve beside this paragraph another cutting out of my store-drawer, from the Morning Post, of about a parallel date, Friday, March 10th, 1865:—―The salons of Mme. C—, who did the honours with clever imitative grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts—in fact, with the same male company as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. 2 Some English peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy the animated and dazzlingly 1 [Matthew vii. 9: ―What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will give him a stone?‖] 2 [Princess Metternich, wife of the Austrian Ambassador at Paris, a friend of the Empress Eugénie, and a leader of Society during the Second Empire; Madame Drouyn de Lhuys, wife of Napoleon III.‘s Minister for Foreign Affairs.] I.OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 93 deceased, and he would have nothing to do with them since. They got worse and worse until last Friday week, when they had not even a halfpenny to buy a candle. Deceased then lay down on the straw, and said he could not live till morning.—A juror: ―You are dying of starvation yourself, and you ought to go into the house until the summer.‖—Witness: ―If we went in we should die. When we come out in the summer we should be like people dropped from the sky. No one would know us, and we would not have even a room. I could work now if I had food, for my sight would get better.‖ Dr. G. P. Walker said deceased died from syncope, from exhaustion from want of food. The deceased had had no bedclothes. For four months he had had nothing but bread to eat. There was not a particle of fat in the body. There was no disease, but, if there had been medical attendance, he might have survived the syncope or fainting. The Coroner having remarked upon the painful nature of the case, the jury returned the following verdict: ―That deceased died from exhaustion from want of food and the common necessaries of life; also through want of medical aid.‖ improper scene. On the second floor the supper tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi-monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was served to all the guests (about 200) seated at four o‘clock. Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, Laffitte, Tokay, and champagne of the finest vintages were served most lavishly throughout the morning. After supper dancing was resumed with increased animation, and the ball terminated with a chaîne diabolique and a cancan d’enfer at seven in the morning.1 (Morning service—‗Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the opening eyelids of the Morn.—‘ 2 ) Here is the menu:—‗Consommé de volaille à la Bagration: 16 hors-d‘œuvres variés. Bouchées à la Talleyrand. Saumons froids, sauce Ravigote. Filets de bœuf en Bellevue, timbales milanaises, chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffées. Pâtés de foies gras, buissons d‘écrevisses, salades vénétiennes, gelées blanches aux fruits, gâteau x mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fromages glacés. Ananas. Dessert.‘ ‖ 1 [Compare Time and Tide, § 48 (Vol. XVII. p. 358), and Fors Clavigera, Letter 57, where Ruskin refers to this passage.] 2 [Lycidas, 25, 26; Milton, however, wrote ―high,‖ not ―fresh.‖] 94 SESAME AND LILIES 37. ―Why would witness not go into the workhouse?‖ you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a prejudice against the workhouse which the rich have not; for of course everyone who takes a pension from Government goes into the workhouse on a grand scale:* only the workhouses for the rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be called play-houses. But the poor like to die independently, it appears; perhaps if we made the play-houses for them pretty and pleasant enough, or gave them their pensions at home, and allowed them a little introductory peculation with the public money, their minds might be reconciled to the conditions. Meantime, here are the facts: we make our relief either so insulting to them, or so painful, that they rather die than take it at our hands; or, for third alternative, we leave them so untaught and foolish that they starve like brute creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to do, or what to ask. I say, you despise compassion; if you did not, such a newspaper paragraph would be as impossible in a Christian country as a deliberate assassination permitted in its public streets.† ―Christian,‖ did I say? Alas! if we were but wholesomely un-Christian, it would be impossible:

• Please observe this statement, and think of it, and consider how it happens that a

poor old woman will be ashamed to take a shilling a week from the country—but no one is ashamed to take a pension of a thousand a year. 1 † I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the Pall Mall Gazette established; for the power of the press in the hands of highly educated men, in independent position, and of honest purpose, may indeed become all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its third number, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense wrongness which only an honest man can achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in the outs et, and is following it, regardless of consequences. It contained at the end this notable passage:— ―The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction,—aye, and the bedsteads and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought to give to outcasts merely as outcasts.‖ I merely put beside this expression of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the message which 1 [On the subject of pensions for the poor, see A Joy for Ever, § 129 (Vol. XVI. p. 113), and Unto this Last, Preface (Vol. XVII. p. 22).] I. O F K IN G S ‘ TREA S UR IE S 95 it is our imaginary Christianity that helps us to commit these crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our faith, for the lewd sensation of it; dressing it up, like everything else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of the organ and aisle, of dawn-service and twilight-revival—the Christianity, which we do not fear to mix the mockery of, pictorially, with our play about the devil, in our Satanellas,—Roberts,—Fausts;1 chanting hymns through traceried windows for background effect, and artistically modulating the ―Dio‖ through variation on variation of mimicked prayer: (while we distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit of uncultivated swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signification of the Third Commandment;—) this gas-lighted, and Isaiah was ordered to ―lift up his voice like a trumpet‖ 2 in declaring to the gentlemen of his day: ―Ye fast for strife, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out (margin, ‗afflicted‘) to thy house?‖ The falsehood on which the writer had mentally founded himself, as previously stated by him, was this: ―To confound the functions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and pernicious error.‖ This sentence is so accurately and exquisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in our minds before we can deal with any existing problem of national distress. ―To understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as much greater and franker than that possible to individual charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law respecting pauperism.‖ (Since this was written the Pall Mall Gazette has become a mere party paper—like the rest; but it writes well, and does more good than mischief on the whole.)3 1 [To Gounod‘s Faust Ruskin refers also in Fors Clavigera, Letter 82; to Balfe‘s Satanella, not elsewhere; to Meyerbeer‘s Robert le Diable, below, p. 543, and in Seven Lamps (Vol. VIII. p. 8).] 2 [Isaiah lviii. 1, 4, 7.] 3 [The words in brackets were added in 1871. The Pall Mall Gazette had been started by Mr. George Smith (Ruskin‘s publisher) on February 7, 1865; the editor was Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who continued to occupy that post till 1880. The paper wa s announced as independent in politics, and it was to be largely devoted to original articles on ―public affairs, literature, the arts, and all the influences which strengthen or dissipate society.‖ Ruskin showed his interest in the new paper by contributi ng many letters in 1865 (see Vol. XVII. pp. 506 seq.). In 1871 the paper was inclining towards the Conservative party, and in succeeding years it became a strong supporter of Disraeli; as at a later stage (under a new editor) of Gladstone.] 96 SESAME AND LILIES gas-inspired Christianity, we are triumphant in, and draw back the hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian righteousness in a plain English word or deed; to make Christian law any rule of life, and found one National act or hope thereon,—we know too well what our faith comes to for that! You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion. You had better get rid of the smoke, and the organ pipes, both: leave them, and the Gothic windows, and the painted glass, to the property man; give up your carburetted hydrogen ghost1 in one healthy expiration, and look after Lazarus at the doorstep.2 For there is a true Church wherever one hand meets another helpfully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or ever shall be. 38. All these pleasures then, and all these virtues, I repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, men among you who do not; by whose work, by whose strength, by whose life, by whose death, you live, and never thank them. Your wealth, your amusement, your pride, would all be alike impossible, but for those whom you scorn or forget. The policeman, who is walking up and down the black lane all night to watch the guilt you have created there; and may have his brains beaten out, and be maimed for life, at any moment, and never be thanked; the sailor wrestling with the sea‘s rage; the quiet student poring over his book or his vial; the common worker, without praise, and nearly without bread, fulfilling his task as your horses drag your carts, hopeless, and spurned of all: these are the men by whom England lives; but they are not the nation; they are only the body and nervous force of it, acting still from old habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind is 1 [Ruskin plays on the word, with reference to ―Pepper‘s Ghost‖—an illusion caused by reflection from a mirror by the aid of some strong illuminating agent, such as carburetted hydrogen gas—which was attracting the public at the Polytechnic in 1864.] 2 [Luke xvi. 20.] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 97 gone.1 Our National wish and purpose are only to be amused;2 our National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word Dis-Ease, the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and its Amusements! 39. When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower;—when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. But now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of money-making; and having no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with their pictures on cavern walls, which men had to dig to detect.3 The justice we do not execute, we mimic in the novel and on the stage; for the beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with our fellows, and the pure tears we should have borne with them, we gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather the night-dew of the grave. 40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance of these things; the facts are frightful enough;—the measure of national fault involved in them is perhaps not as great as it would at first seem. We permit, or cause, thousands of 1 [Compare Val d’ Arno, § 81, where Ruskin refers to this passage.] 2 [Compare the quotation from Young in Time and Tide, § 19 (Vol. XVII. p. 335).] 3 [Ezekiel viii. 7–12.] XVIII. G 98 SESAME AND LILIES deaths daily, but we mean no harm; we set fire to houses, and ravage peasants‘ fields, yet we should be sorry to find we had injured anybody. We are still kind at heart; still capable of virtue, but only as children are. Chalmers, at the end of his long life, having had much power with the public, being plagued in some serious matter by a reference to ―public opinion,‖ uttered the impatient exclamation, ―The public is just a great baby!‖ And the reason that I have allowed all these graver subjects of thought to mix themselves up with an inquiry into methods of reading, is that, the more I see of our national faults or miseries, the more they resolve themselves into conditions of childish illiterateness and want of education in the most ordinary habits of thought. It is, I repeat, not vice, not selfishness, not dulness of brain, which we have to lament; but an unreachable schoolboy‘s recklessness, only differing from the true schoolboy‘s in its incapacity of being helped, because it acknowledges no master. 41. There is a curious type of us given in one of the lovely, neglected works of the last of our great painters. It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, and folded morning sky beyond.1 And unmindful alike of these, and of the dead who have left these for other valleys and for other skies, a group of schoolboys have piled their little books upon a grave, to strike them off with stones. So, also, we play with the words of the dead that would teach us, and strike them far from us with our bitter, reckless will; little thinking that those leaves which the wind scatters had been piled, not only upon a gravestone, but upon the seal of an enchanted vault—any, the gate of a great city of sleeping kings, who would awake for us and walk with us, if we knew but how to call them by their names. How often, even if we lift the marble entrance gate, do we but wander among those old kings in their repose, and finger the robes 1 [For a description of this drawing see Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. pp. 26, 381).] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 99 they lie in, and stir the crowns on their foreheads; and still they are silent to us, and seem but a dusty imagery, because we know not the incantation of the heart that would wake them;—which, if they once heard, they would start up to meet us in their power of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider us; and, as the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, saying, ―Art thou also become weak as we—art thou also become one of us?‖1 so would these kings, with their undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, ―Art thou also become pure and mighty of heart as we—art thou also become one of us?‖ 42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind—―magnanimous‖—to be this, is indeed to be great in life; to become this increasingly, is, indeed, to ―advance in life,‖—in life itself—not in the trappings of it. My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head of a house died?2 How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his friends‘ houses; and each of them placed him at his table‘s head, and all feasted in his presence? Suppose it were offered to you in plain words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian honour, gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were this: You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. your life shall fade from you, and sink through the earth into the ice of Caina;3 but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have more orders on its breast—crowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast 1 [Isaiah xiv. 10.] 2 [Herodotus, iv. 73. Compare Ruskin‘s ―Scythian‖ poems: Vol. II. pp. 43, 57.] 3 [Inferno, xxxii. The first and outermost ring of the frozen circle, which holds those who have done violence to their own kindred, is called Caina, from the first murderer. See also Inferno, v. 107, and compare Fiction, Fair and Foul, § 15. See also below, p. 367.] 100 SESAME AND LILIES with it at their tables‘ heads all the night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull;—no more. Would you take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means only that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and more fortune, and more public honour, and—not more personal soul. He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into Living* peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth—they, and they only. All other kingships, so far as they are true, are only the practical issue and expression of theirs; if less than this, they are either dramatic royalties,—costly shows, set off, indeed, with real jewels, instead of tinsel—but still only the toys of nations; or else they are no royalties at all, but tyrannies, or the mere active and practical issue of national folly; for which reason I have said of them elsewhere, ―Visible governments are the toys of some nations the diseases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more.‖1 43. But I have no words for the wonder with which I hear Kinghood still spoken of, even among thoughtful men, as if governed nations were a personal property, and might be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, as sheep, of whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose fleece he was to gather; as if Achilles‘ indignant epithet of base kings,

• ―to se tronhma toq pweqmatos twh kai elphbh.‖2

1 [Munera Pulveris, § 122, Vol. XVII. p. 245.] 2 [Romans viii. 6: ―To be spiritually minded is life and peace.‖] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 101 ―people-eating,‖1 were the constant and proper title of all monarchs; and the enlargement of a king‘s dominion meant the same thing as the increase of a private man‘s estate! Kings who think so, however powerful, can no more be the true kings of the nation than gadflies are the kings of a horse; they suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not guide it. They, and their courts, and their armies are, if one could see clearly, only a large species of marsh mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mastered trumpeting, in the summer air; the twilight being, perhaps, sometimes fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering mists of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly, if at all, and hate ruling;2 too many of them make ―il gran rifiuto‖;3 and if they do not, the mob, as soon as they are likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to make its ―gran rifiuto‖ of them. 44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some day, if ever day comes when he will estimate his dominion by the force of it,—not the geographical boundaries. It matters very little whether Trent cuts you a cantel out here,4 or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. But it does matter to you, king of men, whether you can verily say to this man, ―Go,‖ and he goeth; and to another, ―Come,‖ and he cometh.5 Whether you can turn your people, as you can Trent—and where it is that you bid them come, and where go. It matters to you, king of men, whether your people hate you, and die by you, or love you, and live by you. You may measure your dominion by multitudes, better than by miles; and count 1 [shmobopos: Iliad, i. 231.] 2 [See Plato, Republic, i. 347.] 3 [Inferno, iii. 60: compare Lectures on Art, § 29.] 4 [The reference is to 1 Henry IV., iii. 1, 101, where Hotspur complains that in the division of the kingdom, the course of the Trent unfairly diminishes his share:— ―See how this river comes me cranking in, And cuts me from the best of all my land A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantel out.‖] 5 [Matthew viii. 9.] 102 SESAME AND LILIES degrees of love-latitude, not from, but to, a wonderfully warm and infinite equator. 45. Measure!—nay, you cannot measure. Who shall measure the difference between the power of those who ―do and teach,‖1 and who are greatest in the kingdoms of earth, as of heaven—and the power of those who undo, and consume—whose power, at the fullest, is only the power of the moth and the rust? Strange! to think how the Mothkings lay up treasures for the moth; and the Rust-kings, who are to their peoples‘ strength as rust to armour, lay up treasures for the rust; and the Robber-kings, treasures for the robber; but how few kings have ever laid up treasures that needed no guarding—treasures of which, the more thieves there were, the better! Broidered robe, only to be rent; helm and sword, only to be dimmed; jewel and gold, only to be scattered;—there have been three kinds of kings who have gathered these. Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth order of kings, who had read, in some obscure writing of long ago, that there was a Fourth kind of treasure,2 which the jewel and gold could not equal, neither should it be valued with pure gold. A web made fair in the weaving, by Athena‘s shuttle; an armour, forged in divine fire by Vulcanian force; a gold to be mined in the very sun‘s red heart, where he sets over the Delphian cliffs;—deep-pictured tissue;—impenetrable armour;—potable gold!3—the three great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought,4 still calling to us, and waiting at the posts of our doors, to lead us, with their winged power, and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture‘s eye has not seen!5 1 [Matthew v. 19. For the Bible references which follow, see Matthew vi. 19, 20.] 2 [See Job xxviii. 12–19: ―But where shall wisdom be found,‖ etc.] 3 [The term used in alchemy for gold dissolved in nitro-hydrochloric acid, supposed to contain the elixir of life.] 4 [For Athena, ―the Spirit of Wisdom in Conduct‖; Vulcan, ―the Spirit of Wisdom in Adaptation, or of serviceable labour‖; and Apollo, ―the Spirit of Light and a mountain Spirit, because the sun seems first to rise and set upon the hills,‖ see Cestus of Aglaia, § 12.] 5 [Job xxviii. 7.] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 103 Suppose kings should ever arise, who heard and believed this word, and at last gathered and brought forth treasures of—Wisdom—for their people? 46. Think what an amazing business that would be! How inconceivable, in the state of our present national wisdom! That we should bring up our peasants to a book exercise instead of a bayonet exercise!—organise, drill, maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers!—find national amusement in reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds; give prizes for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a target. What an absurd idea it seems, put fairly in words, that the wealth of the capitalists of civilised nations should ever come to support literature instead of war! 47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you a single sentence out of the only book, properly to be called a book, that I have yet written myself, the one that will stand (if anything stand), surest and longest of all work of mine.1 ―It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that it is entirely capitalists‘ wealth which supports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to support them; for most of the men who wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men‘s bodies and souls have both to be bought; and the best tools of war for them besides, which make such war costly to the maximum; not to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to buy an hour‘s peace of mind with; as, at present, Fra nce and England, purchasing of each other ten millions sterling worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried by the ‗science‘ of the modern political economist, teaching covetousn ess instead of truth). And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists‘ will being the primary root of the war; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each person.‖ 1 [Unto this Last, § 76 n., Vol. XVII. pp. 103–104. And for the opinion here expressed by Ruskin of that book, see ibid., p. 17.] 104 SESAME AND LILIES 48. France and England literally, observe, buy panic of each other; they pay, each of them, for ten thousandthousand-pounds‘-worth of terror, a year.1 Now suppose, instead of buying these ten millions‘ worth of panic annually, they made up their minds to be at peace with each other, and buy ten millions‘ worth of knowledge annually; and that each nation spent its ten thousand thousand pounds a year in founding royal libraries, royal art galleries, royal museums, royal gardens, and places of rest.2 Might it not be better somewhat for both French and English? 49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass.3 Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before royal or national libraries will be founded in every considerable city, with a royal series of books in them;4 the same series in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, prepared for that national series in the most perfect way possible; their text printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of binders‘ work; and that these great libraries will be accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of the day and evening; strict law being enforced for this cleanliness and quietness. 50. I could shape for you other plans, for art-galleries, and for natural history galleries, and for many precious—many, it seems to me, needful—things; but this book plan is the easiest and needfullest, and would prove a considerable tonic to what we call our British constitution, which has fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You have got its 1 [Compare Vol. XVII. p. 104.] 2 [Ruskin returned to the subject of museums and ―places of rest‖ in his lecture at the Royal Institution in 1867: see Vol. XIX.] 3 [The first Act, authorising municipalities to provide Free Libraries out of the rates, was passed in 1850, but progress under it had been very slow. In 1860 there were only 23 such libraries in England and Wales, and in 1870 only 35. There are now (1905) about 350.] 4 [Ruskin‘s ―Shepherds‘ Library‖ (Bibliotheca Pastorum) was and attempt in this direction: see his Preface, § 1, to The Economist of Xenophon.] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 105 corn laws repealed for it; try if you cannot get corn laws established for it, dealing in a better bread;—bread made of that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens doors;—doors not of robbers‘, but of Kings‘, Treasuries.1 __________________________________ NOTE TO § 302 Respecting the increase of rent by the deaths of the poor, for evidence of which see the preface to the Medical Officer‘s report to the Privy Council, just published, there are suggestions in its preface which will make some stir among us,3 I fancy, respecting which let me note these points following:— There are two theories on the subject of land now abroad, and in contention; both false. The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have always existed, and must continue to exist, a certain number of hereditarily sacred persons to whom the earth, air, and water of the world belong, as personal property; of which earth, air, and water, these persons may, at their pleasure, permit, or forbid, the rest of the human race to eat, to 1 [Eds. 1–4 had an additional paragraph:— ―Friends, the treasuries of true kings are the streets of their cities; and the gold they gather, which for others is as the mire of the streets, changes itself, for them and their people, into a crystalline pavement for evermore.‖] 2 [In eds. 1–4 this note appeared as a footnote to § 30 (see above, p. 82 n.). It there began , ―See the evidence in the . . .‖] 3 [See The Seventh Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1864. The Medical Officer was Ruskin‘s friend, John Simon (for whom see Vol. XVII. p. 450 n.) The report contained an exhaustive inquiry into the house-accommodation of the agricultural and other labourers in rural districts. In his prefactory remarks the Medical Officer emphasised the evils disclosed by this inquiry; the accommodation, he found, was sometimes ―swinish‖; landlords, in order to reduce their liability to the poor rate, declined to build cottages; and ―in the open village cottage-speculators buy scraps of land which they throng as densely as they can with the cheapest of hovels.‖ Simon denounced the state of things as ―a reproach to the civilisation of England,‖ and a serious danger to the public health. ―The ulterior question,‖ he said, ―which will I think have to be considered is this—whether all land which requires labour ought not to be held liable to the obligation of containing a certain proportion of suitable labourers‘ dwellings.‖] 106 SESAME AND LILIES breathe, or to drink. This theory is not for many years longer tenable. The adverse theory is that a division of the land of the world among the mob of the world would immediately elevate the said mob into sacred personages; that houses would then build themselves, and corn grow of itself; and that everybody would be able to live, without doing any work for his living. This theory would also be found highly untenable in practice. It will, however, require some rough experiments and rougher catastrophes,1 before the generality of persons will be convinced that no law concerning anything—least of all concerning land, for either holding or dividing it, or renting it high, or renting it low—would be of the smallest ultimate use to the people, so long as the general contest for life, and for the means of life, remains one of mere brutal competition. That contest, in an unprincipled nation, will take one deadly form or another, whatever laws you make against it. For instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law for England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits should be assigned to incomes according to classes;2 and that every nobleman‘s income should be paid to him as a fixed salary or pension by the nation; and not squeezed by him in variable sums, at discretion, out of the tenants of his land. But if you could get such a law passed to-morrow, and if, which would be farther necessary, you could fix the value of the assigned incomes by making a given weight of pure bread legal tender3 for a given sum, a twelvemonth would not pass before another currency would have been tacitly established, and the power of accumulated wealth would have re-asserted itself in some other article, 1 [Eds. 1–4 add, ―even in this magnesium-lighted epoch.‖ At the time when Ruskin wrote ―magnesium light‖ was first attracting attention by its brilliance: see the uses of the terms (1860 and 1864) cited in Murray‘s New English Dictionary. Compare Cestus of Aglaia, § 38.] 2 [On this subject, compare Vol. XVII. pp. 322, 421, 436; on fixed salaries to landowners, ibid., p. 439.] 3 [The words ―legal tender‖ in eds. 1–4 were by a printer‘s error omitted from the edition of 1871, and this blunder has been reproduced in every subsequent issue, except the ―Coronation Edition.‖ On the subject of a currency based on food, compare Vol. XVII. pp. 200, 489.] I. OF K INGS‘ TREASURIES 107 or some other imaginary sign. There is only one cure for public distress—and that is public education, directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, and just. There are, indeed, many laws conceivable which would gradually better and strengthen the national temper; but, for the most part, they are such as the national temper must be much bettered before it would bear. A nation in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child by backboards, but when it is old it cannot that way strengthen its crooked spine. And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable,—Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay? Who is to do no work, and for what pay? And there are curious moral and religious questions connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in order to put the abstracted psychical quantities together and make one very beautiful or ideal soul? If we had to deal with mere blood instead of spirit, (and the thing might literally be done—as it has been done with infants before now)—so that it were possible, by taking a certain quantity of blood from the arms of a given number of the mob, and putting it all into one person, to make a more azure-blooded gentleman of him, the thing would of course be managed; but secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it is brain and soul that we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done quite openly, and we live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner of weasels; that is to say, we keep a certain number of clowns digging and ditching, and generally stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, may have all the thinking and feeling to ourselves.1 Yet there is a great deal to be said for this. A highly-bred and trained English, French, Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much more a 1 [With this passage compare Vol. XVII. pp. xcix.—c.] 108 SESAME AND LILIES lady), is a great production,—a better production than most statues; being beautifully coloured as well as shaped, and plus all the brains; a glorious thing to look at, a wonderful thing to talk to; and you cannot have it, any more than a pyramid or a church, but by sacrifice of much contributed life. And it is, perhaps, better to build a beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or steeple—and more delightful to look up reverently to a creature far above us, than to a wall; only the beautiful human creature will have some duties to do in return—duties of living belfry and rampart—of which presently.1 1 [This passage was originally (as explained above) a footnote to § 30; and the reference in ―presently‖ is to §§ 42 seq.] LECTURE II.—LILIES O F QUE ENS’ GARD E NS ―Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made cheerful, and bloom as the lily; and the barren places of Jordan shall run wild with wood.‖—ISAIAH XXXV. 1 (Septuagint1 ). 51. IT will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the sequel of one previously given, that I should shortly state to you my general intention in both. The questions specially proposed to you in the first, namely, How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavour to make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advantages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of education and of literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when we have apprehended clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed moral training and well-chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the illguided and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in the truest, which is, according to the measure of it, in the truest sense, kingly; conferring indeed the purest 1 [In eds. 1–4 the motto was different:— ws kpiwow ew mepw alawqwn, oqtws h plhoiow mow —with a footnote referring to ―Canticles ii. 2.‖ ―As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.‖ In his own copy of the first edition, Ruskin had substituted for the Greek, ―Et breve Lilium‖—from one of his favourite lines in Horace (Odes, i. 36, 16). ―What a glorious line of Horace that is,‖ he wrote to his father (Mornex, September 16, 1863), ―of the flowers laid on his table when his friend returns— ― ‗Neu vivax apium, neu breve Lilium‘— the life of the green plant, and fading of the blossom, in two words; but I can‘t give you the sweet metre of it; you ought to hear it sung, as it was meant to be; and the expirin g of the last short low syllables.‖] 109 110 SESAME AND LILIES kingship that can exist among men: too many other kingships (however distinguished by visible insignia or material power) being either spectral, or tyrannous;—spectral—that is to say, aspects and shadows only of royalty, hollow as death, and which only the ―likeness of a kingly crown have on:‖1 or else—tyrannous—that is to say, substituting their own will for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule. 52. There is, then, I repeat—and as I want to leave this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it—only one pure kind of kingship; an inevitable and eternal kind, crowned or not; the kingship, namely, which consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful state, than that of others; enabling you, therefore, to guide, or to raise them. Observe that word ―State‖; we have got into a loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and stability of a thing; and you have the full force of it in the derived word ―statue‖—―the immovable thing.‖ A king‘s majesty or ―state,‖ then, and the right of his kingdom to be called a state, depends on the movelessness of both:—without tremor, without quiver of balance; established and enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which nothing can later, nor overthrow. 53. Believing that all literature and all education are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, and therefore kingly, power—first, over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over all around us,—I am now going to ask you to consider with me father, what special portion or kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble education, may rightly be possessed by women; and how far they also are called to a true queenly power,—not in their households merely, but over all within their sphere. And in what sense, if they rightly understood and exercised this royal or gracious influence, the order and beauty induced by such benignant power would justify us in speaking 1 [Paradise Lost, ii. 673.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 111 of the territories over which each of them reigned, as ―Queens‘ Gardens.‖ 54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far deeper question, which—strange though this may seem—remains among many of us yet quite undecided in spite of its infinite importance. We cannot determine what the queenly power of women should be, until we are agreed what their ordinary power should be. We cannot consider how education may fit them for any widely extending duty, until we are agreed what is their true constant duty. And there never was a time when wilder words were spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, respecting this question—quite vital to all social happiness. The relations of the womanly to the manly nature, their different capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never to have been yet estimated with entire consent. We hear of the ―mission‖ and of the ―rights‖ of Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission and the rights of Man—as if she and her lord were creatures of independent kind, and of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what I hope to prove)—is the idea that woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her weakness by the pre-eminence of his fortitude. This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave! 55. Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it is true) of what womanly mind and virtue are in power and office, with respect to man‘s; and how their relations, rightly accepted, aid and increase the vigour and honour and authority of both. And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last 112 SESAME AND LILIES lecture:1 namely, that the first use of education was to enable us to consult with the wisest and the greatest men on all points of earnest difficulty. That to use books rightly, was to go to them for help: to appeal to them, when our own knowledge and power of thought failed: to be led by them into wider sight,—purer conception,—than our own, and receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinion. Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in any wise on this point: let us hear the testimony they have left respecting what they held to be the true dignity of woman and her mode of help to man. 56. And first let us take Shakespeare. Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes;—he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage; and the still slighter Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In his laboured and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round him; but he is the only example even approximating to the heroic type. Coriolanus—Cæsar—Antony stand in flawed strength, and fall by their vanities;—Hamlet is indolent, and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and he sinks into the office of a servant only. Orlando, no less noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance, followed, comforted, saved by Rosalind. Whereas there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope, and errorless purpose: 1 [Above, p. 58, § 6.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 113 Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Catherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; conceived in the highest heroic type of humanity.1 57. Then observe, secondly, The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and, failing that, there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; the virtue of his one true daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the others, unless he had cast her away form him; as it is, she all but saves him. Of Othello I need not trace the tale;—nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against his error:— ―Oh, murderous coxcomb! what should such a fool Do with so good a wife?‖2 In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and brave stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience of her husband. In Winter’s Tale, and in Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two princely households, lost through long years, and imperilled to the death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by the queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In Measure for Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul cowardice of the brother, are opposed 1 [For Ruskin‘s many references to the plays and characters here mentioned, see the General Index. Compare, especially, for Cordelia and Virgilia—―the two women whom he has gifted with the deepest souls,‖ Academy Notes, 1855 (Vol. XIV. p. 16); for Perdita—―the most perfect study of the opposite of vulgarity,‖ Academy Notes, 1859 (Vol. XIV. p. 243 n.), and Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. p. 442); for Ophelia, Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. pp. 441–442); and for Othello, Fors Clavigera, Letters 83 and 91.] 2 [Act v. sc. 2, 236.] XVIII. H 114 SESAME AND LILIES to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, the mother‘s counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last granted, saves him—not, indeed, from death, but from the curse of living as the destroyer of his country. And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the fickleness of a lover who is a mere wicked child?—of Helena, against the petulance and insult of a careless youth?—of the patience of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of the ―unlessoned girl,‖1 who appears among the helplessness, the blindness, and the vindictive passions of men, as a gentle angel, bringing courage and safety by her presence, and defeating the worst malignities of crime by what women are fancied most to fail in, nities of crime by what women are fancied most to fail in,—precision and accuracy of thought?2 58. Observe, further, among all the principal figures in Shakespeare‘s plays, there is only one weak woman—Ophelia; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the critical moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a guide to him when he needs her most, that all the bitter catastrophe follows. Finally, though there are three wicked women among the principal figures—Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril—they are felt at once to be frightful exceptions to the ordinary laws of life; fatal in their influence also, in proportion to the power for good which they have abandoned. Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare‘s testimony to the position and character of women in human life. He represents them as infallibly faithful and wise counsellors,—incorruptibly just and pure examples—strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save. 59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of the 1 [Portia‘s description of herself: Merchant of Venice, iii. 2, 159.] 2 [Eds. 1–4 read:— ―. . . as a gentle angel, to save merely by her presence, and defeat the worst intensities of crime by her smile?‖] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 115 nature of man,—still less in his understanding of the causes and courses of fate,—but only as the writer who has given us the broadest view of the conditions and modes of ordinary thought in modern society, I ask you next to receive the witness of Walter Scott.1 I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of no value, and though the early romantic poetry is very beautiful, its testimony is of no weight, other than that of a boy‘s ideal. But his true works, studied from Scottish life, bear a true witness; and in the whole range of these, there are but three men who reach the heroic type*—Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse; of these, one is a border farmer; another a freebooter; the third a solider in a bad cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only in their courage and faith, together with a strong, but uncultivated, or mistakenly applied, intellectual power; while his younger men are the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, and only by aid (or accident) of that fortune, survive, not vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any disciplined, or consistent character, earnest in a purpose wisely conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, definitely challenged and resolutely subdued, there is no trace in his conceptions of young men. Whereas in his imaginations of women,—in the characters of Ellen Douglas, of Flora MacIvor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans,—with endless varieties of grace, tenderness,

• I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have noted the various

weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great characters of men in the Waverley novels—the selfishness and narrowness of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in Edward Glendinning, and the like; and I ought to have noticed that there are several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the backgrounds; three—let us accept joyously this courtesy to England and her soldiers—are English officers: Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, and Colonel Mannering. 1 [Here again for many references to the characters and tales, see the General Index; comparing especially the passages in Fiction, Fair and Foul.] 116 SESAME AND LILIES and intellectual power, we find in all a quite infallible1 sense of dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice, to even the appearance of duty, much more to its real claims; and, finally, a patient wisdom of deeply-restrained affection, which does infinitely more than protect its objects from a momentary error; it gradually forms, animates, and exalts the characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at the close of the tale, we are just able, and no more, to take patience in hearing of their unmerited success. So that, in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches over, or educates, his mistress. 60. Next take, though more briefly, graver testimony—that of the great Italians and Greeks. You know well the plan of Dante‘s great poem—that it is a love-poem to his dead lady; a song of praise for her watch over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to love, she yet saves him from destruction—saves him from hell. He is going eternally astray in despair; she comes down from heaven to his help, and throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, interpreting for him the most difficult truths, divine and human; and leading him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star. I do not insist upon Dante‘s conception; if I began I could not cease: besides, you might think this a wild imagination of one poet‘s heart. So I will rather read to you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a knight of Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic of the feeling of all the noblest men of the thirteenth, or early fourteenth, century, preserved among many other such records of knightly honour and love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered for us from among the early Italian poets.2 1 [Eds. 1–4 add ―and inevitable‖ after ―infallible.‖] 2 [The poem is by Pannuccio dal Bagno, Pisano: see Rossetti‘s Dante and his Circle, pp. 331–332 (ed. 1874).] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 117 ―For lo! thy law is passed That this my love should manifestly be To serve and honour thee: And so I do; and my delight is full, Accepted for the servant of thy rule. ―Without almost, I am all rapturous, Since thus my will was set To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence: Nor ever seems it anything could rouse A pain or a regret. But on thee dwells my every thought and sense; Considering that from thee all virtues spread As from a fountain head,— That in thy gift is wisdom’s best avail, And honour without fail, With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. ―Lady, since I conceived Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, My life has been apart In shining brightness and the place of truth; Which till that time, good sooth, Groped among shadows in a darken‘d place, Where many hours and days It hardly ever had remember‘d good. But now my servitude Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. A man from a wild beast Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived.‖ 61. You may think perhaps a Greek knight would have had a lower estimate of women than this Christian lover. His spiritual subjection to them was indeed not so absolute; but as regards their own personal character, it was only because you could not have followed me so easily, that I did not take the Greek women instead of Shakespeare‘s; and instance, for chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, the simple mother‘s and wife‘s heart of Andromache; the divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful kindness and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly devoted piety of the sister, and daughter, in Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent; and finally, the expectation 118 SESAME AND LILIES of the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the Greeks in the return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, to save her husband, had passed calmly through the bitterness of death.1 62. Now I could multiply witness upon witness of this kind upon you if I had time. I would take Chaucer, and show you why he wrote a Legend of Good Women;2 but no Legend of Good Men. I would take Spenser, and show you how all his fairy knights are sometimes deceived and sometimes vanquished; but the soul of Una is never darkened, and the spear of Britomart is never broken.3 Nay, I could go back into the mythical teaching of the most ancient times, and show you how the great people,—by one of whose princesses it was appointed that the Lawgiver of all the earth should be educated4 rather than by his own kindred;—how that great Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a Woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver‘s shuttle; and how the name and the form of that spirit, adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, became that Athena of the olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to faith in whom you owe, down to this date, whatever you hold most precious in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue.5 63. But I will not wander into this distant and mythical element; I will only ask you to give its legitimate value to the testimony of these great poets and men of the world,—consistent, as you see it is, on this head. I will ask you 1 [For other references to Nausicaa, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. p. 236); to Penelope, Queen of the Air, §§ 24, 33; to Antigone, Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 272), and Val d’Arno, § 214; to Iphigenia, below, p. 285 n., and Art of England, § 13, Mornings in Florence, § 48; to Alcestis, Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 204), and vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 273 n.), and Lectures on Art, § 92.] 2 [Compare Ethics of the Dust, Note i. (below, p. 361).] 3 [For Una, see Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. p. 408), and vol. iii., Appendix 2 (Vol. XI. pp. 251 seq.); for Britomart, Vol. X. pp. 383, 408; Crown of Wild Olive, § 119 (below, p. 482); and The Study of Architecture, § 10 (Vol. XIX.).] 4 [See Exodus ii. 10.] 5 [What Ruskin here suggests that he could do, he presently did in his book upon Athena, The Queen of the Air. For Neith, the corresponding goddess of the Egyptians, see § 14 of that book (Vol. XIX.); and Ethics of the Dust, Note iii. (below, p. 364).] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 119 whether it can be supposed that these men, in the main work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious and idle view of the relations between man and woman;—nay, worse than fictitious or idle; for a thing may be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible: but this, their ideal of woman, is according to our common idea of the marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, is not to guide, nor even to think for herself. The man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power. 64. Is it not somewhat important to make up our minds on this matter? Are all these great men mistaken, or are we? Are Shakespeare and Æschylus, Dante and Homer, merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse than dolls, unnatural visions, the realization of which, were it possible, would bring anarchy into all households and ruin into all affections? Nay, if you can suppose this, take lastly the evidence of facts, given by the human heart itself. In all Christian ages which have been remarkable for their purity or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient;—not merely enthusiastic and worshipping in imagination, but entirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, however young, not only the encouragement, the praise, and the reward of all toil, but, so far as any choice is open, or any question difficult of decision, the direction of all toil. That chivalry, to the abuse and dishonour of which are attributable primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic relations; and to the original purity and power of which we owe the defence alike of faith, of law, and of love; that chivalry, I say, in its very first conception of honourable life, assumes the subjection of the young knight to the command—should it even be the command in caprice—of his lady. It assumes this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary impulse of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of blind service to its lady: that 120 SESAME AND LILIES where that true faith and captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passion must be; and that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of his youth, is the sanctification of all man‘s strength, and the continuance of all his purposes. And this, not because such obedience would be safe, or honourable, were it ever rendered to the unworthy; but because it ought to be impossible for every noble youth—it is impossible for every one rightly trained—to love any one whose gentle counsel he cannot trust, or whose prayerful command he can hesitate to obey. 65. I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I think it should commend itself at once to your knowledge of what has been and to your feeling of what should be. You cannot think that the buckling on of the knight‘s armour by his lady‘s hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth—that the soul‘s armour is never well set to the heart unless a woman‘s hand has braced it; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honour of manhood fails. Know you not those lovely lines—I would they were learned by all youthful ladies of England:— ―Ah, wasteful woman, she who may On her sweet self set her own price, Knowing he cannot choose but pay, How has she cheapen‘d Paradise; How given for nought her priceless gift, How spoiled the bread and spill‘d the wine, Which, spent with due, respective thrift, Had made brutes men, and men divine!‖*

• Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too carefully; as far as I

know he is the only living poet who always strengthens and purifies; t he others sometimes darken, and nearly always depress and discourage, the imagination they deeply seize.1 1 [This note (except only the words ―Coventry Patmore‖) was not in eds. 1–4. For an earlier allusion to Patmore‘s poem, see Vol. XV. p. 227. The passage here quoted is Prelude i. (―The Prodigal‖) to Canto vii. (―Ætna and The Moon‖) of book i. part i. of The Angel in the House. Patmore omitted ―The Prodigal‖ in the last edition of the poem, substituting another prelude for it (―Love‘s Immortality‖). In reading the passage, Ruskin altered the seventh line to ―Which, granted all with sacred thrift‖: see his letter to Patmore given in the Introduction; above, p. liv.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 121 66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations of lovers I believe you will accept. But what we too often doubt is the fitness of the continuance of such a relation throughout the whole of human life. We think it right in the lover and mistress, not in the husband and wife. That is to say, we think that a reverent and tender duty is due to one whose affection we still doubt, and whose character we as yet do but partially and distantly discern; and that this reverence and duty are to be withdrawn when the affection has become wholly and limitlessly our own, and the character has been so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust it with the happiness of our lives. Do you not see how ignoble this is, as well as how unreasonable? Do you not feel that marriage,—when it is marriage at all,—is only the seal which marks the vowed transition of temporary into untiring service, and of fitful into eternal love? 67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding function of the woman1 reconcilable with a true wifely subjection? Simply in that it is a guiding, not a determining, function. Let me try to show you briefly how these powers seem to be rightly distinguishable. We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking of the ―superiority‖ of one sex to the other, as if they could be compared in similar things. Each has what the other has not: each completes the other, and is completed by the other: they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give. 68. Now their separate characters are briefly these. The man‘s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman‘s power 1 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 80, where Ruskin refers to this lecture on women‘s ―power to do whatever they like with men‖; and compare ibid., Letter 90. See also Crown of Wild Olive, § 129 (below, p. 490).] 122 SESAME AND LILIES is for rule, not for battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise; she enters into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation, The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial;—to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offence, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence. This is the true nature of home—it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistentlyminded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love,—so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light,—shade as of the rock in a weary land,1 and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea;2—so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, of Home. And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head; the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot; but home is yet wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with 1 [Isaiah xxxii. 2.] 2 [Compare Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. p. 98 and p. 99 n.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 123 cedar, or painted with vermilion,1 shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless. 69. This, then, I believe to be,—will you not admit it to be?—the woman‘s true place and power. But do not you see that, to fulfil this, she must—as far as one can use such terms of a human creature—be incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise—wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service—the true changefulness of woman.2 In that great sense—―La donna è mobile,‖ not ―Qual piúm‘ al vento‖;3 no, nor yet ―Variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made‖;4 but variable as the light, manifold in fair and serene division, that it. may take the colour of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 70. (II.) I have been trying, thus far, to show you what should be the place, and what the power of woman. Now, secondly, we ask, What kind of education is to fit her for these? And if you indeed think this a true conception of her office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the course of education which would fit her for the one, and raise her to the other. The first of our duties to her—no thoughtful persons now doubt this,—is to secure for her such physical training and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect her beauty; the highest refinement of that beauty being unattainable without splendour of activity and of delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its power; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light 1 [Jeremiah xxii. 14.] 2 [Compare Ethics of the Dust, § 88 (below, p. 311).] 3 [The well-known song in Verdi‘s Rigoletto.] 4 [Marmion, canto vi. 30.] 124 SESAME AND LILIES too far: only remember that all physical freedom is vain to produce beauty without a corresponding freedom of heart. There are two passages of that poet who is distinguished, it seems to me, from all others—not by power, but by exquisite rightness1—which point you to the source, and describe to you, in a few syllables, the completion of womanly beauty. I will read the introductory stanzas, but the last is the one I wish you specially to notice:— ―Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, ‗A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own. ‗Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse; and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle, or restrain. ‗The floating clouds their state shall lend To her, for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see, Even in the motions of the storm, Grace that shall mould the maiden‘s form By silent sympathy. ‗And vital feelings of delight Shall rear her form to stately height,— Her virgin bosom swell. Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, While she and I together live, Here in this happy dell.‘ ‖* ―Vital feelings of delight,‖ observe. There are deadly feelings of delight; but the natural ones are vital, necessary to very life. And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to be

• Observe, it is ―Nature‖ who is speaking throughout, and who says, ―while she and

I together live.‖ 1 [On this appreciation of Wordsworth, compare Fiction, Fair and Foul, § 80.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 125 vital. Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if you do not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put on a good girl‘s nature—there is not one check you give to her instincts of affection or of effort—which will not be indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which is all the more painful because it takes away the brightness from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue. 71. This for the means: now note the end. Take from the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description of womanly beauty— ―A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet.‖1 The perfect loveliness of a woman‘s countenance can only consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in the memory of happy and useful years,—full of sweet records; and from the joining of this with that yet more majestic childishness, which is still full of change and promise;—opening always—modest at once, and bright, with hope of better things to be won, and to be bestowed. There is no old age where there is still that promise.2 72. Thus, then, you have first to mould her physical frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural tact of love. All such knowledge should be given her as may enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men: and yet it should be given, not as knowledge,—not as if it were, or could be, for her an object to know; but only to feel, and to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter of pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows many languages or one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand the sweetness of a stranger‘s tongue. It is of no moment to her own 1 [From the poem beginning ―She was a phantom of delight.‖] 2 [Eds. 1–4 add ―—it is eternal youth.‖] 126 SESAME AND LILIES worth or dignity that she should be acquainted with this science or that; but it is of the highest that she should be trained in habits of accurate thought; that she should understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural laws; and follow at least some one path of scientific attainment, as far as to the threshold of that bitter Valley of Humiliation,1 into which only the wisest and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves for ever children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore.2 It is of little consequence how many positions of cities she knows, or how many dates of events, or names of celebrated persons—it is not the object of education to turn the woman into a dictionary; but it is deeply necessary that she should be taught to enter with her whole personality into the history she reads; to picture the passages of it vitally in her own bright imagination; to apprehend, with her fine instincts, the pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations, which the historian too often only eclipses by his reasoning, and disconnects by his arrangement: it is for her to trace the hidden equities of divine reward, and catch sight, through the darkness, of the fateful threads of woven fire that connect error with retribution. But, chiefly of all, she is to be taught to extend the limits of her sympathy with respect to that history which is being for ever determined as the moments pass in which she draws her peaceful breath; and to the contemporary calamity, which, were it but rightly mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. She is to exercise herself in imagining what would be the effects upon her mind and conduct, if she were daily brought into the presence of the suffering which is not the less real because shut from her sight. She is to be taught somewhat to understand the nothingness of the proportion which that little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the world in which God 1 [Through which Christian had to pass in Bunyan‘s Pilgrim’s Progress.] 2 [―As children gathering pebbles on the shore‖: Paradise Regained, iv. 330. Hence Sir Isaac Newton‘s saying about himself that he was but as a child playing on the sea-shore, and amusing himself with pebble after pebble, and shell after shell, while the great ocean of truth stretched unfathomable away from him.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 127 lives and loves;1—and solemnly she is to be taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble in proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer more languid than it is for the momentary relief from pain of her husband or her child, when it is uttered for the multitudes of those who have none to love them,—and is ―for all who are desolate and oppressed.‖2 73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence; perhaps you will not be with me in what I believe is most needful for me to say. There is one dangerous science for women—one which they must indeed beware how they profanely touch—that of theology. Strange, and miserably strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their 1 [See the last stanza of In Memoriam:— ―That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves.‖] 2 [The Litany. In delivering the lecture Ruskin here gave an illustration from contemporary politics—thus reported in the Manchester Examiner:— ―He quoted from a recent newspaper account from Yalta the way in which thousands of Circassians were being driven from their country, with dreadful loss of life from suffering and exhaustion. This, he said, was all the fault of English men and women, but chiefly English ladies. If they cared about it and wept over it, it could not be. All this was because England did not carry out a treaty, the only good we ever got out of the siege of Sebastopol. The Circassian ambassadors went back from us a year ago without so much as being heard when they petitioned us merely to take our commerce to the south side of the Black Sea, and not let the Russians hinder us. If English ladies really cared, would it not be possible to hear at least a petition for justice if not to do it? That came upon him as he was thinking what a woman‘s feelings should be of the things far from her, if she would learn geography enough to know it does not make so much difference whether a man be wounded 3000 or 300 miles off—to him, it might to others—as the pity we ought to extend him. This, Mr. Ruskin said, was really much more important than any other part of his lecture.‖ The reference is to the long-drawn-out subjugation of the Caucasus by Russia; for another reference to it, see below, p. 548. The Treaty of Paris, at the end of the Crimean War, led to a temporary suspension of Russian activity in the Caucasus. But hostilities soon recommenced, and in 1864 the last of the tribes was subdued, and the final subjugation of the Circassians was secured by the wholesale emigration of the Circassians to the number of 400,000 souls; they settled, after many hardships, in different provinces of the Turkish Empire. By the Treaty of Paris the Black Sea was declared open to the mercantile marine of every nation; and the Circassian delegates hoped, if this clause of the treaty did not become a dead letter, to receive supplies from England. The sufferings of the exiles excited much futile sympathy in this country. In 1862 a committee had been formed for their relief; a public meeting was held in the City (with Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in the chair) on July 8, 1864; the subject was discussed in Parliament; and Papers respecting the Settlement of Circassian Emigrants in Turkey were presented, June 6, 1864.] 128 SESAME AND LILIES powers, and pause at the threshold of sciences where every step is demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, and without one thought of incompetency, into that science in which the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, that they will complacently and pridefully bind up whatever vice or folly there is in them, whatever arrogance, petulance, or blind incomprehensiveness, into one bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in creatures born to be Love visible, that where they can know least, they will condemn first, and think to recommend themselves to their Master, by crawling1 up the steps of His judgment-throne to divide it with Him. Strangest of all that they should think they were led by the Spirit of the Comforter into habits of mind which have become in them the unmixed elements of home discomfort; and that they dare to turn the Household Gods of Christianity into ugly idols of their own;—spiritual dolls, for them to dress according to their caprice; and from which their husbands must turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should be shrieked at for breaking them. 74. I believe, then, with this exception, that a girl‘s education should be nearly, in its course and material of study, the same as a boy‘s; but quite differently directed. A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different way. His command of it should be foundational and progressive; hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use. Not but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things in a womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for the discipline and training of their mental powers in such branches of study as will be afterwards fittest for social service; but, speaking broadly, a man ought to know any language or science he learns, thoroughly—while a woman ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as may enable her to sympathise in her husband‘s pleasures, and in those of his best friends. 1 [In eds. 1–4 ―scrambling.‖] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 129 75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as she reaches. There is a wide difference between elementary knowledge and superficial knowledge—between a firm beginning, and an infirm attempt at compassing.1 A woman may always help her husband by what she knows, however little; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only tease him. And indeed, if there were to be any difference between a girl‘s education and a boy‘s, I should say that of the two the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects: and that her range of literature should be, not more, but less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit; and also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter not now into any question of choice of books; only let us be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the package of the circulating library,2 wet with the last and lightest spray of the fountain of folly. 76. Or even of the fountain of wit; for with respect to the sore temptation of novel reading, it is not the badness of a novel that we should dread, so much as its over-wrought interest. The weakest romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, and the worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, false philosophy, or false political essays. But the best romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the morbid thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be called upon to act.3 1 [For ―an infirm attempt at compassing,‖ eds. 1–4 read ―a feeble smattering.‖ For other passages in which Ruskin insists on the importance of accuracy in education, see above, p. 64; Preface to Aratra Pentelici; and Time and Tide, § 98 (Vol. XVII. p. 399).] 2 [Compare § 32 (above, p. 85).] 3 [For other passages in which Ruskin discusses novels and novel-reading, see above, pp. 78–79 n.; Time and Tide, Appendix iii. (Vol. XVII. p. 468); Elements of Drawing, § 259 (Vol. XV.p. 227); Fors Clavigera, Letters 31, 34, 55 (footnote); and Fiction, Fair and Foul.] XVIII. I 130 SESAME AND LILIES 77. I speak therefore of good novels only; and our modern literature is particularly rich in types of such. Well read, indeed, these books have serious use, being nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry; studies of human nature in the elements of it. But I attach little weight to this function: they are hardly ever read with earnestness enough to permit them to fulfil it. The utmost they usually do is to enlarge somewhat the charity of a kind reader, or the bitterness of a malicious one; for each will gather, from the novel, food for her own disposition. Those who are naturally proud and envious will learn from Thackeray to despise humanity; those who are naturally gentle, to pity it; those who are naturally shallow, to laugh at it.1 So, also, there might be a serviceable power in novels to bring before us, in vividness, a human truth which we had before dimly conceived; but the temptation to picturesqueness of statement is so great, that often the best writers of fiction cannot resist it; and our views are rendered so violent and one-sided, that their vitality is rather a harm than good. 78. Without, however, venturing here on any attempt at decision how much novel reading should be allowed, let me at least clearly assert this,—that whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they should be chosen, not for their freedom from evil, but for their possession of good.2 The chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a noble girl; but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, and his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have access to a good library of old and classical books, there need be no choosing at all. Keep the modern magazine and novel out of your girl‘s way: turn her loose into 1 [Ruskin‘s view of Thackeray‘s novels seems to have changed. With this passage may be compared Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. pp. 213 n., and 323); but for later, and less favourable, notices see Fors Clavigera, Letters 31 and 63; and The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century. With Thackeray himself, Ruskin was on friendly terms (see Vol. XVII. p. xxix. n.).] 2 [Eds. 1–4 read ―. . . not for what is out of them, but what is in them.‖] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 131 the old library every wet day, and let her alone. She will find what is good for her; you cannot: for there is just this difference between the making of a girl‘s character and a boy‘s—you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does,—she will wither without sun; she will decay in her sheath, as a narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough; she may fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without help at some moments of her life; but you cannot fetter her; she must take her own fair form and way, if she take any, and in mind as in body, must have always ―Her household motions light and free And steps of virgin liberty.‖1 Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than you; and the good ones too, and will eat some bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest thought would have been so. 79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before her, and let her practice in all accomplishments be accurate and thorough, so as to enable her to understand more than she accomplishes. I say the finest models—that is to say, the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those epithets: they will range through all the arts. Try them in music, where you might think them the least applicable. I say the truest, that in which the notes most closely and faithfully express the meaning of the words, or the character of intended emotion; again, the simplest, that in which the meaning and melody are attained with the fewest and most significant notes possible; and, finally, the usefullest, that music which makes the best words most beautiful, which 1 [Again a quotation from the poem beginning ―She was a phantom of delight.‖ Compare Val d’Arno, § 214, where the lines are again quoted to show Wordsworth‘s ideal in ―the most soft and domestic form of virtue.‖] 132 SESAME AND LILIES enchants them in our memories each with its own glory of sound, and which applies them closest to the heart at the moment we need them. 80. And not only in the material and in the course, but yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl‘s education be as serious as a boy‘s. You bring up your girls as if they were meant for sideboard ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you give their brothers—appeal to the same grand instincts of virtue in them; teach them, also, that courage and truth are the pillars of their being:—do you think that they would not answer that appeal, brave and true as they are even now, when you know that there is hardly a girls‘ school in this Christian kingdom where the children‘s courage or sincerity would be thought of half so much importance as their way of coming in at a door; and when the whole system of society, as respects the mode of establishing them in life, is one rotten plague of cowardice and imposture—cowardice, in not daring to let them live, or love, except as their neighbours choose; and imposture, in bringing, for the purposes of our own pride, the full glow of the world‘s worst vanity upon a girl‘s eyes, at the very period when the whole happiness of her future existence depends upon her remaining undazzled? 81. And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but noble teachers. You consider somewhat before you send your boy to school, what kind of a man the master is;—whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at least give him full authority over your son, and show some respect to him yourself;—if he comes to dine with you, you do not put him at a side table: you know also that, at college, your child‘s immediate tutor will be under the direction of some still higher tutor, for whom you have absolute reverence. You do not treat the Dean of Christ Church or the Master of Trinity as your inferiors. But what teachers do you give your girls, and what reverence do you show to the teachers you have chosen? II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 133 Is a girl likely to think her own conduct, or her own intellect, of much importance, when you trust the entire formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a person whom you let your servants treat with less respect than they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your child were a less charge than jams and groceries), and whom you yourself think you confer an honour upon by letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the evening? 82. Thus, then, of literature as her help, and thus of art. There is one more help which she cannot do without—one which, alone, has sometimes done more than all other influences besides,—the help of wild and fair nature. Hear this of the education of Joan of Arc:— ―The education of this poor girl was mean, according to the present standard; was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard; and only not good for our age, because for us it would be unattainable.* * * ―Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domrémy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest (curé) was obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep them in decent bounds. * * * ―But the forests of Domrémy—those were the glories of the land; for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. ‗Abbeys there were, and abbey windows,‘—‗like Moorish temples of the Hindoos,‘ that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, 1 so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; yet many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness.‖* Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England, woods eighteen miles deep to the centre; but you can, perhaps, keep a fairy or two for your children yet, if you wish to keep them. But do you wish it? Suppose you had each, at the back of your houses, a garden, large enough for your

• ―Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet‘s History of France.‖ De Quincey‘s

Works. Vol. iii. p. 217 [edition of 1862]. 1 [Compare Val d’Arno, § 82, where Ruskin refers to this passage.] 134 SESAME AND LILIES children to play in, with just as much lawn as would give them room to run,—no more—and that you could not change your abode; but that, if you chose, you could double your income, or quadruple it, by digging a coal shaft in the middle of the lawn, and turning the flower-beds into heaps of coke. Would you do it? I hope not. I can tell you, you would be wrong if you did, though it gave you income sixty-fold instead of four-fold. 83. Yet this is what you are doing with all England. The whole country is but a little garden, not more than enough for your children to run on the lawns of, if you would let them all run there. And this little garden you will turn into furnace ground, and fill with heaps of cinders, if you can;1 and those children of yours, not you, will suffer for it. For the fairies will not be all banished; there are fairies of the furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts seem to be ―sharp arrows of the mighty‖; but their last gifts are ―coals of juniper.‖2 84. And yet I cannot—though there is no part of my subject that I feel more—press this upon you; for we made so little use of the power of nature while we had it that we shall hardly feel what we have lost. Just on the other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and your Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock beyond the moors of Anglesea, splendid in its heathery crest, and foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred—a divine promontory, looking westward; the Holy Head or Headland, still not without awe when its red light glares first through storm.3 These are the hills, and these the bays and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would 1 [On this ideal for the future of England, compare Crown of Wild Olive, § 123 n. (below, p. 485); Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 425); Queen of the Air, § 92; and Fors Clavigera, Letter 12.] 2 [Psalms cxx. 4.] 3 [Ruskin stayed some days at Holyhead in 1862, and thus described the rocks in a letter to his father:— ―(August 25.)—. . . I have never seen more tremendous rock scenery even on the Montanvert. The sheets of gneiss and granite go down to the sea far more sheer than the granite of the Charmoz goes under the ice, II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 135 have been always loved, always fateful in influence on the national mind. That Snowdon is your Parnassus; but where are its Muses? That Holyhead mountain is your Island of Ægina; but where is its temple to Minerva? 85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva had achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus up to the year 1848?—Here is a little account of a Welsh school, from page 261 of the Report on Wales, published by the Committee of Council on Education. This is a school close to a town containing 5000 persons:— ―I then called up a larger class, most of whom had recently come to the school. Three girls repeatedly declared they had never heard of Christ, and two that they had never heard of God. Two out of six thought Christ was on earth now‖ (they might have had a worse thought perhaps), ―three knew nothing about the Crucifixion. Four out of seven did not know the names of the months nor the number of days in a year. They had no notion of addition beyond two and two, or three and three; their minds were perfect blanks.‖1 Oh, ye women of England! from the Princess of that Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your own children can be brought into their true fold of rest, while these are scattered on the hills, as sheep having no shepherd.2 And do not think your daughters can be trained to the truth of their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which God made at once for their schoolroom and their playground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize them also in the sweet waters which the and the gorse and heather are in blossom together, intermingled, a thing I have never seen before—purple and gold with a witness! The rocks are intensely interesting in substance as well as sublime in form—the sea pure and terrific—the distant range of Snowdon very grand.‖] 1 [The reference given in the text (in all editions) is wrong. The passage comes from Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales (1846–1847), Part II. pp. 38 (where the instance is cited in the summary report), 133 (where the detailed report of it is given). Ruskin somewhat compresses the passage, and the words ―(they might have had a worse thought perhaps)‖ are, of course, his comment. The school was near ―Brynmaur, in Brecknockshire, a town containing nearly 5000 persons employed at the neighbouring ironworks, etc., of Mr. Bailey, M.P., and left wholly without any mental or spiritual means of instruction by the Company.‖] 2 [Matthew ix. 36.] 136 SESAME AND LILIES great Lawgiver1 strikes forth for ever from the rocks of your native land—waters which a Pagan would have worshipped in their purity, and you worship only with pollution. You cannot lead your children faithfully to those narrow axe-hewn church altars of yours, while the dark azure altars in heaven—the mountains that sustain your island throne,—mountains on which a Pagan would have seen the powers of heaven rest in every wreathed cloud—remain for you without inscription; altars built, not to, but by an Unknown God.2 86. (III.) Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of the teaching, of woman, and thus of her household office, and queenliness. We now come to our last, our widest question.—What is her queenly office with respect to the state? Generally, we are under an impression that a man‘s duties are public, and a woman‘s private. But this is not altogether so. A man has a personal work or duty, relating to his own home, and a public work or duty, which is the expansion of the other, relating to the state. So a woman has a personal work or duty, relating to her own home, and a public work or duty, which is also the expansion of that. Now the man‘s work for his own home is, as has been said,3 to secure its maintenance, progress, and defence; the woman‘s to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness. Expand both these functions. The man‘s duty as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the defence of the state. The woman‘s duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of the state. What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in 1 [See Exodus xvii. 6.] 2 [Acts xvii. 23.] 3 [Above, § 68, pp. 121–122.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 137 a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there. And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty: that she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. And as within the human heart there is always set an instinct for all its real duties,—an instinct which you cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt if you withdraw it from its true purpose:—as there is the intense instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, maintains all the sanctities of life, and, misdirected, undermines them; and must do either the one or the other;—so there is in the human heart an inextinguishable instinct, the love of power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the majesty of law and life, and, misdirected, wrecks them. 87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and God keeps it there.—Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of power!—For Heaven‘s sake, and for Man‘s sake, desire it all you can. But what power? That is all the question. Power to destroy? the lion‘s limb, and the dragon‘s breath? Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, and to guard. Power of the sceptre and shield; the power of the royal hand that heals in touching,—that binds the fiend, and looses the captive; the throne that is founded on the rock of Justice, and descended from only by steps of Mercy. Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens? 88. It is now long since the women of England arrogated, universally, a title which once belonged to nobility only; and, having once been in the habit of accepting the simple title of gentlewoman as correspondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title 138 SESAME AND LILIES of ―Lady,‖* which properly corresponds only to the title of ―Lord.‖ I do not blame them for this; but only for their narrow motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely the title, but the office and duty signified by it. Lady means ―breadgiver‖ or ―loaf-giver,‖ and Lord means ―maintainer of laws,‖1 and both titles have reference, not to the law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given to the household; but to law maintained for the multitude, and to bread broken among the multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to his title in so far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of lords; and a Lady has legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates that help to the poor representatives of her Master, which women once, ministering to Him of their substance, were permitted to extend to that Master Himself; and when she is known, as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread.2 89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power of the Dominus, or House-Lord, and of the Domina, or House-Lady, is great and venerable, not in the number of those through whom it has lineally descended, but in the number of those whom it grasps within its sway; it is always regarded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty

• I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English youth of certain

ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title; attainable only by certain probation and trial both of characte r and accomplishment; and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonourable act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, possible, in a nation which loved honour. That it would not be possible among us, is not to the discredit of the scheme. 1 [According to Skeat (Etymological Dictionary) lord means ―loaf-keeper (AngloSaxon hláford (loaf-ward),‖ and lady, ―loaf-kneader (Anglo-Saxon hláf and dáege (kneader).‖ Ruskin, it will be seen, assumes a different derivation for ―lord,‖ deriving it from the Anglo-Saxon lágu (law). For other references to ―ladies‖ as ―loaf-givers,‖ see Ethics of the Dust, § 78 (below, p. 298); and Fors Clavigera, Letters 45 and 93; and for lords as ―law-wards,‖ Time and Tide, § 153 (Vol. XVII. p. 440).] 2 [Luke xxiv. 30, 31, 35.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 139 is founded on its duty, and its ambition co-relative with its beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with the thought of being noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be it so; you cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be too great; but see to it that your train is of vassals whom you serve and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed you; and that the multitude which obeys you is of those whom you have comforted, not oppressed,—whom you have redeemed, not led into captivity. 90. And this, which is true of the lower or household dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion; that highest dignity is open to you, if you will also accept that highest duty. Rex et Regina—Roi et Reine—―Right-doers‖;1 they differ but from the Lady and Lord, in that their power is supreme over the mind as over the person—that they not only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. And whether consciously or not, you must be, in many a heart, enthroned: there is no putting by that crown; queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows itself, and will for ever bow, before the myrtle crown2 and the stainless sceptre of womanhood. But, alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest; and leaving misrule and violence to work their will among men, in defiance of the power which, holding straight in gift from the Prince of all Peace, the wicked among you betray, and the good forget. 91. ―Prince of Peace.‖3 Note that name. When kings rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of the earth, they also, in their narrow place, and mortal measure, receive the power of it. There are no other rulers than they; other rule than theirs is but misrule; they who govern 1 [Compare Crown of Wild Olive, § 109 (below, p. 476); and Unto this Last, § 44 n., and Munera Pulveris, § 113 (Vol. XVII. pp. 59, 239).] 2 [For the myrtle as sacred to Venus, see Virgil, Eclogues, vii. 61.] 3 [Isaiah ix. 6.] 140 SESAME AND LILIES verily ―Dei Gratiâ‖1 are all princes, yes, or princesses of Peace. There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; they will fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you to choose their cause for them, and to forbid them when there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injustice, no misery, in the earth, but the guilt of it lies with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it down without sympathy in their own struggle; but men are feeble in sympathy, and contracted in hope; it is you only who can feel the depths of pain, and conceive the way of its healing. Instead of trying to do this, you turn away from it; you shut yourselves within your park walls and garden gates; and you are content to know that there is beyond them a whole world in wilderness—a world of secrets which you dare not penetrate; and of suffering which you dare not conceive. 92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most amazing among the phenomena of humanity. I am surprised at no depths to which, when once warped from its honour, that humanity can be degraded. I do not wonder at the miser‘s death, with his hands, as they relax, dropping gold. I do not wonder at the sensualist‘s life, with the shroud wrapped about his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed murder of a single victim, done by the assassin in the darkness of the railway, or read shadow of the marsh. I do not even wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multitudes, done boastfully in the daylight, by the frenzy of nations, and the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt heaped up from hell to heaven, of their priests, and kings. But this is wonderful to me—oh, how wonderful!—to see the tender and delicate woman among you, with her child at her breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over it, and over its father, purer than the air of heaven, and stronger than 1 [Compare Crown of Wild Olive, § 145 (below, p. 502), and Munera Pulveris, § 100 n. (Vol. XVII. p. 225).] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 141 the seas of earth—nay, a magnitude of blessing which her husband would not part with for all that earth itself, though it were made of one entire and perfect chrysolite:1—to see her abdicate this majesty to play at precedence with her next-door neighbour! This is wonderful—oh, wonderful!—to see her, with every innocent feeling fresh within her, go out in the morning into her garden to play with the fringes of its guarded flowers, and lift their heads when they are drooping, with her happy smile upon her face, and no cloud upon her brow, because there is a little wall around her place of peace: and yet she knows, in her heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their life-blood. 93. Have you ever considered what a deep under meaning there lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our custom of strewing flowers before those whom we think most happy? Do you suppose it is merely to deceive them into the hope that happiness is always to fall thus in showers at their feet?—that wherever they pass they will tread on herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground will be made smooth for them by depths of roses? So surely as they believe that, they will have, instead, to walk on bitter herbs and thorns; and the only softness to their feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended they should believe; there is a better meaning in that old custom. The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them. ―Her feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies rosy.‖2 1 [Othello, v. 2, 146:— ―Had she been true, If Heaven would make me such another world, Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I‘d not have sold her for it.‖] 2 [Tennyson: Maud, i. xii. 6. Ruskin, it will be seen, treats the passage as ―a lover‘s fancy, false and vain‖; as an instance, that is, of the ―Pathetic Fallacy‖ (see Modern Painters, vol. iii., Vol. V. p. 219). The poet resented this interpretation. 142 SESAME AND LILIES 94. You think that only a lover‘s fancy;—false and vain! How if it could be true? You think this also, perhaps, only a poet‘s fancy— ―Even the light harebell raised its head Elastic from her airy tread.‖1 But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not destroy where she passes. She should revive; the harebells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think I am rushing into wild hyperbole! Pardon me, not a whit—I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute truth. You have heard it said—(and I believe there is more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one)—that flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of some one who loves them. I know you would like that to be true; you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them: nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard;—if you could bid the black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare—if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, and say to the south wind, in frost—―Come, thou south, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow out.‖2 This you would think a great thing? And do you think it not a greater thing, that all this, (and how much more than this!) you can do, for fairer flowers than these—flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and will love you for having loved them; flowers that have thoughts like yours, and lives like yours; and which, once saved, you save for ever? Is this only a little power? Far among the moorlands and the rocks,—far in the darkness of the terrible streets,—these feeble florets are lying, with all their fresh leaves torn, and their stems ―Why,‖ he said to Thomas Wilson, ―the very day I wrote it, I saw the daisies rosy in Maiden‘s Croft, and thought of enclosing one to Ruskin labelled ‗A pathetic fallacy‖‘ (Memoir, by his son, vol. i. p. 511).] 1 [From Scott‘s description of Ellen Douglas: Lady of the Lake, i. 18. ―Light‖ is ―slight‖ in the original.] 2 [Song of Solomon iv. 16.] II. OF QUEENS‘ GARDENS 143 broken: will you never go down to them, nor set them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence them in their trembling, from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow morning, for you, but not for them; and the dawn rise to watch, far away, those frantic Dances of Death;* but no dawn rise to breathe upon these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine, and rose; nor call to you, through your casement—call (not giving you the name of the English poet‘s lady, but the name of Dante‘s great Matilda, who, on the edge of happy Lethe, stood, wreathing flowers with flowers1 ), saying:— ―Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the roses blown‖?2 Will you not go down among them?—among those sweet living things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth with the deep colour of heaven upon it, is starting up in strength of goodly spire; and whose purity, washed from the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of promise;—and still they turn to you, and for you, ―The Larkspur listens—I hear, I hear! And the Lily whispers—I wait.‖3 95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when I read you that first stanza; and think that I had forgotten them? Hear them now:— ―Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate, alone.‖ Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this sweeter garden alone, waiting for you? Did you ever hear,

• See note, p. 93.

1 [See Modern Painters, iii. (Vol. V. pp. 276–277), where Ruskin quotes, and comments upon, the passage from Purgatorio, xxviii.] 2 [Maud, part i. canto xxii. verse 1 (the first two and the last two lines).] 3 [From verse 10 of the same canto.] 144 SESAME AND LILIES not of a Maud, but a Madeleine, who went down to her garden in the dawn, and found One waiting at the gate, whom she supposed to be the gardener?1 Have you not sought Him often;—sought Him in vain, all through the night;—sought Him in vain at the gate of that old garden where the fiery sword is set? He is never there; but at the gate of this garden He is waiting always—waiting to take your hand—ready to go down to see the fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine has flourished, and the pomegranate budded. There you shall see with Him the little tendrils of the vines that His hand is guiding—there you shall see the pomegranate springing where His hand cast the sanguine seed;—more: you shall see the troops of the angel keepers that, with their wings, wave away the hungry birds from the path-sides where He has sown, and call to each other between the vineyard rows, ―Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.‖ Oh—you queens—you queens!among the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours, shall the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; and in your cities, shall the stones cry out against you, that they are the only pillows where the Son of Man can lay His head? 1 [John xx. 15. The other Biblical references are to Genesis iii. 24; Song of Solomon vii. 12, and ii. 15; Matthew viii. 20.] LECTURE III THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS Lecture delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Science, Dublin, 18681 96. WHEN I accepted the privilege of addressing you today, I was not aware of a restriction with respect to the topics of discussion which may be brought before this Society*—a restriction which, though entirely wise and right under the circumstances contemplated in its introduction, would necessarily have disabled me, thinking as I think, from preparing any lecture for you on the subject of art in a form which might be permanently useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I must transgress such limitation; for indeed my infringement will be of the letter—not of the spirit—of your commands. In whatever I may say touching the religion which has been the foundation of art, or the policy which has contributed to its power, if I offend one, I shall offend all; for I shall take no note of any separations in creeds, or antagonisms in parties: neither do I fear that ultimately I shall offend any, by proving—or at least stating as capable of positive proof—the connection of all that is best in the crafts and arts of man, with the simplicity of his faith, and the sincerity of his patriotism. 97. But I speak to you under another disadvantage, by which I am checked in frankness of utterance, not here only, but everywhere: namely, that I am never fully aware how far my audiences are disposed to give me credit for

• That no reference should be made to religious questions.

1 [Intended for delivery there, but actually delivered in another building: see Introduction (above, p. lviii.). The ―Society‖ was a Committee for organising afternoon lectures.] 145 XVIII. K 146 SESAME AND LILIES real knowledge of my subject, or how far they grant me attention only because I have been sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune,1 to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so: until I was heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such pleasant language—if indeed it ever were mine—is passing away from me; and whatever I am now able to say at all, I find myself forced to say with great plainness. For my thoughts have changed also, as my words have; and whereas in earlier life, what little influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to the enthusiasm with which I was able to dwell on the beauty of the physical clouds, and of their colours in the sky; so all the influence I now desire to retain must be due to the earnestness with which I am endeavouring to trace the form and beauty of another kind of cloud than those; the bright cloud of which it is written—―What is your life? It is even as a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.‖2 98. I suppose few people reach the middle or latter period of their age, without having, at some moment of change or disappointment,3 felt the truth of those bitter words; and been startled by the fading of the sunshine from the cloud of their life into the sudden agony of the knowledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the endurance of it as transient as the dew. But it is not always that, even at such times of melancholy surprise, we can enter into any true perception that this human life shares in the nature of it, not only the evanescence, but the mystery of the cloud; that its avenues are wreathed in darkness, and its forms and courses no less fantastic, than 1 [Compare Eagle’s Nest, § 3.] 2 [James iv. 14. See above, p. 61 n.] 3 [On the subject of disappointment and its fruits, see below, § 105; and compare Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 451).] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 147 spectral and obscure; so that not only in the vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow which we cannot pierce, it is true of this cloudy life of ours, that ―man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.‖1 99. And least of all, whatever may have been the eagerness of our passions, or the height of our pride, are we able to understand in its depth the third and most solemn character in which our life is like those clouds of heaven; that to it belongs not only their transience, not only their mystery, but also their power; that in the cloud of the human soul there is a fire stronger than the lightning, and a grace more precious than the rain; and that though of the good and evil it shall one day be said alike, that the place that knew them knows them no more,2 there is an infinite separation between those whose brief presence had there been a blessing, like the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to water the garden,3 and those whose place knew them only as a drifting and changeful shade, of whom the heavenly sentence is, that they are ―wells without water; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.‖4 100. To those among us, however, who have lived long enough to form some just estimate of the rate of the changes which are, hour by hour in accelerating catastrophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the arts, and the creeds of men, it seems to me, that now at least, if never at any former time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its powers and responsibilities, should present themselves with absolute sadness and sternness. And although I know that this feeling is much deepened in my own mind by disappointment, which, by chance, has attended the greater number of my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason distrust the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against an exaggerated degree of it: nay, I rather 1 [Psalms xxxix. 7.] 2 [See Psalms ciii. 16.] 3 [Genesis ii. 6.] 4 [2 Peter ii. 17.] 148 SESAME AND LILIES believe that in periods of new effort and violent change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine;1 and that in the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may see the colours of things with deeper truth than in the most dazzling sunshine. And because these truths about the works of men, which I want to bring to-day before you, are most of them sad ones, though at the same time helpful; and because also I believe that your kind Irish hearts will answer more gladly to the truthful expression of a personal feeling, than to the exposition of an abstract principle, I will permit myself so much unreserved speaking of my own causes of regret, as may enable you to make just allowance for what, according to your sympathies, you will call either the bitterness, or the insight, of a mind which has surrendered its best hopes, and been foiled in its favourite aims. 101. I spent the ten strongest years of my life, (from twenty to thirty,) in endeavouring to show the excellence of the work of the man whom I believed, and rightly believed, to be the greatest painter of the schools of England since Reynolds. I had then perfect faith in the power of every great truth of beauty to prevail ultimately, and take its right place in usefulness and honour; and I strove to bring the painter‘s work into this due place, while the painter was yet alive. But he knew, better than I, the uselessness of talking about what people could not see for themselves. He always discouraged me scornfully, even when he thanked me—and he died before even the superficial effect of my work was visible. I went on, however, thinking I could at least be of use to the public, if not to him, in proving his power. My books got talked about a little. The prices of modern pictures, generally, rose, and I was beginning to take some pleasure in a sense of gradual victory, when, fortunately or unfortunately, an opportunity of perfect trial undeceived me at once, and for ever. The 1 [―In periods of new effort and violent change,‖ but not always: see again Vol. VII. p. 451.]

III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 149 Trustees of the National Gallery commissioned me to arrange the Turner drawings there, and permitted me to prepare three hundred examples of his studies from nature, for exhibition at Kensington. At Kensington they were, and are, placed for exhibition; but they are not exhibited, for the room in which they hang is always empty.1 102. Well—this showed me at once, that those ten years of my life had been, in their chief purpose, lost. For that, I did not so much care; I had, at least, learned my own business thoroughly, and should be able, as I fondly supposed, after such a lesson, now to use my knowledge, with better effect. But what I did care for was the—to me frightful—discovery, that the most splendid genius in the arts might be permitted by Providence to labour and perish uselessly; that in the very fineness of it there might be something rendering it invisible to ordinary eyes;2 but that, with this strange excellence, faults might be mingled which would be as deadly as its virtues were vain; that the glory of it was perishable, as well as invisible, and the gift and grace of it might be to us as snow in summer and as rain in harvest.3 103. That was the first mystery of life to me. But, while my best energy was given to the study of painting, I had put collateral effort, more prudent if less enthusiastic, into that of architecture; and in this I could not complain of meeting with no sympathy. Among several personal reasons which caused me to desire that I might give this, my closing lecture on the subject of art here, in Ireland, one of the chief was, that in reading it, I should stand near the beautiful building,—the engineer‘s school of your college,—which was the first realization I had the joy to 1 [On this subject, see Vol. XIII. pp. xl., 341. The drawings are now in Trafalgar Square.] 2 [See Proserpina, ii. ch. ii., where Ruskin refers to this lecture as expressing ―the bitter sorrow with which I first recognised the extreme rarity of finelydeveloped organic sight.‖] 3 [Proverbs xxvi. 1. Compare Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. p. 178), where also Ruskin notices this mystery of life, that ―God permits the mightiest influences of His Spirit to be quenched and shortened by miseries of chance and guilt.‖] 150 SESAME AND LILIES see, of the principles I had, until then, been endeavouring to teach! but which, alas, is now, to me, no more than the richly canopied monument of one of the most earnest souls that ever gave itself to the arts, and one of my truest and most loving friends, Benjamin Woodward.1 Nor was it here in Ireland only that I received the help of Irish sympathy and genius. When to another friend, Sir Thomas Deane, with Mr. Woodward, was entrusted the building of the museum at Oxford, the best details of the work were executed by sculptors who had been born and trained here; and the first window of the façade of the building, in which was inaugurated the study of natural science in England, in true fellowship with literature, was carved from my design by an Irish sculptor. 104. You may perhaps think that no man ought to speak of disappointment, to whom, even in one branch of labour, so much success was granted. Had Mr. Woodward now been beside me, I had not so spoken; but his gentle and passionate spirit was cut off from the fulfilment of its purposes, and the work we did together is now become vain. It may not be so in future; but the architecture we endeavoured to introduce is inconsistent alike with the reckless luxury, the deforming mechanism, and the squalid misery of modern cities; among the formative fashions of the day, aided, especially in England, by ecclesiastical sentiment, it indeed obtained notoriety; and sometimes behind an engine furnace, or a railroad bank, you may detect the pathetic discord of its momentary grace, and, with toil, decipher its floral carvings choked with soot. I felt answerable to the schools I loved, only for their injury.2 I perceived that this new portion of my strength had also been spent in vain; and from amidst streets of iron, and palaces 1 [For Woodward and his work in Dublin, see Vol. XVI. pp. xliii., xliv.; and for the following references to the Irish sculptor, O‘Shea, ibid., pp. xlix., 1. The window is shown in Plate X. (p. 228) in that volume. For Woodward‘s partner, Deane, see Vol. XVI. pp. xlii., 37.] 2 [On this subject, compare the Preface to the third edition of Stones of Venice, Vol. IX. p. 11.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 151 of crystal,1 shrank back at last to the carving of the mountain and colour of the flower.2 105. And still I could tell of failure, and failure repeated, as years went on; but I have trespassed enough on your patience to show you, in part, the causes of my discouragement. Now let me more deliberately tell you its results. You know there is a tendency in the minds of many men, when they are heavily disappointed in the main purposes of their life, to feel, and perhaps in warning, perhaps in mockery, to declare, that life itself is a vanity. Because it has disappointed them, they think its nature is of disappointment always, or at best, of pleasure that can be grasped by imagination only; that the cloud of it has no strength nor fire within; but is a painted cloud only, to be delighted in, yet despised. You know how beautifully Pope has expressed this particular phase of thought:— ―Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays, These painted clouds that beautify our days; Each want of happiness by hope supplied, And each vacuity of sense, by pride. Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy; In Folly‘s cup, still laughs the bubble joy. One pleasure past, another still we gain, And not a vanity is given in vain.‖3 But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been just the reverse of this. The more that my life disappointed me, the more solemn and wonderful it became to me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope‘s saying, that the vanity of it was indeed given in vain; but that there was something behind the veil of it, which was not vanity. It became to me not a painted cloud, but a terrible and impenetrable one: not a mirage, which vanished as I drew near, but a pillar of darkness, to which I was forbidden to draw near. 1 [A building of iron and glass, similar to the Crystal Palace, had been constructed for the Dublin International Exhibition of 1864; Ruskin‘s lecture was delivered in the Concert Hall of this Exhibition Palace: see above, Introduction, p. lviii.] 2 [The reference is to the studies in geology and botany which at this time were occupying much of Ruskin‘s attention. The MS. reads: ―marble of the mountain and carving of the flower.‖] 3 [Essay on Man, ii. 283–290. The first two lines are quoted again by Ruskin in his Preface to E. T. Cook‘s Popular Handbook to the National Gallery.] 152 SESAME AND LILIES For I saw that both my own failure, and such success in petty things as in its poor triumph seemed to me worse than failure, came from the want of sufficiently earnest effort to understand the whole law and meaning of existence, and to bring it to noble and due end; as, on the other hand, I saw more and more clearly that all enduring success in the arts, or in any other occupation, had come from the ruling of lower purposes, not by a conviction of their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in the advancing power of human nature, or in the promise, however dimly apprehended, that the mortal part of it would one day be swallowed up in immortality;1 and that, indeed, the arts themselves never had reached any vital strength or honour, but in the effort to proclaim this immortality, and in the service either of great and just religion, or of some unselfish patriotism, and law of such national life as must be the foundation of religion. 106. Nothing that I have ever said is more true or necessary—nothing has been more misunderstood or misapplied—than my strong assertion2 that the arts can never be right themselves, unless their motive is right. It is misunderstood this way: weak painters, who have never learned their business, and cannot lay a true line, continually come to me, crying out—―Look at this picture of mine; it must be good, I had such a lovely motive. I have put my whole heart into it, and taken years to think over its treatment.‖3 Well, the only answer for these people is—if one had the cruelty to make it—―Sir, you cannot think over anything in any number of years,—you haven‘t the head to do it; and though you had fine motives, strong enough to make you burn yourself in a slow fire, if only first you could paint a picture, you can‘t paint one, nor half an inch of one; you haven‘t the hand to do it.‖4 1 [See 2 Corinthians v. 4.] 2 [As, for instance, in Modern Painters, vol. i. (see the note at Vol. III. p. 88). See also, among many other passages to like effect, Cambridge Inaugural Address (Vol. XVI. pp. 197 seq.), and Two Paths, § 49 (ibid., p. 291).] 3 [Ruskin again notices this misunderstanding of his teaching in Eagle’s Nest, § 42.] 4 [Compare what Ruskin says in The Two Paths, § 54, about fine art requiring the co-operation of ―hand, head, and heart‖ (Vol. XVI. p. 294).] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 153 But, far more decisively we have to say to the men who do know their business, or may know it if they choose—―Sir, you have this gift, and a mighty one; see that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a greater trust than ships and armies: you might cast them away, if you were their captain, with less treason to your people than in casting your own glorious power away, and serving the devil with it instead of men. Ships and armies you may replace if they are lost, but a great intellect, once abused, is a curse to the earth for ever.‖ 107. This, then, I meant by saying that the arts must have noble motive. This also I said respecting them,1 that they never had prospered, nor could prosper, but when they had such true purpose, and were devoted to the proclamation of divine truth or law. And yet I saw also that they had always failed in this proclamation—that poetry, and sculpture, and painting, though only great when they strove to teach us something about the gods, never had taught us anything trustworthy about the gods, but had always betrayed their trust in the crisis of it, and, with their powers at the full reach, became ministers to pride and to lust. And I felt also, with increasing amazement, the unconquerable apathy in ourselves and hearers, no less than in these the teachers; and that while the wisdom and rightness of every act and art of life could only be consistent with a right understanding of the ends of life, we were all plunged as in a languid dream—our hearts fat, and our eyes heavy, and our ears closed, lest the inspiration of hand or voice should reach us—lest we should see with our eyes, and understand with our hearts, and be healed.2 108. This intense apathy in all of us is the first great mystery of life; it stands in the way of every perception, every virtue. There is no making ourselves feel enough astonishment at it. That the occupations or pastimes of life should have no motive, is understandable; but—That life itself should have no motive—that we neither care to 1 [As, for instance, in Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. pp. 9, 262 n.).] 2 [Isaiah vi. 10, quoted in Matthew xii. 18, and Acts xxviii. 27.] 154 SESAME AND LILIES find out what it may lead to, nor to guard against its being for ever taken away from us—here is a mystery indeed. For just suppose I were able to call at this moment to any one in this audience by name, and to tell him positively that I knew a large estate had been lately left to him on some curious conditions; but that though I knew it was large, I did not know how large, nor even where it was—whether in the East Indies or the West, or in England, or at the Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast estate, and that there was a chance of his losing it altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms it had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say this positively to any single man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak without warrant, do you think that he would rest content with that vague knowledge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more? Would he not give every energy to find some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had ascertained where this place was, and what it was like? And suppose he were a young man, and all he could discover by his best endeavour was that the estate was never to be his at all, unless he perservered, during certain years of probation, in an orderly and industrious life; but that, according to the rightness of his conduct, the portion of the estate assigned to him would be greater or less, so that it literally depended on his behaviour from day to day whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty thousand a year, or nothing whatever—would you not think it strange if the youth never troubled himself to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor even to know what was required of him, but lived exactly as he chose, and never inquired whether his chances of the estate were increasing or passing away? Well, you know that this is actually and literally so with the greater number of the educated persons now living in Christian countries. Nearly every man and woman in any company such as this, outwardly professes to believe—and a large number unquestionably think they believe—much more than this; not only that a quite unlimited estate is in III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 155 prospect for them if they please the Holder of it, but that the infinite contrary of such a possession—an estate of perpetual misery—is in store for them if they displease this great Land-Holder, this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there is not one in a thousand of these human souls that cares to think, for ten minutes of the day, where this estate is or how beautiful it is, or what kind of life they are to lead in it, or what kind of life they must lead to obtain it. 109. You fancy that you care to know this: so little do you care that, probably, at this moment many of you are displeased with me for talking of the matter! You came to hear about the Art of this world, not about the Life of the next, and you are provoked with me for talking of what you can hear any Sunday in church. But do not be afraid. I will tell you something before you go about pictures, and carvings, and pottery, and what else you would like better to hear of than the other world. Nay, perhaps you say, ―We want you to talk of pictures and pottery, because we are sure that you know something of them, and you know nothing of the other world.‖ Well—I don‘t. That is quite true. But the very strangeness and mystery of which I urge you to take notice, is in this—that I do not;—nor you either. Can you answer a single bold question unflinchingly about that other world?—Are you sure there is a heaven? Sure there is a hell? Sure that men are dropping before your faces through the pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or sure that they are not? Sure that at your own death you are going to be delivered from all sorrow, to be endowed with all virtue, to be gifted with all felicity, and raised into perpetual companionship with a King, compared to whom the kings of the earth are as grasshoppers, and the nations as the dust of His feet?1 Are you sure of this? or, if not sure, do any of us so much as care to make it sure? and, if not, how can anything that we do be right—how can anything we think be wise? what honour can there be in 1 [See Isaiah xl. 15, 22, and Nahum iii. 17 and i. 3.] 156 SESAME AND LILIES the arts that amuse us, or what profit in the possessions that please? Is not this a mystery of life?1 110. But farther, you may, perhaps, think it a beneficent ordinance for the generality of men that they do not, with earnestness or anxiety, dwell on such questions of the future because the business of the day could not be done if this kind of thought were taken by all of us for the morrow.2 Be it so: but at least we might anticipate that the greatest and wisest of us, who were evidently the appointed teachers of the rest, would set themselves apart to seek out whatever could be surely known of the future destinies of their race; and to teach this in no rhetorical or ambiguous manner, but in the plainest and most severely earnest words. Now, the highest representatives of men who have thus endeavoured, during the Christian era, to search out these deep things, and relate them, are Dante and Milton.3 There are none who for earnestness of thought, for mastery of word, can be classed with these. I am not at present, mind you, speaking of persons set apart in any priestly or pastoral office, to deliver creeds to us, or doctrines; but of 1 [A comparison with the MS. here shows how Ruskin chastened and curtailed in revising. The MS. reads:— ―Are you sure of this? or, if not sure, do you so much as care to make it sure? Or have you only heard of this as a possible contingency, and you let it remain a contingency? Are you mad—or asleep—or stupefied with drugs, or how is it? You say that you believe you may become not knights nor ladies merely, not dukes nor duchesses merely, but Kings and Queens for ever, in a Kingdom where there is no pain, and all this depends on your living in such and such a way, and yet you know that your minds are mainly set at this moment, or will be as soon as I have done, on getting a pleasant drive and a pleasant dinner. Is not this a mystery of life?‖] 2 [See Matthew vi. 34.] 3 [Here, again, the MS. is different:— ―. . . earnest words. Perhaps, indeed, you may think that the highest teaching of this kind would be entrusted only to inspired prophets, whose language would not be under their own command; but, putting the prophets aside, how think you of the wise men and the scribes? You know they have a quite collateral function. ‗Behold, I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes‘—or, translating the word which has become too hackneyed to be intelligible, ‗Behold, I send to you prophets, and wise men, and writers; and some of them ye shall kill, and some of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues, and some of them ye shall persecute from city to city.‘ Well, we poor Gentiles, though we cannot share in the blessings of the Jews, can at least emulate them in hardness of heart, and III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 157 men who try to discover and set forth, as far as by human intellect is possible, the facts of the other world. Divines may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but only these two poets have in any powerful manner striven to discover, or in any definite words professed to tell, what we shall see and become there; or how those upper and nether worlds are, and have been inhabited. 111. And what have they told us? Milton‘s account of the most important event in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod‘s account of the decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans.1 The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed; not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any living faith. Dante‘s conception is far more intense, and, by himself, for the time, not to be escaped from; it is indeed a vision, but a vision only, and we also treat our best teachers in like manner, for I suppose the three greatest of the wise men and scribes, uninspired, who have been sent to teach us, were Socrates, and Dante, and Milton, of whom one was indeed killed, and another indeed persecuted from city to city, and another, in all the deeper spiritual sense of the word, scourged in our synagogues, together with his master, the ashes of whose body we scattered to the winds. But of our treatment of them I do not speak. The mystery of the matter to me is their treatment of us, the little of trustworthy saying which they have left to us, about what we most desired or ought to have desired to know. Socrates, indeed, altogether refused to converse about the things above, saying that until he knew more of the things round about him, he held it no business of his to meddle with those above him; but Dante and Milton, two of our mightiest scribes, gave the best part of their lives to tell us about these things above—and below. ―And what have they told us. . .‖ For the Bible reference, see Matthew xxiii. 34. For Dante‘s exile, see Crown of Wild Olive, § 41 (below, p. 423). The reference in the case of Milton is partly to the overthrow of the principles of civil polity for which as Latin secretary to the Council of Sta te he laboured with his master Cromwell (whose body was disinterred and exposed on the gallows at Tyburn, January 30, 1661); but also to the ignoring of those principles of ecclesiastical policy which Ruskin had drawn out from Milton in the first lecture o f Sesame and Lilies (see above, pp. 70–77). The reference in the case of Socrates is to such passages as that in Plato‘s Apology (19 E.), where he says that he refrains from talking ―concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know either much or littl e.‖] 1 [Compare Lectures on Art, § 15 (Vol. XX.), where Ruskin again refers to Milton‘s ―battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod.‖] 158 SESAME AND LILIES that one of the wildest that ever entranced a soul—a dream in which every grotesque type or phantasy of heathen tradition is renewed, and adorned; and the destinies of the Christian Church, under their most sacred symbols, become literally subordinate to the praise, and are only to be understood by the aid, of one dear Florentine maiden. 112. I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems daily more amazing to me that men such as these should dare to play with the most precious truths,1 (or the most deadly untruths,) by which the whole human race listening to them could be informed, or deceived;—all the world their audiences for ever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart;—and yet, to this submissive infinitude of souls, and evermore succeeding and succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of hell;2 touch a troubadour‘s guitar to the courses of the suns;3 and fill the openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces, and which angels desire to look into, 4 with idle puppets of their scholastic imagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal love. Is not this a mystery of life? 113. But more. We have to remember that these two great teachers were both of them warped in their temper, and thwarted in their search for truth. They were men of intellectual war, unable, through darkness of controversy, 1 [See, however, § 20 (above, p. 70), where Ruskin says of Milton ―great men do not play stage tricks,‖ etc. On the other hand, with the present passage compare Munera Pulveris, § 87 (Vol. XVII. p. 209). What Ruskin there says suggests the distinction which harmonises these passages. When great poets are dealing with what they know (as, for instance, in the passage of Milton analysed in § 20), they do not ―play‖; but the exercise of the imagination in regions of the unknowable is, in a sense, mere ―play,‖ though here, too, behind ―their veils of phantasy‖ they speak with one voice abou t ―the indisputable truths of human life and duty.‖] 2 [See Paradise Lost, books ii. and x.] 3 [The reference is, of course, to the Divina Commedia, in which the story of the poet‘s love threads the general scheme.] 4 [Isaiah vi. 2; 1 Peter i. 12.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 159 or stress of personal grief, to discern where their own ambition modified their utterances of the moral law; or their own agony mingled with their anger at its violation. But greater men than these have been—innocent-hearted—too great for contest. Men, like Homer and Shakespeare, of so unrecognized personality, that it disappears in future ages, and becomes ghostly, like the tradition of a lost heathen god.1 Men, therefore, to whose unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of human nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, with which they will not strive; or in mournful and transitory strength, which they dare not praise. And all Pagan and Christian Civilization thus becomes subject to them. It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have read, either of Homer or Shakespeare; everything round us, in substance, or in thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under Homer. All Roman gentlemen, by Greek literature. All Italian, and French, and English gentlemen, by Roman literature, and by its principles.2 Of the scope of Shakespeare, I will say only, that the intellectual measure of every man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned to him, according to the degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare. Well, what do these two men, centres of mortal intelligence, deliver to us of conviction respecting what it most behoves that intelligence to grasp? What is their hope 1 [Compare what Ruskin says in Modern Painters about Shakespeare‘s ―universal and equal grasp‖ (Vol. VI. p. 440).] 2 [The MS. has an additional passage here:— ―. . . Roman literature, headed in its spiritual power by Virgil, and in its worldly wisdom by Horace, of whom the first transmits the influence of Homer to the religious division of the civilized world through Dante, and the last, who is the head of the great worldly school of Pope, Boileau, and Molière, transmits the philosophy of Homer to us, though he refuses his faith, saying of him that what is honourable, and what is base, what is useful and useless, he has taught better than the best masters of the Stoic and Platonic schools:— ― ‗Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, Planius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit.‘ Of the scope,‖ etc. The quotation is from the Epistles, i. 2, 3, 4. Ruskin refers to the passage again in Queen of the Air, § 17 (Vol. XIX.).] 160 SESAME AND LILIES —their crown of rejoicing?1 what manner of exhortation have they for us, or of rebuke? what lies next their own hearts, and dictates their undying words? Have they any peace to promise to our unrest—any redemption to our misery?2 114. Take Homer first, and think if there if there is any sadder image of human fate than the great Homeric story. The 1 [1 Thessalonians ii. 19.] 2 [In his first draft Ruskin had here the following passage:— ―And now, observe, this teaching of Homer and Shakespeare is addressed to a totally different quality of mind from that addressed by Dante and Milton. For in every nation there have always been two great divisions of persons, who must be taught in two different ways. One group is willing to surrender its powers of reason to the teaching of others; it, therefore, reaches all the virtues of obedience, but it also incurs all the dangers of an enthusiasm in which the imagination and conscience are excited by assertions of which the intellect is not allowed to test the likelihood. This great division, which we may properly call the division of believers, is necessarily under the absolute authority of whatever priesthood, clerks, or clergy, Egyptian, Brahminical, Mahometan, Zoroastrian, have the charge of its instruction in any given country or epoch. When its clergy are good, its laity are good; when its clergy are bad, its lai ty are bad; but in general, the purest churches are mingled in character, and the fish of their nets mingled of those which are to be gathered into vessels, and those which are to be cast away. Then in all civilized nations there is a second vast division of men, always larger than it is thought to be, because it is not given to talking, while the believing portion of the community is in the essence of it vociferous, because conscientiously desirous of communicating its beliefs. This second division consists of men for whom it is simply impossible not to use their own reason in judging of any proposition submitted to them. The reasoning faculty is the strongest part of their whole life; it is strong enough to extinguish all the rest, and cannot therefore be extinguished by all the rest. There is nothing in the world that you cannot keep quiet except the reason in a strong reasoner‘s brain. You can keep a child quiet in a room, a tiger quiet in its den, you can quiet the winds with shocks of artillery, you can quiet the sea with mounds and bars, but you cannot quiet the thoughts in a thinker‘s brain. And there is nothing in the world that you cannot quench except the conviction in a thinker‘s heart. You can quench the violence of fire, you can quench the bitterness of strife, you can quench ambition, you can quench Faith—yes—and though much water cannot quench Love, neither can the floods drown it, yet under ashes at last you can quench Love; but until the time come for ashes to fall to their ashes, you cannot quench the Truth in a strong Thinker‘s Soul. ―The truth, or what seems the truth—for that is in many things all that the best of men can perceive—be that as it may, there are the two great classes into which all nations are divided, each including their mixed number of good and evil persons, for as the believers are disgraced by those who are too feeble to believe, or who use their pretended belief as a cloak for their sin, so the Reasoners are disgraced by those who are too feeble to reason, or who use their pretended reason as a cloak for their sin.‖ The Bible reference is to Song of Solomon viii. 7 (―Many waters cannot quench love,‖ etc.).] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 161 main features in the character of Achilles are its intense desire of justice, and its tenderness of affection. And in that bitter song of the Iliad, this man, though aided continually by the wisest of the gods, and burning with the desire of justice in his heart, becomes yet, through illgoverned governed passion, the most unjust of men: and, full of the deepest tenderness in his heart, becomes yet, through ill-governed passion, the most cruel of men. Intense alike in love and in friendship, he loses, first his mistress, and then his friend; for the sake of the one, he surrenders to death the armies of his own land; for the sake of the other, he surrenders all. Will a man lay down his life for his friend?1 Yea—even for his dead friend, this Achilles, though goddess-born, and goddess-taught, gives up his kingdom, his country, and his life—casts alike the innocent and guilty, with himself, into one gulf of slaughter, and dies at last by the hand of the basest of his adversaries.2 Is not this a mystery of life? 115. But what, then, is the message to us of our own poet, and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered over the graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than the Heathen‘s—is his hope more near—his trust more sure—his reading of fate more happy? Ah, no! He differs from the Heathen poet chiefly in this—that he recognizes, for deliverance, no gods nigh at hand; and that, by petty chance—by momentary folly—by broken message—by fool‘s tyranny—or traitor‘s snare, the strongest and most righteous are brought to their ruin, and perish without word of hope.3 He indeed, as part of his rendering of character, ascribes the power and modesty of habitual devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright with 1 [John xiii. 15.] 2 [The references in § 114 are to Achilles, born of Thetis and advised by Athena; to his abstention from battle because Agamemnon had robbed him of Briseis; to his return on account of the death of Patroclus; to his dragging of the body of Hector round the walls of Troy; to his death at the hands of Paris.] 3 [―By petty chance,‖ as by the changing of the foils in Hamlet; ―by momentary folly,‖ as by Cordelia in King Lear (i. 1); ―by broken message,‖ as in Romeo and Juliet (iv. 2); ―by fool‘s tyranny,‖ as of Leontes in Winter’s Tale; XVIII. L 162 SESAME AND LILIES visions of angels;1 and the great soldier-king, standing by his few dead,2 acknowledges the presence of the Hand that can save alike by many or by few.3 But observe that from those who with deepest spirit, meditate, and with deepest passion, mourn, there are no such words as these; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the perpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, through all heathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death,4 we find only in the great Christian poet, the consciousness of a moral law, through which ―the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us‖;5 and of the resolved arbitration of the destinies, that conclude into precision of doom what we feebly and blindly began; and force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and our deepest plots do pall, to the confession, that ―there‘s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.‖6 Is not this a mystery of life? 116. Be it so, then. About this human life that is to be, or that is, the wise religious men tell us nothing that we can trust; and the wise contemplative men, nothing that can give us peace. But there is yet a third class, to whom we may turn—the wise practical men. We have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they have told us their dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang of earth, and they have chanted to us dirges ―or traitor‘s snare,‖ as Iago‘s in Othello. Compare what Ruskin says in Modern Painters about ―the ‗I am fortune‘s fool‘ of Romeo expressing Shakespeare‘s primary idea of tragic circumstance‖ (Vol. VII. p. 272).] 1 [Henry VIII., Act iv. sc. 2: for another reference to Queen Katharine, see Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 272).] 2 [Henry V., Act iv. sc. 8.] 3 [1 Samuel xiv. 6.] 4 [Psalms xxiii. 4.] 5 [King Lear, v. 3, lines 170–171.] 6 [Hamlet, v. 2, lines 7–10:— ―Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots shall pall: and that should teach us There‘s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.‖ For some supplementary remarks at a later date upon this passage (§ 115) about Shakespeare, see Fors Clavigera, Letter 91.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 163 and words of despair. But there is one class of men more:—men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive to sorrow, but firm of purpose—practised in business; learned in all that can be, (by handling,) known. Men, whose hearts and hopes are wholly in this present world, from whom, therefore, we may surely learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to live in it.1 What will they say to us, or show us by example? These kings—these councillors—these statesmen and builders of kingdoms—these capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust of it, in a balance.2 They know the world, surely; and what is the mystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely show us how to live, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what is best. 117. I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling you a dream I had once. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes:3—I dreamed I was at a child‘s May-day party, in which every means of entertainment had been provided for them, by a wise and kind host. It was in a stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it; and the children had been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know much about what was to happen next day; and some of them, I thought, were a little frightened, because there was a chance of their being sent to a new school where there 1 [Here the MS. has an additional passage:— ―. . .live in it. It is not, however, usually either the prevalent wish or the peculiar gift of this kind of person to instruct others in the arts by which they prosper themselves. We must learn by their example rather than their precept, and observe, therefore, mainly what their general behaviour is, and in what points it seems imitable with advantage. ―Before looking out, however, into the wide scene of real worldly business, which it is difficult to conceive, we may advisably consider what may in some sort be representative of it. The child is the Father of the Man; and the a ffairs of children appear to them frequently of as much importance as ours appear to us. Let us imagine a child‘s Christmas party, in which the best means . . .‖ (as in text, with slight variations). For the quotation from Wordsworth, see below, p. 165.] 2 [Isaiah xl. 12.] 3 [For a reference to this fable, see the Preface of 1871 (above, p. 35); and for Ruskin‘s ―relation of composed metaphor as of actual dream,‖ see Preface to Ethics of the Dust (below, p. 204).] 164 SESAME AND LILIES were examinations; but they kept the thoughts of that out of their heads as well as they could, and resolved to enjoy themselves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful garden, and in the garden were all kinds of flowers; sweet, grassy banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and pleasant streams and woods; and rocky places for climbing. And the children were happy for a little while, but presently they separated themselves into parties; and then each party declared it would have a piece of the garden for its own, and that none of the others should have anything to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently which pieces they would have; and at last the boys took up the thing, as boys should do, ―practically,‖1 and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a flower left standing; then they trampled down each other‘s bits of the garden out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no more; and so they all lay down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited for the time when they were to be taken home in the evening.* 118. Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves happy also in their manner. For them, there had been provided every kind of indoor pleasure: there was music for them to dance to; and the library was open, with all manner of amusing books; and there was a museum full of the most curious shells, and animals, and birds; and there was a workshop, with lathes and carpenter‘s tools, for the ingenious boys; and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress in; and there were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes; and whatever toys a child could fancy; and a table, in the dining-room, loaded with everything nice to eat. But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of

• I have sometimes been asked what this means. I int ended it to set forth the

wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth. 1 [See Fors Clavigera, Letter 3, ad fin., for ―what we English call being ‗practical.‘ ‖] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 165 the more ―practical‖ children, that they would like some of the brass-headed nails that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull them out. Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, took a fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the children, nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headed nails. With all that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; and then, everybody wanted some of somebody else‘s. And at last, the really practical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any real consequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed nails; and that the books, and the cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at all in themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged for nailheads. And at last they began to fight for nail-heads, as the others fought for the bits of garden. Only here and there, a despised one shrank away into a corner, and tried to get a little quiet with a book, in the midst of the noise; but all the practical ones thought of nothing else but counting nail-heads all the afternoon—even though they knew they would not be allowed to carry so much as one brass knob away with them. But no—it was—―who has most nails? I have a hundred, and you have fifty; or, I have a thousand, and you have two. I must have as many as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go home in peace.‖ At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and thought to myself, ―What a false dream that is, of children!‖ The child is the father of the man;1 and wiser. Children never do such foolish things. Only men do. 119. But there is yet one last class of persons to be interrogated. The wise religious men we have asked in vain; the wise contemplative men, in vain; the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another group yet. In the midst of this vanity of empty religion—of tragic contemplation—of wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute 1 [See Wordsworth‘s poem beginning:— ―My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky.‖] 166 SESAME AND LILIES for dust, there is yet one great group of persons, by whom all these disputers live—the persons who have determined, or have had it by a beneficent Providence determined for them, that they will do something useful; that whatever may be prepared for them hereafter, or happen to them here, they will, at least, deserve the food that God gives them by winning it honourably: and that, however fallen from the purity, or far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry out the duty of human dominion, though they have lost its felicity; and dress and keep1 the wilderness, though they no more can dress or keep the garden. These,—hewers of wood, and drawers of water,2—these, bent under burdens, or torn of scourges—these, that dig and weave—that plant and build; workers in wood, and in marble, and in iron—by whom all food, clothing, habitation, furniture, and means of delight are produced, for themselves, and for all men beside; men, whose deeds are good, though their words may be few; men, whose lives are serviceable, be they never so short, and worthy of honour, be they never so humble;—from these, surely, at least, we may receive some clear message of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the mystery of life, and of its arts. 120. Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to say, or rather—for that is the deeper truth of the matter—I rejoice to say—this message of theirs can only be received by joining them—not by thinking about them. You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you in coming. But the main thing I have to tell you is,—that art must not be talked about. The fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever speaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of all that 1 [Genesis ii. 15. Compare Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 13).] 2 [Joshua ix. 21.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 167 he could not himself do, and was utterly silent respecting all that he himself did.1 The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it. All words become idle to him—all theories.2 121. Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is essentially done that way—without hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers of the best, there is an inner and involuntary power which approximates literally to the instinct of an animal—nay, I am certain that in the most perfect human artists, reason does not supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as much more divine than that of the lower animals as the human body is more beautiful than theirs; that a great singer sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with more—only more various, applicable, and governable; that a great architect does not build with less instinct than the beaver or the bee, but with more—with an innate cunning of proportion that embraces all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all construction. But be that as it may—be the instinct less or more than that of inferior animals—like or unlike theirs, still the human art is dependent on that first, and then upon an amount of practice, of science,—and of imagination disciplined by thought, which the true possessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the true critic of it, inexplicable, except through long process of laborious years. That journey of life‘s conquest, 1 [Compare Modern Painters, vol. iii., where Ruskin says further that ―nearly every word that Reynolds wrote was contrary to his own practice‖ (Vol. V. p. 46, and see the note there).] 2 [The MS. has an additional passage here:— ―That which is truly within us, of correlative virtue, answers its appeal with an instant gladness; but whatever in us is unworthy of it, cannot be prompted into sympathy with its purposes, nor lifted into fellowship with its power. This mystery of life within us is the root of every act and of every perception—it is only out of our own brightness that we can enjoy; and the sweetness of the lips that speak, and the force of the hands that labour, and the gladness of the eyes that possess, are all out of the abundance of the heart kept with diligence, because out of it are the Issues of Life.‖ For the Bible reference, see Matthew xii. 34, 35.] 168 SESAME AND LILIES in which hills over hills, and Alps on Alps arose,1 and sank,—do you think you can make another trace it painlessly, by talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up an Alp, by talking. You can guide us up it, step by step, no otherwise—even so, best silently. You girls, who have been among the hills, know how the bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is ―Put your foot here‖; and ―Mind how you balance yourself there‖; but the good guide walks on quietly, without a word, only with his eyes on you when need is, and his arm like an iron bar, if need be. 122. In that slow way, also, art can be taught—if you have faith in your guide, and will let his arm be to you as an iron bar when need is. But in what teacher of art have you such faith? Certainly not in me; for, as I told you at first,2 I know well enough it is only because you think I can talk, not because you think I know my business, that you let me speak to you at all. If I were to tell you anything that seemed to you strange you would not believe it, and yet it would only be in telling you strange things that I could be of use to you. I could be of great use to you—infinite use—with brief saying, if you would believe it; but you would not, just because the thing that would be of real use would displease you. You are all wild, for instance, with admiration of Gustave Doré. Well, suppose I were to tell you, in the strongest terms I could use, that Gustave Doré‘s art was bad—bad, not in weakness,—not in failure,—but bad with dreadful power—the power of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting; that so long as you looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful art was possible for you. Suppose I were to tell you that!3 What would be the use? Would you look at Gustave Doré less? Rather, more, I fancy. On the other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with me, if I chose. I know well enough 1 [See Pope: Essay on Criticism, ii. 32.] 2 [Above, § 97, p. 146.] 3 [As Ruskin had done in Time and Tide: see Vol. XVII. pp. 344–346, 357.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 169 what you like, and how to praise it to your better liking. I could talk to you about moonlight, and twilight, and spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael—how motherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo—how majestic! and the Saints of Angelico—how pious! and the Cherubs of Correggio—how delicious! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the harp yet, that you would dance to.1 But neither you nor I should be a bit the better or wiser; or, if we were, our increased wisdom could be of no practical effect.2 For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, differ from the sciences also in this, that their power is founded not merely on facts which can be communicated, but on dispositions which require to be created. Art is neither to be achieved by effort of thinking, 1 [See Matthew xi. 17. The MS. adds here:— ―. . .dance to, and say what a fine lecture it was, and really think yourselves ever so much the wiser for it, and you wouldn‘t be an atom the wiser. No, you would be none the wiser. I should merely have done what popular preachers usually do—appealed with pleasant words to your pleasant faiths, confirmed your existing prejudices right or wrong, and exalted myself in your eyes by approving and enforcing your favourite judgments. But this is not teaching. Remember that all teaching that is true is in a measure startling. Of the best and perfectest knowledge it is said such knowledge is ‗too wonderful for me‘; but in its own measure all knowledge is wonderful. To learn the vivid radical meaning of a familiar word, to get sight of a new feature or harmony in a natural object, to apprehend the bearing of an unknown law—all these things are wonderful; and of any teacher who is really helping you, you ought always to feel, not ‗how right that is; I always thought that‘—no—but ‗how strange that is; I never thought of that.‘ But it follows therefore that all true teaching must be very slow, for you cannot receive many new thoughts or facts at once; and besides this, the arts differ from the sciences essentially in this. . .‖ With this passage, compare § 13; above, p. 63. For the Bible reference, see Job xlii. 3.] 2 [Here among the MSS. is a passage intended for this lecture, but reserved for publication (in a different form) a year later (1869) in The Crown of Wild Olive, § 148 (see below, p. 506):— ―At the first supper I was ever at in Christchurch—it was at the table of a young Irish nobleman, since dead, a man of superb personal beauty and of noble gifts of mind—I helped to carry four of the guests, one of them the son of the head of a college, drunk downstairs. The vices of the poor are always caused by the vices of those above them. They are their superiors in that they can teach them—good or evil as they choose. ―But in the broad average there is virtue and peace with the workers, and moral nobleness with the masters of noble art, and this one word do rightly and you shall know rightly—and that all right doing is the outcome of right life—not possible, but as the issue of that—not to be taught, but to be lived up to: that way only can you solve the mystery of life and its arts.‖] 170 SESAME AND LILIES nor explained by accuracy of speaking. It is the instinctive and necessary result of power, which can only be developed through the mind of successive generations, and which finally burst into life under social conditions as slow of growth as the faculties they regulate. Whole æras of mighty history are summed, and the passions of dead myriads are concentrated, in the existence of a noble art; and if that noble art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice; not caring in the least to hear lectures on it; and since it is not among us, be assured we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to the place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches began to die. 123. And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, partly with reference to matters which are at this time of greater moment than the arts—that if we undertook such recession to the vital germ of national arts that have decayed, we should find a more singular arrest of their power in Ireland than in any other European country?1 For in the eighth century Ireland possessed a school of art in her manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its 1 [In place of §§ 123, 124 there is a long passage in the MS. referring to illustrations which were shown, or intended to be shown, at the lecture. Its publication is now of the more interest because the principal design discussed in it—the ―Astrologia‖—is engraved and further discussed in Ariadne Florentina, Plate III., §§ 128 seq.:— ―Let us take, for instance, the simplest piece of Italian engraving of the fifteenth century—I have put an enlarged facsimile of Baccio Baldini‘s Angel of the Stars, or of star-knowledge—Astrologia—into as clear a view as I can—and consider how much is involved in the execution of that one figure. ―First. The belief in a world of spirits having authority over the various departments of human knowledge. That belief takes its first beautiful and perfect form in the earliest Greek traditions respecting the Muses, and the strength of it modifies all the personifications which mingled in the Christian faith of the great ages of Italy, giving an intellectual severity and abstraction to the idea of all angelic ministration; so that you could not have had this idea of the mingled angel and muse thus expressed, without the prolonged influence of the Greek and Hebrew traditions, both fully believed. ―Secondly. It implies a national life led so as to produce exceeding purity of race and severity of feature—severity rather than perfectness. You could not have had this kind of face presented to the artist‘s eyes—much less deliberately chosen by him as admirable, unless among a singularly refined, thoughtful, delicate race. Nor are the features less severe than the form. Look especially at the thin arm, and the subtle touch with which the fingers rest upon the rod, and consider how much the III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 171 qualities—apparently in all essential qualities of decorative invention—was quite without rival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs in architecture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of pause to which there is no parallel: so that, long ago, in tracing the progress of European schools from infancy to reserve of that touch and the delicate lifting of the little finger, and the slender and nervous arm, in which only the contour is dwelt upon, not the roundness or softness, and the perfectly modest and massive dress mean of national refinement and honour and sanctity. ―Thirdly. The treatment of the whole in bright broad masses with little expression of shade, and yet complete indication of form, could only have been accomplished by an artist accustomed to see figures in the open air and in diffused light, and could not become a national style except where this diffused light was both rejoiced in, as an expression of happy life, and habitually rendered on luminous and large surfaces. It implies much previously practised fresco painting from figures seen in the open air; it could not have been arrived at by artists working in interiors in Northern Europe. ―Again, the entirely decisive lines adopted everywhere signify that the schools of painting were governed by sculpture, and were themselves thoroughly disciplined in drawing; it signifies accurate training of the mind and hand in early youth, and extreme sensitiveness and precision in both. ―And lastly, the entire refusal of all minor ornament in the dress and accessaries—the plumes of the wings kept so simple as to be almost like scale-armour, where an inferior artist would have elaborated the filaments as in birds‘ feathers, the simple brooch confining the patternless dress, and the stars of the crown expressed only as symbols, and with no radiation or effect of light proceeding from them—indicate a temper in the painter, and in the nation for whom he painted, fixed sternly on the abstract qualities and powers of things and on their intellectual meaning; it is pre-eminently the manner of conception indicating the most thoughtful and passionate phase of human mind, not to be diverted from its purpose nor disturbed from its thought by any vulgar pleasure or superficial appearance: it is the conception of a people in the purest intellectual life, in the most rapid progress to consummate art power. ―Now if we go back from this magnificent period at once to an undeveloped state of art conception—if we go back from the fifteenth century to the eleventh, and put beside this angelic muse of astronomy the angelic muse of husbandry, as conceived by an Anglo-Saxon soon after the year 1000—I think you will at once feel that the advance from the earlier to the later work is not one to be accomplished by teaching but only by growth. This second subject is from the Anglo-Saxon books of Moses, and it represents an Angel teaching Agriculture to Adam after his expulsion from Paradise. ―Now I do not show you this as wholly bad work at all; on the contrary, it belongs to a progressive and thoughtful school, as much as the other. But do not you feel at once that the fact of men being pleased with such a representation of an angel as this, indicates that you cannot for the moment teach them better—their notion of sublimity, and grace, and divinity being radically other than yours—and that if in process of time, with the advantage of your five or eight hundred years knowledge, you did 172 SESAME AND LILIES strength, I chose for the students of Kensington, in a lecture since published, two characteristic examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the one case, skill which was progressive—in the other, skill which was at pause. In the one case, it was work receptive of correction—hungry for correction; and in the other, work which inherently rejected correction. I chose for them a corrigible Eve, and teach them better, it would mean, not merely that you had taught them to draw, but that you had taught them more of humanity and more of Deity—that you had raised them from children into men. And now if we go back yet three hundred [years] more, into times of entirely nascent intellectual power, we shall feel, I think, without any farther doubt, the relation of the art-conception to the total character of mind. I hardly know whether you will hold it as flattering to you—or the reverse—that for this example of earliest imagination I must go back to the first condition of the arts in Ireland. That is to say, I do not know whether you will be offended that I take my example of early and barbarous conception not from the Visigoths in Spain, or from the Normans in France, or the Byzantines in Italy, but from the Celts in Ireland; or whether you will be pleased because I am induced to take this example in great measure by my respect for the admirable skill of ornamentation with which Irish work of this early period is always accompanied. But the fact being also that I can obtain no other example which suits my purpose so well—and this which I am going to show you having been prepared, not specially for this lecture, but long ago for one given at Kensington, so that it has been already engraved in The Two Paths—you must acquit me of the impropriety which there otherwise might have been in showing it you. So you see, here we have an angel of the fifteenth century—and here an angel of the eleventh century—and here an angel of the eighth century, and you must not be angry with me because this extremely early angel is also an Irish angel. ―Now I should not have been so deprecatory in my introduction of this Irish ideal to you if I had not a word or two to say against it, more severe than would be due to childishness only. This Celtic drawing has indeed one great fault which neither of the other two have, and belongs therefore not merely to an earlier but also to an inferior school. This Irish angel differs from both the others essentially in one character, and in one only. The Irish angel thinks it is all right, and both the others know that they are in many ways wrong. This great Florentine painter, much as he has done, was yet in every line straining for a beauty which he could not reach, and for thought which he could not convey; this eager Teutonic missal-painter, firmly as he has drawn his childish idea, yet shows in the irregular broken touches of the plumes and the imperfect struggle for shadow in the drapery a perception of forms and colours that he could not render—there is the sense of effort and imperfection in every line. But the Irish missal-painter drew his angel with no sense of failure, in happy complacency, and put the dots into the palms of the hands, and curled the hair, and left the mouth out altogether, with complete satisfaction to himself.‖ The subject from the Anglo-Saxon Book of Moses is depicted in a coloured plate (Fig. 4), illustrating ―Anglo-Saxon Books of Moses,‖ in J. O. Westwood‘s Palæographia Sacra Pictoria, 1843–1845. The subject comes from the Heptateuch of Ælfric in the Cottonian MSS. at the British Museum (Claudius, B. iv. Sæc. xi., No. 39). The ―Irish Angel‖ is Fig. 1 in The Two Paths (Vol. XVI. p. 275).] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 173 an incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to say that the incorrigible Angel was also an Irish Angel!* 124. And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both pieces of art there was an equal falling short of the needs of fact; but the Lombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought himself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, thought firmly insisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for softer lines in the form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not render; there was the strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in every line. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense of failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into the palm of each hand, and rounded the eyes into a perfect circles, and, I regret to say, left the mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction to himself. 125. May I without offence ask you to consider whether this mode of arrest in ancient Irish art may not be indicative of points of character which even yet, in some measure, arrest your national power? I have seen much of Irish character, and have watched it closely, for I have also much loved it. And I think the form of failure to which it is most liable is this,—that being generous-hearted, and wholly intending always to do right, it does not attend to the external laws of right, but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means to do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it out; and then, when the consequences of its wrong come upon it, or upon others connected with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in anywise of its causing or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony of desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which leads it farther astray, until there is nothing that it is not capable of doing with a good conscience. 126. But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or present relations between Ireland and England, you have

• See The Two Paths, §§ 28 et seq. [Vol. XVI. pp. 274 seq.]

174 SESAME AND LILIES been wrong, and we right. Far from that, I believe that in all great questions of principle, and in all details of administration of law, you have been usually right, and we wrong; sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in resolute iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all disputes between states, though the stronger is nearly always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is often so in a minor degree; and I think we sometimes admit the possibility of our being in error, and you never do.1 127. And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts and labours of life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of their lessons—that the more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the work of people who feel themselves wrong;—who are striving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not yet attained, which they feel even farther and farther from attaining the more they strive for it. And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the work of people who know also that they are right. The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks the perfectness of that purpose, and the continued sense of failure arises from the continued opening of the eyes more clearly to all the sacredest laws of truth. 128. This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious one: namely—that whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilled in this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have to do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as much as seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths by which that happiness is pursued there is disappointment, or destruction: for ambition and for passion there is no rest—no fruition; the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater than their past light: and the loftiest and purest love too often does but inflame the cloud of life 1 [Ruskin, it may be mentioned, shared the views of Mill and Gladstone on the Irish Land Question (see Vol. XVII. p. 444 n.). On the misunderstanding of the Irish character by English Governments, see his letter on ―The Irish Question‖ in the Pall Mall Gazette of January 5, 1886 (reprinted in a later volume of this edition).] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 175 with endless fire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of human industry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the labourer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and with the colours of light; and none of these, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found the law of heaven an unkind one—that in the sweat of their face they should eat bread, till they return to the ground;1 nor that they ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faithfully to the command—―Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do—do it with thy might.‖2 129. These are the two great and constant lessons which our labourers teach us of the mystery of life. But there is another, and a sadder one, which they cannot teach us, which we must read on their tombstones. ―Do it with thy might.‖ There have been myriads upon myriads of human creatures who have obeyed this law—who have put every breath and nerve of their being into its toil—who have devoted every hour, and exhausted every faculty—who have bequeathed their unaccomplished thoughts at death—who, being dead, have yet spoken,3 by majesty of memory, and strength of example. And, at last, what has all this ―Might‖ of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labour and sorrow? What has it done? Take the three chief occupations and arts of men, one by one, and count their achievements. Begin with the first—the lord of them all—Agriculture. Six thousand years have passed since we were set to till the ground, from which we were taken.4 How much of it is tilled? How much of that which is, wisely or well? In the very centre and chief garden of Europe—where the two forms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses—where the noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants of the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for 1 [Genesis iii. 19.] 2 [Ecclesiastes ix. 10.] 3 [See Hebrews xi. 4.] 4 [See Genesis iii. 23.] 176 SESAME AND LILIES dateless ages, their faiths and liberties1—there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in devastation; and the marshes, which a few hundred men could redeem with a year‘s labour, still blast their helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism.2 That is so, in the centre of Europe! While, on the near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for famine. And, with all the treasures of the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, could not find a few grains of rice, for a people that asked of us no more; but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them perish of hunger.3 130. Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next head of human arts—Weaving; the art of queens, honoured of all noble Heathen women, in the person of their virgin goddess4—honoured of all Hebrew women, by the word of their wisest king—―She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth girdles to the merchant.‖5 What 1 [For other references to the Catholics of the Forest Cantons as not less noble than the Protestants of the Vaudois valleys, see Ruskin‘s letter in the Scotsman of July 20, 1859; below, p. 537.] 2 [On this subject, see Vol. XVII. pp. 547 seq.] 3 [The reference is to the famine in Orissa in 1866: see also above, Preface of 1871, p. 35, and compare Eagle’s Nest, §§ 35–36. Full particulars may be read in the Papers and Correspondence relative to the Famine in Bengal and Orissa, including the Report of the Famine Commission, presented to Parliament in 1867. It was calculated that one-fourth of the population of Orissa (about 2,500,000) perished. The Secretary of State (Sir Stafford Northcote), in his Despatch to the Government of India (July 25, 1867), says: ―Such a visitation, even if we could console ourselves with the reflection that every available means had been used to avert and mitigate it, must necessarily be felt as a severe misfortune; and I deeply regret that on the present occasion this consolation is denied to me. I am reluctantly brought to the conclusion that, though the melancholy loss of life which the Commissioners report may be due mainly to natural and inevitable causes, there has been a most unfortunate want of foresight and of energy on the part of those who were charged with the administration.‖] 4 [For Athena, as the goddess of weaving, see Queen of the Air, § 119; and on the general subject, see above, p. 40.] 5 [Proverbs xxxi. 19–22, 24, a chapter often quoted by Ruskin: see above, p. 40 n.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 177 have we done in all these thousands of years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian matron? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave? Might not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and every feeble breast fenced with sweet colours from the cold? What have we done? Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some poor covering for our bodies. We set our streams to work for us, and choke the air with fire, to turn our spinning-wheels—and,—are we yet clothed? Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul with sale of cast clouts and rotten rags?1 Is not the beauty of your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, with better honour, nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, and the suckling of the wolf in her den? And does not every winter‘s snow robe what you have not robed, and shroud what you have not shrouded; and every winter‘s wind bear up to heaven its wasted souls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice of their Christ,—―I was naked, and ye clothed me not‖?2 131. Lastly—take the Art of Building—the strongest—proudest—most orderly—most enduring of the arts of man; that of which the produce is in the surest manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be replaced; but if once well done, will stand more strongly than the unbalanced rocks—more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art which is associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with which men record their power—satisfy their enthusiasm—make sure their defence—define and make dear their habitation. And in six thousand years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of all that skill and strength, no vestige is left, but fallen stones, that encumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what is left to 1 [Jeremiah xxxviii. 11; quoted also in Vol. XI. p. 227.] 2 [Matthew xxv. 43.] XVIII. M 178 SESAME AND LILIES us? Constructive and progressive creatures that we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages in vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places where once dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells for each of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners of our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless—―I was a stranger, and ye took me not in.‖1 132. Must it be always thus? Is our life for ever to be without profit—without possession? Shall the strength of its generations be as barren as death; or cast away their labour, as the wild fig-tree casts her untimely figs?2 Is it all a dream then—the desire of the eyes and the pride of life3—or, if it be, might we not live in nobler dream than this? The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, though they have told us nothing about a life to come, have told us much about the life that is now. They have had—they also,—their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have dreamed of mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and good-will; they have dreamed of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; they have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in store; they have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law; of gladness of parents, 1 [Matthew xxv. 43. The MS. has an additional passage here:— ―And what shall I say of the arts of imagery and of sound—the arts given for the retaining of beauty, for the history of action, for the mastery and perfecting of emotion, for which the light was divided into harmonious rays for us, the air into concordant vibrations? What shall I say of the painting that might have kept for us the great dead among the living, and witnessed to the nations of the acts of valour that had saved them, of virtue that had exalted?‖] 2 [See Revelation vi. 13.] 3 [See 1 John ii. 16.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 179 and strength of children, and glory of grey hairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we accomplished with our realities? Is this what has come of our worldly wisdom, tried against their folly? this, our mightiest possible, against their impotent ideal? or, have we only wandered among the spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead of visions of the Almighty; and walked after the imaginations of our evil hearts,1 instead of after the counsels of Eternity, until our lives—not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of hell—have become ―as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away‖?2 133. Does it vanish then? Are you sure of that?—sure, that the nothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troubled nothingness; and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change into the smoke of the torment that ascends for ever?3 Will any answer that they are sure of it, and that there is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go?4 Be it so: will you not, then, make as sure of the Life that now is, as you are of the Death that is to come?5 Your hearts are wholly in this world—will you not give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly? And see, first of all, that you have hearts, and sound hearts, too, to give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that any reason that you should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite earth, which is firmly and instantly given you in possession? Although your days are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary that you should share the degradation of the brute, because you are condemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of the worm, because you 1 [Jeremiah xi. 8.] 2 [See above, § 9 (p. 61 n.).] 3 [Psalms xxxix. 7 (Prayer-book Version); Revelation xiv. 11.] 4 [See Ecclesiastes ix. 10.] 5 [Ruskin develops this appeal in the Introduction to The Crown of Wild Olive (below, pp. 396 seq.). See also the Introduction to this volume; above, p. lxxvii.] 180 SESAME AND LILIES are to companion them in the dust? Not so; we may have but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only—perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye;1 still we are men, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. ―He maketh the winds His messengers; the momentary fire, His minister;‖2 and shall we do less than these? Let us do the work of men while we bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our narrow portion of time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion out of Immortality—even though our lives be as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 134. But there are some of you who believe not this—who think this cloud of life has no such close—that it is to float, revealed and illumined, upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him.3 Some day, you believe, within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and the books opened.4 If that be true, far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of judgment? Why, for us every day is a day of judgment—every day is a Dies Iræ, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are opened? It waits at the doors of your houses—it waits at the corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment—the insects that we crush are our judges—the moments we fret away are our judges—the elements that feed us, judge, as they minister—and the pleasures that deceive us, judge, as they indulge. Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the form of them, if indeed those lives are Not as a vapour, and do Not vanish away. 1 [1 Corinthians xv. 52.] 2 [Psalms civ. 42 (Prayer-book Version).] 3 [Revelation i. 7.] 4 [Daniel vii. 10.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 181 135. ―The work of men‖—and what is that?1 Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias,2 and it is a mortal one—we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of it—as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be—crucified upon. ―They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts.‖ Does that mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity—none of us will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to any wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their footmen‘s coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kindreds—yes, and life, if need be? Life!—some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as we have made it. But ―station in Life‖—how many of us are ready to quit that? Is it not always the great objection, where there is question of finding something useful to do—―We cannot leave our stations in Life‖?3 Those of us who really cannot—that is to say, who can only maintain themselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, have already something to do; and all that they have to see to is, that they do it honestly and with all their might. But with most people who use that apology, ―remaining in the station of life to which Providence has called them‖ means keeping all the carriages, and all the footmen and large houses they can possibly pay for; and, once for all, I say that if ever Providence did put them into stations of that sort—which is not at all a matter of certainty—Providence is just now 1 [For §§ 135 seq., see above, Preface of 1871, p. 34.] 2 [Acts v. 1, 2. The other Biblical references in § 135 are to Matthew x. 38; Galatians v. 24; Matthew xix. 29; Mark ii. 14; Matthew iv. 18; and Acts ix. 1.] 3 [On this point see above, § 2 (p. 54), and the note there.] 182 SESAME AND LILIES very distinctly calling them out again. Levi‘s station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter‘s, the shore of Galilee; and Paul‘s, the antechambers of the High Priest,—which ―station in life‖ each had to leave, with brief notice. And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of us who mean to fulfil our duty ought first to live on as little as we can; and, secondly, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to spend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. And sure good is, first in feeding people, then in dressing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought. 136. I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let yourselves be deceived by any of the common talk of ―indiscriminate charity.‖1 The order to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to feed the hungry.2 It is quite true, infallibly true, that if any man will not work, neither should he eat3—think of that, and every time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask a blessing, ―How much work have I done to-day for my dinner?‖ But the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people to starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your vagabond; and shut your vagabond up out of honest people‘s way, and very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does not eat. But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to give; and, therefore, to enforce the organization of vast activities in agriculture 1 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 93, where Ruskin stigmatises the talk about not giving alms as a ―pestilential lie‖; and for his own practice in the matter, Queen of the Air, § 132; and Fors Clavigera, Letter 4, where he says that he does not dare to give anybody a penny, until he is sure that no clergyman is in sight. See also the Introduction; above, p. xlviii.] 2 [See Isaiah lviii. 6, 7.] 3 [2 Thessalonians iii. 10. Compare A Joy for Ever, § 145 (Vol. XVI. p. 130), and Vol. XVII. p. 538.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 183 and in commerce, for the production of the wholesomest food, and proper storing and distribution of it, so that no famine shall any more be possible among civilized beings. There is plenty of work in this business alone, and at once, for any number of people who like to engage in it. 137. Secondly, dressing people—that is to say, urging every one within reach of your influence to be always neat and clean, and giving them means of being so. In so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give up the effort with respect to them, only taking care that no children within your sphere of influence shall any more be brought up with such habits; and that every person who is willing to dress with propriety shall have encouragement to do so. And the first absolutely necessary step towards this is the gradual adoption of a consistent dress for different ranks of persons, so that their rank shall be known by their dress; and the restriction of the changes of fashion within certain limits. All which appears for the present quite impossible; but it is only so far even difficult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear what we are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, that these mean and shallow vices are unconquerable by Christian women. 138. And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may think should have been put first, but I put it third, because we must feed and clothe people where we find them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing lodgment for them means a great deal of vigorous legislature, and cutting down of vested interests that stand in the way, and after that, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough sanitary and remedial action in the houses that we have; and then the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept in proportion to their streams, and walled round, so that there may be no festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street within, and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden and orchard round the walls, so that 184 SESAME AND LILIES from any part of the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and sight of far horizon, might be reachable in a few minutes‘ walk. This the final aim; but in immediate action every minor and possible good to be instantly done, when, and as, we can; roofs mended that have holes in them—fences patched that have gaps in them—walls buttressed that totter—and floors propped that shake; cleanliness and order enforced with our own hands and eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the fine arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn‘t washed their stairs since they first went up them;1 and I never made a better sketch than that afternoon. 139. These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life;2 and the law for every Christian man and woman is, that they shall be in direct service towards one of these three needs, as far as is consistent with their own special occupation, and if they have no special business, then wholly in one of these services. And out of such exertion in plain duty all other good will come; for in this direct contention with material evil, you will find out the real nature of all evil; you will discern by the various kinds of resistance, what is really the fault and main antagonism to good; also you will find the most unexpected helps and profound lessons given, and truths will come thus down to us which the speculation of all our lives would never have raised us up to. You will find nearly every educational problem solved, as soon as you truly want to do something; everybody will become of use in their own fittest way, and will learn what is best for them to know in that use. Competitive examination will then, and not till then, be wholesome, because it will be daily, and calm, and in practice; and on these familiar arts, and minute, but certain and serviceable knowledges, will be surely edified 1 [At Samoens: see Præterita, ii. ch. xi. § 203.] 2 [With this passage (§§ 135–138) compare Munera Pulveris, §§ 155 seq. (Vol. XVII. pp. 278 seq.).] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 185 and sustained the greater arts and splendid theoretical sciences.1 140. But much more than this. On such holy and simple practice will be founded, indeed, at last, an infallible religion. The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational, effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, observe! for there is just one law, which, obeyed, keeps all religions pure—forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil‘s power. That is the essence of the Pharisee‘s thanksgiving—―Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are.‖2 At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ from other people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment we find we can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good, (and who but fools couldn‘t?) then do it; push at it together: you can‘t quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best men stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for piety, and it‘s all over. I will not speak of the crimes which in past times have been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies which are at this hour held to be consistent with obedience to Him; but I will speak of the morbid corruption and waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by 1 [The MS. has an additional passage here:— ―The art of agriculture, rightly followed, employs and educates at once people of every age and sex—educates body and mind—and embraces in the full scope of it the knowledge of every natural object and law. The art of dress, rightly followed, leads to the understanding of every grace and propriety of domestic life and of daily humane intercourse, and, through these, to the brightest perceptions of beauty and pleasures in a pure and healthful gaiety. The art of architecture, rightly followed, involves the knowledge of the most subtle mathematical laws and harmonies of proportion, the sternest training in endurance and in contention with the elements (read Miss Ingelow‘s ballad of Winstanley), and lastly, in due order and appliance, all the other inventive and creative arts.‖ The subject of Miss Ingelow‘s ballad is Henry Winstanley (1644–1703), who lost his life in the storm which destroyed the Eddystone lighthouse which he had built.] 2 [Luke xviii. 11, 12.] 186 SESAME AND LILIES which the pure strength of that which should be the guiding soul of every nation, the splendour of its youthful manhood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted or cast away.1 You may see continually girls who have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life has been passed either in play or in pride; you will find girls like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through the irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the meaning of the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of common serviceable life would have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin verses, and called them educated; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can they sow, can they plant at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Is it the effort of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay, with many, and the strength of England is in them, and the hope; but we have to turn their courage from the toil of war to the toil of mercy; and their intellect from dispute of words to discernment of things; and 1 [The waste of feeling and energy among women upon religious sentimentality is a constant theme with Ruskin: see, for instance, Lectures on Art, § 57, and in this volume the Preface of 1871, above, p. 44.] III. MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 187 their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to the state and fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, for them and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible religion; shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by temptation, no more to be defended by wrath and by fear;—shall abide with us Hope, no more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or made ashamed by the shadows that betray:—shall abide for us, and with us, the greatest of these; the abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. For the greatest of these is Charity.1 1 [1 Corinthians xiii. 13.] II THE ETHICS OF THE DUST (1866) THE ETHICS OF THE DUST TEN LECTURES TO L I T T L E H O U S E W I V E S ON THE ELEMENTS OF CRYSTALLISATION BY JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 65 CORNHILL 1866 The right of translation is reserved [Bibliographical Note.—The editions of The Ethics of the Dust are as follow:— First Edition (1866).—The title-page is as shown here (p. 191). Crown 8vo, pp. xii. +244. Dedication (here p. 197), p. v.; Preface (here p. 201), pp. vii.-ix.; Contents (here p. 199), p. xi.; List of ―Personæ‖ (here p. 207), p. 1; Text of the Lectures, pp. 3–232 (each lecture, with the exception of the first, being preceded by a fly-title); Fly-title to Notes, p. 233; Notes, pp. 235–244. Imprint (at the foot of the last page and in centre of the reverse of the half-title): ―London: Printed by Spottiswoode & Co., New Street Square.‖ Some copies, however, were printed by the publishers; in these, the reverse of the half-title is blank, and the imprint at the foot of the last page reads: ―London: Printed by Smith, Elder & Co., Old Bailey, E.C.‖ Each page is headed with the title of the lecture occupying it; pages 235–244 being headed ―Notes.‖ Issued in December 1865 (though dated 1866) in brown cloth boards; lettered across the back: ―Ethics | of the | Dust | By | John | Ruskin. |. London | Smith Elder & Co.‖; and on the front cover: ―Ethics of the Dust.‖ Price 5s. Second Edition (1877).—This edition contains a new Preface (here p. 203), and a note added to the last page (here p. 368); otherwise the text of the book is unaltered, and it was reprinted almost page for page1 from the First Edition. The title-page reads:— The Ethics of the Dust. | Ten Lectures | to | Little Housewives | on | The Elements of Crystallisation | By | John Ruskin, LL.D., | Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Slade Professor of Fine Art. | Second Edition. | George Allen | Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. | 1877. | The right of translation is reserved. Crown 8vo, pp. xx.+244. Imprint (at foot of the reverse of the half-title): ―Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney, London and Aylesbury.‖ Issued on November 20, 1877, in cream-coloured paper boards, cut flush with the leaves; lettered up the back: ―Ethics of the Dust‖; and on the front cover (enclosed in a plain ruled frame): ―The Ethics of the Dust | Ten Lectures | to | Little Housewives | on the Elements of Crystallisation | Ruskin.‖ Price 5s. 2000 copies. Third Edition (1883).—The text of this edition follows that of its predecessor, but a misprint in § 106 was corrected (see under ―Variæ Lectiones,‖ below). A few other minor alterations were made by Ruskin. Thus in § 43 1 The exceptions are few and unimportant. Sometimes a word is carried over from one page to another (e.g., the word ―not‖ on p. 11 in ed. 2 was on p. 10 in ed. 1); sometimes a line is carried over (e.g., pp. 214; 220; 226). 193 XVIII. N 194 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST (line 6 here) he italicised ―ugly‖; in § 74 (line 15) he altered ―Well. I‘m telling . . .‖ to ―Am not I telling . . .‖; and (line 19) ―Isn‘t he cross?‖ to ―Cross?‖ The title-page reads:— The Ethics of the Dust. | Ten Lectures | to | Little Housewives | on | The Elements of Crystallisation. | By | John Ruskin, LL. D., | Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Slade Professor of Fine Art. | Third Edition. | George Allen, | Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. | 1883. | The right of translation is reserved. Crown 8vo, pp. xx.+244. Again a page for page reprint, so far as the body of the book is concerned; but the collation differs, inasmuch as a fly-title was provided for the first lecture; the preliminary matter, being re-set, occupies only eighteen pages, and the list of ―Personæ‖ was numbered xix.-xx., instead of 1–2 as in previous editions. This arrangement was preserved in subsequent issues. Issued in January 1883, in plain cloth of a claret colour, with whitepaper back-label which reads: ―Ruskin. | Ethics | of | the Dust.‖ Subsequently issued both in chocolate-coloured and in dark green cloth boards, lettered across the back: ―Ruskin | Ethics | of | the Dust.‖ Price 5s. 2000 copies. Fourth Edition (1886).—This is a page for page reprint of the Third, except that the text of the sixth lecture is overrun on to page 126. The only differences in the title-page are (1) in the number of the edition and the date; and (2) the author‘s description is ―Honorary Student of Christ Church, | and Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.‖ Issued in chocolate and dark green cloth boards as before. Price 5s. 2000 copies. Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Editions (1888, 1890, 1892).—These were again page for page reprints with the date and number of the edition altered on the title-page. Price and binding as before. Each edition consisted of 2000 copies. Issued severally, in June 1888, November 1890, and June 1892. The publisher‘s imprint in the 6th and 7th editions contained the address ―8 Bell Yard, Temple Bar.‖ Eighth Edition (1894).—In this edition the paragraphs were for the first time numbered, and an Index (by Mr. A. Wedderburn) was added (pp. 245–269). The word ―Dedication‖ was now omitted, and the date to it was differently printed. The publisher‘s imprint was: ―London | George Allen, 156, Charing Cross Road | 1894‖; and the book was printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. (imprint on the reverse of the title-page and at the foot of p. 269). Otherwise a reprint of previous issues. 2000 copies. Ninth and Tenth Editions (1896, 1898). Reprints of the Eighth, with alteration of date and number of edition only. Each edition consisted of 2000 copies. Issued respectively in July 1896 and July 1898. Twenty-first to Twenty-fourth Thousand (1900–1903).—These were again reprints, now called Thousands; issued severally in June 1900, July 1901, July 1902, and June 1903. The issue of June 1903 is still current; the price was reduced in January 1904 to 3s. 6d. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 195 Pocket Edition (1904).—This was uniform with other volumes in the form already described (Vol. XV. p. 6). The title-page reads:— The Ethics of | the Dust | By | John Ruskin | London: George Allen. Issued in May 1904 (3000 copies). Re-issued in August 1904 (2000), completing the Twenty-ninth Thousand, and in March 1905 (2000), completing the Thirty-first Thousand. Unauthorised American editions have been numerous, in various forms and at various prices from 50 cents upwards. An authorised American (―Brantwood‖) Edition was published at New York in 1891, by Charles Merrill & Co., with an introduction by Charles Eliot Norton, pp. viii.-xii. Reviews appeared in the Saturday Review, December 30, 1865 (―whimsical, incongruous, and silly beyond all measure‖); the Guardian, February 21, 1866 (―Mr. Ruskin appears to unusual advantage; playful, allegorical, and dramatic as well as instructive‖); the Spectator, January 20, 1866; the Christian World Magazine, February 1866, vol. i. pp. 112–116 (?) (an article on ―Mr. Ruskin‘s Lectures to Little Housewives,‖ by Peter Bayne); and Meliora, July 1866, vol. 9, pp. 97–107. ______________________ Variæ Lectiones.—As already stated there were no intentional variations in the text (other than those already described); but there are a few errors, etc., to be noted:— To the list of Contents, the Prefaces and list of Personæ are here added. § 18, line 15, ―lake‖ (eds. 1 and 2) is misprinted ―like‖ in the ―Pocket‖ and preceding editions. § 62, last line but one, ―Airolo‖ (eds. 1 and 2) is misprinted ―Airola‖ in the ―Pocket‖ and preceding editions. § 68, last line but one, ―is‖ (eds. 1 and 2) is misprinted ―its‖ in the ―Pocket‖ and preceding editions. § 71, third line from end, ―delaying‖ in all previous editions is here corrected to ―decaying‖ § 92, third line from end, ―anything‖ (eds. 1 and 2) is misprinted ―thing‖ in the ―Pocket‖ and preceding editions. § 96, lines 19, 20, ―Ceylonese‖ is here substituted for ―Ceylanese.‖ § 106, line 19, in the quotation from Molière, ―pare‖ was misprinted ―parle‖ in eds. 1 and 2. Note iii. (p. 364, line 19), ―Leontini‖ has in all previous editions been misprinted ―Leontium.‖] DEDICATION __________ TO THE REAL LITTLE HOUSEWIVES WHOSE GENTLE LISTENING AND THOUGHTFUL QUESTIONING ENABLED THE WRITER TO WRITE THIS BOOK IT IS DEDICATED WITH HIS LOVE ________ CHRISTMAS, 1865 C ON T E N T S PAGE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1865 201 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 1877 203 PERSONÆ 207 LECTURE I. THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS 209 II. THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 221 III. THE CRYSTAL LIFE 233 IV. THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 246 V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 260 VI. CRYSTAL QUARRELS 277 VII. HOME VIRTUES 292 VIII. CRYSTAL CAPRICE 311 IX. CRYSTAL SORROWS 325 X. THE CRYSTAL REST 340 NOTES P R E F A C E T O T H E F I R S T E D I T I O N [1865] 1. THE following Lectures were really given, in substance, at a girls‘ school (far in the country); which, in the course of various experiments on the possibility of introducing some better practice of drawing into the modern scheme of female education, I visited frequently enough to enable the children to regard me as a friend.1 The Lectures always fell more or less into the form of fragmentary answers to questions; and they are allowed to retain that form, as, on the whole, likely to be more interesting than the symmetries of a continuous treatise. Many children (for the school was large) took part, at different times, in the conversations; but I have endeavoured, without confusedly multiplying the number of imaginary* speakers, to represent, as far as I could, the general tone of comment and inquiry among young people. 2. It will be at once seen that these Lectures were not intended for an introduction to mineralogy. Their purpose was merely to awaken in the minds of young girls, who were ready to work earnestly and systematically, a vital interest in the subject of their study. No science can be

• I do not mean, in saying ―imaginary,‖ that I have not permitted to myself, in

several instances, the affectionate discourtesy of some reminiscence of personal character; for which I must hope to be forgiven by my old pupils and their friends, as I could not otherwise have written the book at all. But only two sentences in all the dialogues, and the anecdote of ―Dotty,‖ 2 are literally ―historical.‖ 1 [See above, Introduction, pp. lxiii.-lxxiii.] 2 [See below, § 116, p. 353.] 201 202 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST learned in play; but it is often possible, in play, to bring good fruit out of past labour, or show sufficient reasons for the labour of the future. The narrowness of this aim does not, indeed, justify the absence of all reference to many important principles of structure, and many of the most interesting orders of minerals; but I felt it impossible to go far into detail without illustrations; and if readers find this book useful, I may, perhaps, endeavour to supplement it by illustrated notes of the more interesting phenomena in separate groups of familiar minerals;1—flints of the chalk, agates of the basalts; and the fantastic and exquisitely beautiful varieties of the vein-ores of the two commonest metals, lead and iron. But I have always found that the less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of our realising them; and this poor little book will sufficiently have done its work, for the present, if it engages any of its young readers in study which may enable them to despise it for its shortcomings. DENMARK HILL, Christmas 1865. 1 [Not done; except that Ruskin made selections of minerals for various schools, and in some instances wrote brief notes to accompany them—see a later volume of this edition.] P R E F A C E T O T H E S E C O N D E D I T I O N [1877] 1. I HAVE seldom been more disappointed by the result of my best pains given to any books, than by the earnest request of my late publishers, after the opinion of the public had been taken on the Ethics of the Dust, that I would ―write no more in dialogue!‖ However, I bowed to public judgment in this matter at once, (knowing also my inventive powers to be of the feeblest); but in reprinting the book, (at the prevailing request of my kind friend, Mr. Henry Willett,1 ) I would pray the readers whom it may at first offend by its disconnected method, to examine, nevertheless, with care, the passages in which the principal speaker sums the conclusions of any dialogue: for these summaries were written as introductions, for young people, to all that I have said on the same matters in my larger books; and on re-reading them, they satisfy me better, and seem to me calculated to be more generally useful, than anything else I have done of the kind. The summary of the contents of the old book, beginning, ―You may at least earnestly believe,‖ at p. 346, is thus the clearest exposition I have ever yet given of the general conditions under which the Personal Creative Power manifests itself in the forms of matter; and the analysis of heathen conceptions of Deity, beginning at p. 347, and closing at p. 356, not only prefaces, but very nearly supersedes, all that in more lengthy terms I have 1 [See Vol. XVI. p. 255 n. Since that note was written Mr. Willett has died: in 1905 at the age of 82.] 203 204 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST since asserted, or pleaded for, in Aratra Pentelici and the Queen of the Air. 2. And thus, however the book may fail in its intention of suggesting new occupations or interests to its younger readers, I think it worth reprinting, in the way I have also reprinted Unto this Last,—page for page; that the students of my more advanced works may be able to refer to these as the original documents of them; of which the most essential in this book are these following. I. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious functions of the Lower Pthah, p. 242, with his beetle-gospel, p. 245, ―that a nation can stand on its vices better than on its virtues,‖ explains the main motive of all my books on Political Economy. II. The examination of the connection between stupidity and crime, pp. 261–267, anticipated all that I have had to urge in Fors Clavigera1 against the commonly alleged excuse for public wickedness,—―They don‘t mean it—they don‘t know any better.‖ III. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, pp. 301, 302, is a summary of what is afterwards developed with utmost care in my inaugural lecture at Oxford on the relation of Art to Morals; compare in that lecture, §§ 83–85, with the sentence in p. 302 of this book,2—―Nothing is ever done so as really to please our Father, unless we would also have done it, though we had had no Father to know of it.‖ This sentence, however, it must be observed, regards only the general conditions of action in the children of God, in consequence of which it is foretold of them by Christ that they will say at the Judgment, ―When saw we Thee?‖3 It does not refer to the distinct cases in which virtue consists in faith given to command, appearing 1 [See, for instance, the beginning of Letter 54; and compare Letters 48 (―Thoughtlessness—only thoughtlessness‖), and 63 (―sin through pure ignorance‖).] 2 [Compare also the preface of 1883 to vol. ii. of Modern Painters (Vol. IV. p. 6 n.).] 3 [Matthew xxv. 37.] PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 205 to foolish human judgment inconsistent with the Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of Isaac; nor to those in which any directly-given command requires nothing more of virtue than obedience. IV. The subsequent pages, 303–310, were written especially to check the dangerous impulses natural to the minds of many amiable young women, in the direction of narrow and selfish religious sentiment: and they contain, therefore, nearly everything which I believe it necessary that young people should be made to observe, respecting the errors of monastic life. But they in nowise enter on the reverse, or favourable side; of which indeed I did not, and as yet do not, feel myself able to speak with any decisiveness; the evidence on that side, as stated in the text, having ―never yet been dispassionately examined.‖ V. The dialogue with Lucilla, beginning at p. 267, is, to my own fancy, the best bit of conversation in the book; and the issue of it, at p. 273, the most practically and immediately useful. For on the idea of the inevitable weakness and corruption of human nature, has logically followed, in our daily life, the horrible creed of modern ―Social science,‖ that all social action must be scientifically founded on vicious impulses.1 But on the habit of measuring and reverencing our powers and talents that we may kindly use them, will be founded a true Social science, developing, by the employment of them, all the real powers and honourable feelings of the race. VI. Finally, the account given in the second and third lectures, of the real nature and marvellousness of the laws of crystallization, is necessary to the understanding of what farther teaching of the beauty of inorganic form I may be able to give, either in Deucalion, or in my Elements of Drawing. 2 I wish however that the second lecture had 1 [Ruskin was for some years an active member of the Social Science Association (see Vol. XVII. pp. 536 seq.), but he had resigned his membership a few years before the date of this Preface.] 2 [That is, in the work upon which he was then engaged as a substitute for The Elements of Drawing, and which eventually he called The Laws of Fésole.] 206 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST been made the beginning of the book; and would fain now cancel the first altogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and dull. It was meant for a metaphorical description of the pleasures and dangers in the kingdom of Mammon, or of worldly wealth; its waters mixed with blood, its fruits entangled in thickets of trouble, and poisonous when gathered; and the final captivity of its inhabitants within frozen walls of cruelty and disdain. But the imagery is stupid and ineffective throughout; and I retain this chapter only because I am resolved to leave no room for any one to say that I have withdrawn, as erroneous in principle, so much as a single sentence of any of my books written since 1860. 3. One licence taken in this book, however, though often permitted to essay-writers for the relief of their dulness, I never mean to take more, 1—the relation of composed metaphor as of actual dream, pp. 221 and 318. I assumed, it is true, that in these places the supposed dream would be easily seen to be an invention; but must not any more, even under so transparent disguise, pretend to any share in the real powers of Vision possessed by great poets and true painters.2 BRANTWOOD, 10th October, 1877. 1 [Compare Ruskin‘s use of this form in Sesame and Lilies, §§ 117 seq. (above, pp. 163 seq.).] 2 [On the inevitableness of true vision, see Vol. V. p. 116 n.] PERSONÆ OLD LECTURER (of incalculable age) FLORRIE, on astronomical evidence presumed to be aged 9 ISABEL ― ‖ ‖ 11 MAY ― ‖ ‖ 11 LILY ― ‖ ‖ 12 KATHLEEN ― ‖ ‖ 4 LUCILLA ― ‖ ‖ 15 VIOLET ― ‖ ‖ 16 DORA (who has the keys and is housekeeper) ― ‖ ‖ 17 EGYPT (so called from her dark eyes) ― ‖ ‖ 17 SIBYL (so called because she knows Latin) ― ‖ ‖ 18 JESSIE (who somehow always makes the room look brighter when she is in it) ― ‖ ‖ 18 MARY (of whom everybody, including the old Lecturer, is in great awe) ― ‖ ‖ 20 207 LECTURE I THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS1 A very idle talk, by the dining-room fire, after raisin-and-almond-time. OLD LECTURER; FLORRIE, ISABEL, MAY, LILY, and SIBYL. 1. OLD LECTURER (L.). Come here, Isabel, and tell me what the make-believe was, this afternoon. ISABEL (arranging herself very primly on the footstool). Such a dreadful one! Florrie and I were lost in the Valley of Diamonds. L. What! Sindbad‘s, which nobody could get out of?2 ISABEL. Yes; but Florrie and I got out of it. L. So I see. At least, I see you did; but are you sure Florrie did? ISABEL. Quite sure. FLORRIE (putting her head round from behind L.‘s sofa-cushion). Quite sure. (Disappears again.) L. I think I could be made to feel surer about it. (FLORRIE reappears, gives L. a kiss, and again exit.) L. I suppose it‘s all right; but how did you manage it? ISABEL. Well, you know, the eagle that took up Sindbad was very large—very, very large—the largest of all the eagles. L. How large were the others? ISABEL. I don‘t quite know—they were so far off. But this one was, oh, so big! and it had great wings, as 1 [For the meaning of this first lecture, see the Preface (above, p. 206) and Note vi. (below, pp. 366–368).] 2 [See ―The Second Voyage of Es-Sindibád of the Sea,‖ in Lane‘s Arabian Nights, 1889, vol. iii. pp. 17 seq.] 209 XVIII. O 210 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST wide as—twice over the ceiling. So, when it was picking up Sindbad, Florrie and I thought it wouldn‘t know if we got on its back too: so I got up first, and then I pulled up Florrie, and we put our arms round its neck and away it flew. L. But why did you want to get out of the valley? and why haven‘t you brought me some diamonds? ISABEL. It was because of the serpents. I couldn‘t pick up even the least little bit of a diamond, I was so frightened. L. You should not have minded the serpents. ISABEL. Oh, but suppose they had minded me? L. We all of us mind you a little too much, Isabel, I‘m afraid. ISABEL. No—no—no, indeed. 2. L. I tell you what, Isabel—I don‘t believe either Sindbad, or Florrie, or you, ever were in the Valley of Diamonds. ISABEL. You naughty! when I tell you we were! L. Because you say you were frightened at the serpents. ISABEL. And wouldn‘t you have been? L. Not at those serpents. Nobody who really goes into the valley is ever frightened at them—they are so beautiful. ISABEL. (suddenly serious). But there‘s no real Valley of Diamonds, is there? L. Yes, Isabel; very real indeed. FLORRIE (reappearing). Oh, where? Tell me about it. L. I cannot tell you a great deal about it; only I know it is very different from Sindbad‘s. In his valley, there was only a diamond lying here and there; but, in the real valley, there are diamonds covering the grass in showers every morning, instead of dew: and there are clusters of trees, which look like lilac trees; but, in spring, all their blossoms are of amethyst. FLORRIE. But there can‘t be any serpents there, then? L. Why not? I. THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS 211 FLORRIE. Because they don‘t come into such beautiful places. L. I never said it was a beautiful place. FLORRIE. What! not with diamonds strewed about it like dew? L. That‘s according to your fancy, Florrie. For myself, I like dew better. ISABEL. Oh, but the dew won‘t stay; it all dries! L. Yes; and it would be much nicer if the diamonds dried too, for the people in the valley have to sweep them off the grass, in heaps, whenever they want to walk on it; and then the heaps glitter so, they hurt one‘s eyes. 3. FLORRIE. Now you‘re just playing, you know. L. So are you, you know. FLORRIE. Yes, but you mustn‘t play. L. That‘s very hard, Florrie; why mustn‘t I, if you may? FLORRIE. Oh, I may, because I‘m little, but you mustn‘t, because you‘re—(hesitates for a delicate expression of magnitude). L. (rudely taking the first that comes). Because I‘m big? No; that‘s not the way of it at all, Florrie. Because you‘re little, you should have very little play; and because I‘m big, I should have a great deal. ISABEL and FLORRIE (both). No—no—no—no. That isn‘t it at all. (ISABEL, sola, quoting Miss Ingelow.) ―The lambs play always—they know no better.‖1 (Putting her head very much on one side). Ah, now—please—please—tell us true; we want to know. L. But why do you want me to tell you true, any more than the man who wrote the Arabian Nights? ISABEL. Because—because we like to know about real things; and you can tell us, and we can‘t ask the man who wrote the stories. L. What do you call real things? ISABEL. Now, you know! Things that really are. 1 [Line 7 of Songs of Seven: quoted also in Fors Clavigera, Letter 82.] 212 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST L. Whether you can see them or not? ISABEL.. Yes, if somebody else saw them. L. But if nobody has ever seen them? 4. ISABEL (evading the point). Well, but, you know, if there were a real Valley of Diamonds, somebody must have seen it. L. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. Many people go to real places, and never see them; and many people pass through this valley, and never see it. FLORRIE. What stupid people they must be! L. No, Florrie. They are much wiser than the people who do see it. MAY. I think I know where it is. ISABEL. Tell us more about it, and then we‘ll guess. L. Well—there‘s a great broad road, by a river-side, leading up into it. MAY (gravely cunning, with emphasis on the last word). Does the road really go up? L. You think it should go down into a valley? No, it goes up; this is a valley among the hills, and it is as high as the clouds, and is often full of them; so that even the people who most want to see it, cannot, always. ISABEL. And what is the river beside the road like? L. It ought to be very beautiful, because it flows over diamond sand—only the water is thick and red. ISABEL. Red water? L. It isn‘t all water. MAY. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, just now; I want to hear about the valley. 5. L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock; only such numbers of people are always trying to get in, that they keep jostling each other, and manage it but slowly. Some weak ones are pushed back, and never get in at all; and make great moaning as they go away: but perhaps they are none the worse in the end. MAY. And when one gets in, what is it like? L. It is up and down, broken kind of ground: the road I. THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS 213 stops directly; and there are great dark rocks, covered all over with wild gourds and wild vines; the gourds, if you cut them, are red, with black seeds, like water-melons, and look ever so nice; and the people of the place make a red pottage of them: but you must take care not to eat any if you ever want to leave the valley, (though I believe putting plenty of meal in it makes it wholesome1 ). Then the wild vines have clusters of the colour of amber; and the people of the country say they are the grape of Eshcol;2 and sweeter than honey: but indeed, if anybody else tastes them, they are like gall. Then there are thickets of bramble, so thorny that they would be cut away directly, anywhere else; but here they are covered with little cinque-foiled blossoms of pure silver; and, for berries, they have clusters of rubies. Dark rubies, which you only see are red after gathering them. But you may fancy what blackberry parties the children have! Only they get their frocks and hands sadly torn. LILY. But rubies can‘t spot one‘s frocks, as black-berries do? 6. L. No; but I‘ll tell you what spots them—the mulberries.3 There are great forests of them, all up the hills, covered with silkworms, some munching the leaves so loud that it is like mills at work; and some spinning. But the berries are the blackest you ever saw; and, wherever they fall, they stain a deep red; and nothing ever washes it out again. And it is their juice, soaking through the grass, which makes the river so red, because all its springs are in this wood. And the boughs of the trees are twisted, as if in pain, like old olive branches; and their leaves are dark. And it is in these forests that the serpents are; but nobody 1 [The reference here is to Elisha (2 Kings iv. 40, 41): ―O thou man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof. But he said, Then bring meal. And he cast it into the pot; and he said, Pour out for the people, that they may eat. And there was no harm in the pot.‖ See Ruskin‘s explanation in Note vi. (below, p. 366).] 2 [See Numbers xiii. 23.] 3 [For the meaning of the mulberries and the worms, see again Note vi. (below, p. 367).] 214 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST is afraid of them. They have fine crimson crests,1 and they are wreathed about the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly; and they are singing serpents, for the serpents are, in this forest, what birds are in ours. FLORRIE. Oh, I don‘t want to go there at all, now. L. You would like it very much indeed, Florrie, if you were there. The serpents would not bite you; the only fear would be of your turning into one! FLORRIE. Oh, dear, but that‘s worse. L. You wouldn‘t think so if you really were turned into one, Florrie; you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time, and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with throats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can sing chords—it is very fine indeed. And the fireflies fly round the edge of the forests all the night long; you wade in fireflies, they make the fields look like a lake trembling with reflection of stars; but you must take care not to touch them, for they are not like Italian fireflies, but burn, like real sparks.2 FLORRIE. I don‘t like it at all; I‘ll never go there. 7. L. I hope not, Florrie; or at least that you will get out again if you do. And it is very difficult to get out, for beyond these serpent forests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which form a labyrinth, winding always higher and higher, till the gold is all split asunder by wedges of ice; and glaciers, welded, half of ice seven times frozen, and half of gold seven times frozen, hang down from them, and fall in thunder, cleaving into deadly splinters, like the Cretan arrowheads;3 and into a mixed dust of snow and 1 [The serpents are the souls of those who have lived wantonly in their riches, and their crimson crests stand for the seven mortal sins: see again, below, p. 367.] 2 [For the meaning of the fire-flies, see once more Note vi. (below, p. 368).] 3 [For the arrows of Crete, see Horace (Odes, i. 15, 17, ―calami spicula Gnosii‖), Virgil (Ecl. x. 59), and many other passages.] I. THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS 215 gold, ponderous, yet which the mountain whirlwinds are able to lift and drive in wreaths and pillars, hiding the paths with a burial cloud, fatal at once with wintry chill, and weight of golden ashes. So the wanderers in the labyrinth fall, one by one, and are buried there:—yet, over the drifted graves, those who are spared climb to the last, through coil on coil of the path;—for at the end of it they see the king of the valley, sitting on his throne: and beside him, (but it is only a false vision), spectra of creatures like themselves, set on thrones, from which they seem to look down on all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.1 And on the canopy of his throne there is an inscription in fiery letters, which they strive to read, but cannot; for it is written in words which are like the words of all languages, and yet are of none. Men say it is more like their own tongue to the English than it is to any other nation; but the only record of it is by an Italian, who heard the king himself cry it as a war cry, ―Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe.‖* 8. SIBYL. But do they all perish there? You said there was a way through the valley, and out of it. L. Yes; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass paths, where the diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass paths lead forward gradually to a place where one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. You were at Chamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the pierced rock of the Aiguille du Midi? SIBYL. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Monday night; and it rained all Tuesday: and we had to be back at Geneva again, early on Wednesday morning. L. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a Sibylline manner, by inner consciousness: but you might

• Dante, Inf. 7. 1.

1 [Matthew iv. 8.] 216 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST have seen the pierced rock in your drive up, or down, if the clouds broke: not that there is much to see in it; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole; which you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley, (as the clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue. Well, there‘s just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle.1 But if you get up to it, they say you may drive a loaded camel through it, and that there are fine things on the other side, but I have never spoken with anybody who had been through. SIBYL. I think we understand it now. We will try to write it down, and think of it.2 9. L. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I have been telling you is very true, yet you must not think the sort of diamonds that people wear in rings and necklaces are found lying about on the grass. Would you like to see how they really are found? FLORRIE. Oh, yes—yes. L. Isabel—or Lily—run up to my room and fetch me the little box with a glass lid, out of the top drawer of the chest of drawers. (Race between LILY and ISABEL.) (Re-enter ISABEL with the box, very much out ofbreath. LILY behind.) L. Why, you never can beat Lily in a race on the stairs, can you, Isabel? ISABEL (panting). Lily—beat me—ever so far—but she gave me—the box—to carry in. L. Take off the lid then; gently. FLORRIE (after peeping in, disappointed). There‘s only a great ugly brown stone! L. Not much more than that, certainly, Florrie, if 1 [See Matthew xix. 24.] 2 [They worked hard at the allegory; but in the end the Lecturer supplied some clues: see below, pp. 366–368.] I. THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS 217 people were wise. But look, it is not a single stone; but a knot of pebbles fastened together by gravel; and in the gravel, or compressed sand, if you look close, you will see grains of gold glittering everywhere, all through; and then, do you see these two white beads, which shine, as if they had been covered with grease? FLORRIE. May I touch them? L. Yes; you will find they are not greasy, only very smooth. Well, those are the fatal jewels; native here in their dust with gold, so that you may see, cradled here together, the two great enemies of mankind,—the strongest of all malignant physical powers that have tormented our race. SIBYL. Is that really so? I know they do great harm; but do they not also do great good? 10. L. My dear child, what good? Was any woman, do you suppose, ever the better for possessing diamonds? but how many have been made base, frivolous, and miserable by desiring them?1 Was ever man the better for having coffers full of gold? But who shall measure the guilt that is incurred to fill them? Look into the history of any civilised nations; analyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, the lives and thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this; pride, and lust, and envy, and anger, all give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas.2 Men do not disbelieve their Christ; but they sell Him. SIBYL. But surely that is the fault of human nature? it is not caused by the accident, as it were, of there being a pretty metal, like gold, to be found by digging. If people could not find that, would they not find something else, and quarrel for it instead? 11. L. No. Wherever legislators have succeeded in 1 [On this subject, see Vol. XVII. p. 97 and n.] 2 [On the sin of Judas, see Crown of Wild Olive, § 33 (below, p 414.).] 218 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST excluding, for a time, jewels and precious metals from among national possessions, the national spirit has remained healthy.1 Covetousness is not natural to man—generosity is; but covetousness must be excited by a special cause, as a given disease by a given miasma; and the essential nature of a material for the excitement of covetousness is, that it shall be a beautiful thing which can be retained without a use. The moment we can use our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of communicating that use to others rises side by side with our power. If you can read a book rightly, you will want others to hear it; if you can enjoy a picture rightly, you will want others to see it: learn how to manage a horse, a plough, or a ship, and you will desire to make your subordinates good horsemen, ploughmen, or sailors: you will never be able to see the fine instrument you are master of, abused; but, once fix your desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride and folly in your heart will mix with the desire, and make you at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish.2 12. SIBYL. But surely, these two beautiful things, gold and diamonds, must have been appointed to some good purpose? L. Quite conceivably so, my dear: as also earthquakes and pestilences; but of such ultimate purposes we can have no sight. The practical, immediate office of the earthquake and pestilence is to slay us, like moths; and, as moths, we shall be wise to live out of their way. So, the practical, immediate office of gold and diamonds is the multiplied destruction of souls (in whatever sense you have been taught to understand that phrase); and the paralysis of wholesome human effort and thought on the face of God‘s earth: and a wise nation will live out of the way of them. The money which the English habitually spend in 1 [Ruskin was thinking probably of the Spartans, of whom Plutarch (Lycurgus, ch. 9) relates that Lycurgus stopped the currency of the gold and silver coin, and ordered that they should use iron money only.] 2 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 38 n. (Vol. XVII. p. 169).] I. THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS 219 cutting diamonds would, in ten years, if it were applied to cutting rocks instead,1 leave no dangerous reef nor difficult harbour round the whole island coast. Great Britain would be a diamond worth cutting, indeed, a true piece of regalia. (Leaves this to their thoughts for a little while.) Then, also, we poor mineralogists might sometimes have the chance of seeing a fine crystal of diamond unhacked by the jeweller. SIBYL. Would it be more beautiful uncut? L. No; but of infinite interest. We might even come to know something about the making of diamonds. SIBYL. I thought the chemists could make them already? 13. L. In very small black crystals, yes; but no one knows how they are formed where they are found; or if indeed they are formed there at all. These, in my hand, look as if they had been swept down with the gravel and gold; only we can trace the gravel and gold to their native rocks, but not the diamonds. Read the account given of the diamond in any good work on mineralogy;—you will find nothing but lists of localities of gravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old indurated gravel). Some say it was once a vegetable gum; it may have been charred wood; but what one would like to know is, mainly, why charcoal should make itself into diamonds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale. SIBYL. Are they wholly the same, then? L. There is a little iron mixed with our black lead; but nothing to hinder its crystallisation. Your pencils in fact are all pointed with formless diamond, though they would be H H H pencils to purpose, if it crystallised. SIBYL. But what is crystallisation? L. A pleasant question, when one‘s half asleep, and it has been tea time these two hours. What thoughtless things girls are! SIBYL. Yes, we are; but we want to know, for all that. L. My dear, it would take a week to tell you. 1 [Compare Crown of Wild Olive, § 147 (below, p. 504).] 220 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST SIBYL. Well, take it, and tell us. L. But nobody knows anything about it. SIBYL. Then tell us something that nobody knows.1 L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea. (The house rises; but of course the LECTURER wanted to be forced to lecture again, and was.) 1 [In the MS. ―Sibyl‖ drives home her point a little further, adding, ―It will be the very thing for you.‖] LECTURE II THE PYRAMID BUILDERS In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been summoned by ringing of the great bell. 14. L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallisation! I cannot conceive why, unless the little ones think that the discussion may involve some reference to sugar-candy. (Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members of council. ISABEL frowns severely at L., and shakes her head violently.) My dear children, if you knew it, you are yourselves, at this moment, as you sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eyes of a mineralogist, but a lovely group of rosy sugarcandy, arranged by atomic forces. And even admitting you to be something more, you have certainly been crystallising without knowing it. Did not I hear a great hurrying and whispering, ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the playground; and thought you would not all be quietly seated by the time I was ready:—besides some discussion about places—something about ―its not being fair that the little ones should always be nearest‖? Well, you were then all being crystallised. When you ran in from the garden, and against one another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence; when you got seated in those orderly rows, each in her proper place, you became crystalline. That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can, whenever they get disordered: they get into order again as soon as may be. 221 222 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, ―But we know our places; how do the atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dispute about our places; do the atoms—(and, besides, we don‘t like being compared to atoms at all)—never dispute about theirs?‖ Two wise questions these, if you had a mind to put them! it was long before I asked them myself, of myself. And I will not call you atoms any more. May I call you—let me see—―primary molecules‖? (General dissent indicated in subdued but decisive murmurs.) No! not even, in familiar Saxon, ―dust‖? (Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt; LILY gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid “Please don‘t.‖) 15. No, children, I won‘t call you that; and mind, as you grow up, that you do not get into an idle, and wicked, habit of calling yourselves that.1 You are something better than dust, and have other duties to do than ever dust can do; and the bonds of affection you will enter into are better than merely ―getting into order.‖ But see to it, on the other hand, that you always behave at least as well as ―dust‖; remember, it is only on compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes, that it ever gets out of order: but sometimes, with some of us, the compulsion has to be the other way—hasn‘t it? (Remonstratory whispers, expressive of opinion that the LECTURER is becoming too personal.) I‘m not looking at anybody in particular—indeed I am not. Nay, if you blush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking? We‘ll go back to the atoms. ―How do they know their places?‖ you asked, or should have asked. Yes, and they have to do much more than know them: they have to find their way to them, and that quietly and at once, without running against each other. 16. We may, indeed, state it briefly thus:—Suppose you have to build a castle, with towers and roofs and 1 [On the dignity of human nature, see Crown of Wild Olive, §§ 106–107 (below, p. 474); Lectures on Art, § 103; and Aratra Pentelici, § 237.] II. THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 223 buttresses, out of bricks of a given shape, and that these bricks are all lying in a huge heap at the bottom, in utter confusion, upset out of carts at random. You would have to draw a great many plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had enough for this and that tower, before you began, and then you would have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in order, slowly. But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy days, when children don‘t read children‘s books, nor believe any more in fairies, if suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright-red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say: ―Bricks, bricks, to your places!‖ and then you saw in an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees, and—you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think that strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!—You want to ask something, Florrie, by the look of your eyes. FLORRIE. Are they turned into real bees, with stings? L. No, Florrie; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw the slates flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only those slates didn‘t seem to know where they were going, and, besides, were going where they had no business: but my spellbound bricks, though they have no wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their way in the air just where they should settle, into towers and roofs, each flying to his place and fastening there at the right moment, so that every other one shall fit to him in his turn. LILY. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals? L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more than crystals; but she builds these also. I dreamed that I saw her building a pyramid, the other day, as she used to do for the Pharaohs.1 1 [On this imaginary dream, and another in § 93 (p. 318), see the Preface; above, p. 206.] 224 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST ISABEL. But that was only a dream? L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel; but I won‘t tell it you unless you like. ISABEL. Oh, please, please. L. You are all such wise children, there‘s no talking to you; you won‘t believe anything. LILY. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, when you say we ought. 17. L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect that evening when we had been looking at your old cave by Cumæ,1 and wondering why you didn‘t live there still: and then we wondered how old you were; and Egypt said you wouldn‘t tell, and nobody else could tell but she; and you laughed—I thought very gaily for a Sibyl—and said you would harness a flock of cranes for us, and we might fly over to Egypt if we liked, and see? SIBYL. Yes, and you went, and couldn‘t find out after all! L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that third pyramid of hers;* and making a new entrance into it; and a fine entrance it was! First, we had to go through an ante-room, which had both its doors blocked up with stones; and then we had three granite portcullises to pull up, one after another: and the moment we had got under them, Egypt signed to somebody above; and down they came again behind us, with a roar like thunder, only louder; then we got into a passage fit for nobody but rats, and Egypt wouldn‘t go any further herself, but said we might go on if we liked; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and then to a granite trap-door—and then we thought we had gone quite far enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed at us.

• Note i. [p. 361].

1 [Ruskin explains the story of the Cumæan Sibyl in his note on Turner‘s picture (Vol. XIII. p. 132).] II. THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 225 EGYPT. You would not have had me take my crown off, and stoop all the way down a passage fit only for rats? L. It was not the crown, Egypt—you know that very well. It was the flounces that would not let you go any farther. I suppose, however, you wear them as typical of the inundation of the Nile, so it is all right. ISABEL. Why didn‘t you take me with you? Where rats can go, mice can. I wouldn‘t have come back. 18. L. No, mousie; you would have gone on by yourself, and you might have waked one of Pasht‘s cats,* and it would have eaten you. I was very glad you were not there. But after all this, I suppose the imagination of the heavy granite blocks and the underground ways had troubled me, and dreams are often shaped in a strange opposition to the impressions that have caused them; and from all that we had been reading in Bunsen about stones that couldn‘t be lifted with levers,1 I began to dream about stones that lifted themselves with wings. SIBYL. Now you must just tell us all about it. L. I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of whose clay the bricks were made for the great pyramid of Asychis.† They had just been all finished, and were lying by the lake margin, in long ridges, like waves.2 It was near evening; and as I looked towards the sunset, I saw a thing like a dark pillar standing where the rock of the desert stoops to the Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar there, and wondered at it; and it grew larger, and glided nearer, becoming like the form of a man, but vast, and it did not move its feet, but glided, like a pillar of sand. And as it drew nearer, I looked by chance past it, towards the sun; and saw a silver cloud, which was of

• Note iii. [p. 363].

† Note ii. [p. 362]. 1 [For Bunsen‘s book, see below, p. 361 n.; the reference here is to his account of the pyramids, vol. ii. pp. 164 seq.] 2 [In the MS., ―like peats by a Scotch morass.‖] XVIII. P 226 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST all the clouds closest to the sun, (and in one place crossed it,) draw itself back from the sun, suddenly. And it turned, and shot towards the dark pillar; leaping in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow. And I thought it was lightning; but when it came near the shadowy pillar, it sank slowly down beside it, and changed into the shape of a woman, very beautiful, and with a strength of deep calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to the feet with a white robe; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud which I had seen across the sun; but all the golden ripples of it had become plumes, so that it had changed into two bright wings like those of a vulture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She had a weaver‘s shuttle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left hand, arrows, tipped with fire. ISABEL (clapping her hands). Oh ! it was Neith,1 it was Neith! I know now. 19. L. Yes; it was Neith herself; and as the two great spirits came nearer to me, I saw they were the Brother and Sister—the pillared shadow was the Greater Pthah.* And I heard them speak, and the sound of their words was like a distant singing.2 I could not understand the words one by one: yet their sense came to me; and so I knew that Neith had come down to see her brother‘s work, and the work that he had put into the mind of the king to make his servants do. And she was displeased at it; because she saw only pieces of dark clay; and no porphyry, nor marble, nor any fair stone that men might engrave the figures of the gods upon. And she blamed her brother, and said, ―Oh, Lord of truth! is this then thy will, that men should mould only four-square pieces of clay: and

• Note iii. [p. 362].

1 [For Neith, see Note iii. p. 364.] 2 [The passage, ―And I heard . . . singing,‖ is a characteristic instance of Ruskin‘s attainment of greater conciseness in revision. He first wrote: ―And I heard a low sound as of voices far away, sweet and clear like the harping of fine harpers.‖] II. THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 227 the forms of the gods no more?‖ Then the Lord of truth sighed, and said, ―Oh! sister, in truth they do not love us; why should they set up our images? Let them do what they may, and not lie—let them make their clay foursquare; and labour; and perish.‖ Then Neith‘s dark blue eyes grew darker, and she said, ―Oh, Lord of truth! why should they love us? their love is vain; or fear us? for their fear is base. Yet let them testify of us, that they knew we lived for ever.‖ But the Lord of truth answered, ―They know, and yet they know not. Let them keep silence; for their silence only is truth.‖ 20. But Neith answered, ―Brother, wilt thou also make league with Death, because Death is true? Oh! thou potter, who hast cast these human things from thy wheel, many to dishonour, and few to honour; wilt thou not let them so much as see my face, but slay them in slavery?‖ But Pthah only answered, ―Let them build, sister, let them build.‖ And Neith answered, ―What shall they build, if I build not with them?‖ And Pthah drew with his measuring rod upon the sand. And I saw suddenly, drawn on the sand, the outlines of great cities, and of vaults, and domes, and aqueducts, and bastions, and towers, greater than obelisks, covered with black clouds. And the wind blew ripples of sand amidst the lines that Pthah drew, and the moving sand was like the marching of men. But I saw that wherever Neith looked at the lines, they faded, and were effaced. ―Oh, Brother!‖ she said at last, ―what is this vanity? If I, who am Lady of wisdom, do not mock the children of men, why shouldst thou mock them, who art Lord of truth?‖ But Pthah answered, ―They thought to bind me; and they shall be bound. They shall labour in the fire for vanity.‖ And Neith said, looking at the sand, ―Brother, there is 228 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST no true labour here—there is only weary life and wasteful death.‖ And Pthah answered, ―Is it not truer labour, sister, than thy sculpture of dreams?‖ Then Neith smiled; and stopped suddenly. She looked to the sun; its edge touched the horizonedge of the desert. Then she looked to the long heaps of pieces of clay, that lay, each with its blue shadow, by the lake shore. ―Brother,‖ she said, ―how long will this pyramid of thine be in building?‖ ―Thoth1 will have sealed the scroll of the years ten times, before the summit is laid.‖ 21. ―Brother, thou knowest not how to teach thy children to labour,‖ answered Neith. ―Look! I must follow Phre beyond Atlas; shall I build your pyramid for you before he goes down?‖ And Pthah answered, ―Yea, sister, if thou canst put thy winged shoulders to such work.‖ And Neith drew herself to her height; and I heard a clashing pass through the plumes of her wings, and the asp stood up on her helmet, and fire gathered in her eyes. And she took one of the flaming arrows out of the sheaf in her left hand, and stretched it out over the heaps of clay. And they rose up like flights of locusts, and spread themselves in the air, so that it grew dark in a moment. Then Neith designed them places with her arrow point; and they drew into ranks, like dark clouds laid level at morning. Then Neith pointed with her arrow to the north, and to the south, and to the east, and to the west, and the flying motes of earth drew asunder into four great ranked crowds; and stood, one in the north, and one in the south, and one in the east, and one in the west—one against another. Then Neith spread her wings wide for an instant, and closed them with a sound like the sound of a rushing sea; and waved her 1 [For Thoth and Phre (the sun), see Note iii. (below, p. 364).] II. THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 229 hand towards the foundation of the pyramid, where it was laid on the brow of the desert. And the four flocks drew together and sank down, like sea-birds settling to a level rock; and when they met, there was a sudden flame, as broad as the pyramid, and as high as the clouds; and it dazzled me; and I closed my eyes for an instant; and when I looked again, the pyramid stood on its rock, perfect; and purple with the light from the edge of the sinking sun. THE YOUNGER CHILDREN (variously pleased). I‘m so glad! How nice! But what did Pthah say? L. Neith did not wait to hear what he would say. When I turned back to look at her, she was gone; and I only saw the level white cloud form itself again, close to the arch of the sun as it sank. And as the last edge of the sun disappeared, the form of Pthah faded into a mighty shadow, and so passed away. EGYPT. And was Neith‘s pyramid left? L. Yes; but you could not think, Egypt, what a strange feeling of utter loneliness came over me when the presences of the two gods passed away. It seemed as if I had never known what it was to be alone before; and the unbroken line of the desert was terrible. EGYPT. I used to feel that, when I was queen; sometimes I had to carve gods, for company, all over my palace. I would fain have seen real ones, if I could. 22. L. But listen a moment yet, for that was not quite all my dream. The twilight drew swiftly to the dark,1 and I could hardly see the great pyramid; when there came a heavy murmuring sound in the air; and a horned beetle, with terrible claws, fell on the sand at my feet, with a blow like the beat of a hammer. Then it stood up on its hind claws, and waved its pincers at me: and its four claws became strong arms, and hands; one grasping real iron pincers, and the other a huge hammer; 1 [Compare Tennyson‘s Day Dream (188): ―The twilight died into the dark.‖] 230 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST and it had a helmet on its head, without any eyelet holes, that I could see. And its two hind claws became strong crooked legs, with feet bent inwards. And so there stood by me a dwarf, in glossy black armour, ribbed and embossed like a beetle‘s back, leaning on his hammer. And I could not speak for wonder; but he spoke with a murmur like the dying away of a beat upon a bell. He said, ―I will make Neith‘s great pyramid small. I am the lower Pthah;1 and have power over fire. I can wither the strong things, and strengthen the weak: and everything that is great I can make small, and everything that is little I can make great.‖ Then he turned to the angle of the pyramid and limped towards it. And the pyramid grew deep purple; and then red like blood, and then pale rose-colour, like fire. And I saw that it glowed with fire from within. And the lower Pthah touched it with the hand that held the pincers; and it sank down like the sand in an hour-glass,—then drew itself together, and sank, still, and became nothing, it seemed to me; but the armed dwarf stooped down, and took it into his hand, and brought it to me, saying, ―Everything that is great I can make like this pyramid: and give into men‘s hands to destroy.‖ And I saw that he had a little pyramid in his hand, with as many courses in it as the large one; and built like that,—only so small. And because it glowed still, I was afraid to touch it; but Pthah said, ―Touch it—for I have bound the fire within it, so that it cannot burn.‖ So I touched it, and took it into my own hand; and it was cold; only red, like a ruby. And Pthah laughed, and became like a beetle again, and buried himself in the sand, fiercely; throwing it back over his shoulders. And it seemed to me as if he would draw me down with him into the sand; and I started back, and woke, holding the little pyramid so fast in my hand that it hurt me. 1 [For ―Pthah in his lower office,‖ see Note iii.; below, p. 363.] II. THE PYRAMID BUILDERS 231 EGYPT. Holding WHAT in your hand? L. The little pyramid. EGYPT. Neith‘s pyramid? L. Neith‘s I believe; though not built for Asychis. I know only that it is a little rosy transparent pyramid, built of more courses of bricks than I can count, it being made so small. You don‘t believe me, of course, Egyptian infidel; but there it is. (Giving crystal of rose Fluor.) (Confused examination by crowded audience, over each other’s shoulders and under each other’s arms. Disappointment begins to manifest itself.) 23. SIBYL (not quite knowing why she and others are disappointed). But you showed us this the other day! L. Yes; but you would not look at it the other day. SIBYL. But was all that fine dream only about this? L. What finer thing could a dream be about than this? It is small, if you will; but when you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of smallness and largeness pass away.1 The making of this pyramid was in reality just as wonderful as the dream I have been telling you, and just as incomprehensible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand things are done as swiftly. When Neith makes crystals of snow, it needs a great deal more marshalling of the atoms, by her flaming arrows, than it does to make crystals like this one; and that is done in a moment. EGYPT. But how you do puzzle us! Why do you say Neith does it? You don‘t mean that she is a real spirit, do you? L. What I mean, is of little consequence. What the Egyptians meant, who called her ―Neith,‖—or Homer, who called her ―Athena,‖—or Solomon, who called her by a word which the Greeks render as ―Sophia,‖ you must judge for yourselves. But her testimony is always the same, and 1 [For another side of this question see, however, Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 231).] 232 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST all nations have received it: ―I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight; rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men.‖1 MARY. But is not that only a personification? L. If it be, what will you gain by unpersonifying it, or what right have you to do so? Cannot you accept the image given you, in its life; and listen, like children, to the words which chiefly belong to you as children; ―I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me‖?2 (They are all quiet for a minute or two; questions begin to appear in their eyes.) I cannot talk to you any more to-day. Take that rose crystal away with you, and think. 1 [Proverbs viii. 31; quoted also in Unto this Last, § 82 (Vol. XVII. p. 111), and Eagle’s Nest, §§ 19, 64.] 2 [Proverbs viii. 17.] LECTURE III THE CRYSTAL LIFE A very dull Lecture, wilfully brought upon themselves by the elder children. Some of the young ones have, however, managed to get in by mistake. SCENE, the Schoolroom. 24. L. So I am to stand up here merely to be asked questions, to-day, Miss Mary, am I? MARY. Yes; and you must answer them plainly; without telling us any more stories. You are quite spoiling the children; the poor little things‘ heads are turning round like kaleidoscopes; and they don‘t know in the least what you mean. Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter: to-day you must really tell us nothing but facts. L. I am sworn; but you won‘t like it, a bit. MARY. Now, first of all, what do you mean by ―bricks‖?—Are the smallest particles of minerals all of some accurate shape, like bricks? L. I do not know, Miss Mary; I do not even know if anybody knows. The smallest atoms which are visibly and practically put together to make large crystals, may better be described as ―limited in fixed directions‖ than as ―of fixed forms.‖ But I can tell you nothing clear about ultimate atoms: you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of little spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put it to. MARY. Well, it‘s very provoking; one seems always to be stopped just when one is coming to the very thing one wants to know. L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything but what is easily and assuredly knowable. There‘s no end to it. If I could show you, or myself, a group of 233 234 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST ultimate atoms, quite clearly, in this magnifying glass, we should both be presently vexed because we could not break them in two pieces, and see their insides. 25. MARY. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying of the bricks? What is it the atoms do, that is like flying? L. When they are dissolved, or uncrystallised, they are really separated from each other, like a swarm of gnats in the air, or like a shoal of fish in the sea;—generally at about equal distances. In currents of solutions, or at different depths of them, one part may be more full of the dissolved atoms than another; but, on the whole, you may think of them as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. If they are separated by force of heat only, the substance is said to be melted; if they are separated by any other substance, as particles of sugar by water, they are said to be ―dissolved.‖ Note this distinction carefully, all of you. DORA. I will be very particular. When next you tell me there isn‘t sugar enough in your tea, I will say, ―It is not yet dissolved, sir.‖ L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora; and that‘s the present parliament, if the members get too saucy. (DORA folds her hands and casts down her eyes.) L. (proceeds in state). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, I believe, that nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient heat, like wax. Limestone melts (under pressure); sand melts; granite melts; the lava of a volcano is a mixed mass of many kinds of rocks, melted: and any melted substance nearly always, if not always, crystallises as it cools; the more slowly, the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call the freezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conveniently, call the melting, point; and radiates as it cools into the most beautiful of all known crystals. Glass melts at a greater heat, and will crystallise, if you let it cool slowly enough, in stars, much like snow. Gold needs III. THE CRYSTAL LIFE 235 more heat to melt it, but crystallises also exquisitely, as I will presently show you. Arsenic and sulphur crystallise from their vapours. Now, in any of these cases, either of melted, dissolved, or vaporous bodies, the particles are usually separated from each other, either by heat, or by an intermediate substance; and in crystallising they are both brought nearer to each other, and packed, so as to fit as closely as possible; the essential part of the business being not the bringing together, but the packing. Who packed your trunk for you, last holidays, Isabel? ISABEL. Lily does, always. L. And how much can you allow for Lily‘s good packing, in guessing what will go into the trunk? ISABEL. Oh! I bring twice as much as the trunk holds. Lily always gets everything in. LILY. Ah! but, Isey, if you only knew what a time it takes! and since you‘ve had those great hard buttons on your frocks, I can‘t do anything with them. Buttons won‘t go anywhere, you know. 26. L. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only knew what a time it takes; and I wish any of us knew what a time crystallisation takes, for that is consummately fine packing. The particles of the rock are thrown down, just as Isabel brings her things—in a heap; and innumerable Lilies, not of the valley, but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes such a time! However, the best—out and out the best—way of understanding the thing, is to crystallise yourselves. THE AUDIENCE. Ourselves! L. Yes; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly, on the schoolroom forms; but carefully and finely, out in the playground. You can play at crystallisation there as much as you please. KATHLEEN and JESSIE. Oh! how?—how? L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you can, in the middle of the grass, and form, for first practice, any figure you like. 236 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST JESSIE. Any dancing figure, do you mean? L. No; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any figure you like, standing close together. You had better outline it first on the turf, with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see that it is rightly drawn; then get into it and enlarge or diminish it at one side, till you are all quite in it, and no empty space left. DORA. Crinoline and all? L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface, unless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal of yourselves. LILY. Oh, we‘ll pin it in—we‘ll pin it in! L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note her place, and who is next her on each side; and let the outsiders count how many places they stand from the corners. KATHLEEN. Yes, yes,—and then? L. Then you must scatter all over the playground—right over it from side to side, and end to end; and put yourselves all at equal distances from each other, everywhere. You needn‘t mind doing it very accurately, but so as to be nearly equidistant; not less than about three yards apart from each other, on every side. JESSIE. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, to hold. And then? L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same rate, towards the outlined figure in the middle. You had better sing as you walk; that will keep you in good time. And as you close in towards it, let each take her place, and the next comers fit themselves in beside the first ones, till you are all in the figure again. KATHLEEN. Oh! how we shall run against each other! What fun it will be! L. No, no, Miss Katie; I can‘t allow any running against each other. The atoms never do that, whatever human creatures do. You must all know your places, and find your way to them without jostling. III. THE CRYSTAL LIFE 237 LILY. But how ever shall we do that? ISABEL. Mustn‘t the ones in the middle be the nearest, and the outside ones farther off—when we go away to scatter, I mean? L. Yes; you must be very careful to keep your order; you will soon find out how to do it; it is only like soldiers forming square, except that each must stand still in her place as she reaches it, and the others come round her; and you will have much more complicated figures, afterwards, to form, than squares. ISABEL. I‘ll put a stone at my place; then I shall know it. L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your place, with your name upon it: but it would be of no use, for if you don‘t know your places, you will make a fine piece of business of it, while you are looking for your names. And, ISABEL, if with a little head, and eyes, and a brain, (all of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as such things go), you think you cannot know your place without a stone at it, after examining it well,—how do you think each atom knows its place, when it never was there before, and there‘s no stone at it? 27. ISABEL. But does every atom know its place? L. How else could it get there? MARY. Are they not attracted into their places? L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals; and then imagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any law of attraction, to exist between the spots, and try how, on that permitted supposition, you can attract them into the figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of the paper. MARY (having tried it). Yes; I see that I cannot:—one would need all kinds of attractions, in different ways, at different places. But you do not mean that the atoms are alive? L.What is it to be alive? DORA. There now; you‘re going to be provoking, I know. 238 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked what it is to be alive. Do you think you don‘t know whether you are alive or not? (ISABEL skips to the end of the room and back.) L. Yes, Isabel, that‘s all very fine; and you and I may call that being alive: but a modern philosopher calls it being in a ―mode of motion.‖1 It requires a certain quantity of heat to take you to the sideboard; and exactly the same quantity to bring you back again. That‘s all. ISABEL. No, it isn‘t. And besides, I‘m not hot. L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you know, Isabel, you might have been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been carried round the room, or anywhere else, by chemical forces, in the liveliest way. ISABEL. Yes; but I wasn‘t carried; I carried myself. L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say what makes a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut off from the rest of the universe into a Self, you begin to be alive. VIOLET (indignant). Oh, surely—surely that cannot be so. Is not all the life of the soul in communion, not separation? 28. L. There can be no communion where there is no distinction. But we shall be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don‘t look out; and besides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children. We‘ll be grand, some day by ourselves, if we must. (The younger children are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but knowing by experience, that all conversations in which the word “communion” occurs, are unintelligible, think better of it.) Meantime, for broad answer about the atoms. I do not think we should use the word ―life‖ of any energy which does not belong to a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a young animal, are properly called ―alive‖ with respect to the force belonging to those forms, which 1 [Tyndall‘s Heat considered as a Mode of Motion, 1863.] III. THE CRYSTAL LIFE 239 consistently develops that form, and no other. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to be chiefly external, and it does not produce an entirely determinate and individual form, limited in size, but only an aggregation, in which some limiting laws must be observed. MARY. But I do not see much difference, that way, between a crystal and a tree. L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a continual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may define life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its attached positive, birth. But I won‘t be plagued any more about this, just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome. Rocks have always been called ―living‖ in their native place. MARY. There‘s one question more; then I‘ve done. L. Only one? MARY. Only one. L. But if it is answered, won‘t it turn into two? MARY. No; I think it will remain single, and be comfortable. L. Let me hear it. 29. MARY. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of the whole playground. Now, what playground have the minerals? Where are they scattered before they are crystallised; and where are the crystals generally made? L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, Mary. If it is only one, it is a wide one. MARY. I did not say anything about the width of it. L. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. When rocks either dry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarily alter in bulk; and cracks, or open spaces, form in them in all directions. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or the rock would eventually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water, sometimes by vapour, sometimes nobody knows how, crystallisable matter is brought from 240 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST somewhere, and fastens itself in these open spaces, so as to bind the rock together again, with crystal cement. A vast quantity of hollows are formed in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are left in bread well baked. In process of time these cavities are generally filled with various crystals. MARY. But where does the crystallising substance come from? L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below or above, through the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;—or with mineral vapour: or it may be so charged at one place, and empty at another. There‘s no end to the ―may be‘s.‖ But all that you need fancy, for our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves in Derbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapour containing certain elements in a more or less free or separate state, which crystallise on the cave walls. 30. SIBYL. There now;—Mary has had all her questions answered; it‘s my turn to have mine. L. Ah, there‘s a conspiracy among you, I see. I might have guessed as much. DORA. I‘m sure you ask us questions enough! How can you have the heart, when you dislike so to be asked them yourself? L. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it does not matter how many they are asked, because they‘ve no trouble with them. Now, when I ask you questions, I never expect to be answered; but when you ask me, you always do; and it‘s not fair. DORA. Very well, we shall understand next time. SIBYL. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing more, quite dreadfully. L. And I don‘t want to be asked it quite dreadfully; but you‘ll have your own way, of course. SIBYL. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. It was not merely yesterday; but in all we have III. THE CRYSTAL LIFE 241 read about him in Wilkinson,1 or in any book, we cannot understand what the Egyptians put their god into that ugly little deformed shape for. L. Well, I‘m glad it‘s that sort of question; because I can answer anything I like, to that. EGYPT. Anything you like will do quite well for us; we shall be pleased with the answer, if you are. L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen; for I must begin by the statement that queens seem to have disliked all sorts of work, in those days, as much as some queens dislike sewing to-day. EGYPT. Now, it‘s too bad! and just when I was trying to say the civillest thing I could! L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing so? EGYPT. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I always get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew long. 31. L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought everybody got cramp in their neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people‘s fingers. At all events, every kind of manual labour was despised both by them, and the Greeks;2 and, while they owned the real good and fruit of it, they yet held it a degradation to all who practised it. Also, knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the special practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfection strengthened the body distortedly; one energy or member gaining at the expense of the rest. They especially dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to be done near fire: yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, as the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed reverence and scorn in 1 [The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson: for another reference to the book, see Vol. IX. p. 279. For a discussion of Pthah (and the conception of him as a dwarf), see (in the edition of 1878) vol. iii. pp. 14–20.] 2 [On this subject compare Crown of Wild Olive, § 89 (below, p. 461); and compare Vol. XVII. p. 235 n.] XVIII. Q 242 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST the varied types of the lame Hephæstus, and the lower Pthah. SIBYL. But what did you mean by making him say, ―Everything great I can make small, and everything small great‖?1 L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen in modern times the power of the lower Pthah developed in a separate way, which no Greek nor Egyptian could have conceived. It is the character of pure and eyeless manual labour to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, in reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected; aggrandising itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of all noble things. I heard an orator, and a good one too, at the Working Men‘s College, the other day, make a great point in a description of our railroads; saying, with grandly conducted emphasis, ―They have made man greater, and the world less.‖ His working audience were mightily pleased; they thought it so very fine a thing to be made bigger themselves, and all the rest of the world less. I should have enjoyed asking them (but it would have been a pity—they were so pleased), how much less they would like to have the world made;—and whether, at present, those of them really felt themselves the biggest men, who lived in the least houses. 32. SIBYL. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he could make weak things strong, and small things great? L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so far true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighbourhood—a very fine fair we thought it.2 You never saw such an one; but if you look at the engraving of Turner‘s ―St. Catherine‘s Hill,‖3 you will see what it was like. There were curious booths, carried on poles; and 1 [See above, § 22, p. 230. On this passage, compare the Preface; above, p. 204.] 2 [The reference is to the famous, or notorious, Camberwell Fair held on Camberwell Green—originally from August 9 to September 1, and afterwards on August 18, 19, and 20. It was held for the last time in 1855.] 3 [The drawing engraved in England and Wales.] III. THE CRYSTAL LIFE 243 peep-shows; and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much barley-sugar and ginger-bread, and the like; and in the alleys of this fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, after their fashion, very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one day; he made the wooden poles into iron ones, and put them across, like his own crooked legs, so that you always fall over them if you don‘t look where you are going; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, and put it up on his iron crosspoles; and made all the little booths into one great booth;—and people said it was very fine, and a new style of architecture; and Mr. Dickens said nothing was ever like it in Fairy-land, which was very true.1 And then the little Pthah set to work to put fine fairings in it; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, with the blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like his gingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could think of, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and her children; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders; and the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin; and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops and buns, and beer; and all the little-Pthah-worshippers say, never was anything so sublime! 33. SIBYL. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these Crystal Palace Concerts? They‘re as good as good can be. L. I don‘t go to the thundering things with a million of bad voices in them. When I want a song, I get Julia 1 [The reference is to an article in No. 193 (December 3, 1853) of Household Words: a weekly journal conducted by Charles Dickens. The article (perhaps not written by Dickens himselr) was entitled ―Fairyland in ―Fifty-four,‖ and describes the Crystal Palace as ―a fairy palace with fairy terraces, and fairy gardens, and fairy fountains, compared to which the palace of Sardanapalus was a hovel, and the gardens of the Hesperides a howling waste,‖ etc., etc. Ruskin refers again to the article in Aratra Pentelici, § 54; in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton of July 8, 1870, and in one of March 29, 1880, published in the Art Journal of June 1880 (both letters are reprinted in later volumes of this edition).] 244 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST Mannering and Lucy Bertram and Counsellor Pleydell to sing ―We be three poor mariners‖ to me;1 then I‘ve no headache next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when I can; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl; and I always get a reserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I am sure I can see the kettledrummer drum. SIBYL. Now do be serious, for one minute. L. I am serious—never was more so. You know one can‘t see the modulation of violinists‘ fingers, but one can see the vibration of the drummer‘s hand; and it‘s lovely. SIBYL. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to see! L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, is to go there to talk. I confess, however, that in most music, when very well done, the doing of it is to me the chiefly interesting part of the business. I‘m always thinking how good it would be for the fat, supercilious people, who care so little for their half-crown‘s worth, to be set to try and do a half-crown‘s worth of anything like it. MARY. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and help to the people of London? L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear; but they are spoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. And the palace (as they call it) is a better place for them, by much, than the old fair; and it is always there, instead of for three days only; and it shuts up at proper hours of night. And good use may be made of the things in it, if you know how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them nothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah‘s work—nothing but hammer and tongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his doing, in the place, only the other day. Some unhappy metal-worker—I am not sure if it was not a metal-working firm—had taken three years to make a golden eagle. 1 [Guy Mannering, ch. xlix.] III. THE CRYSTAL LIFE 245 SIBYL. Of real gold? 34. L. No; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent metals—it is no matter what. I meant a model of our chief British eagle. Every feather was made separately; and every filament of every feather separately, and so joined on; and all the quills modelled of the right length and right section, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened together. You know, children, I don‘t think much of my own drawing; but take my proud word for once, that when I go to the Zoological Gardens, and happen to have a bit of chalk in my pocket, and the grey Happy will sit, without screwing his head round, for thirty seconds,—I can do a better thing of him in that time than the three years‘ work of this industrious firm.1 For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my object—not myself; and during the three years, the firm‘s object, in every fibre of bronze it made, was itself, and not the eagle. That is the true meaning of the little Pthah‘s having no eyes—he can see only himself. The Egyptian beetle was not quite the full type of him; our northern ground beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it at work, gathering its treasures (such as they are) into little round balls; and pushing them home with the strong wrong end of it,—head downmost all the way,—like a modern political economist with his ball of capital, declaring that a nation can stand on its vices better than on its virtues.2 But away with you, children, now, for I‘m getting cross. DORA. I‘m going downstairs; I shall take care, at any rate, that there are no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboards. 1 [Several of Ruskin‘s studies at the Zoological Gardens are in the Rudimentary Series at Oxford: see Vol. XX.] 2 [Here, again, see the Preface; above, p. 204.] LECTURE IV THE CRYSTAL ORDERS A working Lecture, in the large Schoolroom; with experimental Interludes. The great bell has rung unexpectedly. 35. KATHLEEN (entering disconsolate, though first at the summons). Oh dear, oh dear, what a day! Was ever anything so provoking! just when we wanted to crystallise ourselves;—and I‘m sure it‘s going to rain all day long. L. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an Irish way with it. But I don‘t see why Irish girls should also look so dismal. Fancy that you don‘t want to crystallise yourselves: you didn‘t the day before yesterday, and you were not unhappy when it rained then. FLORRIE. Ah ! but we do want to-day; and the rain‘s so tiresome. L. That is to say, children, that because you are all the richer by the expectation of playing at a new game, you choose to make yourselves unhappier than when you had nothing to look forward to, but the old ones. ISABEL. But then, to have to wait—wait—wait; and before we‘ve tried it;—and perhaps it will rain to-morrow, too! L. It may also rain the day after to-morrow. We can make ourselves uncomfortable to any extent with perhapses, Isabel. You may stick perhapses into your little minds like pins, till you are as uncomfortable as the Lilliputians made Gulliver with their arrows when he would not lie quiet.1 ISABEL. But what are we to do to-day? 1 [See Gulliver’s Travels, part i. ch. i.] 246 IV. THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 247 L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw there was nothing better to be done. And to practise patience. I can tell you, children, that requires nearly as much practising as music; and we are constantly losing our lessons when the master comes. Now, to-day, here‘s a nice little adagio lesson for us, if we play it properly. ISABEL. But I don‘t like that sort of lesson. I can‘t play it properly. L. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel? The more need to practise. All one‘s life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly and in time. But there must be no hurry. KATHLEEN. I‘m sure there‘s no music in stopping in on a rainy day. 36. L. There‘s no music in a ―rest,‖ Katie, that I know of: but there‘s the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life-melody; and scrambling on without counting—not that it‘s easy to count; but nothing on which so much depends ever is easy. People are always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude,—and—and the rarest too. I know twenty persevering girls for one patient one: but it is only that twenty-first who can do her work, out and out, or enjoy it. For patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, when impatience companions her. (ISABEL and LILY sit down on the floor, and fold their hands. The others follow their example.) Good children! but that‘s not quite the way of it, neither. Folded hands are not necessarily resigned ones. The Patience who really smiles at grief usually stands, or walks, or even runs: she seldom sits; though she may sometimes have to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by monuments;1 or, like Chaucer‘s, ―with face pale, upon a hill of 1 [Twelfth Night, Act ii. sc. 4, line 116; quoted also in Cestus of Aglaia, § 33.] 248 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST sand.‖1 But we are not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous forenoon to choose the shapes we are to crystallise into? we know nothing about them yet. (The pictures of resignation rise from the floor, not in the patientest manner. General applause.) MARY (with one or two others). The very thing we wanted to ask you about. LILY. We looked at the books about crystals, but they are so dreadful. 37. L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, that‘s a fact: no road to any good knowledge is wholly among the lilies and the grass; there is rough climbing to be done always. But the crystal-books are a little too dreadful, most of them, I admit; and we shall have to be content with very little of their help. You know, as you cannot stand on each other‘s heads, you can only make yourselves into the sections of crystals,—the figures they show when they are cut through; and we will choose some that will be quite easy. You shall make diamonds of yourselves— ISABEL. Oh, no, no! we won‘t be diamonds, please. L. Yes, you shall, Isabel; they are very pretty things, if the jewellers, and the kings and queens, would only let them alone. You shall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies of yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of these—with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which we will hope the best;—and you shall make Derbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and—Quicksilver there‘s enough of in you, without any making. MARY. Now, you know, the children will be getting 1 [The Assembly of Foules, stanza 35. Ruskin quotes the passage again in the Cestus of Aglaia, § 30, and in the lecture on ―Patience,‖ reported in E. T. Cook‘s Studies in Ruskin (p. 268), and in a later volume of this edition.] IV. THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 249 quite wild: we must really get pencils and paper, and begin properly. L. Wait a minute, Miss Mary; I think, as we‘ve the schoolroom clear to-day, I‘ll try to give you some notion of the three great orders or ranks of crystals, into which all the others seem more or less to fall. We shall only want one figure a day, in the playground; and that can be drawn in a minute; but the general idea had better be fastened first. I must show you a great many minerals; so let me have three tables wheeled into the three windows, that we may keep our specimens separate;—we will keep the three orders of crystals on separate tables. (First Interlude, of pushing and pulling, and spreading of baize covers. VIOLET, not particularly minding what she is about, gets herself jammed into a corner, and bid to stand out of the way; on which, she devotes herself to meditation.) 38. VIOLET (after interval of meditation). How strange it is that everything seems to divide into threes! L. Everything doesn‘t divide into threes. Ivy won‘t, though shamrock will; and daisies won‘t, though lilies will. VIOLET. But all the nicest things seem to divide into threes. L. Violets won‘t. VIOLET. No; I should think not, indeed! But I mean the great things. L. I‘ve always heard the globe had four quarters. ISABEL. Well; but you know you said it hadn‘t any quarters at all.1 So mayn‘t it really be divided into three? L. If it were divided into no more than three, on the outside of it, Isable, it would be a fine world to live in; and if it were divided into three in the inside of it, it would soon be no world to live in at all. DORA. We shall never get to the crystals, at this rate. 1 [A reference to other talks not included in Ethics of the Dust.] 250 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST (Aside to Mary.) He will get off into political economy before we know where we are. (Aloud.) But the crystals are divided into three, then? L. No; but there are three general notions by which we may best get hold of them. Then between these notions there are other notions. LILY (alarmed). A great many? And shall we have to learn them all? L. More than a great many—a quite infinite many. So you cannot learn them all. LILY (greatly relieved). Then may we only learn the three? L. Certainly; unless, when you have got those three notions, you want to have some more notions;—which would not surprise me. But we‘ll try for the three, first. Katie, you broke your coral necklace this morning? KATHLEEN. Oh, who told you? It was in jumping. I‘m so sorry! L. I‘m very glad. Can you fetch me the beads of it? KATHLEEN. I‘ve lost some; here are the rest in my pocket, if I can only get them out. L. You mean to get them out some day, I suppose; so try now. I want them. (KATHLEEN empties her pocket on the floor. The beads disperse. The School disperses also. Second Interlude—hunting piece.) 39. L. (after waiting patiently for a quarter of an hour, to ISABEL, who comes up from under the table with her hair all about her ears, and the last findable beads in her hand). Mice are useful little things sometimes. Now, mousie, I want all those beads crystallised. How many ways are there of putting them in order?1 ISABEL. Well, first one would string them, I suppose? L. Yes, that‘s the first way. You cannot string ultimate atoms; but you can put them in a row, and then 1 [Compare Laws of Fésole, ch. v., for similar lessons with beads or coins (Vol. XV.).] IV. THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 251 they fasten themselves together, somehow, into a long rod or needle. We will call these ―Needle-crystals.‖ What would be the next way? ISABEL. I suppose as we are to get together in the playground, when it stops raining, in different shapes? L. Yes; put the beads together then, in the simplest form you can, to begin with. Put them into a square, and pack them close. ISABEL (after careful endeavour). I can‘t get them closer. L. That will do. Now you may see beforehand, that if you try to throw yourselves into square in this confused way, you will never know your places; so you had better consider every square as made of rods, put side by side. Take four beads of equal size, first, Isabel; put them into a little square. That, you may consider as made up of two rods of two beads each. Then you can make a square a size larger, out of three rods of three. Then the next square may be a size larger. How many rods, Lily? LILY. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose. L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, look here; make another square of four beads again. You see they leave a little opening in the centre. ISABEL (pushing two opposite ones closer together). Now they don‘t. L. No; but now it isn‘t a square; and by pushing the two together you have pushed the two others farther apart.1 ISABEL. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they were! L. Yes; for before, each of them only touched two of the others, but now each of the two in the middle touches the other three. Take away one of the outsiders, Isabel: now you have three in a triangle—the smallest triangle you can make out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on at one side. So, you have a triangle of six beads; 1 [With the exercise here suggested, compare Laws of Fésole, ch. v. § 9, and the figures there given (Vol. XV. pp. 387 seq.).] 252 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST but just the shape of the first one. Next a rod of four on the side of that; and you have a triangle of ten beads: then a rod of five on the side of that: and you have a triangle of fifteen. Thus you have a square with five beads on the side, and a triangle with five beads on the side; equal-sided, therefore, like the square. So, however few or many you may be, you may soon learn how to crystallise quickly into these two figures, which are the foundation of form in the commonest, and therefore actually the most important, as well as in the rarest, and therefore by our esteem, the most important, minerals of the world. Look at this in my hand. VIOLET. Why, it is leaf gold! 40. L. Yes; but beaten by no man‘s hammer; or rather, not beaten at all, but woven. Besides, feel the weight of it. There is gold enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, if it were beaten thin. VIOLET. How beautiful! And it glitters like a leaf covered with frost. L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of brass: for it is Transylvanian gold; and they say there is a foolish gnome in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don‘t know how that may be: but the silver always is in the gold; and if he does it, it‘s very provoking of him, for no gold is woven so fine anywhere else. MARY (who has been looking through her magnifying glass). But this is not woven. This is all made of little triangles. L. Say ―patched,‖ then, if you must be so particular. But if you fancy all those triangles, small as they are (and many of them are infinitely small), made up again of rods, and those of grains, as we built our great triangle of the beads, what word will you take for the manufacture? MAY. There‘s no word—it is beyond words. L. Yes; and that would matter little, were it not IV. THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 253 beyond thoughts too. But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, shed, not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, will help you to remember the second kind of crystals, Leaf-crystals, or Foliated-crystals; though I show you the form in gold first only to make a strong impression on you, for gold is not generally, or characteristically, crystallised, in leaves; the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica; which if you once feel well, and break well, you will always know again; and you will often have occasion to know it, for you will find it everywhere, nearly, in hill countries.1 KATHLEEN. If we break it well! May we break it? L. To powder, if you like. (Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation. Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophical treatment at all hands.) 41. FLORRIE (to whom the last fragments have descended). Always leaves, and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust! L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves. (Shows them to FLORRIE through magnifying glass.) ISABEL (peeping over FLORRIE‘S shoulder). But then this bit under the glass looks like that bit out of the glass. If we could break this bit under the glass, what would it be like? L. It would be all leaves still. ISABEL. And then if we broke those again? L. All less leaves still. ISABEL (impatient). And if we broke them again, and again, and again, and again, and again? L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could only see it. Notice that the little flakes already differ somewhat from the large ones; because I can bend them up and down, and they stay bent; while the large flake, though it bent easily a little way, sprang back when 1 [See Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. pp. 137, 146, 292).] 254 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST you let it go, and broke, when you tried to bend it far. And a large mass would not bend at all. MARY. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in the same way? L. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteristic specimen of a foliated crystallisation. The little triangles are portions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, which looks like a black mica; but you see it is made up of triangles, like the gold, and stands, almost accurately, as an intermediate link, in crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is the commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals. 42. MARY. Is it iron? I never saw iron so bright. L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallised: from its resemblance to mica, it is often called micaceous iron. KATHLEEN. May we break this too? L. No, for I could not easily get such another crystal; besides, it would not break like the mica; it is much harder. But take the glass again, and look at the fineness of the jagged edges of the triangles where they lap over each other. The gold has the same: but you see them better here, terrace above terrace, countless, and in successive angles, like superb fortified bastions. MAY. But all foliated crystals are not made of triangles? L. Far from it; mica is occasionally so, but usually of hexagons; and here is a foliated crystal made of squares, which will show you that the leaves of the rock-land have their summer green, as well as their autumnal gold. FLORRIE. Oh! oh! oh! (jumps for joy). L. Did you never see a bit of green leaf, before, Florrie? FLORRIE. Yes, but never so bright as that, and not in a stone. L. If you will look at the leaves of the trees in sunshine after a shower, you will find they are much brighter than that; and surely they are none the worse for being on stalks instead of in stones? IV. THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 255 FLORRIE. Yes, but then there are so many of them, one never looks, I suppose. L. Now you have it, Florrie. 43. VIOLET (sighing). There are so many beautiful things we never see! L. You need not sigh for that, Violet; but I will tell you what we should all sigh for,—that there are so many ugly things we never see. VIOLET. But we don‘t want to see ugly things! L. You had better say, ―We don‘t want to suffer them.‖ You ought to be glad in thinking how much more beauty God has made, than human eyes can ever see; but not glad in thinking how much more evil man has made, than his own soul can ever conceive,—much more, than his hands can ever heal. VIOLET. I don‘t understand;—how is that like the leaves? L. The same law holds in our neglect of multiplied pain, as in our neglect of multiplied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy at sight of half an inch of a green leaf in a brown stone; and takes more notice of it than of all the green in the wood: and you, or I, or any of us, would be unhappy if any single human creature beside us were in sharp pain; but we can read, at breakfast, day after day, of men being killed, and of women and children dying of hunger, faster than the leaves strew the brooks in Vallombrosa;1—and then go out to play croquet, as if nothing had happened. MAY. But we do not see the people being killed or dying. 44. L. You did not see your brother, when you got the telegram the other day, saying he was ill, May; but you cried for him; and played no croquet. But we cannot talk of these things now; and what is more, you must let me talk straight on, for a little while; and ask no questions till I‘ve done; for we branch (―exfoliate,‖ I should say, 1 [Paradise Lost, i. 302.] 256 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST mineralogically) always into something else,—though that‘s my fault more than yours; but I must go straight on now. You have got a distinct notion, I hope, of leaf-crystals; and you see the sort of look they have; you can easily remember that ―folium‖ is Latin for a leaf, and that the separate flakes of mica, or any other such stones, are called ―folia‖; but, because mica is the most characteristic of these stones, other things that are like it in structure are called ―micas‖; thus we have Uran-mica, which is the green leaf I showed you; and Copper-mica, which is another like it, made chiefly of copper: and this foliated iron is called ―micaceous iron.‖ You have then these two great orders, Needle-crystals, made (probably) of grains in rows; and Leaf-crystals, made (probably) of needles interwoven; now, lastly, there are crystals of a third order, in heaps, or knots, or masses, which may be made, either of leaves laid one upon another, or of needles bound like Roman fasces; and mica itself, when it is well crystallised, puts itself into such masses, as if to show us how others are made. Here is a brown six-sided crystal, quite as beautifully chiselled at the sides as any castle tower; but you see it is entirely built of folia of mica, one laid above another, which break away the moment I touch the edge with my knife. Now, here is another hexagonal tower, of just the same size and colour, which I want you to compare with the mica carefully; but as I cannot wait for you to do it just now, I must tell you quickly what main differences to look for. First, you will feel it is far heavier than the mica. Then, though its surface looks quite micaceous in the folia of it, when you try them with the knife, you will find you cannot break them away— 45. KATHLEEN. May I try? L. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here‘s my strong knife for you. (Experimental pause. KATHLEEN doing her best.) You‘ll have that knife shutting on your finger presently, Kate; and I don‘t know a girl who would like less to have her hand tied up for a week. IV. THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 257 KATHLEEN (who also does not like to be beaten—giving up the knife despondently). What can the nasty hard thing be? L. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate: very hard set certainly, yet not so hard as it might be. If it were thoroughly well crystallised, you would see none of those micaceous fractures; and the stone would be quite red and clear, all through. KATHLEEN. Oh, cannot you show us one? L. Egypt can, if you ask her; she has a beautiful one in the clasp of her favourite bracelet. KATHLEEN. Why, that‘s a ruby! L. Well, so is that thing you‘ve been scratching at. KATHLEEN. My goodness! (Takes up the stone again, very delicately; and drops it. General consternation.) L. Never mind, Katie; you might drop it from the top of the house, and do it no harm. But though you really are a very good girl, and as good-natured as anybody can possibly be, remember, you have your faults, like other people; and, if I were you, the next time I wanted to assert anything energetically, I would assert it by ―my badness,‖ not ―my goodness.‖ KATHLEEN. Ah, now, it‘s too bad of you! 46. L. Well, then, I‘ll invoke, on occasion, my ―too-badness.‖ But you may as well pick up the ruby, now you have dropped it; and look carefully at the beautiful hexagonal lines which gleam on its surface: and here is a pretty white sapphire (essentially the same stone as the ruby), in which you will see the same lovely structure, like the threads of the finest white cobweb.1 I do not know what is the exact method of a ruby‘s construction, but you see by these lines what fine construction there is, even in this hardest of stones (after the diamond), which 1 [For other passages on the beauty of the sapphire, see Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 12 (Vol. XII. p. 29), and Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. viii. ch. i. § 9 (Vol. VII. p. 208).] XVIII. R 258 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST usually appears as a massive lump or knot. There is therefore no real mineralogical distinction between needle crystals and knotted crystals, but, practically, crystallised masses throw themselves into one of the three groups we have been examining to-day; and appear either as Needles, as Folia, or as Knots; when they are in needles (or fibres), they make the stones or rocks formed out of them ―fibrous‖; when they are in folia, they make them ―foliated‖; when they are in knots (or grains), ―granular.‖ Fibrous rocks are comparatively rare, in mass; but fibrous minerals are innumerable; and it is often a question which really no one but a young lady could possibly settle, whether one should call the fibres composing them ―threads‖ or ―needles.‖ Here is amianthus, for instance, which is quite as fine and soft as any cotton thread you ever sewed with; and here is sulphide of bismuth, with sharper points and brighter lustre than your finest needles have; and fastened in white webs of quartz more delicate than your finest lace; and here is sulphide of antimony, which looks like mere purple wool, but it is all of purple needle crystals; and here is red oxide of copper (you must not breathe on it as you look, or you may blow some of the films of it off the stone), which is simply a woven tissue of scarlet silk. However, these finer thread forms are comparatively rare, while the bolder and needle-like crystals occur constantly; so that, I believe, ―Needle-crystal‖ is the best word, (the grand one is ―Acicular crystal,‖ but Sibyl will tell you it is all the same, only less easily understood; and therefore more scientific1 ). Then the Leaf-crystals, as I said, form an immense mass of foliated rocks; and the Granular crystals, which are of many kinds, form essentially granular, or granitic and porphyritic rocks; and it is always a point of more interest to me (and I think will ultimately be to you), to consider the causes which force a given mineral to take any one of these three general forms, than what the peculiar 1 [On scientific nomenclature, compare Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 71), and Eagle’s Nest, § 186.] IV. THE CRYSTAL ORDERS 259 geometrical limitations are, belonging to its own crystals.* It is more interesting to me, for instance, to try and find out why the red oxide of copper, usually crystallising in cubes or octahedrons, makes itself exquisitely, out of its cubes, into this red silk in one particular Cornish mine, than what are the absolutely necessary angles of the octahedron, which is its common form. At all events, that mathematical part of crystallography is quite beyond girls‘ strength; but these questions of the various tempers and manners of crystals are not only comprehensible by you, but full of the most curious teaching for you. For in the fulfilment, to the best of their power, of their adopted form under given circumstances, there are conditions entirely resembling those of human virtue; and indeed expressible under no term so proper as that of the Virtue, or Courage, of crystals:—which, if you are not afraid of the crystals making you ashamed of yourselves, we will try to get some notion of, to-morrow. But it will be a bye-lecture, and more about yourselves than the minerals. Don‘t come unless you like. MARY. I‘m sure the crystals will make us ashamed of ourselves; but we‘ll come, for all that. L. Meantime, look well and quietly over these needle, or thread crystals, and those on the other two tables, with magnifying glasses; and see what thoughts will come into your little heads about them. For the best thoughts are generally those which come without being forced, one does not know how. And so I hope you will get through your wet day patiently.

• Note iv. [p. 365].

LECTURE V CRYSTAL VIRTUES A quiet talk, in the afternoon, by the sunniest window of the Drawing-room. Present, FLORRIE, ISABEL, MAY, LUCILLA, KATHLEEN, DORA, MARY, and some others, who have saved time for the bye-Lecture. 47. L. So you have really come, like good girls, to be made ashamed of yourselves? DORA (very meekly). No, we needn‘t be made so; we always are. L. Well, I believe that‘s truer than most pretty speeches: but you know, you saucy girl, some people have more reason to be so than others. Are you sure everybody is, as well as you? THE GENERAL VOICE. Yes, yes; everybody. L. What! Florrie ashamed of herself? (FLORRIE hides behind the curtain.) L. And Isabel? (ISABEL hides under the table.) L. And May? (MAY runs into the corner behind the piano.) L. And Lucilla? (LUCILLA hides her face in her hands.) L. Dear, dear; but this will never do. I shall have to tell you of the faults of the crystals, instead of virtues, to put you in heart again. MAY (coming out of her corner). Oh! have the crystals faults, like us? L. Certainly, May. Their best virtues are shown in fighting their faults. And some have a great many faults; and some are very naughty crystals indeed. 260 V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 261 FLORRIE (from behind her curtain). As naughty as me? ISABEL (peeping from under the table-cloth). Or me? L. Well, I don‘t know. They never forget their syntax, children, when once they‘ve been taught it. But I think some of them are, on the whole, worse than any of you. Not that it‘s amiable of you to look so radiant, all in a minute, on that account. DORA. Oh! but it‘s so much more comfortable. (Everybody seems to recover their spirits. Eclipse of FLORRIE and ISABEL terminates.) 48. L. What kindly creatures girls are, after all, to their neighbours‘ failings! I think you may be ashamed of yourselves indeed now, children! I can tell you, you shall hear of the highest crystalline merits that I can think of to-day: and I wish there were more of them; but crystals have a limited, though a stern, code of morals; and their essential virtues are but two;—the first is to be pure, and the second to be well shaped. MARY. Pure! Does that mean clear—transparent? L. No; unless in the case of a transparent substance. You cannot have a transparent crystal of gold; but you may have a perfectly pure one. ISABEL. But you said that it was the shape that made things be crystals;1 therefore oughtn‘t their shape to be their first virtue, not their second? L. Right, you troublesome mousie. But I call their shape only their second virtue, because it depends on time and accident, and things which the crystal cannot help. If it is cooled too quickly, or shaken, it must take what shape it can; but it seems as if, even then, it had in itself the power of rejecting impurity, if it has crystalline life enough. Here is a crystal of quartz, well enough shaped in its way; but it seems to have been languid and sick at heart; and some white milky substance has got into it, and mixed itself up with it, all through. It makes the 1 [See above, pp. 233, 235, 258.] 262 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST quartz quite yellow, if you hold it up to the light, and milky blue on the surface. Here is another, broken into a thousand separate facets, and out of all traceable shape; but as pure as a mountain spring. I like this one best. THE AUDIENCE. So do I—and I—and I. MARY. Would a crystallographer? L. I think so. He would find many more laws curiously exemplified in the irregularly grouped but pure crystal. But it is a futile question, this of first or second. Purity is in most cases a prior, if not a nobler, virtue; at all events it is most convenient to think about it first. MARY. But what ought we to think about it? Is there much to be thought—I mean, much to puzzle one? L. I don‘t know what you call ―much.‖ It is a long time since I met with anything in which there was little. There‘s not much in this, perhaps. The crystal must be either dirty or clean—and there‘s an end. So it is with one‘s hands, and with one‘s heart;—only you can wash your hands without changing them, but not hearts, nor crystals. On the whole, while you are young, it will be as well to take care that your hearts don‘t want much washing; for they may perhaps need wringing also, when they do. (Audience doubtful and uncomfortable. LUCILLA at last takes courage.) 49. LUCILLA. Oh! but surely, sir, we cannot make our hearts clean? L. Not easily, Lucilla; so you had better keep them so, when they are. LUCILLA. When they are! But, sir— L. Well? LUCILLA. Sir—surely—are we not told that they are all evil? L. Wait a little, Lucilla: that is difficult ground you are getting upon; and we must keep to our crystals, till at least we understand what their good and evil consist in;1 1 [See below, § 53 (p. 267).] V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 263 they may help us afterwards to some useful hints about our own. I said that their goodness consisted chiefly in purity of substance, and perfectness of form: but those are rather the effects of their goodness, than the goodness itself. The inherent virtues of the crystals, resulting in these outer conditions, might really seem to be best described in the words we should use respecting living creatures—―force of heart‖ and ―steadiness of purpose.‖ There seem to be in some crystals, from the beginning, an unconquerable purity of vital power, and strength of crystal spirit. Whatever dead substance, unacceptant of this energy, comes in their way, is either rejected, or forced to take some beautiful subordinate form; the purity of the crystal remains unsullied, and every atom of it bright with coherent energy. Then the second condition is, that from the beginning of its whole structure, a fine crystal seems to have determined that it will be of a certain size and of a certain shape; it persists in this plan, and completes it. Here is a perfect crystal of quartz for you. It is of an unusual form, and one which it might seem very difficult to build—a pyramid with convex sides, composed of other minor pyramids. But there is not a flaw in its contour throughout; not one of its myriads of component sides but is as bright as a jeweller‘s faceted work (and far finer, if you saw it close). The crystal points are as sharp as javelins; their edges will cut glass with a touch. Anything more resolute, consummate, determinate in form, cannot be conceived. Here, on the other hand, is a crystal of the same substance, in a perfectly simple type of form—a plain six-sided prism; but from its base to its point,—and it is nine inches long,—it has never for one instant made up its mind what thickness it will have. It seems to have begun by making itself as thick as it thought possible with the quantity of material at command. Still not being as thick as it would like to be, it has clumsily glued on more substance at one of its sides. Then it has thinned itself, in a panic of economy; then puffed itself out again; then starved one side 264 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST to enlarge another; then warped itself quite out of its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite human image of decrepitude and dishonour; but the worst of all the signs of its decay and helplessness is that, half-way up, a parasite crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in the side of the larger one, eating out a cavity round its root, and then growing backwards, or downwards, contrary to the direction of the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least difference in purity of substance between the first most noble stone, and this ignoble and dissolute one. The impurity of the last is in its will, or want of will. MARY. Oh, if we could but understand the meaning of it all! 50. L. We can understand all that is good for us. It is just as true for us, as for the crystal, that the nobleness of life depends on its consistency,—clearness of purpose,—quiet and ceaseless energy. All doubt and repenting, and botching, and retouching, and wondering what it will be best to do next, are vice, as well as misery. MARY (much wondering). But must not one repent when one does wrong, and hesitate when one can‘t see one‘s way? L. You have no business at all to do wrong; nor to get into any way that you cannot see. Your intelligence should always be far in advance of your act. Whenever you do not know what you are about, you are sure to be doing wrong. KATHLEEN. Oh, dear, but I never know what I am about! L. Very true, Katie, but it is a great deal to know, if you know that. And you find that you have done wrong afterwards; and perhaps some day you may begin to know, or at least, think, what you are about. ISABEL. But surely people can‘t go very wrong if they don‘t know, can they? I mean, they can‘t be very naughty. They can be wrong, like Kathleen, or me, when we make mistakes; but not wrong in the dreadful way. I can‘t V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 265 express what I mean; but there are two sorts of wrong, are there not? L. Yes, Isabel; but you will find that the great difference is between kind and unkind wrongs, not between meant and unmeant wrong. Very few people really do mean to do wrong,—in a deep sense, none. They only don‘t know what they are about. Cain did not mean to do wrong when he killed Abel. (ISABEL draws a deep breath, and opens her eyes very wide.) 51. No, Isabel; and there are countless Cains among us now, who kill their brothers by the score a day, not only for less provocation than Cain had, but for no provocation,—and merely for what they can make of their bones,—yet do not think they are doing wrong in the least. Then sometimes you have the business reversed, as over in America these last years, where you have seen Abel resolutely killing Cain, and not thinking he is doing wrong. 1 The great difficulty is always to open people‘s eyes: to touch their feelings, and break their hearts, is easy; the difficult thing is to break their heads. What does it matter, as long as they remain stupid, whether you change their feelings or not? You cannot be always at their elbow to tell them what is right: and they may just do as wrong as before, or worse; and their best intentions merely make the road smooth for them,—you know where, children. For it is not the place itself that is paved with them, as people say so often. You can‘t pave the bottomless pit; but you may the road to it. MAY. Well, but if people do as well as they can see how, surely that is the right for them, isn‘t it? L. No, May, not a bit of it; right is right, and wrong is wrong. It is only the fool who does wrong, and says he ―did it for the best.‖2 And if there‘s one sort of 1 [By referring to the North as Abel and the South as Cain, Ruskin shows that his general sympathies were with the former; but he drew the line at ―the bayonet point‖: se e Vol. XVII. pp. 432–433 n.] 2 [On this passage, see the Preface; above, p. 204.] 266 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST person in the world that the Bible speaks harder of than another, it is fools. Their particular and chief way of saying ―There is no God‖1 is this of declaring that whatever their ―public opinion‖ may be, is right; and that God‘s opinion is of no consequence. 52. MAY. But surely nobody can always know what is right? L. Yes, you always can, for to-day; and if you do what you see of it to-day, you will see more of it, and more clearly, to-morrow. Here, for instance, you children are at school, and have to learn French, and arithmetic, and music, and several other such things. That is your ―right‖ for the present; the ―right‖ for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There‘s no doubt of conscience about that, I suppose? VIOLET. No; but if one wants to read an amusing book, instead of learning one‘s lesson? L. You don‘t call that a ―question,‖ seriously, Violet? You are then merely deciding whether you will resolutely do wrong or not. MARY. But, in after life, how many fearful difficulties may arise, however one tries to know or to do what is right! L. You are much too sensible a girl, Mary, to have felt that, whatever you may have seen. A great many of young ladies‘ difficulties arise from their falling in love with a wrong person: but they have no business to let themselves fall in love, till they know he is the right one. DORA. How many thousands ought he to have a year? L. (disdaining reply). There are, of course, certain crises of fortune when one has to take care of one-self; 1 [Psalms xiv. 1; very often quoted by Ruskin (see General Index).] V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 267 and mind shrewdly what one is about. There is never any real doubt about the path, but you may have to walk very slowly. 53. MARY. And if one is forced to do a wrong thing by some one who has authority over you? L. My dear, no one can be forced to do a wrong thing, for the guilt is in the will: but you may any day be forced to do a fatal thing, as you might be forced to take poison; the remarkable law of nature in such cases being, that it is always unfortunate you who are poisoned, and not the person who gives you the dose. It is a very strange law, but it is a law. Nature merely sees to the carrying out of the normal operation of arsenic. She never troubles herself to ask who gave it you. So also you may be starved to death, morally as well as physically, by other people‘s faults. You are, on the whole, very good children sitting here to-day:—do you think that your goodness comes all by your own contriving? or that you are gentle and kind because your dispositions are naturally more angelic than those of the poor girls who are playing, with wild eyes, on the dustheaps in the alleys of our great towns; and who will one day fill their prisons,—or, better, their graves? Heaven only knows where they, and we who have cast them there, shall stand at last. But the main judgment question will be, I suppose, for all of us, ―Did you keep a good heart through it?‖ What you were, others may answer for;—what you tried to be, you must answer for yourself. Was the heart pure and true—tell us that? And so we come back to your sorrowful question, Lucilla, which I put aside a little ago. You would be afraid to answer that your heart was pure and true, would not you?1 LUCILLA. Yes, indeed, sir. L. Because you have been taught that it is all evil— 1 [For the author‘s opinion of the following dialogue, see the Preface; above, p. 205.] 268 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST ―only evil continually.‖1 Somehow, often as people say that, they never seem, to me, to believe it. Do you really believe it? LUCILLA. Yes, sir; I hope so. L. That you have an entirely bad heart? Lucilla (a little uncomfortable at the substitution of the monosyllable for the dissyllable, nevertheless persisting in her orthodoxy). Yes, sir. 54. L. Florrie, I am sure you are tired; I never like you to stay when you are tired; but, you know, you must not play with the kitten while we‘re talking. FLORRIE. Oh! but I‘m not tired; and I‘m only nursing her. She‘ll be asleep in my lap directly. L. Stop! that puts me in mind of something I had to show you, about minerals that are like hair. I want a hair out of Tittie‘s tail. FLORRIE (quite rude, in her surprise, even to the point of repeating expressions). Out of Tittie‘s tail! L. Yes; a brown one: Lucilla, you can get at the tip of it nicely, under Florrie‘s arm; just pull one out for me. LUCILLA. Oh! but, sir, it will hurt her so! L. Never mind; she can‘t scratch you while Florrie is holding her. Now that I think of it, you had better pull out two. LUCILLA. But then she may scratch Florrie! and it will hurt her so, sir! if you only want brown hairs, wouldn‘t two of mine do? L. Would you really rather pull out your own than Tittie‘s? LUCILLA. Oh, of course, if mine will do. L. But that‘s very wicked, Lucilla! LUCILLA. Wicked, sir? L. Yes; if your heart was not so bad, you would much rather pull all the cat‘s hairs out, than one of your own. 1 [Genesis vi. 5.] V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 269 LUCILLA. Oh! but, sir, I didn‘t mean bad like that. 55. L. I believe, if the truth were told, Lucilla, you would like to tie a kettle to Tittie‘s tail, and hunt her round the playground. LUCILLA. Indeed, I should not, sir. L. That‘s not true, Lucilla; you know it cannot be. LUCILLA. Sir? L. Certainly it is not;—how can you possibly speak any truth out of such a heart as you have? It is wholly deceitful. LUCILLA. Oh! no, no; I don‘t mean that way: I don‘t mean that it makes me tell lies, quite out. L. Only that it tells lies within you? LUCILLA. Yes. L. Then, outside of it, you know what is true, and say so; and I may trust the outside of your heart; but within, it is all foul and false. Is that the way? LUCILLA. I suppose so: I don‘t understand it, quite. L. There is no occasion for understanding it; but do you feel it? Are you sure that your heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked?1 LUCILLA (much relieved by finding herself among phrases with which she is acquainted). Yes, sir. I‘m sure of that. L. (pensively). I‘m sorry for it, Lucilla. LUCILLA. So am I, indeed. L. What are you sorry with, Lucilla? LUCILLA. Sorry with, sir? L. Yes; I mean, where do you feel sorry? in your feet? LUCILLA (laughing a little). No, sir, of course. L. In your shoulders, then? LUCILLA. No, sir. L. You are sure of that? Because, I fear, sorrow in the shoulders would not be worth much. LUCILLA. I suppose I feel it in my heart, if I really am sorry. 1 [Jeremiah xvii. 9.] 270 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST L. If you really are! Do you mean to say that you are sure you are utterly wicked, and yet do not care? LUCILLA. No, indeed; I have cried about it often. L. Well, then, you are sorry in your heart? LUCILLA. Yes, when the sorrow is worth anything. L. Even if it be not, it cannot be anywhere else but there. It is not the crystalline lens of your eyes which is sorry, when you cry? LUCILLA. No, sir, of course. L. Then, have you two hearts; one of which is wicked, and the other grieved? or is one side of it sorry for the other side? 56. LUCILLA (weary of cross-examination and a little vexed). Indeed, sir, you know I can‘t understand it; but you know how it is written—―another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.‖1 L. Yes, Lucilla, I know how it is written; but I do not see that it will help us to know that, if we neither understand what is written, nor feel it. And you will not get nearer to the meaning of one verse, if, as soon as you are puzzled by it, you escape to another, introducing three new words—―law,‖ ―members,‖ and ―mind‖; not one of which you at present know the meaning of; and respecting which, you probably never will be much wiser; since men like Montesquieu and Locke2 have spent great part of their lives in endeavouring to explain two of them. LUCILLA. Oh! please, sir, ask somebody else. L. If I thought any one else could answer better than you, Lucilla, I would: but suppose I try, instead, myself to explain your feeling to you? LUCILLA. Oh, yes; please do. L. Mind, I say your ―feelings,‖ not your ―belief.‖ For I cannot undertake to explain anybody‘s beliefs. Still I 1 [Romans vii. 23.] 2 [For other references to Locke‘s Essay concerning Human Understanding, see Vol. III. p. 92, and Vol. XVII. p. 512. To Montesquieu‘s Esprit des Lois Ruskin does not elsewhere refer.] V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 271 must try a little, first, to explain the belief also, because I want to draw it to some issue. As far as I understand what you say, or any one else, taught as you have been taught, says, on this matter,—you think that there is an external goodness, a whited-sepulchre kind of goodness, which appears beautiful outwardly, but is within full of uncleanness:1 a deep secret guilt, of which we ourselves are not sensible; and which can only be seen by the Maker of us all. (Approving murmurs from audience.) L. Is it not so with the body as well as the soul? (Looked notes of interrogation.) L. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful thing? (Grave faces, signifying “Certainly not,” and “What next?‖) L. And if you all could see in each other, with clear eyes, whatever God sees beneath those fair faces of yours, you would not like it? (Murmured “No’s.‖) L. Nor would it be good for you? (Silence.) L. The probability being, that what God does not allow you to see, He does not wish you to see; nor even to think of? (Silence prolonged.) 57. L. It would not at all be good for you, for instance, whenever you were washing your faces, and braiding your hair, to be thinking of the shapes of the jawbones, and of the cartilage of the nose, and of the jagged sutures of the scalp? (Resolutely whispered “No’s.‖) L. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily processes of nourishment and decay? (No.) L. Still less, if instead of merely inferior and preparatory conditions of structure, as in the skeleton,—or inferior 1 [See Matthew xxiii. 27.] 272 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST offices of structure, as in operations of life and death,—there were actual disease in the body; ghastly and dreadful. You would try to cure it; but having taken such measures as were necessary, you would not think the cure likely to be promoted by perpetually watching the wounds, or thinking of them. On the contrary, you would be thankful for every moment of forgetfulness: as, in daily health, you must be thankful that your Maker has veiled whatever is fearful in your frame under a sweet and manifest beauty; and has made it your duty, and your only safety, to rejoice in that, both in yourself and in others:—not indeed concealing, or refusing to believe in sickness, if it come; but never dwelling on it. Now, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are just the same. Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you; and so far as you know any means of mending it, take those means, and have done; when you are examining yourself, never call yourself merely a ―sinner‖; that is very cheap abuse, and utterly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of it. But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an evil-eyed, jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in any wise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly accused yourself of. And as soon as you are in active way of mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over an undefined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of others‘ faults: in every person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong: honour that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it: and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life should seem rugged as a palm tree stem; still, never mind, so long as it has been growing; and has its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of honeyed fruit, at top. And even if you cannot find much good in V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 273 yourself at last, think that it does not much matter to the universe either what you were, or are; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be; and rejoice in their nobleness. An immense quantity of modern confession of sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly egotism; which will rather gloat over its own evil, than lose the centralisation of its interest in itself. 58. MARY. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, how did the old Greek proverb ―know thyself‖1 come to be so highly esteemed? L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs;—Apollo‘s proverb and the sun‘s:—but do you think you can know yourself by looking into yourself? Never. You can know what you are, only by looking out of yourself. Measure your own powers with those of others; compare your own interests with those of others; try to understand what you appear to them, as well as what they appear to you; and judge of yourselves, in all things, relatively and subordinately; not positively: starting always with a wholesome conviction of the probability that there is nothing particular about you. For instance, some of you perhaps think you can write poetry. Dwell on your own feelings and doings;—and you will soon think yourselves Tenth Muses; but forget your own feelings; and try, instead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or Dante: and you will soon begin to feel yourselves very foolish girls—which is much like the fact. So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfortune;—you meditate over its effects on you personally; and begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a this or that or the other of profound significance; and that all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little while, that they may watch its effects on your mind. But give up this egotistic indulgence of 1 [For another reference to this—the oldest dictum of philosophy on record, and thought so highly of that it was even attributed to the oracle of Apollo—see Eagle’s Nest, §§ 22, 23.] XVIII. S 274 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST your fancy; examine a little what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happening, every second, to twenty times worthier persons: and your self-consciousness will change into pity and humility; and you will know yourself, so far as to understand that ―there hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man.‖1 59. Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any person of sense would arrive at, supposing the texts which relate to the inner evil of the heart were as many, and as prominent, as they are often supposed to be 1 [1 Corinthians x. 13. From this point to the end of the lecture there is a different passage in the MS., as follows:— ―MARY. But that is very dreadful. L. Very dreadful indeed, my dear. The world is no place to live in dreadlessly. MARY. But it seems as if one could hardly live in it at all, if one thought such things. L. You have no business to think them; but to know them, and deal with them vigorously. As for their being too dreadful facts to face—perhaps—if people knew them a little better, they might not spend their whole day so placidly (or petulantly, as the case may be) at croquet; but it will be a long while before you can make anybody seriously uncomfortable about their Destinies, much less about their Deeds, which are the Seeds of Destiny. MARY. But then we cannot, surely, suffer in the end for the faults of others? L. I know nothing either of ends or beginnings, my dear; but I know that our faults would be of small consequence—if others did not suffer for them. But thus you know it is all fair exchange; we are helped by the virtue of other men, as much as we are hurt by their sin. The crystals will tell us a great deal about this too, if we like to look at them. The wicked ones quarrel with and hurt the good ones, just as human creatures do. MARY. Are there wicked crystals, then? L. Certainly, as there are right-minded ones. What are all these thick, stupid, disturbed, half-dead, back-growing things I‘ve been showing you but wicked crystals; and a fine life they lead the better ones that get among them. Not but that sometimes the high-spirited crystals quarrel a little too. I think sometimes the Hartz Demons set them on at each other, and take as much delight in crystal-fighting as English gentlemen used to do in cock-fighting. ISABEL. Oh, but let us see how they fight. L. Yes, of course, you girls will like the fighting crystals better than the peaceable ones, even though they have not red coats nor feathers in their hats. It must be for to-morrow however. The malice of crystals, I am sorry to say, is more various than their virtue, and crystalline treacheries and hypocrisies may rival those of better animated Dust. We have had to-day our school for morals; to-morrow, and I am afraid you will like it best, we shall have the School for Scandal. (The Audience, ashamed to express their satisfaction, retire silently, with sparkling eyes.)‖] V. CRYSTAL VIRTUES 275 by careless readers. But the way in which common people read their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes.1 They rolled themselves (it was said), over and over, where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to their spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is. But you can only get the skins of the texts that way. If you want their juice, you must press them in cluster. Now, the clustered texts2 about the human heart insist, as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts, but on the terrific distinction between the bad and the good ones. ―A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil.‖3 ―They on the rock are they which, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it.‖ ―Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.‖ ―The wicked have bent their bow, that they may privily shoot at him that is upright in heart.‖ And so on; they are countless, to the same effect. And, for all of us, the question is not at all to ascertain how much or how little corruption there is in human nature; but to ascertain whether, out of all the mass of that nature, we are of the sheep or the goat breed; whether we are people of upright heart, being shot at, or people of crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the texts bearing on the subject, this, which is a quite simple and practical order, is the one you have chiefly to hold in mind. ―Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.‖ 1 [See Fors Clavigera, Letter 35, where Ruskin refers to this passage and states the point less metaphorically; compare also Time and Tide, § 37 (Vol. XVII. p. 350).] 2 [See the note on the next page.] 3 [Matthew xii. 35. The following references are to Luke viii. 15; Psalms xxxvii. 4; Psalms xi. 2; Proverbs iv. 23; Matthew xii. 44, 45.] 276 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST LUCILLA. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem!1 L. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the universe is bound to look consistent to a girl of fifteen? Look up at your own room window;—you can just see it from where you sit. I‘m glad that it is left open, as it ought to be, on so fine a day. But do you see what a black spot it looks, in the sun-lighted wall? LUCILLA. Yes, it looks as black as ink. L. Yet you know it is a very bright room when you are inside of it; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very probable, also, that if you could look into your heart from the sun‘s point of view, it might appear a very black hole to you indeed: nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make it very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don‘t put the shutters up. And the one question for you, remember, is not ―dark or light?‖ but ―tidy or untidy?‖ Look well to your sweeping and garnishing; and be sure it is only the banished spirit, or some of the seven wickeder ones at his back, who will still whisper to you that it is all black. 1 [On the apparent inconsistency of Bible texts, see a passage from Ruskin‘s diary given in Vol. V. pp. liii.–iv., and compare Vol. XII. pp. 561–563.] LECTURE VI CRYSTAL QUARRELS Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game at crystallisation in the morning, of which various account has to be rendered. In particular everybody has to explain why they were always where they were not intended to be. 60. L. (having received and considered the report). You have got on pretty well, children: but you know these were easy figures you have been trying. Wait till I have drawn you out the plans of some crystals of snow! MARY. I don‘t think those will be the most difficult: they are so beautiful that we shall remember our places better; and then they are all regular, and in stars; it is those twisty oblique ones we are afraid of. L. Read Carlyle‘s account of the battle of Leuthen, and learn Friedrich‘s ―oblique order.‖ You will ―get it done for once, I think, provided you can march as a pair of compasses would.‖1 But remember, when you can construct the most difficult single figures, you have only learned half the game—nothing so much as the half, indeed, as the crystals themselves play it. MARY. Indeed; what else is there? L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallises alone. Usually two or three, under quite different crystalline laws, form together. They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, when they are in fine temper: and observe what this signifies. It signifies that the two, or more, minerals of different natures agree, somehow, between themselves, how much space each will want;—agree which of them 1 [Friedrich, book xviii. ch. x. 277 278 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST shall give way to the other at their junction; or in what measure each will accommodate itself to the other‘s shape! And then each takes its permitted shape, and allotted share of space; yielding, or being yielded to, as it builds, till each crystal has fitted itself perfectly and gracefully to its differently-natured neighbour. So that, in order to practise this, in even the simplest terms, you must divide into two parties, wearing different colours; each must choose a different figure to construct; and you must form one of these figures through the other, both going on at the same time. 61. MARY. I think we may, perhaps, manage it; but I cannot at all understand how the crystals do. It seems to imply so much preconcerting of plan, and so much giving way to each other, as if they really were living. L. Yes, it implies both concurrence and compromise, regulating all wilfulness of design: and, more curiously still, the crystals do not always give way to each other. They show exactly the same varieties of temper that human creatures might. Sometimes they yield the required place with perfect grace and courtesy; forming fantastic, but exquisitely finished, groups: and sometimes they will not yield at all; but fight furiously for their places, losing all shape and honour, and even their own likeness, in the contest. MARY. But is not that wholly wonderful? How it is that one never sees it spoken of in books? L. The scientific men are all busy in determining the constant laws under which the struggle takes place; these indefinite humours of the elements are of no interest to them. And unscientific people rarely give themselves the trouble of thinking at all, when they look at stones. Not that it is of much use to think; the more one thinks, the more one is puzzled. 62. MARY. Surely it is more wonderful than anything in botany? L. Everything has its own wonders; but, given the VI. CRYSTAL QUARRELS 279 nature of the plant, it is easier to understand what a flower will do, and why it does it, than, given anything we as yet know of stone-nature, to understand what a crystal will do, and why it does it. You at once admit a kind of volition and choice, in the flower; but we are not accustomed to attribute anything of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, in reality, more likeness to some conditions of human feeling among stones than among plants. There is a far greater difference between kindlytempered and ill-tempered crystals of the same mineral, than between any two specimens of the same flower: and the friendships and wars of crystals depend more definitely and curiously on their varieties of disposition, than any associations of flowers. Here, for instance, is a good garnet, living with good mica; one rich red, and the other silver white: the mica leaves exactly room enough for the garnet to crystallise comfortably in; and the garnet lives happily in its little white house; fitted to it, like a pholas in its cell. But here are wicked garnets living with wicked mica. See what ruin they make of each other! You cannot tell which is which; the garnets look like dull red stains on the crumbling stone. By the way, I never could understand, if St. Gothard is a real saint,1 why he can‘t keep his garnets in better order. These are all under his care; but I suppose there are too many of them for him to look after. The streets of Airolo are paved with them. MAY. Paved with garnets? 63. L. With mica-slate and garnets; I broke this bit out of a paving stone. Now garnets and mica are natural friends, and generally fond of each other; but you see how they quarrel when they are ill brought up. So it is always. Good crystals are friendly with almost all other good crystals, however little they chance to see of each other, 1 [The origin of the name of the St. Gothard Pass is uncertain, but probably it is derived from St. Godehardus, Bishop of Hildesheim (1038); in his honour the abbots of Dissentis had raised a chapel on the mountain (see Brockedon‘s Passes of the Alps, vol. i. p. 60).] 280 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST or however opposite their habits may be; while wicked crystals quarrel with one another, though they may be exactly alike in habits, and see each other continually. And of course the wicked crystals quarrel with the good ones. ISABEL. Then do the good ones get angry? L. No, never; they attend to their own work and life; and live it as well as they can, though they are always the sufferers. Here, for instance, is a rock-crystal of the purest race and finest temper, who was born, unhappily for him, in a bad neighbourhood, near Beaufort in Savoy;1 and he has had to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life. See here, when he was but a child, it came down on him, and nearly buried him; a weaker crystal would have died in despair; but he only gathered himself together, like Hercules against the serpents, and threw a layer of crystal over the clay; conquered it,—imprisoned it,—and lived on. Then, when he was a little older, came more clay; and poured itself upon him here, at the side; and he has laid crystal over that, and lived on, in his purity. Then the clay came on at his angles, and tried to cover them, and round them away; but upon that he threw out buttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to his own central line as chapels round a cathedral apse; and clustered them round the clay; and conquered it again. At last the clay came on at his summit, and tried to blunt his summit; but he could not endure that for an instant; and left his flanks all rough, but pure; and fought the clay at his crest, and built crest over crest, and peak over peak, till the clay surrendered at last; and here is his summit, smooth and pure, terminating a pyramid of alternate clay and crystal, half a foot high! LILY. Oh, how nice of him! What a dear, brave crystal! But I can‘t bear to see his flanks all broken, and the clay within them. 1 [St. Maxime de Beaufort, about twelve miles north-east of Albertville.] VI. CRYSTAL QUARRELS 281 64. L. Yes; it was an evil chance for him, the being born to such contention; there are some enemies so base that even to hold them captive is a kind of dishonour. But look, here has been quite a different kind of struggle: the adverse power has been more orderly, and has fought the pure crystal in ranks as firm as its own. This is not mere rage and impediment of crowded evil: here is a disciplined hostility; army against army. LILY. Oh, but this is much more beautiful! L. Yes, for both the elements have true virtue in them; it is a pity they are at war, but they war grandly. MARY. But is this the same clay as in the other crystal? L. I used the word clay for shortness. In both, the enemy is really limestone; but in the first, disordered, and mixed with true clay; while, here, it is nearly pure, and crystallises into its own primitive form, the oblique sixsided one, which you know; and out of these it makes regiments; and then squares of the regiments, and so charges the rock crystal, literally in square against column. ISABEL. Please, please, let me see. And what does the rock crystal do? L. The rock crystal seems able to do nothing. The calcite cuts it through at every charge. Look here,—and here! The loveliest crystal in the whole group is hewn fairly into two pieces. ISABEL. Oh, dear! but is the calcite harder than the crystal then? L. No, softer. Very much softer. MARY. But then, how can it possibly cut the crystal? 65. L. It did not really cut it, though it passes through it. The two were formed together, as I told you; but no one knows how. Still, it is strange that this hard quartz has in all cases a good-natured way with it, of yielding to everything else. All sorts of soft things make nests for themselves in it; and it never makes a nest for itself in anything. It has all the rough outside work; and every 282 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST sort of cowardly and weak mineral can shelter itself within it. Look; these are hexagonal plates of mica; if they were outside of this crystal they would break, like burnt paper; but they are inside of it,—nothing can hurt them,—the crystal has taken them into its very heart, keeping all their delicate edges as sharp as if they were under water, instead of bathed in rock. Here is a piece of branched silver: you can bend it with a touch of your finger, but the stamp of its every fibre is on the rock in which it lay, as if the quartz had been as soft as wool. LILY. Oh, the good, good quartz! But does it never get inside of anything? L. As it is a little Irish girl who asks, I may perhaps answer, without being laughed at, that it gets inside of itself sometimes. But I don‘t remember seeing quartz make a nest for itself in anything else. 66. ISABEL. Please, there was something I heard you talking about, last term, with Miss Mary. I was at my lessons, but I heard something about nests; and I thought it was birds‘ nests; and I couldn‘t help listening; and then, I remember, it was about ―nests of quartz in granite.‖ I remember, because I was so disappointed! L. Yes, mousie, you remember quite rightly; but I can‘t tell you about those nests to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow: but there‘s no contradiction between my saying then, and now; I will show you that there is not, some day. Will you trust me meanwhile? ISABEL, Won‘t I! L. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of courtesy in quartz; it is on a small scale, but wonderfully pretty. Here is nobly born quartz living with a green mineral, called epidote; and they are immense friends. Now, you see, a comparatively large and strong quartz-crystal, and a very weak and slender little one of epidote, have begun to grow, close by each other, and sloping unluckily towards each other, so that at last they meet. They cannot go on growing together; the quartz crystal is five times as thick, VI. CRYSTAL QUARRELS 283 and more than twenty times as strong,* as the epidote; but he stops at once, just in the very crowning moment of his life, when he is building his own summit! He lets the pale little film of epidote grow right past him; stopping his own summit for it; and he never himself grows any more. 67. LILY (after some silence of wonder). But is the quartz never wicked then? L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured compared to other things. Here are two very characteristic examples; one is good quartz, living with good pearlspar, and the other, wicked quartz, living with wicked pearl-spar. In both, the quartz yields to the soft carbonate of iron; but, in the first piece, the iron takes only what it needs of room; and is inserted into the planes of the rock crystal with such precision, that you must break it away before you can tell whether it really penetrates the quartz or not; while the crystals of iron are perfectly formed,1 and have a lovely bloom on their surface besides. But here, when the two minerals quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all its surfaces jagged and torn to pieces; and there is not a single iron crystal whose shape you can completely trace. But the quartz has the worst of it, in both instances. 68. VIOLET. Might we look at that piece of broken quartz again, with the weak little film across it? it seems such a strange lovely thing, like the self-sacrifice of a human being. L. The self-sacrifice of a human being is not a lovely thing, Violet. It is often a necessary and noble thing; but no form nor degree of suicide can be ever lovely. VIOLET. But self-sacrifice is not suicide! L. What is it then? VIOLET. Giving up one‘s self for another.

• Quartz is not much harder than epidote; the strength is only supposed to be in some

proportion to the squares of the diameters. 1 [The MS. reads: ―. . . as perfectly formed as if they were halbert heads.‖] 284 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST L. Well, and what do you mean by ―giving up one‘s self‖? VIOLET. Giving up one‘s tastes, one‘s feelings, one‘s time, one‘s happiness, and so on, to make others happy. L. I hope you will never marry anybody, Violet, who expects you to make him happy in that way. VIOLET (hesitating). In what way? L. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing your feelings, and happiness. VIOLET. No, no, I don‘t mean that; but you know, for other people, one must. L. For people who don‘t love you, and whom you know nothing about? Be it so; but how does this ―giving up‖ differ from suicide then? VIOLET. Why, giving up one‘s pleasures is not killing one‘s self? L. Giving up wrong pleasure is not; neither is it selfsacrifice, but self-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If you surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither; you may as well cut it off: if you surrender the pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be unable to bear the light; you may as well pluck them out. And to maim yourself is partly to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you will soon slay. 69. VIOLET. But why do you make me think of that verse then, about the foot and the eye?1 L. You are indeed commanded to cut off and to pluck out, if foot or eye offend you; but why should they offend you? VIOLET. I don‘t know; I never quite understood that. L. Yet it is a sharp order; one needing to be well understood if it is to be well obeyed! When Helen sprained her ankle the other day, you saw how strongly it had to be bandaged; that is to say, prevented from all work, to recover it. But the bandage was not ―lovely.‖ VIOLET. No, indeed. 1 [Mark ix. 45, 47.] VI. CRYSTAL QUARRELS 285 L. And if her foot had been crushed, or diseased, or snake-bitten, instead of sprained, it might have been needful to cut it off. But the amputation would not have been ―lovely.‖ VIOLET. No. L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you;—if the light that is in you be darkness, and your feet run into mischief, or are taken in the snare,—it is indeed time to pluck out, and cut off, I think: but, so crippled, you can never be what you might have been otherwise. You enter into life, at best, halt or maimed;1 and the sacrifice is not beautiful, though necessary. VIOLET (after a pause). But when one sacrifices one‘s self for others. L. Why not rather others for you? VIOLET. Oh! but I couldn‘t bear that. L. Then why should they bear it? DORA (bursting in, indignant). And Thermopylæ, and Protesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia, and Jephthah‘s daughter?2 L. (sustaining the indignation unmoved). And the Samaritan woman‘s son? DORA. Which Samaritan woman‘s? L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29.3 DORA (obeys). How horrid! As if we meant anything like that! L. You don‘t seem to me to know in the least what you do mean, children. What practical difference is there between ―that,‖ and what you are talking about? The Samaritan children had no voice of their own in the business, it is true; but neither had Iphigenia: the Greek girl 1 [See Matthew xviii. 8.] 2 [These are all favourite instances with Ruskin, except Protesilaus, to whose doom, as the first Greek to set foot on the Trojan shore, Ruskin does not elsewhere allude. For references to Thermopylæ, see below, p. 430 n.; Curtius and Winkelried, Vol. VII. pp. 231–232; Iphigenia, Sesame and Lilies, § 61 (above, p. 118); and Jephthah‘s daughter, Time and Tide, § 43 (Vol. XVII. p. 353).] 3 [―So we boiled my son, and did eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son.‖] 286 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST was certainly neither boiled, nor eaten; but that only makes a difference in the dramatic effect; not in the principle. DORA (biting her lip). Well, then, tell us what we ought to mean. As if you didn‘t teach it all to us, and mean it yourself, at this moment, more than we do, if you wouldn‘t be tiresome! 70. L. I mean, and always have meant, simply this, Dora;—that the will of God respecting us is that we shall live by each other‘s happiness, and life; not by each other‘s misery, or death.1 I made you read that verse which so shocked you just now, because the relations of parent and child are typical of all beautiful human help. A child may have to die for its parents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live for them;—that not by sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, its force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and as the arrow in the hand of the giant.2 So it is in all other right relations. Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They are not intended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen themselves for each other. And among the many apparently beautiful things which turn, through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that the thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of good men must be named as one of the fatallest. They have so often been taught that there is a virtue in mere suffering, as such; and foolishly to hope that good may be brought by Heaven out of all on which Heaven itself has set the stamp of evil, that we may avoid it,—that they accept pain and defeat as if these were their appointed portion; never understanding that their defeat is not the less to be 1 [In the MS. Ruskin first enforces the other side of his lesson, thus:— ―I mean . . . that there are times when men must give their flesh to each other, to eat; and their souls too; when they must give their spirits to each other to eat. There are causes for which every man will commonly and naturally dare to die—most husbands and wives of high temper, happily married, would for each other—most parents for their children—most soldiers for whatever cause they have attached themselves to.‖] 2 [Psalms cxxvii. 5 (Prayer-book version).] VI. CRYSTAL QUARRELS 287 mourned because it is more fatal to their enemies than to them. The one thing that a good man has to do, and to see done, is justice; he is neither to slay himself nor others causelessly: so far from denying himself, since he is pleased by good, he is to do his utmost to get his pleasure accomplished. And I only wish there were strength, fidelity, and sense enough, among the good Englishmen of this day, to render it possible for them to band together in a vowed brotherhood, to enforce, by strength of heart and hand, the doing of human justice among all who came within their sphere. And finally, for your own teaching, observe, although there may be need for much self-sacrifice and self-denial in the correction of faults of character, the moment the character is formed, the self-denial ceases. Nothing is really well done, which it costs you pain to do. 71. VIOLET. But surely, sir, you are always pleased with us when we try to please others, and not ourselves?1 L. My dear child, in the daily course and discipline of right life, we must continually and reciprocally submit and surrender in all kind and courteous and affectionate ways: and these submissions and ministries to each other, of which you all know (none better) the practice and the preciousness, are as good for the yielder as the receiver: they strengthen and perfect as much as they soften and refine. But the real sacrifice of all our strength, or life, or happiness to others (though it may be needed, and though all brave creatures hold their lives in their hand, to be given, 1 [Here the MS. shows an instance of Ruskin‘s expansion on revision. It reads:— ―VIOLET. Ah, how is that? L. Do you think it is a self-denial to Lily to nurse her little sister, as she does, all her holidays? VIOLET. She always says she couldn‘t do anything else. L. Yes; therefore she is a perfect nurse. If it was any self-denial to her, she could not be. And briefly, this, children, is what you have all to do, and what we your masters are bound as far as we may to see that you do—namely, to ascertain your powers, tastes, special gifts and graces; and to cultivate these for the help of others. You are not to think that Titian would have helped the world by not painting, or Casella by not singing . . .‖] 288 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST when such need comes, as frankly as a soldier gives his life in battle), is yet always a mournful and momentary necessity; not the fulfilment of the continuous law of being. Self-sacrifice which is sought after, and triumphed in, is usually foolish; and calamitous in its issue: and by the sentimental proclamation and pursuit of it, good people have not only made most of their own lives useless, but the whole framework of their religion so hollow, that at this moment, while the English nation, with its lips, pretends to teach every man to ―love his neighbour as himself,‖1 with its hands and feet it clutches and tramples like a wild beast; and practically lives, every soul of it that can, on other people‘s labour. Briefly, the constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts; and to strengthen them for the help of others. Do you think Titian would have helped the world better by denying himself, and not painting: or Casella2 by denying himself, and not singing? The real virtue is to be ready to sing the moment people ask us; as he was, even in purgatory. The very word ―virtue‖ means, not ―conduct,‖ but ―strength,‖ vital energy in the heart. Were not you reading about that group of words beginning with V,—vital, virtuous, vigorous, and so on,3—in Max Müller, the other day, Sibyl? Can‘t you tell the others about it? SIBYL. No, I can‘t; will you tell us, please? L. Not now, it is too late. Come to me some idle time to-morrow, and I‘ll tell you about it, if all‘s well. But the gist of it is, children, that you should at least know two Latin words; recollect that ―mors‖ means death, and decaying; and ―vita‖ means life, and growing: and try always, not to mortify yourselves, but to vivify yourselves. 1 [Matthew xix. 19.] 2 [See Vol. VII. p. 432; Vol. XV. p. 205.] 3 [See Max Müller‘s Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. pp. 352–353 (edition of 1880) for the derivation of ―mors.‖ For the reference to the words beginning with ―v,‖ see below, p. 301.] VI. CRYSTAL QUARRELS 289 72. VIOLET. But then, are we not to mortify our earthly affections?1 and surely we are to sacrifice ourselves, at least in God‘s service, if not in man‘s? L. Really, Violet, we are getting too serious. I‘ve given you enough ethics for one talk, I think! Do let us have a little play. Lily, what were you so busy about, at the ant-hill in the wood, this morning? LILY. Oh, it was the ants who were busy, not I; I was only trying to help them a little. L. And they wouldn‘t be helped, I suppose? LILY. No, indeed. I can‘t think why ants are always so tiresome, when one tries to help them! They were carrying bits of stick, as fast as they could, through a piece of grass; and pulling and pushing so hard; and tumbling over and over,—it made one quite pity them; so I took some of the bits of stick, and carried them forward a little, where I thought they wanted to put them; but instead of being pleased, they left them directly, and ran about looking quite angry and frightened; and at last ever so many of them got up my sleeves, and bit me all over, and I had to come away. L. I couldn‘t think what you were about. I saw your French grammar lying on the grass behind you, and thought perhaps you had gone to ask the ants to hear you a French verb. ISABEL. Ah! but you didn‘t, though! L. Why not, Isabel? I knew well enough Lily couldn‘t learn that verb by herself. ISABEL. No; but the ants couldn‘t help her. L. Are you sure the ants could not have helped you, Lily? LILY (thinking). I ought to have learned something from them, perhaps. L. But none of them left their sticks to help you through the irregular verb? 1 [See Colossians iii. 5.] XVIII. T 290 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST LILY. No, indeed. (Laughing with some others.) L. What are you laughing at, children? I cannot see why the ants should not have left their tasks to help Lily in hers,—since here is Violet thinking she ought to leave her tasks, to help God in His. Perhaps, however, she takes Lily‘s more modest view, and thinks only that ―He ought to learn something from her.‖ (Tears in VIOLET‘s eyes.) DORA (scarlet). It‘s too bad—it‘s a shame:—poor Violet! L. My dear children, there‘s no reason why one should be so red, and the other so pale, merely because you are made for a moment to feel the absurdity of a phrase which you have been taught to use, in common with half the religious world. There is but one way in which man can ever help God—that is, by letting God help him: and there is no way in which His name is more guiltily taken in vain than by calling the abandonment of our own work, the performance of His. God is a kind Father.1 He sets us all in the places where He wishes us to be employed; and that employment 1 [In place of this concluding passage (―God is a kind Father. . . upon pouting‖) Ruskin wrote in a first draft a characteristic sermon against sermons:— ―And what business have you to think that preaching is His work? As if preaching were not, for all impertinent and conceited persons, the pleasantest of all conceivable occupations! To hold one‘s tongue and do a little bit of honest and humble work in leather or iron, and to think nothing better of oneself than of others—after doing one‘s best—this is Divine work indeed, and goes considerably against the grain with all bad and proud men; but to stand up in a box on four wooden legs, and set oneself forth for wiser than everybody below, and declare to them that they will all go to hell if they don‘t do exactly as you think proper—I should like to know anything pleasanter for a fool. That every man should teach others the thing that he knows, is charity; should tell them what makes him happy, is natural; but neither on pain of death if they don‘t attend to him. And one thing a wise nation ought to insist upon for all its teachers—that they should learn to do some thorough work by which they could live on occasion, not for the sake of saving tithes, but of the discipline which learning any practical business is to a man‘s mind. If a man who cannot work should not eat, much less should he talk. I am quite willing to be preached to by a ploughman, carpenter or tentmaker, or a blacksmith, or a fisherman—a Boulogne pilot has preached to me some of the best sermons I ever heard—but I am very sure that a merely conceited person, who can neither ride, row, fish, hammer, or plough, can tell me nothing about God worth listening to.‖ For the Boulogne pilot, who ―talked like Rochefoucauld,‖ see Vol. XVII. p. xxxvii.] VI. CRYSTAL QUARRELS 291 is truly ―our Father‘s business.‖1 He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves. Now, away with you, children; and be as happy as you can. And when you cannot, at least don‘t plume yourselves upon pouting. 1 [Luke ii. 49.] LECTURE VII HOME VIRTUES By the fireside, in the Drawing-room. Evening. 73. DORA. Now, the curtains are drawn, and the fire‘s bright, and here‘s your armchair—and you‘re to tell us all about what you promised. L. All about what? DORA. All about virtue. KATHLEEN. Yes, and about the words that begin with V. L. I heard you singing about a word that begins with V, in the playground, this morning, Miss Katie. KATHLEEN. Me singing! MAY. Oh, tell us—tell us. L. ―Vilikens and his—‖ 1 KATHLEEN (stopping his mouth). Oh! please don‘t. Where were you? ISABEL. I‘m sure I wish I had known where he was! We lost him among the rhododendrons, and I don‘t know where he got to; oh, you naughty—naughty—(climbs on his knee). DORA. Now, Isabel, we really want to talk. L. I don‘t. DORA. Oh, but you must. You promised, you know. L. Yes, if all was well; but all‘s ill. I‘m tired, and cross; and I won‘t. DORA. You‘re not a bit tired, and you‘re not crosser than two sticks; and we‘ll make you talk, if you were 1 [Villikins and his Dinah, ―a tragico-comico burlesque in one act,‖ by F. C. Burnand, first performed at the A. D. C. Rooms, Cambridge, 1855.] 292 VII. HOME VIRTUES 293 crosser than six. Come here, Egypt; and get on the other side of him. (EGYPT takes up a commanding position near the hearth brush.) DORA (reviewing her forces). Now, Lily, come and sit on the rug in front. (LILY does as she is bid.) L. (seeing he has no chance against the odds). Well, well; but I‘m really tired. Go and dance a little, first; and let me think. DORA No; you mustn‘t think. You will be wanting to make us think next; that will be tiresome. 74. L. Well, go and dance first, to get quit of thinking: and then I‘ll talk as long as you like. DORA. Oh, but we can‘t dance to-night. There isn‘t time; and we want to hear about virtue. L. Let me see a little of it first. Dancing is the first of girls‘ virtues.1 EGYPT. Indeed! And the second? L. Dressing. EGYPT. Now, you needn‘t say that! I mended that tear the first thing before breakfast this morning. L. I cannot otherwise express the ethical principle, Egypt: whether you have mended your gown or not. DORA. Now don‘t be tiresome. We really must hear about virtue, please: seriously. L. Am not I telling you about it, as fast as I can? DORA. What! the first of girls‘ virtues is dancing? L. More accurately, it is wishing to dance, and not wishing to tease, nor to hear about virtue. DORA (to EGYPT). Cross? EGYPT. How many balls must we go to in the season, to be perfectly virtuous? L. As many as you can without losing your colour. But I did not say you should wish to go to balls. I said you should be always wanting to dance. 1 [Compare Vol. XVII. p. 353 n.] 294 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST EGYPT. So we do; but everybody says it is very wrong. L. Why, Egypt, I thought— ―There was a lady once, That would not be a queen,—that would she not, For all the mud in Egypt.‖1 You were complaining the other day of having to go out a great deal oftener than you liked. EGYPT. Yes, so I was; but then, it isn‘t to dance. There‘s no room to dance: it‘s—(pausing to consider what it is for). 75. L. It is only to be seen, I suppose. Well, there‘s no harm in that. Girls ought to like to be seen. DORA (her eyes flashing). Now, you don‘t mean that; and you‘re too provoking; and we won‘t dance again, for a month. L. It will answer every purpose of revenge, Dora, if you only banish me to the library; and dance by yourselves; but I don‘t think Jessie and Lily will agree to that. You like me to see you dancing, don‘t you, Lily? LILY. Yes, certainly,—when we do it rightly. L. And besides, Miss Dora, if young ladies really do not want to be seen, they should take care not to let their eyes flash when they dislike what people say; and, more than that, it is all nonsense from beginning to end, about not wanting to be seen. I don‘t know any more tiresome flower in the borders than your especially ―modest‖ snowdrop;2 which one always has to stoop down and take all sorts of tiresome trouble with, and nearly break its poor little head off, before you can see it; and then, half of it is not worth seeing. Girls should be like daisies; nice and white, with an edge of red, if you look close; making the ground bright wherever they are;3 knowing simply and quietly that they do it, and are meant to do it, and that it would be very wrong if they didn‘t do it. 1 [King Henry VIII., ii. 3, 90.] 2 [See Wordsworth‘s lines of 1819, ―To a Snowdrop.‖] 3 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 93 (above, p. 141).] VII. HOME VIRTUES 295 Not want to be seen, indeed! How long were you in doing your back hair, this afternoon, Jessie? (JESSIE not immediately answering, DORA comes to her assistance.) DORA. Not above three-quarters of an hour, I think, Jess? JESSIE (putting her finger up). Now, Dorothy, you needn‘t talk, you know! L. I know she needn‘t, Jessie; I shall ask her about those dark plaits presently. (DORA looks round to see if there is any way open for retreat.) But never mind; it was worth the time, whatever it was; and nobody will ever mistake that golden wreath for a chignon: but if you don‘t want it to be seen, you had better wear a cap. JESSIE. Ah, now, are you really going to do nothing but play? And we all have been thinking and thinking, all day; and hoping you would tell us things; and now—! L. And now I am telling you things, and true things, and things good for you; and you won‘t believe me. You might as well have let me go to sleep at once, as I wanted to. (Endeavours again to make himself comfortable.) ISABEL. Oh, no, no, you sha‘n‘t go to sleep, you naughty!—Kathleen, come here. L. (knowing what he has to expect if KATHLEEN comes). Get away, Isabel, you‘re too heavy. (Sitting up.) What have I been saying? DORA. I do believe he has been asleep all the time! You never heard anything like the things you‘ve been saying. L. Perhaps not. If you have heard them, and anything like them, it is all I want. EGYPT. Yes, but we don‘t understand, and you know we don‘t; and we want to. 76. L. What did I say first? DORA. That the first virtue of girls was wanting to go to balls. 296 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST L. I said nothing of the kind. JESSIE. ―Always wanting to dance,‖ you said. L. Yes, and that‘s true. Their first virtue is to be intensely happy;—so happy that they don‘t know what to do with themselves for happiness,—and dance, instead of walking. Don‘t you recollect ―Louisa‖? ―No fountain from a rocky cave E‘er tripped with foot so free; She seemed as happy as a wave That dances on the sea.‖1 A girl is always like that, when everything‘s right with her. VIOLET. But, surely, one must be bad sometimes? L. Yes, Violet; and dull sometimes, and stupid sometimes, and cross sometimes. What must be, must; but it is always either our own fault, or somebody else‘s. The last and worst thing that can be said of a nation is, that it has made its young girls sad, and weary. MAY. But I am sure I have heard a great many good people speak against dancing? L. Yes, May; but it does not follow they were wise as well as good. I suppose they think Jeremiah liked better to have to write Lamentations for his people, than to have to write that promise for them, which everybody seems to hurry past, that they may get on quickly to the verse about Rachel weeping for her children; though the verse they pass is the counter blessing to that one: ―Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance; and both young men and old together; and I will turn their mourning into joy.‖2 (The children get very serious, but look at each other, as if pleased.) 77. MARY. They understand now: but, do you know what you said next? L. Yes; I was not more than half asleep. I said their second virtue was dressing. MARY. Well! what did you mean by that? 1 [Wordsworth: Two April Mornings.] 2 [Jeremiah xxxi. 13. Compare Time and Tide, §§ 42–45 (Vol. XVII. pp. 353–355).] VII. HOME VIRTUES 297 L. What do you mean by dressing? MARY. Wearing fine clothes. L. Ah! there‘s the mistake. I mean wearing plain ones.1 MARY. Yes, I daresay! but that‘s not what girls understand by dressing, you know. L. I can‘t help that. If they understand by dressing, buying dresses, perhaps they also understand by drawing, buying pictures. But when I hear them say they can draw, I understand that they can make a drawing; and when I hear them say they can dress, I understand that they can make a dress; and—which is quite as difficult—wear one. DORA. I‘m not sure about the making; for the wearing, we can all wear them—out, before anybody expects it. EGYPT (aside to L., piteously). Indeed I have mended that torn flounce quite neatly; look if I haven‘t. L. (aside to EGYPT). All right; don‘t be afraid. (Aloud, to DORA..) Yes, doubtless; but you know that is only a slow way of undressing. DORA. Then, we are all to learn dress-making, are we? L. Yes; and always to dress yourselves beautifully—not finely, unless on occasion; but then very finely and beautifully too. Also you are to dress as many other people as you can; and to teach them how to dress, if they don‘t know; and to consider every ill-dressed woman or child whom you see anywhere, as a personal disgrace; and to get at them, somehow, until everybody is as beautifully dressed as birds. (Silence; the children drawing their breaths hard as if they had come from under a shower bath.) 78. L. (seeing objections begin to express themselves in the eyes). Now you needn‘t say you can‘t; for you can: and it‘s what you were meant to do, always; and to dress your houses, and your gardens, too; and to do very little else, I believe, except singing; and dancing, as we said, of course: and—one thing more. DORA. Our third and last virtue, I suppose? 1 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, above, p. 40 n.] 298 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST L. Yes; on Violet‘s system of triplicities.1 DORA. Well, we are prepared for anything now. What is it? L. Cooking. DORA. Cardinal, indeed! If only Beatrice were here with her seven handmaids,2 that she might see what a fine eighth we had found for her! MARY. And the interpretation? What does ―cooking‖ mean? L. It means the knowledge of Medea, and of Circe, and of Calypso, and of Helen, and of Rebekah, and of the Queen of Sheba.3 It means the knowledge of all herbs, and fruit and balms and spices and of all that is healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savoury in meats; it means carefulness, and inventiveness, and watchfulness, and willingness, and readiness of appliance; it means the economy of your great-grandmothers, and the science of modern chemists; it means much tasting, and no wasting; it means English thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality; and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly, and always, ―ladies‖—―loaf-givers‖;4 and, as you are to see, imperatively, that everybody has something pretty to put on,—so you are to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something nice to eat. (Another pause, and long-drawn breath.) DORA (slowly recovering herself) to EGYPT. We had better have let him go to sleep, I think, after all! 1 [See above, § 38, p. 249.] 2 [See Purgatorio, xxxiii., where Beatrice is attended by the three Evangelical and the four Cardinal virtues.] 3 [On the importance attached by Ruskin to education in cooking, see Preface of 1871 to Sesame and Lilies, § 10 (above, p. 39); ―The Story of Arachne,‖ § 25; and Fors Clavigera, Letter 8. In including Medea among the patronesses of the art of cookery, Ruskin seizes the good of the legend and disdains the evil (see his note upon it in the Lecture on ―Modern Art,‖ § 15, in Vol. XIX.); thinking here of the knowledge by which, with the juice of chosen herbs, she renewed the youth of Aeson. For Circe‘s herbs, see Vol. XVII. pp. 215, 291; and Calypso‘s ―sweet woods,‖ St. Mark’s Rest, § 72; for Helen‘s herb-fields, Vol. XVII. p. 291; for Rebekah and her ―savoury meats,‖ see Genesis xxvii.; for the Queen of Sheba and her ―abundance of spices,‖ 1 Kings x.] 4 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 88; above, pp. 137, 138.] VII. HOME VIRTUES 299 L. You had better let the younger ones go to sleep, now: for I haven‘t half done. ISABEL (panic-struck). Oh! please, please! just one quarter of an hour. L. No, Isabel; I cannot say what I‘ve got to say, in a quarter of an hour; and it is too hard for you, besides:—you would be lying awake, and trying to make it out half the night. That will never do. ISABEL. Oh, please! L. It would please me exceedingly, mousie: but there are times when we must both be displeased; more‘s the pity. Lily may stay for half an hour, if she likes. LILY. I can‘t; because Isey never goes to sleep if she is waiting for me to come. ISABEL. Oh, yes, Lily; I‘ll go to sleep to-night; I will, indeed. LILY. Yes, it‘s very likely, Isey, with those fine round eyes! (To L.) You‘ll tell me something of what you‘ve been saying, to-morrow, won‘t you? L. No, I won‘t, Lily. You must choose. It‘s only in Miss Edgeworth‘s novels that one can do right, and have one‘s cake and sugar afterwards as well; (not that I consider the dilemma, to-night, so grave). (LILY, sighing, takes ISABEL‘s hand.) Yes, Lily dear, it will be better, in the outcome of it, so, than if you were to hear all the talks that ever were talked, and all the stories that ever were told. Goodnight. (The door leading to the condemned cells of the Dormitory closes on LILY, ISABEL, FLORRIE, and other diminutive and submissive victims.) 79. JESSIE (after a pause). Why, I thought you were so fond of Miss Edgeworth! L. So I am; and so you ought all to be.1 I can read her over and over again, without ever tiring: there‘s no 1 [For Ruskin‘s fondness for Miss Edgeworth‘s tales, see Vol. XV. p. 227 n.] 300 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST one whose every page is so full, and so delightful; no one who brings you into the company of pleasanter or wiser people; no one who tells you more truly how to do right. And it is very nice, in the midst of a wild world, to have the very ideal of poetical justice done always to one‘s hand:—to have everybody found out, who tells lies; and everybody decorated with a red riband, who doesn‘t; and to see the good Laura, who gave away her half sovereign, receiving a grand ovation from an entire dinner party disturbed for the purpose; and poor, dear little Rosamond,1 who chooses purple jars instead of new shoes, left at last without either her shoes or her bottle. But it isn‘t life; and, in the way children might easily understand it, it isn‘t morals. JESSIE. How do you mean we might understand it? L. You might think Miss Edgeworth meant that the right was to be done mainly because one was always rewarded for doing it. It is an injustice to her to say that: her heroines always do right simply for its own sake, as they should; and her examples of conduct and motive are wholly admirable. But her representation of events is false and misleading. Her good characters never are brought into the deadly trial of goodness,—the doing right, and suffering for it, quite finally. And that is life, as God arranges it. ―Taking up one‘s cross‖2 does not at all mean having ovations at dinner parties, and being put over everybody else‘s head. 80. DORA. But what does it mean then? That is just what we couldn‘t understand, when you were telling us about not sacrificing ourselves yesterday.3 L. My dear, it means simply that you are to go the road which you see to be the straight one: carrying whatever you find is given you to carry, as well and stoutly as you can; without making faces or calling people to come and look at you. Above all, you are neither to load, nor 1 [In Miss Edgeworth‘s moral tale called ―The Purple Jar.‖] 2 [Matthew xvi. 24.] 3 [See above, § 69, p. 285.] VII. HOME VIRTUES 301 unload, yourself; nor cut your cross to your own liking. Some people think it would be better for them to have it large; and many, that they could carry it much faster if it were small; and even those who like it largest are usually very particular about its being ornamental, and made of the best ebony. But all that you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it—above all, not to boast of what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of ―virtue‖ is in that straightness of back. Yes; you may laugh, children, but it is. You know I was to tell you about the words that began with V. Sibyl, what does ―virtue‖ mean, literally? SIBYL. Does it mean courage? L. Yes; but a particular kind of courage. It means courage of the nerve; vital courage. That first syllable of it, if you look in Max Müller,1 you will find really means ―nerve,‖ and from it comes ―vis,‖ and ―vir,‖ and ―virgin‖ (through vireo), and the connected word ―virga‖—a ―rod‖;—the green rod, or springing bough of a tree, being the type of perfect human strength, both in the use of it in the Mosaic story, when it becomes a serpent, or strikes the rock; or when Aaron‘s bears its almonds;2 and in the metaphorical expressions, the ―Rod out of the stem of Jesse,‖ and the ―Man whose name is the Branch,‖3 and so on. And the essential idea of real virtue is that of a vital human strength, which instinctively, constantly, and without motive, does what is right. You must train men to this by habit, as you would the branch of a tree; and give them instincts and manners (or morals) of purity, justice, kindness, and courage.4 Once rightly trained, they act as they should, irrespectively of all motive, of fear, or of 1 [See above, p. 288. The reference seems to be to Max Müller‘s Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. i. p. 8: see the passage quoted in the note to Queen of the Air, § 38 (Vol. XIX.), where Ruskin again discusses the same group of words.] 2 [Exodus iv. 4; Numbers xx. 11; xvii. 8.] 3 [Isaiah xi. 1; Zechariah vi. 12.] 4 [For this ―examination of the roots of moral power,‖ see the Preface; above, p. 204.] 302 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST reward. It is the blackest sign of putrescence in a national religion, when men speak as if it were the only safeguard of conduct; and assume that, but for the fear of being burned, or for the hope of being rewarded, everybody would pass their lives in lying, stealing, and murdering. I think quite one of the notablest historical events of this century (perhaps the very notablest), was that council of clergymen, horror-struck at the idea of any diminution in our dread of hell, at which the last of English clergymen whom one would have expected to see in such a function, rose as the devil‘s advocate; to tell us how impossible it was we could get on without him.1 81. VIOLET (after a pause). But, surely, if people weren‘t afraid—(hesitates again). L. They should be afraid of doing wrong, and of that only, my dear. Otherwise, if they only don‘t do wrong for fear of being punished, they have done wrong in their hearts, already. VIOLET. Well, but surely, at least one ought to be afraid of displeasing God; and one‘s desire to please Him should be one‘s first motive? L. He never would be pleased with us, if it were, my dear. When a father sends his son out into the world—suppose as an apprentice—fancy the boy‘s coming home at night, and saying, ―Father, I could have robbed the till to-day; but I didn‘t, because I thought you wouldn‘t like it.‖ Do you think the father would be particularly pleased? (VIOLET is silent.) He would answer, would he not, if he were wise and good, ―My boy, though you had no father, you must not rob tills‖? And nothing is ever done so as really to please our Great Father, unless we would also have done it, though we had had no Father to know of it.2 1 [For particulars of this ―council of clergymen,‖ and Keble‘s speech at it, see Time and Tide, § 49 (Vol. XVII. p. 360). Compare below, p. 395.] 2 [Here, again, see the Preface; above, p. 204.] VII. HOME VIRTUES 303 VIOLET (after long pause). But, then, what continual threatenings, and promises of reward there are! L. And how vain both! with the Jews, and with all of us. But the fact is, that the threat and promise are simply statements of the Divine law, and of its consequences. The fact is truly told you,—make what use you may of it; and as collateral warning, or encouragement, or comfort, the knowledge of future consequences may often be helpful to us; but helpful chiefly to the better state when we can act without reference to them. And there‘s no measuring the poisoned influence of that notion of future reward on the mind of Christian Europe, in the early ages. Half the monastic system rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and ambition of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies and misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity of pride, to begin with, in what is called ―giving one‘s self‖ to God. As if one had ever belonged to anybody else! 82. DORA. But, surely, great good has come out of the monastic system—our books,—our sciences—all saved by the monks? L. Saved from what, my dear? From the abyss of misery and ruin which that false Christianity allowed the whole active world to live in.1 When it had become the principal amusement, and the most admired art, of Christian men, to cut one another‘s throats and burn one another‘s towns; of course the few feeble or reasonable persons left, who desired quiet, safety, and kind fellowship, got into cloisters: and the gentlest, thoughtfullest, noblest men and women shut themselves up, precisely where they could be of least use. They are very fine things, for us painters, now—the towers and white arches upon the tops of the rocks; always in places where it takes a day‘s climbing to get at them: but the intense tragi-comedy of the thing, when one thinks of it, is unspeakable. All the 1 [For the intention in the following passage (pp. 303–310), see the Preface above, p. 205.] 304 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST good people of the world getting themselves hung up out of the way of mischief, like Bailie Nicol Jarvie;1—poor little lambs, as it were, dangling there for the sign of the Golden Fleece; or like Socrates in his basket in the Clouds! (I must read you that bit of Aristophanes again, by the way.2 ) And believe me, children, I am no warped witness, as far as regards monasteries; or if I am, it is in their favour. I have always had a strong leaning that way; and have pensively shivered with Augustines at St. Bernard; and happily made hay with Franciscans at Fésole, and sat silent with Carthusians in their little gardens, south of Florence; and mourned through many a day-dream, at Melrose and Bolton.3 But the wonder is always to me, not how much, but how little, the monks have, on the whole, done, with all that leisure, and all that good-will! What nonsense monks characteristically wrote;—what little progress they made in the sciences to which they devoted themselves as a duty,—medicine especially;—and, last and worst, what depths of degradation they can sometimes see one another, and the population round them, sink into; without either doubting their system, or reforming it! 83. (Seeing questions rising to lips.) Hold your little tongues, children; it‘s very late, and you‘ll make me forget what I‘ve to say. Fancy yourselves in pews, for five minutes. There‘s one point of possible good in the conventual system, which is always attractive to young girls; and the idea is a very dangerous one;—the notion of a 1 [Rob Roy, ch. xxx.] 2 [See the Clouds, 225 seq., where Socrates describes how he walks the air and meditates on the sun. ―Never had I rightly discovered ærial matters unless by suspending the intellect and commingling the subtle thought with the similar air. But if being on the ground I had investigated things above from below, I had never found them; for infallibly the earth by force draws to itself the moisture or thought.‖ And then follows the philosopher‘s invocation to the clouds.] 3 [For Ruskin‘s sojourn at the Great St. Bernard, see Vol. I. pp. 505 seq., and Vol. X. p. xxiv.; for his haymaking with the monks at Fiesole, Vol. IV. p. 352; he must have ―sat in the gardens‖ of the Chartreuse of the Val d‘Ema, south of Florence, in 1845; for Melrose, see Præterita, i. § 249, and Vol. XII. p. xx; for Bolton, Vol. XVI. p. xxx.] VII. HOME VIRTUES 305 merit, or exalting virtue, consisting in a habit of meditation on the ―things above,‖1 or things of the next world. Now it is quite true, that a person of beautiful mind, dwelling on whatever appears to them most desirable and lovely in a possible future, will not only pass their time pleasantly, but will even acquire, at last, a vague and wildly gentle charm of manner and feature, which will give them an air of peculiar sanctity in the eyes of others. Whatever real or apparent good there may be in this result, I want you to observe, children, that we have no real authority for the reveries to which it is owing. We are told nothing distinctly of the heavenly world; except that it will be free from sorrow and pure from sin. What is said of pearl gates, golden floors, and the like,2 is accepted as merely figurative by religious enthusiasts themselves: and whatever they pass their time in conceiving, whether of the happiness of risen souls, of their intercourse, or of the appearance and employment of the heavenly powers, is entirely the product of their own imagination; and as completely and distinctly a work of fiction, or romantic invention, as any novel of Sir Walter Scott‘s. That the romance is founded on religious theory or doctrine;—that no disagreeable or wicked persons are admitted into the story;—and that the inventor fervently hopes that some portion of it may hereafter come true, does not in the least alter the real nature of the effort or enjoyment. 84. Now, whatever indulgence may be granted to amiable people for pleasing themselves in this innocent way, it is beyond question, that to seclude themselves from the rough duties of life, merely to write religious romances, or, as in most cases, merely to dream them without taking so much trouble as is implied in writing, ought not to be received as an act of heroic virtue. But, observe, even in admitting thus much, I have assumed that the fancies are 1 [Colossians iii. 2.] 2 [See, for instance, Revelation xxi. 18–21.] XVIII. U 306 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST just and beautiful though fictitious. Now, what right have any of us to assume that our own fancies will assuredly be either the one or the other? That they delight us, and appear lovely to us, is no real proof of its not being wasted time to form them: and we may surely be led somewhat to distrust our judgment of them by observing what ignoble imaginations have sometimes sufficiently, or even enthusiastically, occupied the hearts of others. The principle source of the spirit of religious contemplation is the East; now I have here in my hand a Byzantine image of Christ, which, if you will look at it seriously, may, I think, at once and for ever render you cautious in the indulgence of a merely contemplative habit of mind. Observe, it is the fashion to look at such a thing only as a piece of barbarous art; that is the smallest part of its interest. What I want you to see, is the baseness and falseness of a religious state of enthusiasm, in which such a work could be dwelt upon with pious pleasure. That a figure, with two small round black beads for eyes; a gilded face, deep cut into horrible wrinkles; an open gash for a mouth, and a distorted skeleton for a body, wrapped about, to make it fine, with striped enamel of blue and gold:—that such a figure, I say, should ever have been thought helpful towards the conception of a Redeeming Deity, may make you, I think, very doubtful, even of the Divine approval,—much more of the Divine inspiration,—of religious reverie in general. You feel, doubtless, that your own idea of Christ would be something very different from this; but in what does the difference consist? Not in any more Divine authority in your imagination; but in the intellectual work of six intervening centuries; which, simply, by artistic discipline, has refined this crude conception for you, and filled you partly with an innate sensation, partly with an acquired knowledge, of higher forms,—which render this Byzantine crucifix as horrible to you, as it was pleasing to its maker. More is required to excite your fancy; but your fancy is of no more authority VII. HOME VIRTUES 307 than his was: and a point of national art-skill is quite conceivable, in which the best we can do now will be as offensive to the religious dreamers of the more highly cultivated time, as this Byzantine crucifix is to you. 85. MARY. But surely, Angelico will always retain his power over everybody? L. Yes, I should think, always; as the gentle words of a child will: but you would be much surprised, Mary, if you thoroughly took the pains to analyses, and had the perfect means of analysing, that power of Angelico,—to discover its real sources. Of course it is natural, at first, to attribute it to the pure religious fervour by which he was inspired; but do you suppose Angelico was really the only monk, in all the Christian world of the Middle Ages, who laboured, in art, with a sincere religious enthusiasm? MARY. No, certainly not. L. Anything more frightful, more destructive of all religious faith whatever, than such a supposition, could not be. And yet, what other monk ever produced such work? I have myself examined carefully upwards of two thousand illuminated missals,1 with especial view to the discovery of any evidence of a similar result upon the art, from the monkish devotion; and utterly in vain. MARY. But then, was not Fra Angelico a man of entirely separate and exalted genius? L. Unquestionably; and granting him to be that, the peculiar phenomenon in his art is, to me, not its loveliness, but its weakness.2 The effect of ―inspiration,‖ had it been real, on man of consummate genius, should have been, one would have thought, to make everything that he did faultless and strong, no less than lovely. But of all men, 1 [In the British Museum and elsewhere: see Vol. XII. pp. lxvii.–lxviii. for Ruskin‘s studies in this sort.] 2 [Ruskin‘s very numerous references to Fra Angelico (for which see General Index) vary in tenor according as he emphasises now the loveliness, and now the weakness of the painter. He begins with reverent praise (e. g., Modern Painters, vol. ii., Vol. p. 372); then he notices rather the limitations of Angelico‘s ―purist‖ ideal (compare Vol. V. pp. 62, 105); at a later date he came to find his art ―absolutely true and good‖ (see Laws of Fésole, Vol. XV. p. 345.)] 308 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST deserving to be called ―great,‖ Fra Angelico permits to himself the least pardonable faults, and the most palpable follies. There is evidently within him a sense of grace, and power of invention, as great as Ghiberti‘s:1—we are in the habit of attributing those high qualities to his religious enthusiasm; but, if they were produced by that enthusiasm in him, they ought to be produced by the same feelings in others; and we see they are not. Whereas, comparing him with contemporary great artists, of equal grace and invention, one peculiar character remains notable in him—which, logically, we ought therefore to attribute to the religious fervour;—and that distinctive character is, the contented indulgence of his own weaknesses, and perseverance in his own ignorances. 86. MARY. But that‘s dreadful! And what is the source of the peculiar charm which we all feel in his work? L. There are many sources of it, Mary; united and seeming like one. You would never feel that charm but in the work of an entirely good man; be sure of that: but the goodness is only the recipient and modifying element, not the creative one. Consider carefully what delights you in any original picture of Angelico‘s. You will find, for one minor thing, an exquisite variety and brightness of ornamental work. That is not Angelico‘s inspiration. It is the final result of the labour and thought of millions of artists, of all nations; from the earliest Egyptian potters downwards—Greeks, Byzantines, Hindoos, Arabs, Gauls, and Northmen—all joining in the toil; and consummating it in Florence, in that century, with such embroidery of robe and inlaying of armour as had never been seen till then; nor, probably, ever will be seen more. Angelico merely takes his share of this inheritance, and applies it in the tenderest way to subjects which are peculiarly acceptant of it. But the inspiration, if it exist anywhere, flashes on the knight‘s shield quite as radiantly as on the monk‘s 1 [See Vol. IX. p. 260 n.] VII. HOME VIRTUES 309 picture. Examining farther into the sources of your emotion in the Angelico work, you will find much of the impression of sanctity dependent on a singular repose and grace of gesture, consummating itself in the floating, flying, and above all, in the dancing groups. That is not Angelico‘s inspiration. It is only a peculiarly tender use of systems of grouping which had been long before developed by Giotto, Memmi, and Orcagna; and the real root of it all is simply—What do you think, children? The beautiful dancing of the Florentine maidens! DORA (indignant again). Now, I wonder what next! Why not say it all depended on Herodias‘ daughter, at once? L. Yes; it is certainly a great argument against singing, that there were once sirens. 87. DORA. Well, it may be all very fine and philosophical; but shouldn‘t I just like to read you the end of the second volume of Modern Painters!1 L. My dear, do you think any teacher could be worthy our listening to, or anybody else‘s listening to, who had learned nothing, and altered his mind in nothing, from seven and twenty to seven and forty?2 But that second volume is very good for you as far as it goes. It is a great advance and a thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as it is the main business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle-pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the general sense and judgment which may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses from the virtues of what you love: else you might come to love both alike; or even the weaknesses without the virtues. You might end by liking Overbeck and Cornelius3 as well as Angelico. However, I have perhaps been leaning a little 1 [The passage on ―the angel choirs of Angelico, with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as they move‖: see Vol. IV. p. 332.] 2 [Compare the Preface to the last volume of Modern Painters: Vol. VII. p. 9.] 3 [For other references to Overbeck, see Vol. V. p. 50; Vol. VII. p. 488; Vol. XV. p. 157. For Cornelius, Vol. VII. pp. liii., 488.] 310 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST too much to the merely practical side of things, in tonight‘s talk; and you are always to remember, children, that I do not deny, though I cannot affirm, the spiritual advantages resulting, in certain cases, from enthusiastic religious reverie, and from the other practices of saints and anchorites. The evidence respecting them has never yet been honestly collected, much less dispassionately examined: but assuredly, there is in that direction a probability, and more than a probability, of dangerous error, while there is none whatever in the practice of an active, cheerful, and benevolent life. The hope of attaining a higher religious position, which induces us to encounter, for its exalted alternative, the risk of unhealthy error, is often, as I said, founded more on pride than piety; and those who, in modest usefulness, have accepted what seemed to them here the lowliest place in the kingdom of their Father, are not, I believe, the least likely to receive hereafter the command, then unmistakable, ―Friend, go up higher.‖1 1 [Luke xiv. 10.] LECTURE VIII CRYSTAL CAPRICE Formal Lecture in Schoolroom, after some practical examination of minerals. 88. L. We have seen enough, children, though very little of what might be seen if we had more time, of mineral structures produced by visible opposition, or contest among elements; structures of which the variety, however great, need not surprise us: for we quarrel, ourselves, for many and slight causes;—much more, one should think, may crystals, who can only feel the antagonism, not argue about it. But there is a yet more singular mimicry of our human ways in the varieties of form which appear owing to no antagonistic force; but merely to the variable humour and caprice of the crystals themselves: and I have asked you all to come into the schoolroom to-day, because, of course, this is a part of the crystal mind which must be peculiarly interesting to a feminine audience. (Great symptoms of disapproval on the part of said audience.) Now, you need not pretend that it will not interest you; why should it not? It is true that we men are never capricious; but that only makes us the more dull and disagreeable. You, who are crystalline in brightness, as well as in caprice, charm infinitely, by infinitude of change.1 (Audible murmurs of “Worse and worse!” “As if we could be got over that way!” etc. The LECTURER, however, observing the expression of the features to be more complacent, proceeds.) And the most curious mimicry, if not of your changes of fashion, 1 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 69 (above, p. 123).] 311 312 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST at least of your various modes (in healthy periods) of national costume,1 takes place among the crystals of different countries. With a little experience, it is quite possible to say at a glance, in what districts certain crystals have been found; and although, if we had knowledge extended and accurate enough, we might of course ascertain the laws and circumstances which have necessarily produced the form peculiar to each locality, this would be just as true of the fancies of the human mind. If we could know the exact circumstances which affect it, if we could foretell what now seems to us only caprice of thought, as well as what now seems to us only caprice of crystal: nay, so far as our knowledge reaches, it is on the whole easier to find some reason why the peasant girls of Berne should wear their caps in the shape of butterflies; and the peasant girls of Munich theirs in the shape of shells, than to say why the rock-crystals of Dauphiné should have all their summits of the shape of lip pieces of flageolets, while those of St. Gothard are symmetrical; or why the fluor of Chamouni is rose-coloured, and in octahedrons, while the fluor of Weardale is green, and in cubes. Still farther removed is the hope, at present, of accounting for minor differences in modes of grouping and construction. Take, for instance, the caprices of this single mineral, quartz;—variations upon a single theme. It has many forms; but see what it will make out of this one, the six-sided prism. For shortness‘ sake, I shall call the body of the prism its ―column,‖ and the pyramid at the extremities its ―cap.‖ Now, here, first you have a straight column, as long and thin as a stalk of asparagus, with two little caps at the ends; and here you have a short thick column, as solid as a hay-stack, with two fat caps at the ends; and here you have two caps fastened together, and no column at all between them! Then here is a crystal with its column fat in the middle, and tapering to a little cap; and here is one stalked like 1 [On this subject compare Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 428 n.).] VIII. CRYSTAL CAPRICE 313 a mushroom, with a huge cap put on the top of a slender column! Then here is a column built wholly out of little caps, with a large smooth cap at the top. And here is a column built of columns and caps; the caps all truncated about half way to their points. And in both these last, the little crystals are set anyhow, and build the large one in a disorderly way; but here is a crystal made of columns and truncated caps set in regular terraces all the way up. 89. MARY. But are not these, groups of crystals, rather than one crystal? L. What do you mean by a group, and what by one crystal? DORA (audibly aside, to MARY, who is brought to pause). You know you are never expected to answer, Mary. L. I‘m sure this is easy enough. What do you mean by a group of people? MARY. Three or four together, or a good many together, like the caps in these crystals. L. But when a great many persons get together they don‘t take the shape of one person? (MARY still at pause.) ISABEL. No, because they can‘t; but, you know, the crystals can; so why shouldn‘t they? L. Well, they don‘t; that is to say, they don‘t always, nor even often. Look here, Isabel. ISABEL. What a nasty ugly thing! L. I‘m glad you think it so ugly. Yet it is made of beautiful crystals; they are a little grey and cold in colour, but most of them are clear. ISABEL. But they are in such horrid, horrid disorder! L. Yes; all disorder is horrid, when it is among things that are naturally orderly. Some little girls‘ rooms are naturally disorderly, I suppose; or I don‘t know how they could live in them, if they cry out so when they only see quartz crystals in confusion. ISABEL. Oh! but how come they to be like that? L. You may well ask. And yet you will always hear 314 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST people talking as if they thought order more wonderful than disorder! It is wonderful—as we have seen; but to me, as to you, child, the supremely wonderful thing is that nature should ever be ruinous, or wasteful, or dreadful! I look at this wild piece of crystallisation with endless astonishment. MARY. Where does it come from? L. The Tête Noire of Chamouni. What makes it more strange is, that it should be in a vain of fine quartz rock. If it were in a mouldering rock, it would be natural enough; but in the midst of so fine substance, here are the crystals tossed in a heap; some large, myriads small, (almost as small as dust), tumbling over each other like a terrified crowd, and glued together by the sides, and edges, and backs, and heads; some warped, and some pushed out and in, and all spoiled, and each spoiling the rest. MARY. And how flat they all are! L. Yes; that‘s the fashion at the Tête Noire. MARY. But surely this is ruin, not caprice? 90. L. I believe it is in great part misfortune; and we will examine these crystal troubles in next lecture. But if you want to see the gracefullest and happiest caprices of which dust is capable, you must go to the Hartz; not that I ever mean to go there myself, for I want to retain the romantic feeling about the name; and I have done myself some harm already by seeing the monotonous and heavy form of the Brocken from the suburbs of Brunswick.1 But whether the mountains be picturesque or not, the tricks which the goblins (as I am told,) teach the crystals in them, are incomparably pretty. They work chiefly on the mind of a docile, bluish-coloured carbonate of lime; which comes out of a grey limestone. The goblins take the greatest possible care of its education, and see that nothing happens to it to hurt its temper: and when it may be supposed to have arrived at the crisis which is, to a well 1 [In 1859: see Notes on Prout and Hunt (Vol. XIV. p. 418).] VIII. CRYSTAL CAPRICE 315 brought up mineral, what presentation at court is to a young lady—after which it is expected to set fashions—there‘s no end to its pretty ways of behaving. First it will make itself into pointed darts as fine as hoar-frost; here it is changed into a white fur as fine as silk; here into little crowns and circlets, as broght as silver, as if for the gnome princesses to wear; here it is in beautiful little plates, for them to eat off; presently it is in towers, which they might be imprisoned in; presently in caves and cells, where they may make nun-gnomes of themselves, and no gnome ever hear of them more; here is some of it in sheaves, like corn; here, some in drifts, like snow; here, some in rays, like stars: and, though these are, all of them, necessarily, shapes that the mineral takes in other places, they are all taken here with such a grace that you recognise the high caste and breeding of the crystals wherever you meet them; and know at once they are Hartzborn. Of course, such fine things as these are only done by crystals which are perfectly good, and good-humoured; and of course, also, there are ill-humoured crystals who torment each other, and annoy quieter crystals, yet without coming to anything like serious war. Here (for once) is some illdisposed quartz, tormenting a peaceable octahedron of fluor, in mere caprice. I looked at it the other night so long, and so wonderingly, just before putting my candle out, that I fell into another strange dream. But you don‘t care about dreams. DORA. No; we didn‘t yesterday; but you know we are made up of caprice; so we do, to-day: and you must tell it us directly. 91. L. Well, you see, Neith and her work were still much in my mind;1 and then, I had been looking over these Hartz things for you, and thinking of the sort of grotesque sympathy there seemed to be in them with the 1 [See above, p. 226.] 316 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST beautiful fringe and pinnacle work of Northern architecture. So, when I fell asleep, I thought I saw Neith and St. Barbara talking together.1 DORA. But what had St. Barbara to do with it?* L. My dear, I am quite sure St. Barbara is the patroness of good architects: not St. Thomas, whatever the old builders thought.2 It might be very fine, according to the monks‘ notions, in St. Thomas, to give all his employer‘s money away to the poor: but breaches of contract are bad foundations; and I believe, it was not he, but St. Barbara, who overlooked the work in all the buildings you and I care about. However that may be, it was certainly she whom I saw in my dream with Neith. Neith was sitting weaving, and I thought she looked sad, and threw her shuttle slowly; and St. Barbara was standing at her side, in a stiff little grown, all ins and outs, and angles; but so bright with embroidery that it dazzled me whenever she moved; the train of it was just like a heap of broken jewels, it was so stiff, and full of corners, and so many-coloured, and bright. Her hair fell over her shoulders in long, delicate waves, from under a little three-pinnacled crown, like a tower. She was asking Neith about the laws of architecture in Egypt and Greece; and when Neith told her the measures of the pyramids, St. Barbara said she thought they would have been better three-cornered: and when Neith told her the measures of the Parthenon, St. Barbara said she thought it ought to have had two transepts. But she was pleased when Neith told her of the temple of the dew, and of the Caryan maidens bearing its

• Note v. [p. 366.]

1 [For ―the general relations‖ of St. Barbara ―to St. Sophia,‖ see Pleasures of England, § 97, where Ruskin refers to this lecture. Ruskin makes her the patroness of good architects, because of the high tower in which she lived, whence she is often represented in art with the model of a Gothic tower in her hand—as in the picture of Van Eyck referred to in the note on p. 366.] 2 [For the legend of St. Thomas as the spiritual architect of King Gondoforus (whence his attribute in art is the builder‘s rule), see Mrs. Jameson‘s Sacred and Legendary Art, 1850, p. 148.] VIII. CRYSTAL CAPRICE 317 frieze:1 and then she thought that perhaps Neith would like to hear what sort of temples she was building herself, in the French valleys, and on the crags of the Rhine. So she began gossiping, just as one of you might to an old lady: and certainly she talked in the sweetest way in the world to Neith; and explained to her all about crockets and pinnacles: and Neith sat, looking very grave; and always graver as St. Barbara went on; till at last, I‘m sorry to say, St. Barbara lost her temper a little. MAY (very grave herself). St. Barbara? L. Yes, May. Why shouldn‘t she? It was very tiresome of Neith to sit looking like that. 92. MAY. But, then, St. Barbara was a saint? L. What‘s that, May? MAY. A saint! A saint is—I‘m sure you know! L. If I did, it would not make me sure that you knew too, May: but I don‘t. VIOLET (expressing the incredulity of the audience). Oh,—sir? L. That is to say, I know that people are called saints who are supposed to be better than others: but I don‘t know how much better they must be, in order to be saints; nor how nearly anybody may be a saint, and yet not be quite one; nor whether everybody who is called a saint was one; nor whether everybody who isn‘t called a saint, isn‘t one. (General silence; the audience feeling themselves on the verge of the Infinities—and a little shocked—and much puzzled by so many questions at once.) L. Besides, did you never hear that verse about being ―called to be saints‖?2 MAY. (repeats Rom. i. 7). 1 [For the Pandroseion, the sanctuary of Pandrosos attached to the Erechtheum, see Queen of the Air, § 38. One of the Caryatides (supposed to be derived from the town of Caryæ in Laconia) which support the frieze is in the British Museum.] 2 [Romans i. 7. Compare Vol. XVII. p. 63.] 318 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST L. Quite right, May. Well, then, who are called to be that? People in Rome only? MAY. Everybody, I suppose, whom God loves. L. What! little girls as well as other people? MAY. All grown-up people, I mean. L. Why not little girls? Are they wickeder when they are little? MAY. Oh, I hope not. L. Why not little girls, then? (Pause.) LILY. Because, you know, we can‘t be worth anything if we‘re ever so good;—I mean, if we try to be ever so good; and we can‘t do difficult things—like saints. 93. L. I am afraid, my dear, that old people are not more able or willing for their difficulties than you children are for yours. All I can say is, that if ever I see any of you, when you are seven or eight and twenty, knitting your brows over any work you want to do or to understand, as I saw you, Lily, knitting your brows over your slate this morning, I should think you very noble women. But—to come back to my dream—St. Barbara did lose her temper a little; and I was not surprised. For you can‘t think how provoking Neith looked, sitting there just like a statue of sandstone; only going on weaving, like a machine, and never quickening the cast of her shuttle; while St. Barbara was telling her so eagerly all about the most beautiful things, and chattering away, as fast as bells ring on Christmas Eve, till she saw that Neith didn‘t care; and then St. Barbara got as red as a rose, and stopped, just in time;—or I think she would really have said something naughty. ISABEL. Oh, please, but didn‘t Neith say anything then? L. Yes. She said quite quietly, ―It may be very pretty, my love; but it is all nonsense.‖ ISABEL. Oh dear, oh dear! and then? L. Well; then I was a little angry myself, and hoped VIII. CRYSTAL CAPRICE 319 St. Barbara would be quite angry; but she wasn‘t. She bit her lips first; and then gave a great sigh—such a wild, sweet sigh—and then she knelt down and hid her face on Neith‘s knees. Then Neith smiled a little, and was moved. ISABEL. Oh, I am so glad! L. And she touched St. Barbara‘s forehead with a flower of white lotus; and St. Barbara sobbed once or twice, and then said: ―If you could only see how beautiful it is, and how much it makes people feel what is good and lovely; and if you could only hear the children singing in the Lady chapels!‖ And Neith smiled,—but still sadly,—and said, ―How do you know what I have seen or heard, my love? Do you think all those vaults and towers of yours have been built without me? There was not a pillar in your Giotto‘s Santa Maria del Fiore which I did not set true by my spearshaft as it rose. But this pinnacle and flame work which has set your little heart on fire is all vanity; and you will see what it will come to, and that soon; and none will grieve for it more than I. And then every one will disbelieve your pretty symbols and types. Men must be spoken simply to, my dear, if you would guide them kindly, and long.‖ But St. Barbara answered, that, ―Indeed she thought every one liked her work,‖ and that ―the people of different towns were as eager about their cathedral towers as about their privileges or their markets;‖ and then she asked Neith to come and build something with her, wall against tower; and ―see whether the people will be as much pleased with your building as with mine.‖ But Neith answered, ―I will not contend with you, my dear. I strive not with those who love me; and for those who hate me, it is not well to strive with me, as weaver Arachne knows.1 And remember, child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship; nor nobly, which is done in pride.‖ 1 [For the story of Arachne and her contest with Athena (here identified with Neith), see ―The Story of Arachne,‖ §§ 17–23.] 320 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST 94. Then St. Barbara hung her head quite down, and said she was very sorry she had been so foolish; and kissed Neith; and stood thinking a minute: and then her eyes got bright again, and she said, she would go directly and build a chapel with five windows in it; four for the four cardinal virtues, and one for humility, in the middle, bigger than the rest. And Neith very nearly laughed quite out, I thought; certainly her beautiful lips lost all their sternness for an instant; then she said, ―Well, love, build it, but do not put so many colours into your windows as you usually do; else no one will be able to see to read, inside: and when it is built, let a poor village priest consecrate it, and not an archbishop.‖ St. Barbara started a little, I thought, and turned as if to say something; but changed her mind, and gathered up her train and went out. And Neith bent herself again to her loom, in which she was weaving a web of strange dark colours, I thought; but perhaps it was only after the glittering of St. Barbara‘s embroidered train: and I tried to make out the figures in Neith‘s web, and confused myself among them, as one always does in dreams; and then the dream changed altogether, and I found myself, all at once, among a crowd of little Gothic and Egyptian spirits, who were quarrelling: at least the Gothic ones were trying to quarrel; for the Egyptian ones only sat with their hands on their knees, and their aprons sticking out very stiffly; and started. And after a while I began to understand what the matter was. It seemed that some of the troublesome building imps, who meddle and make continually, even in the best Gothic work, had been listening to St. Barbara‘s talk with Neith; and had made up their minds that Neith had no workpeople people who could build against them. They were but dull imps, as you may fancy, by their thinking that; and never had done much, except disturbing the great Gothic building angels at their work, and playing tricks to each other; indeed, of late they had been living years and years, like bats, up under the cornices of Strasbourg and Cologne VIII. CRYSTAL CAPRICE 321 cathedrals, with nothing to do but to make mouths at the people below. However, they thought they knew everything about tower building; and those who had heard what Neith said, told the rest; and they all flew down directly, chattering in German, like jackdaws, to show Neith‘s people what they could do. And they had found some of Neith‘s old workpeople somewhere near Sais, sitting in the sun, with their hands on their knees; and abused them heartily: and Neith‘s people did not mind, at first, but, after a while, they seemed to get tired of the noise; and one or two rose up slowly, and laid hold of their measuring rods, and said, ―If St. Barbara‘s people liked to build with them, tower against pyramid, they would show them how to lay stones.‖ Then the Gothic little spirits threw a great many double somersaults for joy; and put the tips of their tongues out slily to each other, on one side; and I heard the Egyptians say, ―they must be some new kind of frog—they didn‘t think there was much building in them.‖ However, the stiff old workers took their rods, as I said, and measured out a square space of sand; but as soon as the German spirits saw that, they declared they wanted exactly that bit of ground to build on, themselves. Then the Egyptian builders offered to go farther off, and the German ones said, ―Ja wohl.‖ But as soon as the Egyptians had measured out another square, the little Germans said they must have some of that too. Then Neith‘s people laughed; and said, ―they might take as much as they liked, but they would not move the plan of their pyramid again.‖ Then the little Germans took three pieces, and began to build three spires directly; one large, and two little. And when the Egyptians saw they had fairly begun, they laid their foundation all round, of large square stones: and began to build, so steadily that they had like to have swallowed up the three little German spires. So when the Gothic spirits saw that, they built their spires leaning, like the tower of Pisa, that they might stick out at the side of the pyramid. And Neith‘s people stared at XVIII. X 322 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST them; and thought it very clever, but very wrong: and on they went, in their own way, and said nothing. Then the little Gothic spirits were terribly provoked because they could not spoil the shape of the pyramid; and they sat down all along the ledges of it to make faces; but that did no good. Then they ran to the corners, and put their elbows on their knees, and stuck themselves out as far as they could, and made more faces; but that did no good, neither. Then they looked up to the sky, and opened their mouths wide, and gobbled, and said it was too hot for work, and wondered when it would rain; but that did no good, neither. And all the while the Egyptian spirits were laying step above step, patiently. But when the Gothic ones looked, and saw how high they had got, they said, ―Ach, Himmel!‖ and flew down in a great black cluster to the bottom; and swept out a level spot in the sand with their wings, in no time, and began building a tower straight up, as fast as they could. And the Egyptians stood still again to stare at them; for the Gothic spirits had got quite into a passion, and were really working very wonderfully. They cut the sandstone into strips as fine as reeds; and put one reed on the top of another, so that you could not see where they fitted: and they twisted them in and out like basket work, and knotted them into likenesses of ugly faces, and of strange beasts biting each other; and up they went, and up still, and they made spiral staircases at the corners, for the loaded workers to come up by (for I saw they were but weak imps, and could not fly with stones on their backs), and then they made traceried galleries for them to run round by; and so up again; with finer and finer work, till the Egyptians wondered whether they meant the thing for a tower or a pillar; and I heard them saying to one another, ―It was nearly as pretty as lotus stalks; and if it were not for the ugly faces, there would be a fine temple, if they were going to build it all with pillars as big as that!‖ But in a minute afterwards,—just as the Gothic VIII. CRYSTAL CAPRICE 323 spirits had carried their work as high as the upper course, but three or four, of the pyramid,—the Egyptians called out to them to ―mind what they were about, for the sand was running away from under one of their tower corners.‖ But it was too late to mind what they were about; for, in another instant, the whole tower sloped aside; and the Gothic imps rose out of it like a flight of puffins, in a single cloud; but screaming worse than any puffins you ever heard; and down came the tower, all in a piece, like a falling poplar, with its head right on the flank of the pyramid; against which it snapped short off. And of course that waked me! 95. MARY. What a shame of you to have such a dream, after all you have told us about Gothic architecture! L. If you have understood anything I ever told you about it, you know that no architecture was ever corrupted more miserably; or abolished more justly by the accomplishment of its own follies. Besides, even in its days of power, it was subject to catastrophes of this kind. I have stood too often, mourning, by the grand fragment of the apse of Beauvais,1 not to have that fact well burnt into me. Still, you must have seen, surely, that these imps were of the Flamboyant school; or, at least, of the German schools correspondent with it in extravagance.2 MARY. But, then, where is the crystal about which you dreamed all this? L. Here; but I suppose little Pthah has touched it again, for it is very small.3 But, you see, here is the pyramid, built of great square stones of fluor spar, straight up; and here are the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which have set themselves, at the same time, on the same foundation; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely at the side: and here is one great spire 1 [See Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 19 (Vol. XII. p. 39 n.).] 2 [On the fall of Gothic, through Flamboyant extravagances, see Seven Lamps (Vol. VIII. p. 210), and the lecture on Abbeville in Vol. XIX.] 3 [See above, p. 230.] 324 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST of quartz which seems as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off; and then had fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking its pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystallised horizontally, and terminated imperfectly: but, then, by what caprice does one crystal form horizontally, when all the rest stand upright? But this is nothing to the phantasies of fluor, and quartz, and some other such companions, when they get leave to do anything they like. I could show you fifty specimens, about every one of which you might fancy a new fairy tale. Not that, in truth, any crystals get leave to do quite what they like; and many of them are sadly tired, and have little time for caprices—poor things! MARY. I thought they always looked as if they were either in play or in mischief! What trials have they? L. Trials much like our own. Sickness, and starvation; fevers, and agues, and palsy; oppression; and old age, and the necessity of passing away in their time, like all else. If there‘s any pity in you, you must come to-morrow, and take some part in these crystal griefs. DORA. I am sure we shall cry till our eyes are red. L. Ah, you may laugh, Dora: but I‘ve been made grave, not once, nor twice, to see that even crystals ―cannot choose but be old‖1 at last. It may be but a shallow proverb of the Justice‘s; but it is a shrewdly wide one. DORA (pensive for once). I suppose it is very dreadful to be old! But then (brightening again) what should we do without our dear old friends and our nice old lecturers? L. If all nice old lecturers were minded as little as one I know of— DORA. And if they all meant as little what they say, would they not deserve it? But we‘ll come—we‘ll come, and cry. 1 [Justice Shallow‘s saying in the Second Part of Henry IV., act iii. sc. 2.] LECTURE IX CRYSTAL SORROWS Working Lecture in Schoolroom 96. L. We have been hitherto talking, children, as if crystals might live, and play, and quarrel, and behave ill or well, according to their characters, without interruption from anything else. But so far from this being so, nearly all crystals, whatever their characters, have to live a hard life of it, and meet with many misfortunes. If we could see far enough, we should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their vices were misfortunes: but to-day I want you to see what sort of troubles the best crystals have to go through, occasionally, by no fault of their own. This black thing, which is one of the prettiest of the very few pretty black things in the world, is called ―Tourmaline.‖ It may be transparent, and green, or red, as well as black; and then no stone can be prettier; (only, all the light that gets into it, I believe, comes out a good deal the worse; and is not itself again for a long while). But this is the commonest state of it,—opaque, and as black as jet. MARY. What does ―Tourmaline‖1 mean? L. They say it is Ceylonese, and I don‘t know Ceylonese; but we may always be thankful for a graceful word, whatever it means. MARY. And what is it made of? L. A little of everything; there‘s always flint, and clay, and magnesia in it; and the black is iron, according to its fancy; and there‘s boracic acid, if you know what that is; 1 [The word is said to be derived from ―tournamel,‖ the name given to this stone in Ceylon.] 325 326 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST and if you don‘t, I cannot tell you to-day; and it doesn‘t signify: and there‘s potash, and soda; and, on the whole, the chemistry of it is more like a mediæval doctor‘s prescription, than the making of a respectable mineral: but it may, perhaps, be owing to the strange complexity of its make, that it has a notable habit which makes it, to me, one of the most interesting of minerals. You see these two crystals are broken right across, in many places, just as if they had been shafts of black marble fallen from a ruinous temple; and here they lie, imbedded in white quartz, fragment succeeding fragment, keeping the line of the original crystal, while the quartz fills up the intervening spaces. Now tourmaline has a trick of doing this, more than any other mineral I know: here is another bit which I picked up on the glacier of Macugnaga;1 it is broken, like a pillar built of very flat broad stones, into about thirty joints, and all these are heaved and warped away from each other sideways, almost into a line of steps: and then all is filled up with quartz paste. And here, lastly, is a green Indian piece, in which the pillar is first disjointed, and then wrung round into the shape of an S. 97. MARY. How can this have been done? L. There are a thousand ways in which it may have been done; the difficulty is not to account for the doing of it; but for the showing of it in some crystals, and not in others. You never by any chance get a quartz crystal broken or twisted in this way. If it break or twist at all, which it does sometimes, like the spire of Dijon,2 it is by its own will or fault; it never seems to have been passively crushed. But, for the forces which cause this passive ruin of the tourmaline,—here is a stone which will show you multitudes of them in operation at once. It is known as ―brecciated agate,‖ beautiful, as you see; and highly valued as a pebble: yet so far as I can read or hear, no one has 1 [In 1845: for Ruskin‘s sojourn there, see Præterita, ii. §§ 131–133.] 2 [For an explanation of this reference, see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. vi. ch. iii. § 14 n. (Vol. VII. p. 34 n.).] IX. CRYSTAL SORROWS 327 ever looked at it with the least attention.1 At the first glance, you see it is made of very fine red striped agates, which have been broken into small pieces, and fastened together again by paste, also of agate. There would be nothing wonderful in this, if this were all. It is well known that by the movements of strata, portions of rock are often shattered to pieces:—well known also that agate is a deposit of flint by water under certain conditions of heat and pressure: there is, therefore, nothing wonderful in an agate‘s being broken; and nothing wonderful in its being mended with the solution out of which it was itself originally congealed. And with this explanation, most people, looking at a brecciated agate, or brecciated anything, seem to be satisfied. I was so myself, for twenty years; but, lately happening to stay for some time at the Swiss Baden,2 where the beach of the Limmat is almost wholly composed of brecciated limestones, I began to examine them thoughtfully; and perceived, in the end, that they were, one and all, knots of as rich mystery as any poor little human brain was ever lost in. That piece of agate in your hand, Mary, will show you many of the common phenomena of breccias: but you need not knit your brows over it in that way; depend upon it, neither you nor I shall ever know anything about the way it was made, as long as we live. 98. DORA. That does not seem much to depend upon. L. Pardon me, puss. When once we gain some real notion of the extent and the unconquerableness of our ignorance, it is a very broad and restful thing to depend upon; you can throw yourself upon it at ease, as on a cloud, to feast with the gods. You do not thenceforward trouble yourself, nor any one else, with theories, or the contradiction of theories; you neither get headache nor heartburning; and you nevermore waste your poor little store of strength, or allowance of time. 1 [See, in a later volume, Ruskin‘s papers on ―Banded and Brecciated Concretions.‖] 2 [In 1863: see Vol. XVII. p. lxxvi.] 328 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST However, there are certain facts, about this agate-making, which I can tell you; and then you may look at it in a pleasant wonder as long as you like; pleasant wonder is no loss of time. First, then, it is not broken freely by a blow; it is slowly wrung, or ground, to pieces. You can only with extreme dimness conceive the force exerted on mountains in transitional states of movement. You have all read a little geology; and you know how coolly geologists talk of mountains being raised or depressed. They talk coolly of it, because they are accustomed to the fact; but the very universality of the fact prevents us from ever conceiving distinctly the conditions of force involved. You know I was living last year in Savoy:1 my house was on the back of a sloping mountain, which rose gradually for two miles behind it; and then fell at once in a great precipice towards Geneva, going down three thousand feet in four or five cliffs, or steps. Now that whole group of cliffs had simply been torn away by sheer strength from the rocks below, as if the whole mass had been as soft as biscuit. Put four or five captain‘s biscuits on the floor, on the top of one another; and try to break them all in half,2 not by bending, but by holding one half down, and tearing the other halves straight up;—of course you will not be able to do it, but you will feel and comprehend the sort of force needed. Then, fancy each captain‘s biscuit a bed of rock, six or seven hundred feet thick; and the whole mass torn straight through; and one half heaved up three thousand feet, grinding against the other as it rose,—and you will have some idea of the making of the Mont Salève. MAY. But it must crush the rocks all to dust! L. No; for there is no room for dust. The pressure 1 [The reference is to his sojourn at Mornex on the Salève, 1862–1863: see Vol. XVII. pp. liv. seq.] 2 [Compare Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. p. 194), where the same illustration is given.] IX. CRYSTAL SORROWS 329 is too great; probably the heat developed also so great that the rock is made partly ductile; but the worst of it is, that we can never see these parts of mountains in the state they were left in at the time of their elevation; for it is precisely in these rents and dislocations that the crystalline power principally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, and wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the torture and grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; for you only find the crystalline living power fully in action, where the rents and faults are deep and many. 99. DORA. If you please, sir,—would you tell us—what are ―faults‖? L. You never heard of such things? DORA. Never in all our lives. L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is interrupted by another troublesome little vein, which stops it, and puts it out, so that it has to begin again in another place—that is called a fault. I always think it ought to be called the fault of the vein that interrupts it; but the miners always call it the fault of the vein that is interrupted. DORA. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off. L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business; but, whatever good-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have a bad habit, when they are once interrupted, of never asking ―Where was I?‖ DORA. When the two halves of the dining table came separate, yesterday, was that a ―fault‖? L. Yes; but not the table‘s. However, it is not a bad illustration, Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a fissure, but remain at the same level, like the two halves of the table, it is not called a fault, but only a fissure; but if one half of the table be either tilted higher than the other, or pushed to the side, so that the two parts will not fit, it is a fault. You had better read the 330 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST chapter on faults in Jukes‘s Geology;1 then you will know all about it. And this rent that I am telling you of in the Salève, is one only of myriads to which are owing the forms of the Alps, as, I believe, of all great mountain chains. Wherever you see a precipice on any scale of real magnificence, you will nearly always find it owing to some dislocation of this kind; but the point of chief wonder to me, is the delicacy of the touch by which these gigantic rents have been apparently accomplished. Note, however, that we have no clear evidence, hitherto, of the time taken to produce any of them. We know that a change of temperature alters the position and the angles of the atoms of crystals, and also the entire bulk of rocks. We know that in all volcanic, and the greater part of all subterranean action, temperatures are continually changing, and therefore masses of rock must be expanding or contracting, with infinite slowness, but with infinite force. This pressure must result in mechanical strain somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that of the rocks surrounding them; and we can form no conception of the result of irresistible pressure, applied so as to rend and raise, with imperceptible slowness of gradation, masses thousands of feet in thickness. We want some experiments tried on masses of iron and stone; and we can‘t get them tried, because Christian creatures never will seriously and sufficiently spend money, except to find out the shortest ways of killing each other. But, besides this slow kind of pressure, there is evidence of more or less sudden violence, on the same terrific scale; and, through it all, the wonder, as I said, is always to me the delicacy of touch. I cut a block of the Salève limestone from the edge of one of the principal faults which have formed the precipice; it is a lovely compact limestone, and the fault itself is filled up with a red breccia, formed of the crushed fragments of the torn rock, cemented by a rich red crystalline paste. I have had the piece I 1 [For references to Jukes, see in a later volume some letters of 1864 (reprinted from Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. i. pp. 267, 272).] IX. CRYSTAL SORROWS 331 cut from it smoothed, and polished across the junction; here it is; and you may now pass your soft little fingers over the surface, without so much as feeling the place where a rock which all the hills of England might have been sunk in the body of, and not a summit seen, was torn asunder through that whole thickness, as a thin dress is torn when you tread upon it. (The audience examine the stone and touch it timidly; but the matter remains inconceivable to them.) 100. MARY (struck by the beauty of the stone). But this is almost marble? L. It is quite marble. And another singular point in the business, to my mind, is that these stones which men have been cutting into slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament their principal buildings with,—and which, under the general name of ―marble,‖ have been the delight of the eyes, and the wealth of architecture, among all civilised nations,—are precisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth-agonies have been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. What a boundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in the human mind! Fancy reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three thousand years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and educate themselves to an art at last, (such as it is,) of imitating these veins by dexterous painting:—and never a curious soul of them, all that while, asks, ―What painted the rocks?‖ (The audience look dejected, and ashamed of themselves.) The fact is, we are all, and always, asleep, through our lives; and it is only by pinching ourselves very hard that we ever come to see, or understand, anything. At least, it is not always we who pinch ourselves; sometimes other people pinch us; which I suppose is very good of them,—or other things, which I suppose is very proper of them. 332 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST But it is a sad life; made up chiefly of naps and pinches. (Some of the audience, on this, appearing to think that the others require pinching, the LECTURER changes the subject.) 101. Now, however, for once, look at a piece of marble carefully, and think about it. You see this is one side of the fault; the other side is down or up, nobody knows where; but, on this side, you can trace the evidence of the dragging and tearing action. All along the edge of this marble, the ends of the fibres of the rock are torn, here an inch, and there half an inch away from each other; and you see the exact places where they fitted, before they were torn separate; and you see the rents are now all filled up with the sanguine paste, full of the broken pieces of the rock; the paste itself seems to have been half melted, and partly to have also melted the edge of the fragments it contains, and then to have crystallised with them, and around them. And the brecciated agate I first showed you contains exactly the same phenomena; a zoned crystallisation going on amidst the cemented fragments partly altering the structure of those fragments themselves, and subject to continual change, either in the intensity of its own power, or in the nature of the materials submitted to it;—so that, at one time, gravity acts upon them, and disposes them in horizontal layers, or causes them to droop in stalactites; and at another, gravity is entirely defied, and the substances in solution are crystallised in bands of equal thickness on every side of the cell. It would require a course of lectures longer than these, (I have a great mind,—you have behaved so saucily—to stay and give them) to describe to you the phenomena of this kind, in agates and chalcedonies only;—nay, there is a single sarcophagus in the British Museum,1 covered with grand 1 [There is no sarcophagus of the eighteenth dynasty which answers to Ruskin‘s description. The breccia sarcophagus which seems to be referred to is that of Nectanebus I., a king of the thirtieth dynasty; inscribed with several scenes from the ―Book of what is in the Underworld,‖ with the proper texts.] IX. CRYSTAL SORROWS 333 sculpture of the 18th dynasty, which contains in the magnificent breccia (agates and jaspers imbedded in porphyry), out of which it is hewn, material for the thought of years; and record of the earth-sorrow of ages, in comparison with the duration of which, the Egyptian letters tell us but the history of the evening and morning of a day. 102. Agates, I think, of all stones, confess most of their past history; but all crystallisation goes on under, and partly records, circumstances of this kind—circumstances of infinite variety, but always involving difficulty, interruption, and change of condition at different times. Observe, first, you have the whole mass of the rock in motion, either contracting itself, and so gradually widening the cracks; or being compressed, and thereby closing them, and crushing their edges;—and, if one part of its substance be softer, at the given temperature, than another, probably squeezing that softer substance out into the veins. Then the veins themselves, when the rock leaves them open by its contraction, act with various power of suction upon its substance;—by capillary attraction when they are fine,—by that of pure vacuity when they are larger, or by changes in the constitution and condensation of the mixed gases with which they have been originally filled. Those gases themselves may be supplied in all variation of volume and power from below; or, slowly, by the decomposition of the rocks themselves: and, at changing temperatures, must exert relatively changing forces of decomposition and combination on the walls of the veins they fill; while water, at every degree of heat and pressure, (from beds of everlasting ice, alternate with cliffs of native rock, to volumes of red hot, or white hot, steam) congeals, and drips, and throbs, and thrills, from crag to crag; and breathes from pulse to pulse of foaming or fiery arteries, whose beating is felt through chains of the great islands of the Indian seas, as your own pulses lift your bracelets, and makes whole kingdoms of the world quiver in deadly earthquake, as if they were light as aspen leaves. And, remember, the poor 334 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST little crystals have to live their lives, and mind their own affairs, in the midst of all this, as best they may. They are wonderfully like human creatures,—forget all that is going on if they don‘t see it, however dreadful; and never think what is to happen to-morrow. They are spiteful or loving, and indolent or painstaking, and orderly or licentious, with no thought whatever of the lava or the flood which may break over them any day, and evaporate them into air bubbles, or wash them into a solution of salts. And you may look at them, once understanding the surrounding conditions of their fate, with an endless interest. You will see crowds of unfortunate little crystals, who have been forced to constitute themselves in a hurry, their dissolving element being fiercely scorched away; you will see them doing their best, bright and numberless, but tiny. Then you will find indulged crystals, who have had centuries to form themselves in, and have changed their mind and ways continually; and have been tired, and taken heart again; and have been sick, and got well again; and thought they would try a different diet, and then thought better of it; and made but a poor use of their advantages, after all. And others you will see, who have begun life as wicked crystals; and then have been impressed by alarming circumstances, and have become converted crystals, and behaved amazingly for a little while, and fallen away again, and ended, but discreditably, perhaps even in decomposition; so that one doesn‘t know what will become of them. And sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that look as soft as velvet, and are deadly to all near them; and sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that seem flintedged, like our little quartz-crystal of a housekeeper here, (hush! Dora,) and are endlessly gentle and true wherever gentleness and truth are needed. And sometimes you will see little child-crystals put to school like school-girls, and made to stand in rows; and taken the greatest care of, and taught how to hold themselves up, and behave: and sometimes you will see unhappy little child-crystals left to IX. CRYSTAL SORROWS 335 lie about in the dirt, and pick up their living, and learn manners, where they can. And sometimes you will see fat crystals eating up thin ones, like great capitalists and little labourers; and politico-economic crystals teaching the stupid ones how to eat each other, and cheat each other; and foolish crystals getting in the way of wise ones; and impatient crystals spoiling the plans of patient ones, irreparably; just as things go on in the world. And sometimes you may see hypocritical crystals taking the shape of others, though they are nothing like in their minds; and vampire crystals eating out the hearts of others; and hermit-crab crystals living in the shells of others; and parasite crystals living on the means of others; and courtier crystals glittering in attendance upon others; and all these, besides the two great companies of war and peace, who ally themselves, resolutely to attack, or resolutely to defend. And for the close, you see the broad shadow and deadly force of inevitable fate, above all this; you see the multitudes of crystals whose time has come; not a set time, as with us, but yet a time, sooner or later, when they all must give up their crystal ghosts:—when the strength by which they grew, and the strength given them to breathe, pass away from them; and they fail, and are consumed, and vanish away: and another generation is brought to life, framed out of their ashes. 103. MARY. It is very terrible. Is it not the complete fulfilment, down into the very dust, of that verse: ―The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain‖?1 L. I do not know that it is in pain, Mary: at least, the evidence tends to show that there is much more pleasure than pain, as soon as sensation becomes possible. LUCILLA. But then, surely, if we are told that it is pain, it must be pain? L. Yes; if we are told; and told in the way you mean, Lucilla; but nothing is said of the proportion to pleasure. 1 [Romans viii. 22; quoted also in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. p. 167), and Lectures on Art, § 125.] 336 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST Unmitigated pain would kill any of us in a few hours; pain equal to our pleasures would make us loathe life; the word itself cannot be applied to the lower conditions of matter, in its ordinary sense. But wait till to-morrow to ask me about this. To-morrow is to be kept for questions and difficulties; let us keep to the plain facts to-day. There is yet one group of facts connected with this rending of the rocks, which I especially want you to notice. You know, when you have mended a very old dress, quite meritoriously, till it won‘t mend any more— EGYPT (interrupting). Could not you sometimes take gentlemen‘s work to illustrate by? L. Gentlemen‘s work is rarely so useful as yours, Egypt; and when it is useful, girls cannot easily understand it. DORA. I am sure we should understand it better than gentlemen understand about sewing. L. My dear, I hope I always speak modestly, and under correction, when I touch upon matters of the kind too high for me; and besides, I never intend to speak otherwise than respectfully of sewing;—though you always seem to think I am laughing at you. In all seriousness, illustrations from sewing are those which Neith likes me best to use; and which young ladies ought to like everybody to use. What do you think the beautiful word ―wife‖ comes from? DORA (tossing her head). I don‘t think it is a particularly beautiful word. L. Perhaps not. At your ages you may think ―bride‖ sounds better; but wife‘s the word for wear, depend upon it. It is the great word in which the English and Latin languages conquer the French and the Greek. I hope the French will some day get a word for it, yet, instead of their dreadful ―femme.‖ But what do you think it comes from? DORA. I never did think about it. L. Nor you, Sibyl? IX. CRYSTAL SORROWS 337 SIBYL. No; I thought it was Saxon, and stopped there. L. Yes; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they usually do mean something. Wife means ―weaver.‖ You have all the right to call yourselves little ―housewives,‖ when you sew neatly. DORA. But I don‘t think we want to call ourselves ―little housewives.‖ L. You must either be house-Wives, or house-Moths; remember that. In the deep sense, you must either weave men‘s fortunes, and embroider them; or feed upon, and bring them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewing illustration, and help me out with it. DORA. Well, we‘ll hear it, under protest. L. You have heard it before; but with reference to other matters. When it is said, ―no man putteth a piece of new cloth on an old garment, else it taketh from the old,‖1 does it not mean that the new piece tears the old one away at the sewn edge? DORA. Yes; certainly. L. And when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, does not the whole edge come away sometimes, when it tears again? DORA. Yes; and then it is of no use to mend it any more. 104. L. Well, the rocks don‘t seem to think that; but the same thing happens to them continually. I told you they were full of rents, or veins. Large masses of rock are sometimes as full of veins as your hand is; and of veins nearly as fine; (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube, but a crack or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the strongest material the rock can find; and often literally with threads; for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the substance it is filled with into fibres, which cross from one side of it to the other, and are partly crystalline; so that, when the crystals 1 [Matthew ix. 16.] XVIII. Y 338 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST become distinct, the fissure has often exactly the look of a tear, brought together with strong cross stitches. Now when this is completely done, and all has been fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of temperature may occur, and the rock begin to contract again. Then the old vein must open wider; or else another open elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it may do so at its centre; but it constantly happens, with well-filled veins, that the cross stitches are too strong to break: the walls of the vein, instead, are torn away by them; and another little supplementary vein—often three or four successively—will be thus formed at the side of the first. MARY. That is really very much like our work. But what do the mountains use to sew with? L. Quartz, whenever they can get it; pure limestones are obliged to be content with carbonate of lime; but most mixed rocks can find some quartz for themselves. Here is a piece of black slate from the Buet: it looks merely like dry dark mud;—you could not think there was any quartz in it; but, you see, its rents are all stitched together with beautiful white thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that you can break it like flint, in the mass; but, where it has been exposed to the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown: and, more than that, you see the threads have been all twisted and pulled aside, this way and the other, by the warpings and shifting of the sides of the vein as it widened. 105. MARY. It is wonderful! But is that going on still? Are the mountains being torn and sewn together again at this moment? L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly (though geologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, or on the scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things seem to be tending towards a condition of at least temporary rest; and that groaning and travailing of the creation, as, assuredly, not wholly in pain, is not, in the full sense, ―until now.‖ IX. CRYSTAL SORROWS 339 MARY. I want so much to ask you about that! SIBYL. Yes; and we all want to ask you about a great many other things besides. L. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new ideas as are good for any of you at present: and I should not like to burden you with more; but I must see that those you have are clear, if I can make them so; so we will have one more talk for answer of questions, mainly. Think over all the ground, and make your difficulties thoroughly presentable. Then we‘ll see that we can make of them. DORA. They shall all be dressed in their very best; and curtsey as they come in. L. No, no, Dora; no curtseys, if you please. I had enough of them the day you all took a fit of reverence, and curtsied me out of the room. DORA. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, at once, by that fit. We have never been the least respectful since. And the difficulties will only curtsey themselves out of the room, I hope;—come in at one door—vanish at the other. L. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties were taught to behave so! However, one can generally make something, or (better still) nothing, or at least less, of them, if they thoroughly know their own minds; and your difficulties—I must say that for you, children,—generally do know their own minds, as you do yourselves. DORA. That is very kindly said for us. Some people would not allow so much as that girls had any minds to know. L. They will at least admit you have minds to change, Dora. MARY. You might have left us the last speech, without a retouch. But we‘ll put our little minds, such as they are, in the best trim we can, for to-morrow. LECTURE X THE CRYSTAL REST Evening. The fireside. L.‘s armchair in the comfortablest corner 106. L. (perceiving various arrangements being made of footstool, cushion, screen, and the like). Yes, yes, it‘s all very fine; and I am to sit here to be asked questions till supper-time, am I? DORA. I don‘t think you can have any supper to-night:—we‘ve got so much to ask. LILY. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it him here, you know, so nicely! L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with competitive examination going on over one‘s plate; the competition being among the examiners. Really, now that I know what teasing things girls are, I don‘t so much wonder that people used to put up patiently with the dragons who took them for supper. But I can‘t help myself, I suppose;—no thanks to St. George. Ask away, children, and I‘ll answer as civilly as may be. DORA. We don‘t so much care about being answered civilly, as about not being asked things back again. L. ―Ayez seulement la patience que je pare.‖1 There shall be no requitals. DORA. Well, then, first of all—What shall we ask first, Mary? MARY. It does not matter. I think all the questions come into one, at last, nearly. DORA. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were alive; and we never understand how much you are 1 [For this quotation from Molière‘s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. p. 405 n.).] 340 X. THE CRYSTAL REST 341 in play, and how much in earnest. That‘s the first thing. L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I am in earnest. The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle you. They look as if they were alive, and make me speak as if they were; and I do not in the least know how much truth there is in the appearance. I‘m not to ask things back again to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the one main question, which we asked, before, in vain, ―What is it to be alive?‖ DORA. Yes; but we want to come back to that: for we‘ve been reading scientific books about the ―conservation of forces,‖1 and it seems all so grand, and wonderful; and the experiments are so pretty: and I suppose it must be all right: but then the books never speak as if there were any such thing as ―life.‖ L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, Dora: but they are beautifully right as far as they go: and life is not a convenient element to deal with. They seem to have been getting some of it into and out of bottles, in their ―ozone‖ and ―antizone‖ lately: but they still know little of it; and, certainly, I know less.2 DORA. You promised not to be provoking, to-night. 107. L. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the secrets of life than the philosophers do, I yet know one corner of ground on which we artists can stand, literally as ―Life Guards‖ at bay, as steadily as the Guards at Inkermann; however hard the philosophers push. And you may stand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely. DORA. I‘m sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may stand. L. You may always stand by Form, against Force.3 1 [The phrase originated with Leibnitz (1692); the doctrine was developed in Sir William Grove‘s Correlation of Forces (1842).] 2 [Compare the passage in the Preface to the Queen of the Air: ―Ah, masters of modern science, give me back my Athena out of your vials‖ (Vol. XIX.).] 3 [For an explanation of this sentence, see Queen of the Air, § 59.] 342 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST To a painter the essential character of anything is the form of it; and the philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy, (or whatever else they like to call it) in a tea-kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so; and it is very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, to take the Giereagle up to his nest; and as much more to bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our principal interest to the difference in their forms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings;—not to speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or mode of force;—but then, to an artist, the form, or mode, is the gist of the business. The kettle chooses to sit still on the hob; the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it, which appears to us the more interesting circumstance;—though the other is very interesting too. Exceedingly so! Don‘t laugh, children; the philosophers have been doing quite splendid work lately, in their own way: especially, the transformation of force into light is a great piece of systematised discovery; and this notion about the sun‘s being supplied with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks very likely to be true.1 Of course, it is only the old gunlock,—flint and steel,—on a large scale: but the order and majesty of it are sublime. Still, we sculptors and painters care little about it. ―It is very fine,‖ we say, ―and very useful, this knocking the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eternal cataract of planets. But 1 [Ruskin here refers to the theory that meteorids in falling into the sun furnish by their concussion a supply for the sun‘s heat; for a summary of the objections to the theory see Professor H. A. Newton‘s article on Meteors in the Encyclopædia Britannica.] X. THE CRYSTAL REST 343 you may hail away, so, for ever, and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a bit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, hit out the head of the Apollo of Clazomenæ.1 It is merely a matter of form; but if any of you philosophers, with your whole planetary system to hammer with, can hit out such another bit of silver as this,—we will take off our hats to you. For the present, we keep them on.‖ 108. MARY. Yes, I understand; and that is nice; but I don‘t think we shall any of us like having only form to depend upon. L. It was not neglected in the making of Eve, my dear. MARY. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the ground. It is that breathing of the life which we want to understand. L. So you should: but hold fast to the form, and defend that first, as distinguished from the mere transition of forces. Discern the moulding hand of the potter commanding the clay, from his merely beating foot, as it turns the wheel. If you can find incense, in the vase, afterwards,—well: but it is curious how far mere form will carry you ahead of the philosophers. For instance, with regard to the most interesting of all their modes of force—light;—they never consider how far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain vitreous and nervous substances into the formal arrangement which we call an eye. The German philosophers began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by telling us there was no such thing as light at all, unless we chose to see it:2 now, German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, though nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the force must be 1 [See a plate of this coin in Aratra Pentelici, § 138 (Vol. XX.); and for other references to the coin, Queen of the Air, § 167.] 2 [See Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. pp. 202–203).] 344 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST there, and the eyes there; and ―light‖ means the effect of the one on the other;—and perhaps, also—(Plato saw farther into that mystery than any one has since, that I know of1 ),—on something a little way within the eyes; but we may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the philosophers. SIBYL. But I don‘t care so much about defying the philosophers, if only one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for one‘s self. L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that cave of yours, than any of us. I was just going to ask you about inspiration, and the golden bough,2 and the like; only I remembered I was not to ask anything. But, will not you, at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the power of putting things together, or ―making‖ them; and of Death, as the power of pushing things separate, or ―unmaking‖ them, may not be very simply held in balance against each other? SIBYL. No, I am not in my cave to-night; and cannot tell you anything. 109. L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great separator; it is little more than the expansion of Molière‘s great sentence, ―Il s‘ensuit de là, que tout ce qu‘il y a de beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n‘y a que les mots qui sont transposés.‖3 But when you used to be in your cave, Sibyl, and to be inspired, there was, (and there remains still in some small measure) beyond the merely formative and sustaining power, another, which we painters call ―passion‖—I don‘t know what the philosophers call it; we know it makes people red, or white; and therefore it must be something, itself: and perhaps it 1 [The reference is to Timaeus, 45. A passage from Jowett‘s introduction to that dialogue summarises Plato‘s theory: ―The process of sight is the most complicated [of the sensations], and consists of three elements—the light which is supposed to reside within the eye, the light of the sun, and the light emitted from external objects. When the light of the eye meets the light of the sun, and both together meet the light issuing from an external object, this is the simple act of sight.‖] 2 [See Vol. XVII. p. 368 n.] 3 [Compare Eagle’s Nest, § 100.] X. THE CRYSTAL REST 345 is the most truly ―poetic‖ or ―making‖ force of all, creating a world of its own out of a glance, or a sigh: and the want of passion is perhaps the truest death, or ―unmaking‖ of everything;—even of stones. By the way, you were all reading about that ascent of the Aiguille Verte, the other day? SIBYL. Because you had told us it was so difficult, you thought it could not be ascended. L. Yes; I believed the Aiguille Verte would have held its own. But do you recollect what one of the climbers exclaimed, when he first felt sure of reaching the summit? SIBYL. Yes, it was, ―Oh, Aiguille Verte, vous êtes morte, vous êtes morte!‖1 L. That was true instinct. Real philosophic joy. Now can you at all fancy the difference between that feeling of triumph in a mountain‘s death; and the exultation of your beloved poet, in its life— ―Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse, coruscis Quum fremit ilicibus, quantus, gaudetque nivali Vertice, se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras‖?2 DORA. You must translate for us mere house-keepers, please;—whatever the cave-keepers may know about it. MARY. Will Dryden do? L. No. Dryden is a far way worse than nothing, and nobody will ―do.‖ You can‘t translate it. But this is all you need know, that the lines are full of a passionate sense of the Apennines‘ fatherhood, or protecting power, over Italy; and of sympathy with their joy in their snowy 1 [The first ascent of the Aiguille Verte was made by Mr. E. Whymper on June 29, 1865, accompanied by the guides Christian Almer and Franz Biener. This was Almer‘s remark. Mr. Whymper had described the ascent and recorded the saying in a paper read to the British Association at Birmingham, and reported in the Times of September 13, 1865. See also The Ascent of the Matterhorn, by Edward Whymper, 1880, p. 250 (first published in 1871 under the title Scrambles among the Alps). For other references to Alpine climbing, see above, pp. 21 seq., and compare Vol. XVI. p. 138 n.] 2 [Virgil, Æneid, xii. 701. Dryden‘s version is:— ―Like Eryx, or like Athos, great he shows, Or father Apennine, when, white with snows, His head divine obscure in clouds he hides, And shakes the sounding forest on his sides.‖] 346 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST strength in heaven; and with the same joy, shuddering through all the leaves of their forests. 110. MARY. Yes, that is a difference indeed! but then, you know, one can‘t help feeling that it is fanciful. It is very delightful to imagine the mountains to be alive; but then,—are they alive? L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelings of the purest and most mightily passioned human souls are likely to be the truest. Not, indeed, if they do not desire to know the truth, or blind themselves to it that they may please themselves with passion; for then they are no longer pure: but if, continually seeking and accepting the truth as far as it is discernible, they trust their Maker for the integrity of the instincts He has gifted them with, and rest in the sense of a higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think they will be most in the right, so. DORA and JESSIE (clapping their hands). Then we really may believe that the mountains are living? L. You may at least earnestly believe, that the presence of the spirit which culminates in your own life, shows itself in dawning, wherever the dust of the earth begins to assume any orderly and lovely state.1 You will find it impossible to separate this idea of gradated manifestation from that of the vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or wholly dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most easily examined instance—the life of a flower. Notice what a different degree and kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. The calyx is nothing but the swaddling clothes of the flower; the childblossom is bound up in it, hand and foot; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the time of birth. The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the 1 [On this passage, see the Preface; above, p. 203.] X. THE CRYSTAL REST 347 buttercup; or persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose; or harmonise itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as in the lily; but it never shares in the corolla‘s bright passion of life. And the gradations which thus exist between the different members of organic creatures, exist no less between the different ranges of organism.1 We know no higher or more energetic life than our own; but there seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation of life—it admits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as much nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust. 111. MARY. I am glad you have said that; for I know Violet and Lucilla and May want to ask you something; indeed, we all do; only you frightened Violet so, about the ant-hill, that she can‘t say a word; and May is afraid of your teasing her, too: but I know they are wondering why you are always telling them about heathen gods and goddesses, as if you half believed in them; and you represent them as good; and then we see there is really a kind of truth in the stories about them; and we are all puzzled: and, in this, we cannot even make our difficulty quite clear to ourselves;—it would be such a long confused question, if we could ask you all we should like to know. L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary; for this is indeed the longest, and the most wildly confused question that reason can deal with; but I will try to give you, quickly, a few clear ideas about the heathen gods, which you may follow out afterwards, as your knowledge increases. Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely to be interested, has three distinct characters:2— I. It has a physical character. It represents some of 1 [The MS. here reads:— ―. . . bright passion of life. Love, I suppose, is the real measure of life, for all creatures. And it‘s a fine thing, if it were not so foolish a thing sometimes, too. Keep wise in that, if you can, children,—whatever follies you allow yourselves in, otherwise. And there is one great good in this idea of gradation . . .‖] 2 [Here, again, see the Preface; above, p. 203; and compare Queen of the Air, § 6.] 348 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST the great powers or objects of nature—sun or moon, or heaven, or the winds, or the sea. And the fables first related about each deity represent, figuratively, the action of the natural power which it represents; such as the rising and setting of the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on. II. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its history, the moral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is first, physically, the sun contending with darkness; but morally, the power of divine life contending with corruption. Athena is, physically, the air; morally, the breathing of the divine spirit of wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the sea; morally, the supreme power of agitating passion; and so on.1 III. It has, at last, a personal character; and is realised in the minds of its worshippers as a living spirit, with whom men may speak face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. 112. Now it is impossible to define exactly how far, at any period of a national religion, these three ideas are mingled; or how far one prevails over the other. Each enquirer usually takes up one of these ideas, and pursues it, to the exclusion of the others; no impartial efforts seem to have been made to discern the real state of the heathen imagination in its successive phases. For the question is not at all what a mythological figure meant in its origin; but what it became in each subsequent mental development of the nation inheriting the thought.2 Exactly in proportion to the mental and moral insight of any race, its mythological figures mean more to it, and become more real. An early and savage race means nothing more, (because it has nothing more to mean,) by its Apollo, than the sun; while a cultivated Greek means every operation of divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of Egypt, meant, physically, little more than the blue of the air; but 1 [For these interpretations compare Cestus of Aglaia, § 12, and Queen of the Air, § 10.] 2 [Here, again, compare Queen of the Air, §§ 7 seq.] X. THE CRYSTAL REST 349 the Greek, in a climate of alternate storm and calm, represented the wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the serpents of her ægis; and the lightning and cold of the highest thunder-clouds, by the Gorgon on her shield: while morally, the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful terror of knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and defensive power. And no study can be more interesting, or more useful to you, than that of the different meanings which have been created by great nations, and great poets, out of mythological figures given them, at first, in utter simplicity. But when we approach them in their third, or personal, character (and, for its power over the whole national mind, this is far the leading one), we are met at once by questions which may well put all of you at pause. Were they idly imagined to be real beings? and did they so usurp the place of the true God? Or were they actually real beings,—evil spirits,—leading men away from the true God? Or is it conceivable that they might have been real beings,—good spirits,—entrusted with some message from the true God? These were the questions you wanted to ask; were they not, Lucilla? LUCILLA. Yes, indeed. 113. L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the clearness of your faith in the personality of the spirits which are described in the book of your own religion;—their personality, observe, as distinguished from merely symbolical visions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with its mouth to the north,1 you know that this which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream. Also, when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the bottom,2 you still may suppose the vision symbolical;—you do not think of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse,3 a distinct sense of personality 1 [Jeremiah i. 13.] 2 [Zechariah i. 8.] 3 [Revelation vi.] 350 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST begins to force itself upon you. And though you might, in a dull temper, think that (for one instance of all) the fourth rider on the pale horse was merely a symbol of the power of death,—in your stronger and more earnest moods you will rather conceive of him as a real and living angel. And when you look back from the vision of the Apocalypse to the account of the destruction of the Egyptian first-born, and of the army of Sennacherib, and again to David‘s vision at the threshing floor of Araunah,1 the idea of personality in this death-angel becomes entirely defined, just as in the appearance of the angels to Abraham, Manoah, or Mary.2 114. Now, when you have once consented to this idea of a personal spirit, must not the question instantly follow: ―Does this spirit exercise its functions towards one race of men only, or towards all men? Was it an angel of death to the Jew only, or to the Gentile also?‖ You find a certain Divine agency made visible to a King of Israel, as an armed angel, executing vengeance, of which one special purpose was to lower his kingly pride.3 You find another (or perhaps the same) agency, made visible to a Christian prophet as an angel standing in the sun, calling to the birds that fly under heaven to come, that they may eat the flesh of kings. Is there anything impious in the thought that the same agency might have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by similar visions?—that this figure, standing in the sun, and armed with the sword, or the bow (whose arrows were drunk with blood4 ), and exercising especially its power in the humiliation of the proud, might, at first, have been called only ―Destroyer,‖ and afterwards, as the light, or sun, of justice,5 was recognised in the chastisement, called also, ―Physician‖ or 1 [Exodus xi.; 2 Kings xviii.; 2 Samuel xxiv. 16.] 2 [Genesis xviii.; Judges xiii. 9 seq.; Luke i. 28. For the appearance of the angels to Abraham, compare Vol. IV. pp. xxx., xxxi.] 3 [Again a reference to the appearance of the angel to David by the threshing floor of Araunah. The next reference is to Revelation xix. 17, 18.] 4 [Deuteronomy xxxii. 42.] 5 [Compare Unto this Last, § 44 n. (Vol. XVII. p. 59).] X. THE CRYSTAL REST 351 ―Healer‖?1 If you feel hesitation in admitting the possibility of such a manifestation, I believe you will find it is caused, partly indeed by such trivial things as the difference to your ear between Greek and English terms; but, far more, by uncertainty in your own mind respecting the nature and truth of the visions spoken of in the Bible. Have any of you intently examined the nature of your belief in them? You, for instance, Lucilla, who think often, and seriously, of such things? LUCILLA. No; I never could tell what to believe about them. I know they must be true in some way or other; and I like reading about them. L. Yes; and I like reading about them too, Lucilla; as I like reading other grand poetry. But, surely, we ought both to do more than like it? Will God be satisfied with us, think you, if we read His words, merely for the sake of an entirely meaningless poetical sensation? 115. LUCILLA. But do not the people who give themselves to seek out the meaning of these things, often get very strange, and extravagant? L. More than that, Lucilla. They often go mad. That abandonment of the mind to religious theory, or contemplation, is the very thing I have been pleading with you against. I never said you should set yourself to discover the meanings: but you should take careful pains to understand them, so far as they are clear; and you should always accurately ascertain the state of your mind about them. I want you never to read merely for the pleasure of fancy;—still less as a formal religious duty; (else you might as well take to repeating Paters at once; for it is surely wiser to repeat one thing we understand, than read a thousand which we cannot). Either, therefore, acknowledge the passages to be, for the present, unintelligible to you; or else determine the sense in which you at present receive them; or, at all events, the different senses between 1 [For these names, see Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 420).] 352 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST which you clearly see that you must choose. Make either your belief, or your difficulty, definite; but do not go on, all through your life, believing nothing intelligently, and yet supposing that your having read the words of a divine book must give you the right to despise every religion but your own. I assure you, strange as it may seem, our scorn of Greek tradition depends, not on our belief, but our disbelief, of our own traditions. We have, as yet, no sufficient clue to the meaning of either; but you will always find that, in proportion to the earnestness of our own faith, its tendency to accept a spiritual personality increases: and that the most vital and beautiful Christian temper rests joyfully in its conviction of the multitudinous ministry of living angels, infinitely varied in rank and power. You all know one expression of the purest and happiest form of such faith, as it exists in modern times, in Richter‘s lovely illustrations of the Lord‘s Prayer.1 The real and living death angel girt as a pilgrim for journey, and softly crowned with flowers, beckons at the dying mother‘s door; child-angels sit talking face to face with mortal children, among the flowers;—hold them by their little coats, lest they fall on the stairs;—whisper dreams of heaven to them, leaning over their pillows; carry the sound of the church bells for them far through the air; and, even descending lower in service, fill little cups with honey to hold out to the weary bee. By the way, Lily, did you tell the other children that story about your little sister, and Alice, and the sea? 116. LILY. I told it to Alice, and to Miss Dora. I don‘t think I did to anybody else. I thought it wasn‘t worth. L. We shall think it worth a great deal now, Lily, if you will tell it us. How old is Dotty, again? I forget. LILY. She is not quite three; but she has such odd little old ways, sometimes. 1 [See Vol. XV. p. 224.] X. THE CRYSTAL REST 353 L. And she is very fond of Alice? LILY. Yes; Alice was so good to her always! L. And so when Alice went away? LILY. Oh, it was nothing, you know, to tell about; only it was strange at the time. L. Well; but I want you to tell it.1 LILY. The morning after Alice had gone, Dotty was very sad and restless when she got up, and went about, looking into all the corners, as if she could find Alice in them, and at last she came to me, and said, ―Is Alie gone over the great sea?‖ And I said, ―Yes, she is gone over the great, deep sea, but she will come back again some day.‖ Then Dotty looked round the room; and I had just poured some water out into the basin; and Dotty ran to it, and got up on a chair, and dashed her hands through the water, again and again; and cried, ―Oh, deep, deep sea! send little Alie back to me.‖ L. Isn‘t that pretty, children? There‘s a dear little heathen for you! The whole heart of Greek mythology is in that; the idea of a personal being in the elemental power;—of its being moved by prayer; and of its presence everywhere, making the broken diffusion of the element sacred. 117. Now, remember, the measure in which we may permit ourselves to think of this trusted and adored personality, in Greek, or in any other, mythology, as conceivably a shadow of truth, will depend on the degree in which we hold the Greeks, or other great nations, equal or inferior, in privilege and character, to the Jews, or to ourselves. If we believe that the great Father would use the imagination of the Jew as an instrument by which to exalt and lead him; but the imagination of the Greek only to degrade and mislead him; if we can suppose that real angels were sent to minister to the Jews and to punish them; but no angels, or only mocking spectra of angels, or even devils 1 [On this passage, see the Preface; above, p. 201.] XVIII. Z 354 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST in the shapes of angels, to lead Lycurgus and Leonidas from desolate cradle to hopeless grave:1—and if we can think that it was only the influence of spectres, or the teaching of demons, which issued in the making of mothers like Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobis and Bito, we may, of course, reject the heathen Mythology in out privileged scorn: but, at least, we are bound to examine strictly by what faults of our own it has come to pass, that the ministry of real angels2 among ourselves is occasionally so ineffectual, as to end in the production of Cornelias who intrust their child-jewels to Charlotte Winsors3 for the better keeping of them; and of sons like that one who, the other day, in France, beat his mother to death with a stick; and was brought in by the jury, ―guilty, with extenuating circumstances.‖ MAY. Was that really possible? L. Yes, my dear. I am not sure that I can lay my hand on the reference to it (and I should not have said ―the other day‖—it was a year or two ago), but you may depend on the fact; and I could give you many like it, if I chose. There was a murder done in Russia, very lately, on a traveller. The murderess‘s little daughter was in the way, and found it out somehow. Her mother killed her, too, and put her into the oven. There is a peculiar horror about the relations between parent and child, which are being now brought about by our variously degraded forms of European white slavery. Here is one reference, I see, in my notes on that story of Cleobis and Bito; though I supposed I marked this chiefly for its quaintness, and the beautifully Christian names of the sons; but it is a good 1 [For other references to Lycurgus, see Art of England, § 83, and Fors Clavigera, Letters 2, 27, and 68; and to Leonidas, Vol. XII. p. 138 n. There is a fuller reference to Cornelia in Unto this Last, § 41 (Vol. XVII. p. 56); and the story of Cleobis and Bito is told in Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 277 n.).] 2 [On the ministry of angels, compare Vol. XIV. p. 163; Queen of the Air, § 72.] 3 [See Vol. XVII. p. 523.] X. THE CRYSTAL REST 355 instance of the power of the King of the Valley of Diamonds* among us. In Galignani of July 21–22, 1862, is reported a trial of a farmer‘s son in the department of the Yonne. The father, two years ago, at Malay le Grand, gave up his property to his two sons, on condition of being maintained by them. Simon fulfilled his agreement, but Pierre would not. The tribunal of Sens condemns Pierre to pay eighty-four francs a year to his father. Pierre replies, ―he would rather die than pay it.‖ Actually, returning home, he throws himself into the river, and the body is not found till next day. 118. MARY. But—but—I can‘t tell what you would have us think. Do you seriously mean that the Greeks were better than we are; and that their gods were real angels? L. No, my dear. I mean only that we know, in reality, less than nothing of the dealings of our Maker with our fellow-men; and can only reason or conjecture safely about them, when we have sincerely humble thoughts of ourselves and our creeds. We owe to the Greeks every noble discipline in literature; every radical principle of art; and every from of convenient beauty in our household furniture and daily occupations of life. We are unable, ourselves, to make rational use of half that we have received from them: and, of our own, we have nothing but discoveries in science, and fine mechanical adaptations of the discovered physical powers. On the other hand, the vice existing among certain classes, both of the rich and poor, in London, Paris, and Vienna, could have been conceived by a Spartan or Roman of the heroic ages only as possible in a Tartarus, where fiends were employed to teach, but not to punish, crime. It little becomes us to speak contemptuously of the religion of races to whom we stand in such relations;

• Note vi. [p. 366].

356 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST nor do I think any man of modesty of thoughtfulness will ever speak so of any religion, in which God has allowed one good man to die, trusting. The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become: and no error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do so. There may be doubt of the meaning of other visions; but there is none respecting that of the dream of St. Peter; and you may trust the Rock of the Church‘s Foundation for true interpreting, when he learned from it that ―in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.‖1 See that you understand what that righteousness means; and set hand to it stoutly: you will always measure your neighbours‘ creed kindly, in proportion to the substantial fruits of your own. Do not think you will ever get harm by striving to enter into the faith of others, and to sympathise, in imagination, with the guiding principles of their lives. So only can you justly love them, or pity them, or praise. By the gracious effort you will double, treble—nay, indefinitely multiply, at once the pleasure, the reverence, and the intelligence with which you read: and, believe me, it is wiser and holier, by the fire of your own faith to kindle the ashes of expired religions, than to let your soul shiver and stumble among their graves, through the gathering darkness, and communicable cold. 119. MARY (after some pause). We shall all like reading Greek history so much better after this! but it has put everything else out of our heads that we wanted to ask. L. I can tell you one of the things; and I might take credit for generosity in telling you; but I have a personal reason—Lucilla‘s verse about the creation. DORA. Oh, yes—yes; and its ―pain together, until now.‖2 1 [Acts x. 35.] 2 [See above, § 103, p. 335. It was, however, ―Mary‖ who quoted the verse.] X. THE CRYSTAL REST 357 L. I call you back to that, because I must warn you against an old error of my own. Somewhere in the fourth volume of Modern Painters1 I said that the earth seemed to have passed through its highest state: and that, after ascending by a series of phases, culminating in its habitation by man, it seems to be now gradually becoming less fit for that habitation. MARY. Yes, I remember. L. I wrote those passages under a very bitter impression of the gradual perishing of beauty from the loveliest scenes which I knew in the physical world; not in any doubtful way, such as I might have attributed to loss of sensation in myself—but by violent and definite physical action; such as the filling up of the Lac de Chêde2 by landslips from the Rochers des Fiz;—the narrowing of the Lake Lucerne by the gaining delta of the stream of the Muotta-Thal, which, in the course of years, will cut the lake into two, as that of Brientz has been divided from that of Thun;—the steady diminishing of the glaciers north of the Alps, and still more, of the sheets of snow on their southern slopes, which supply the refreshing streams of Lombardy;—the the equally steady increase of deadly maremma round Pisa and Venice; and other such phenomena, quite measurably traceable within the limits even of short life, and unaccompanied, as it seemed, by redeeming or compensatory agencies. I am still under the same impression respecting the existing phenomena; but I feel more strongly, every day, that no evidence to be collected within historical periods can be accepted as any clue to the great tendencies of geological change; but that the great laws which never fail, and to which all change is subordinate, appear such as to accomplish a gradual advance to lovelier order, and more calmly, yet more deeply, animated Rest. Nor has this conviction ever fastened itself upon me more distinctly, 1 [See in this edition Vol. VI. p. 177.] 2 [For this incident, see Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 540 n.).] 358 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST than during my endeavour to trace the laws which govern the lowly framework of the dust. For, through all the phases of its transition and dissolution, there seems to be a continual effort to raise itself into a higher state; and a measured gain, through the fierce revulsion and slow renewal of the earth‘s frame, in beauty, and order, and permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea draw themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered symmetry; burdened and strained under increase of pressure, they pass into a nascent marble; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river, or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, of resolves itself as it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in which it was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, till it must shatter into fragments, it infuses continually a finer ichor into the opening veins, and finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength. Rent at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in lambent fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibres of a perennial endurance; and, during countless subsequent centuries, declining, or, rather let me say, rising, to repose, finishes the infallible lustre of its crystalline beauty, under harmonies of law which are wholly beneficent, because wholly inexorable. (The children seemed pleased, but more inclined to think over these matters than to talk.) 120. L. (after giving them a little time). Mary, I seldom ask you to read anything out of books of mine; but there is a passage about the Law of Help, which I want you to read to the children now, because it is of no use merely to put it in other words for them. You know the place I mean, do not you? MARY. Yes (presently finding it); where shall I begin? L. Here; but the elder ones had better look afterwards at the piece which comes just before this.

X. THE CRYSTAL REST 359 MARY (reads):1 ―A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and the other name of life, is, therefore, ‗help.‘ The other name of death is ‗separation.‘ Government and co-operation are in all things, and eternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death. ―Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we could take of the nature and power of consistence, will be that of the possible changes in the dust we tread on. ―Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type of impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp over-trodden path, in the outskirts of a manufacturing town. I do not say mud of the road, because that is mixed with animal refuse; but take merely an ounce or two of the blackest slime of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a manufacturing town. That slime we shall find in most cases composed of clay, (or brickdust, which is burnt clay,) mixed with soot, a little sand, and water. All these elements are at helpless war with each other, and destroy reciprocally each other‘s nature and power: competing and fighting for place at every tread of your foot; sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling the whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations possible. ―Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings‘ palaces. But such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it still quiet, to follow its own instinct of unity, and it becomes, not only white, but clear; not only clear, but hard; not only clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. ―Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth; then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. ―In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself white at first; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder; and comes out clear at last; and the hardest thing in the world: and for the blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once, in the vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond. 1 [From Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. viii. ch. i. §§ 6–9 (Vol. XVII. p. 207). Compare Unto this Last, § 54 (Vol. XVII. p. 73); and Crown of Wild Olive, § 112 (below, p. 478).] 360 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST ―Last of all, the water purifies or unites itself; contented enough if it only reach the form of a dewdrop: but, if we insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crystallises into the shape of a star. And, for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of competition, we have, by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.‖ 121. L. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from all that we have seen in the work and play of these past days, I would have you gain at least one grave and enduring thought. The seeming trouble,—the unquestionable degradation,—of the elements of the physical earth, must passively wait the appointed time of their repose, or their restoration. It can only be brought about for them by the agency of external law. But if, indeed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely moving atoms;—if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us,—it must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope; not merely by our desire, but our labour, for the time when the Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of God. The human clay, now trampled and despised, will not be,—cannot be,—knit into strength and light by accidents or ordinances of unassisted fate. By human cruelty and iniquity it has been afflicted;—by human mercy and justice it must be raised: and, in all fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real message of creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has plainly required,—and content that He should indeed require no more of you,—than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.1 1 [Micah vi. 8.] N O T E S NOTE I. (Page 224) ―That third pyramid of hers‖ THROUGHOUT the dialogues, it must be observed that ―Sibyl‖ is addressed (when in play) as having once been the Cumæan Sibyl; and ―Egypt‖ as having been queen Nitocris,—the Cinderella, and ―the greatest heroine and beauty‖ of Egyptian story. The Egyptians called her ―Neith the Victorious‖ (Nitocris), and the Greeks ―Face of the Rose‖ (Rhodope). Chaucer‘s beautiful conception of Cleopatra in the ―Legend of Good Women,‖1 is much more founded on the traditions of her than on those of Cleopatra; and, especially in its close, modified by Herodotus‘s terrible story of the death of Nitocris, which however, is mythologically nothing more than a part of the deep monotonous ancient dirge for the fulfilment of the earthly destiny of Beauty: ―She cast herself into a chamber full of ashes.‖2 I believe this Queen is now sufficiently ascertained to have either built, or increased to double its former size, the third pyramid of Gizeh: and the passage following in the text refers to an imaginary endeavour, by the Old Lecturer and the children together, to make out the description of that pyramid in the 167th page of the second volume of Bunsen‘s Egypt’s Place in Universal History3—ideal endeavour,—which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer‘s real endeavours to the same end always have terminated. There are, however, valuable notes respecting Nitocris at page 210 of the same volume: but the Early Egyptian History for the Young, by the author of Sidney Gray, 4 contains, in a pleasant form, as much information as young readers will usually need. 1 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 62 (above, p. 118).] 2 [Herodotus, ii. 100.] 3 [Egypt’s Place in Universal History. By Christian C.J. Bunsen, translated from the German by Charles H. Cottrell, 1848, 5 vols.] 4 [Namely, Annie Keary; published by Macmillan, 1861.] 361 362 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST NOTE II. (Page 225) ―Pyramid of Asychis‖ THIS pyramid, in mythology, divides with the Tower of Babel the shame, or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great edifices, built with ―brick for stone.‖1 This was the inscription on it, according to Herodotus:— ―Despise me not in comparing me with the pyramids of stone; for I have the pre-eminence over them, as far as Jupiter has pre-eminence over the gods. For, striking with staves into the pool, men gathered the clay which fastened itself to the staff, and kneaded bricks out of it, and so made me.‖2 The word I have translated ―kneaded‖ is literally ―drew‖; in the sense of drawing, for which the Latins used ―duco‖; and thus gave us our ―ductile‖ in speaking of dead clay, and Duke, Doge, or leader, in speaking of living clay. As the asserted pre-eminence of the edifice is made, in this inscription, to rest merely on the quantity of labour consumed in it, this pyramid is considered, in the text, as the type, at once, of the base building, and of the lost labour, of future ages; so far at least as the spirits of measured and mechanical effort deal with it: but Neith, exercising her power upon it, makes it a type of the work of wise and inspired builders. NOTE III. (Page 226) ―The Greater Pthah‖ IT is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal agencies of the Egyptian deities. They are continually associated in function, or hold derivative powers, or are related to each other in mysterious triads; uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena with real spiritual power. I have endeavoured partly to explain this in the text of the tenth Lecture:3 here, it is only necessary for the reader to know that the greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power of order and measurement: he always stands on a four-square pedestal, ―the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth‖;4 his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand; and at Philæ, is represented as holding an egg on a potter‘s wheel; but I do not know if this symbol occurs in older sculptures. His usual title is 1 [Genesis xi. 3.] 2 [Herodotus, ii. 136. The word which Ruskin translates ―kneaded‖ is eirnan.] 3 [See above, §§ 111, 112, pp. 347–349.] 4 [This is a quotation from p. 13 of the Gallery of Antiquities, mentioned below.] NOTES 363 the ―Lord of Truth.‖ Others, very beautiful; ―King of the Two Worlds, of Gracious Countenance,‖ ―Superintendent of the Great Abode,‖ etc., are given by Mr. Birch in Arundale‘s Gallery of Antiquities, 1 which I suppose is the book of best authority easily accessible. For the full titles and utterances of the gods, Rosellini2 is as yet the only—and I believe, still a very questionable—authority; and Arundale‘s little book, excellent in the text, has this great defect, that its drawings give the statues invariably a ludicrous or ignoble character. Readers who have not access to the originals must be warned against this frequent fault in modern illustration, (especially existing also in some of the painted casts of Gothic and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing to any wilful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale‘s book are laboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in a figure depend merely on emphasis of touch; and, in barbaric art, most draughtsmen emphasize what they plainly see—the barbarism: and miss conditions of nobleness, which they must‘ approach the monument in a different temper before they will discover, and draw with great subtlety before they can express. The character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to say, of Pthah in his lower office, is sufficiently explained in the text of the third Lecture:3 only the reader must be warned that the Egyptian symbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful one; it expressed only the idea of his presence in the first elements of life. But it may not unjustly be used, in another sense, by us, who have seen his power in new development; and, even as it was, I cannot conceive that the Egyptians should have regarded their beetle-headed image of him, (Champollion, Pantheon, pl. 12)4 without some occult scorn. It is the most painful of all their types of any beneficent power; and even among those of evil influences, none can be compared with it, except its opposite, the tortoise-headed demon of indolence.5 Pasht (p. 225, line 10) is connected with the Greek Artemis, especially in her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is usually lioness-headed; sometimes cat-headed; her attributes seeming often trivial or ludicrous unless their full meaning is known: but the enquiry is much too wide to be followed here. The cat was sacred to her; or rather to the sun, and secondarily to her. She is alluded to in the text because she is always the companion of Pthah (called ―the beloved of Pthah,‖ it may be as Judgment, demanded and longed for by Truth); and it may be well for young readers to have this fixed in their minds, even by chance association. There are more statues of Pasht in the British Museum6 than of any other 1 [The Gallery of Antiquities, Selected from the British Museum, by F. Arundale and J. Bonomi, with descriptions by S. Birch (1842). See p. 13.] 2 [I Monumenti dell’ Egitto e della Nubia disegnati dalla spedizione scientificolitteraria Toscana in Egitto; distribuiti in ordine di materie, interpretati ed illustrati dal doltere Ippolito Rosellini. Pisa: 1832–1844. Letterpress, 9 vols.; Plates, 3 vols. For other references to this work, see Catalogue of the Educational Series (Vol. XX.).] 3 [See above, § 30, p. 240.] 4 [Jean Francéis Champollion: Panthéon Égyptien; Collection des personages mythologiques de l’ Ancienne Égypte d’apreès les monuments. Paris: 1823–1825.] 5 [See Arundale‘s Gallery of Antiquities, p. 48, and Fig. 88 on Plate 24.] 6 [Several of them are given in Arundale‘s Gallery of Antiquities, Plates 8–10.] 364 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST Egyptian deity; several of them fine in workmanship; nearly all in dark stone, which may be, presumably, to connect her, as the moon, with the night; and in her office of avenger, with grief. Thoth (p. 228, line 12) is the recording Angel of Judgment; and the Greek Hermes. Phre (line 16) is the Sun. Neith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom; and the Athena of the Greeks.1 No sufficient statement of her many attributes, still less of their meanings, can be shortly given; but this should be noted respecting the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by vulture wings—that as she is, physically, the goddess of the air, this bird, the most powerful creature of the air known to the Egyptians, naturally became her symbol. It had other significations; but certainly this, when in connection with Neith. As representing her, it was the most important sign, next to the winged sphere, in Egyptian sculpture; and, just as in Homer, Athena herself guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of wisdom, giving victory, floats over the heads of the Egyptian kings. The Greeks, representing the goddess herself in human form, yet would not lose the power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed it into an angel of victory. First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse and Leontini,2 it gradually became the received sign of all conquest, and the so-called ―Victory‖ of later times; which, little by little, loses its truth, and is accepted by the moderns only as a personification of victory itself,—not as an actual picture of the living Angel who led to victory. There is a wide difference between these two conceptions,—all the difference between insincere poetry, and sincere religion. This I have also endeavoured farther to illustrate in the tenth Lecture;3 there is however one part of Athena‘s character which it would have been irrelevant to dwell upon there; yet which I must not wholly leave unnoticed.4 As the goddess of the air, she physically represents both its beneficent calm, and necessary tempest: other storm-deities (as Chrysaor and Æolus), being invested with a subordinate and more or less malignant function, which is exclusively their own, and is related to that of Athena as the power of Mars is related to hers in war. So also Virgil makes her able to wield the lightning herself, while Juno cannot, but must pray for the intervention of Æolus. She has precisely the correspondent moral authority over calmness of mind, and just anger. She soothes Achilles, as she incites 1 [See also Sesame and Lilies, § 62 (above, p. 118).] 2 [See, for instance, in the British Museum the early tetradrachm of Syracuse (I. C. 35 in the exhibition of electrotypes); the same flying figure is seen on the later Syracusan coins which are engraved in Aratra Pentelici, § 205. It appears also on the early coin of Leontini which is I. C. 28 in the British Museum.] 3 [See above, § 112, p. 349.] 4 [Ruskin took up this subject in his subsequent book, The Queen of the Air (Vol. XIX.). For the myth of Æolus, see §§ 19, 29, 30 of that book; for Chrysaor, Vol. VII. pp. 185, 399. For the references to Virgil, see Æneid, i. 39 seq. (where Juno complains of the power of Pallas to wield the thunderbolt of Jove), and ibid., 52 seq. (where Juno prays Æolus, to raise a storm). For Athena soothing Achilles, see Queen of the Air, § 33; inciting Tydides (Diomed), ibid., § 36; for her grasping Achilles by the hair, ibid., § 37; for her seizing the lance of Mars, see again ibid., § 36; for her adding her own voice to the shout of Achilles, Iliad, xviii. 217–218; for the vow to the Spercheius, Queen of the Air, § 37.] NOTES 365 Tydides; her physical power over the air being always hinted correlatively. She grasps Achilles by his hair—as the wind would lift it—softly. ―It fanned his cheek, it raised his hair, Like a meadow gale in spring.‖1 She does not merely turn the lance of Mars from Diomed; but seizes it in both her hands, and casts it aside, with a sense of making it vain, like chaff in the wind;—to the shout of Achilles, she adds her own voice of storm in heaven—but in all cases the moral power is still the principal one—most beautifully in that seizing of Achilles by the hair, which was the talisman of his life (because he had vowed it to the Sperchius if he returned in safety), and which, in giving at Patroclus‘ tomb, he, knowingly, yields up the hope of return to his country, and signifies that he will die with his friend. Achilles and Tydides are, above all other heroes, aided by her in war, because their prevailing characters are the desire of justice, united in both with deep affections; and, in Achilles, with a passionate tenderness, which is the real root of his passionate anger. Ulysses is her favourite chiefly in her office as the goddess of conduct and design. NOTE IV. (Page 259) ―Geometrical limitation” IT is difficult, without a tedious accuracy, or without full illustration, to express the complete relations of crystalline structure, which dispose minerals to take, at different times fibrous massive, or foliated forms; and I am afraid this chapter will be generally skipped by the reader: yet the arrangement itself will be found useful, if kept broadly in mind; and the transitions of state are of the highest interest, if the subject is entered upon with any earnestness. It would have been vain to add to the scheme of this little volume any account of the geometrical forms of crystals: an available one, though still far too difficult and too copious, has been arranged by the Rev. Mr. Mitchell, for Orr‘s Circle of the Sciences; 2 and, I believe, the ―nets‖ of crystals, which are therein given to be cut out with scissors, and put prettily together, will be found more conquerable by young ladies than by other students. They should also, when an opportunity occurs, be shown, at any public library, the diagram of the crystallisation of quartz referred to poles, at p. 8 of Cloizaux‘s Manuel de Minéralogie: 3 that they may know what work is; and what the subject is. 1 [Coleridge: Ancient Mariner, vi. 12:— ―It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek, Like a meadow gale of spring.‖] 2 [See Mechanical Philosophy, by the Rev. Walter Mitchell (and other writers), 1856, p. 29; volume 9 in W. S. Orr‘s Circle of the Sciences; a Series of Treatises on the Principles of Science.] 3 [Alfred Des Cloizeaux: Manuel de Minéralogie. Paris: 1862.] 366 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST With a view to more careful examination of the nascent states of silica, I have made no allusion in this volume to the influence of mere segregation, as connected with the crystalline power. It has only been recently, during the study of the breccias alluded to in page 327, that I have fully seen the extent to which this singular force often modifies rocks in which at first its influence might hardly have been suspected; many apparent conglomerates being in reality formed chiefly by segregation, combined with mysterious brokenly-zoned structures, like those of some malachites. I hope some day to know more of these and several other mineral phenomena, (especially of those connected with the relative sizes of crystals) which otherwise I should have endeavoured to describe in this volume.1 NOTE V. (Page 316) ―St. Barbara‖ I WOULD have given the legends of St. Barbara, and St. Thomas, if I had thought it always well for young readers to have everything at once told them which they may wish to know. They will remember the stories better after taking some trouble to find them; and the text is intelligible enough as it stands. The idea of St. Barbara, as there given, is founded partly on her legend in Peter de Natalibus,2 partly on the beautiful photograph of Van Eyck‘s picture of her at Antwerp:3 which was some time since published at Lille. NOTE VI. (Page 355) ―King of the Valley of Diamonds” ISABEL interrupted the Lecturer here, and briefly bid to hold her tongue; which gave rise to some talk, apart, afterwards, between L. and Sibyl, of which a word or two may be perhaps advisably set down. SIBYL. We shall spoil Isabel, certainly, if we don‘t mind: I was glad you stopped her, and yet sorry; for she wanted so much to ask about the Valley of Diamonds again, and she has worked so hard at it, and made it nearly all out by herself. She recollected Elisha‘s throwing in the meal, which nobody else did.4 L. But what did she want to ask? 1 [In 1867–1870 Ruskin contributed to the Geological Magazine a series of papers on ―Banded and Brecciated Concretions,‖ reprinted in a later volume of this edition.] 2 [Catalogus Sanctorum et Gestorum eorum ex diversis voluminibus collectis editus a riverendissimo in Christo patre domino Pietro de Natalibus de Venetiis Dei Gratia Episcopo Equilino (Vicenza, 1493). The account of St. Barbara is in book i. ch. xxv.] 3 [This unfinished picture (1437), now in the Museum, shows in the background a multitude of workmen engaged in building a tower.] 4 [For this reference, and for those that follow, see above, pp. 213 seq.] NOTES 367 SIBYL. About the mulberry trees and the serpents; we are all stopped by that. Won‘t you tell us what it means? L. Now, Sibyl, I am sure you, who never explained yourself, should be the last to expect others to do so. I hate explaining myself. SIBYL. And yet how often you complain of other people for not saying what they meant. How I have heard you growl over the three stone steps to purgatory, for instance!1 L. Yes; because Dante‘s meaning is worth getting at; but mine matters nothing: at least, if ever I think it is of any consequence, I speak it as clearly as may be. But you may make anything you like of the serpent forests. I could have helped you to find out what they were, by giving a little more detail, but it would have been tiresome. SIBYL. It is much more tiresome not to find out. Tell us, please, as Isabel says, because we feel so stupid. L. There is no stupidity; you could not possibly do more than guess at anything so vague. But I think you, Sibyl, at least, might have recollected what first dyed the mulberry.2 SIBYL. So I did: but that helped little; I thought of Dante‘s forest of suicides,3 too, but you would not simply have borrowed that? L. No. If I had had strength to use it, I should have stolen it, to beat into another shape; not borrowed it. But that idea of souls in trees is as old as the world; or at least, as the world of man. And I did mean that there were souls in those dark branches;—the souls of all who had perished in misery through the pursuit of riches; and that the river was of their blood gathering gradually, and flowing out of the valley. Then I meant the serpents for the souls of those who had lived carelessly and wantonly in their riches; and who have all their sins forgiven by the world, because they are rich; and therefore they have seven crimsoncrested heads, for the seven mortal sins; of which they are proud: and these, and the memory and report of them, are the chief causes of temptation to others, as showing the pleasantness and absolving power of riches; so that thus they are singing serpents. And the worms are the souls of the common money-getters and traffickers, who do nothing but eat and spin: and who gain habitually by the distress or foolishness of others (as you see the butchers have been gaining out of the panic at the cattle plague, among the poor),4—so they are made to eat the dark leaves, and spin, and perish. 1 [See Vol. VI. p. 141, where the passage from Dante is translated and discussed.] 2 [The reference is to the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe (see Midsummer Night’s Dream, iii. 1)—the tale that Thisbe was to meet her lover at the white mulberry tree near the tomb of Ninus; being scared by a lion she fled, and Pyramus, believing her to be killed, slew himself. Thisbe, returning soon afterwards, stabbed herself also, and the blood of the lovers dyed the mulberry fruit.] 3 [Inferno, xiii. 94–108: compare Vol. V. p. 273.] 4 [In the latter part of the year 1865 there was a severe outbreak of cattle disease in England and Scotland. The effect of the disease upon the prices of meat was considerable. The price, in the retail market at least, rose by a large percentage. Mutton and beef were charged by the butchers in the autumn at 20 to 25 percent. above the rates of previous years. It was alleged that there was no solid ground for such an increase, as the presence of the disease had led to a larger 368 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST SIBYL. And the souls of the great, cruel, rich people who oppress the poor and lend money to governments to make unjust war,1 where are they? L. They change into the ice,2 I believe, and are knit with the gold; and make the grave-dust of the valley. I believe so, at least, for no one ever sees those souls anywhere. SIBYL ceases questioning.) ISABEL. (who has crept up to her side without any one’s seeing). Oh, Sibyl, please ask him about the fire-flies!3 L. What, you there, mousie! No; I won‘t tell either Sibyl or you about the fire-flies; nor a word more about anything else. You ought to be little fire-flies; yourselves, and find your way in twilight by your own wits. ISABEL. But you said they burned, you know? L. Yes: and you may be fire-flies that way too, some of you, before long, though I did not mean that.* Away with you, children. You have thought enough for to-day.

• Sentence out of letter from May, (who is staying with Isabel just now at Cassel,)

dated 15th June, 1877:— ―I am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying here, and she‘s just as puzzled as I‘ve always been about the fire-flies, and we both want to know so much.—Please be a very nice old Lecturer, and tell us, won‘t you?‖ Well, May, you never were a vain girl; so could scarcely guess that I meant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet blind us confused among the stars. One evening, as I came late into Siena, the fire-flies were flying high on a stormy sirocco wind,—the stars themselves no brighter, and all their host seeming, at moments, to fade as the insects faded.4—Note to Second Edition. slaughter of cattle than usual, which had kept down the price in the principal markets; and the excess charged to the customer was freely ascribed to a designed combination among the retail dealers. (See the Annual Register and newspapers of the time.)] 1 [Compare Unto this Last, § 76 n. (Vol. XVII. p. 103).] 2 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 42; above, p. 99.] 3 [See above, p. 214.] 4 [Compare Præterita, iii. § 86 (the closing passage), where Ruskin again refers to the fire-flies at Siena (in 1870).] III THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE (1866) XVIII. 2A THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE Three Lectures ON WORK, TRAFFIC, AND WAR. BY JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. ‗And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so poor.‘ ARISTOPHANES (Plutus). LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 65 CORNHILL. 1866. The right of translation is reserved. [Bibliographical Note.—The volume, entitled The Crown of Wild Olive, consists of three lectures (in the first three editions), and of four (in the later editions). These four lectures were delivered on the following occasions:— Lecture i. (―Work‖), at the Working Men‘s Institute, Camberwell, on January 24, 1865. A report of this lecture appeared in the Art Journal for March 1865, vol. iv., p. 94. Lecture ii. (―Traffic‖), in the Town Hall, Bradford, on April 21, 1864. This lecture was reported in the Bradford Observer, April 28, 1864. Lecture iii. (―War‖), at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1865.1 This lecture was issued separately in book form: see below. Lecture iv. (―The Future of England‖), at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich, on December 14, 1869. This lecture also was separately issued: see below. In 1866 Ruskin collected the first three lectures (much revised) into a volume, and in 1873 he added to the three lectures (again much revised) a fourth lecture and other matter. Of this volume the editions have been as follow:— First Edition (1866).—The title-page is as shown here on p. 371. Foolscap 8vo, pp. xxxvi.+219. Preface, afterwards called ―Introduction‖ (here pp. 385–399), pp. iii.–xxxiv.; Contents (here p. 383), p. xxxv.; Text, pp. 1–219, each of the three lectures being preceded by a fly-title. Imprint, in the centre of the reverse of the title-page and in the centre of the last page: ―London | Printed by Spottiswoode and Co. | New Street Square.‖ The headlines on the left-hand pages are ―The Crown of Wild Olive‖; on the right-hand pages, the titles of the several lectures. The letterpress on each page is enclosed in a single ruled frame. Issued on May 14, 1866, in dark green cloth, lettered across the back: ―The Crown | of | Wild | Olive | Ruskin.‖ Price 5s. Second Edition (1866).—This is an exact reprint of the first, with the addition of the words ―Second Edition‖ upon the title-page. Third Edition (1867).—Again a reprint of the first, with the date and number of the edition altered. Collected Works (Fourth) Edition (1873).—This was volume vi. in the ―Works Series.‖ The text of the first three lectures was revised; a fourth lecture and an appendix were added; and the paragraphs of the lectures 1 The editors are unable to fix the exact date. There is no record of it at the Royal Military Academy; the lecture does not appear to have been reported in the press; nor is there any note of the date in Ruskin‘s letters or diaries. Some part of the lecture was added later, for it includes a reference to an event of January 1866 (see p. 474 n.) 373 374 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE (though not of the appendix) were numbered. The general title-page reads:— The | Works of John Ruskin, | Honorary Student of Christ Church, Oxford. | Volume VI. | The Crown of Wild Olive. | [Rose] | London: Printed for the Author | By Smith, Elder, and Co., 15 Waterloo Place; | and sold by | Mr. G. Allen, Heathfield Cottage, Keston, Kent. | 1873. The particular title-page reads:— The | Crown of Wild Olive. | Four Lectures | on | Industry and War. | By | John Ruskin, M.A. | Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Slade Professor of Fine Art. | ‗And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so poor.‘ | Aristophanes (Plutus). | London: | Smith, Elder, & Co., 15 Waterloo Place. | G. Allen, Heathfield Cottage, Keston, Kent. | 1873. Octavo, pp. vi. + 210. Contents, p. v. Introduction (the previous ―Preface,‖ pp. 1–20. Lectures, pp. 21–174; Appendix (―Notes on the Political Economy of Prussia‖), pp. 175–210. Imprint, at the foot of the last page: ―London: Printed by | Spottiswoode and Co., New Street Square | and Parliament Street.‖ Headlines, as in the previous editions. Issued on December 11, 1873, in purple calf with gilt edges, and lettered across the back: ―Ruskin. | Works. | Vol. | VI. | The | Crown | of Wild | Olive.‖ Price 9s. 6d. Increased on January 1, 1874, to 18s. Collected Works—Second Thousand (1882).—This is an exact reprint of the previous edition, but with new title-pages. A peculiarity of it is that it bears no printer‘s imprint; it was printed by Messrs. Hazell, Watson, and Viney, from the stereo-plates of the previous edition. The differences on the title-pages are in the author‘s description, which is now ―Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Honorary | Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford‖; the addition of the words ―Second Thousand‖; and the publisher‘s imprint, which is ―George Allen, | Sunnyside, Orpington, | Kent. | 1882,‖ with ―[All rights reserved.]‖ below it. Issued in June 1882 in the same ―Ruskin calf‖; price 18s. In the following month some copies were put up in mottled-grey paper boards, with white-paper back-label which reads: ―Ruskin. | Works. | Vol. VI. | The | Crown of | Wild | Olive.‖ These copies were sold at 13s. Collected Works—―Third Edition” (1888).—This is a reprint of the previous edition, with the date and number changed on the title-page. The printer‘s imprint now appears on the reverse of the particular title-page and at the foot of the last page: ―Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.‖ (500 copies.) The price was reduced in March 1893 to 15s. (calf) and 9s. 6d. (cloth); and again in July 1900 to 14s. 6d. (calf) and 7s. 6d. (cloth). Collected Works—―Fourth Edition” (1902).—Again a reprint, with alterations of date and number and also of imprints (the publisher‘s address being now ―156 Charing Cross Road,‖ and the printers being Messrs. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.). Issued (250 copies) at the prices last stated. This issue is still (1905) current. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 375 Small Edition (1886).—The text is that of the ―Collected Works‖ edition, but there is no list of Contents. The title-page is:— The | Crown of Wild Olive. | Four Lectures | on | Industry and War. | By | John Ruskin, M.A., | Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Honorary Fellow | of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. | ‗And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so poor.‘—Aristophanes (Plutus). | George Allen, | Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. | 1886. | [All rights reserved.] Crown 8vo, pp. vi. + 250. Imprint, at the foot of the reverse of the title-page and at the foot of the last page: ―Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.‖ Headlines, as in the previous editions. Issued in April 1886 both in chocolate-coloured and in dark green cloth, lettered across the back: ―Ruskin. | The | Crown | of | Wild | Olive.‖ Price 5s. 3000 copies. The Small Edition of 1886 was re-issued in June 1889 (2000 copies): this issue was incorrectly called on the title-page ―Third Edition‖; it was in fact the fifth (if all issues of the ―Works‖ edition be counted as the fourth). It was again reprinted in December 1890 (3000), the publisher‘s imprint now bearing the address ―8 Bell Yard, Temple Bar‖; this was called the ―Fifth Edition.‖ It was also reprinted in June 1892 (3000); called ―Seventh Edition.‖ Small Edition, with Index (1894).—The Small Editions above described were all printed by Messrs. Hazell, Watson & Viney. From 1894 onwards all were printed by Messrs. Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., and an index (by Mr. A. Wedderburn) was now added (pp. 251–276). The list of Contents was replaced. The publisher‘s imprint bore the address ―156 Charing Cross Road.‖ The first issue in this form (March 1894) was called ―Eighth Edition.‖ The Small Edition of 1894 was re-issued (from electrotype plates, the title-pages being changed) at the following dates: December 1895 (3000 copies), ―Ninth Edition‖; June 1897 (2000), ―Tenth Edition‖; June 1898 (2000), ―Eleventh Edition‖; June 1899 (2000), ―Twelfth Edition‖; February 1900 (2000), ―Thirty-first Thousand‖; June 1900 (2000), ―Thirty-third Thousand‖; June 1901 (2000), ―Thirty-fifth Thousand‖; June 1902 (2000), ―Thirty-seventh Thousand‖; December 1902 (2000), ―Thirty-ninth Thousand‖; June 1904 (2000), ―Forty-first Thousand.‖ This late issue is still current; the price was reduced in January 1904 to 3s. 6d. Pocket Edition (1904).—This edition was uniform with that alreadydescribed (see Vol. XV. p. 6). It was printed (with new title-page) from the electrotype plates of preceding issues. The title-page reads:— The Crown of | Wild Olive | By | John Ruskin | London: George Allen. Issued in February 1904. 5000 copies. Re-issued in June 1904 (3000), in November 1904 (3000), and in March 1905 (3000, completing the Fifty-fifth Thousand of the book). 376 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE Re-issues of the Pocket Edition have been made in May 1904 (―47th to 49th Thousand‖), October 1904 (―50th to 52nd Thousand‖), and March 1905 (―53rd to 55th Thousand‖). Unauthorised American Editions have been numerous, in various forms, and at various prices from 50 cents upwards. An authorised American (―Brantwood‖) Edition was issued in 1891 at New York, by Messrs. Charles E. Merrill & Co., with an introduction by Charles Eliot Norton, pp. v.–x. A Canadian Edition (1902) has also been published, with the following title-page:— The | Crown of Wild Olive. | Four Lectures | on | Industry and War. | By | John Ruskin, LL.D., | Honorary Student of Christ Church, and Honorary Fellow | of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. | ‗And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter | been so poor.‘—Aristophanes (Plutus). | Toronto: | The Copp, Clark Company, Limited. | 1902. Crown 8vo, pp. vi. + 205. The Appendix is not included. An authorised French translation appeared in 1900 in a volume containing also The Seven Lamps of Architecture (see Vol. VIII. p. lv.). The first three lectures only are given, occupying pp. 1–82 of the volume; the Preface, or Introduction, is not included. The translation is by M. George Elwall. A German translation appeared in 1901, being volume iii. in ―John Ruskin Ausgewählte Werke in Vollständiger Übersetzung.‖ The title-page is:— John Ruskin | Der Kranz von | Olivenzweigen | Vier Vorträge über | Industrie and Krieg | Aus dem Englischen | Von Anna Henschke | Verlegt bei Eugen Diederichs, Leipzig 1901. Crown 8vo, pp. 240. Part of the introductory remarks in the Appendix is given (down to the end of § 161), but the rest is omitted. The translator adds a ―Nachwort,‖ pp. 230–232. An index (not translated from the English one) is given, pp. 233–238. _________________________ Separate editions of single lectures:— WAR (1866) Some copies of the third lecture (―War‖) were printed off separately in 1866, and bound up with the following title-page:— War. | A Lecture delivered at the Royal | Military Academy, Woolwich. | By | John Ruskin, M.A. | Printed for private circulation. Foolscap 8vo, pp. 83. Text of the lecture, pp. 5–83. Imprint, on the reverse of the half-title and on the reverse of the last page: ―London | Printed by Spottiswoode & Co. | New Street Square.‖ Headline, ―War‖ BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 377 throughout. The text of each page is enclosed in a ruled frame. Issued in red cloth, with a design in gilt on the front cover, consisting of a drawn sword, an unfurled flag, and a shield with the word ―War‖ upon it. This little book is one of the scarcest Ruskiniana. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND (1870) The fourth lecture (―The Future of England‖) had been separately printed, before it was included (with revisions) in The Crown of Wild Olive. The title-page (enclosed in an ornamental ruled frame on the front cover) is:— A Paper read at | The Royal Artillery Institution, | Woolwich. | By | John Ruskin, LL.D., | December, 14, 1869. | Woolwich: | Printed at the Royal Artillery Institution. | M.DCCC.LXX. Royal 8vo, pp. 14. The upper half of p. 1 has the following drop-title: ―The Future of England | A Paper Read at the Royal Artillery Institution | By | John Ruskin, LL.D. | 14th December, 1869.‖ The pages are numbered centrally. Issued in sage-green paper wrappers. The pamphlet was printed for private circulation, and is also very scarce. _________________ Reviews appeared in the Athenæum, June 2, 1866; Saturday Review, June 2, 1866; the Fortnightly Review, June 15, vol. 5, pp. 381–384 (by Anthony Trollope); the Christian World Magazine, August, vol. 2, pp. 129–134; and the Guardian, August 15, 1866. __________________ Variæ Lectiones.—The following is a list of all the variations in the text of the several editions, other than those already described. The footnotes added in 1873 are not here enumerated, as they are now distinguished by the addition of the date. A few differences in spelling, punctuation, and references to pages are omitted; nor are differences in the matter of italics noted. In revising the book in 1873 the author introduced many more italics than there were in the original editions. The collation of the first three lectures is (unless otherwise stated) with the original editions (1–3) of The Crown of Wild Olive; that of the fourth lecture is with the first and separate publication of it (see above). Contents.—In the original editions, ―Contents‖ followed the Introduction (there called Preface), and enumerated Lectures, i.–iii. only. The title of the Appendix has hitherto been printed in the Contents as ―Notes on the Economies of the Kings of Prussia‖; it is here altered to correspond with the title given by Ruskin (see p. 515). Introduction.—§ 1, line 13, see p. 385 n.; line 33, ―they‖ for ―which‖; last line but one, ―I suppose‖ omitted. 378 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE § 2, line 11, ―wayfarers‖ for ―wayfarer‖; lines 26–28, see p. 388 n.; for an additional passage at the end of the author‘s footnote, see p. 388 n. § 5, lines 5–8, see p. 389 n. § 7, last line, see p. 391 n. § 8, last line, ―labours‖ for ―labour.‖ § 9, line 2, ―three‖ before ―lectures‖; line 10, ―(as I have just said)‖ after ―desired.‖ § 10, line 2, ―the difficulty just spoken of‖ for ―a difficulty.‖ § 11, line 3, ―part of the subject‖ for ―question‖; line 6, see p. 393 n. § 12, line 8, see p. 393 n. § 13, last line, see p. 395 n. § 14, line 2, ―put‖ for ―end.‖ § 15, line 5, ―in its ground‖ after ―secure‖; lines 6–9, see p. 396 n.; third line from end, ―readier‖ for ―more prompt,‖ and in the next line, ―more‖ and ―the‖ omitted. § 16, line 2, ―do this, well understood‖ for ―act thus, well understanding you act‖; line 4, ―in‖ for ―when brought into‖; lines 10 and 11, ―are health and heaven to come? Then . . .‖ omitted; line 14, ―though‖ omitted‖; line 17, ―but your palace-inheritance‖ omitted; line 26, see p. 398 n.; fourth line from end, ―these‖ repeated before ―may yet be here your riches.‖ Lecture i.—§ 17, line 3, ―. . . ask you some plain, but necessary, questions‖; line 6, ―even‖ before ―under any‖; line 13, ―Institution‖ for ―Institute‖; line 15, ―—Institutions, which are‖ for ―and‖; line 18, ―circumstances‖ for ―conditions,‖ and ―above all the‖ omitted; line 20, ―conditions‖ for ―mode‖; last line but one, ―make‖ for ―enable,‖ and ―to‖ omitted. § 18, line 9, ―really‖ for ―necessarily,‖ and then ―are there lower‖ for ―necessarily lower‖; line 10, ―they‖ for ―those‖; lines 11–14, ―. . . how much always depressed? And, gentlemen and ladies, I pray those among you who are here, to forgive me . . .‖ § 19, line 2, ―also as representing a great multitude‖ after ―ask them‖; lines 5 and 6, ―those classes‖ for ―your employers‖; line 9, ―went on‖ for ―proceeded in my lecture.‖ § 20, line 14, ―how little wise in this‖ omitted; lines 17 and 19, ―among them‖ in both places omitted; line 19, ―each class has a tendency to look‖ for ―each look.‖ § 21, line 1, ―class‖ for ―worldly.‖ § 24, line 12, the Small Edition of 1894 and later years and the ―Pocket‖ edition misprint ―gets‖ for ―get.‖ § 25, for an additional passage at the end, see p. 406 n. § 26, line 1, ―game‖ for ―games,‖ and in the next line, ―is‖ for ―are‖; lines 4 and 5, see p. 406 n.; for an additional passage at the end, see p. 407 n. § 27, line 3, see p. 407 n.; lines 15 and 16, ―or as Chaucer . . . ‗for queintise‘ ‖ omitted. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 379 § 28, line 8, ―, the facts of it not always so pleasant‖ after ―imagination‖; line 23, ―all cost‖ for ―are all paid for in‖; line 32, ― ‗play‘ ‖ after ―word.‖ § 29, lines 13 and 14, ―. . . preached to us again, and enough respect what we regard as inspiration, as not to think that ‗Son, go work to-day in my vineyard,‘ means ‗Baby . . .‖ § 30, see p. 410 n. § 32, lines 4 and 5, ―. . . those who earn wealth by those who levy or exact it. There will be always . . .‖; line 11, ―as physically impossible as‖ for ―just as‖; line 40, ―It is the whole distinction in a man; distinction between life and death in him; between . . .‖ § 33, line 11, ―didn‘t want Him to‖ for ―never thought He would‖; line 18, ―He didn‘t understand Christ;—yet . . .‖ for ―Helpless to understand Christ, he, yet . . .‖ § 34, line 19, ―but this one great principle I have to assert,—you will find it indisputably true—that whenever . . .‖ § 35, line 22, see p. 417 n.; for an additional passage at the end, see p. 417 n. § 36, line 1, ―I pass now . . .‖; line 15, for an additional passage, see p. 417 n.; line 32, ―. . . ignoble; and . . .‖ for ―. . . ignoble. Therefore . . .‖ § 38, line 11, ―or ‗loyal‘ ‖ omitted. § 39, line 13, ―perversion‖ for ―perverseness‖; line 31, ―eleven‖ for ―so-and-so.‖ § 40, line 9, ―going to church in their best‖ omitted; line 15, ―we shall‖ for ―you will,‖ and a few words later, ―we‖ for ―you‖; lines 16–19, see p. 421 n.; lines 47–48, see p. 422 n.; line 50, ―during the day‖ omitted; line 52, ―to have understood‖ for ―to acknowledge.‖ § 41, last line, see p. 423 n. § 42, line 4, see p. 424 n. § 43, line 6, for an additional passage here, see p. 424 n.; line 12, ―ever‖ for ―never‖; line 14, ―and bitterer‖ omitted, and ―also‖ added after ―hatred‖; line 25, see p. 425 n. § 44, line 12, ―use‖ for ―exert.‖ § 46, line 11, ―mock‖ for ―insult‖; line 23, ―the hearts of us‖ for ―our hearts.‖ § 47, see p. 429 n.; lines 3, 6. Variations in punctuation are not as a rule included in these Notes; but it may here be mentioned that the comma after ―heaven‖ and the semicolon after ―blessing‖ are now inserted in accordance with Ruskin‘s note in Fors Clavigera, Letter 53. § 48, for an additional passage at the end, see p. 430 n. § 49, line 2, ―and Generous‖ after ―Loving‖; line 6, ―above all‖ omitted; last line, ―little‖ for ―humble.‖ Lecture ii.—§ 54, line 13, see p. 434 n. § 56, line 19, ―fine‖ omitted. § 61, line 6, ―and beauty‖ after ―energy‖; line 15, ―Will you allow me to ask precisely‖ for ―May I ask‖; third line from end, ―you will find that‖ after ―reverent.‖ § 63, line 5, ―or ought to know‖ for ―perfectly well.‖ 380 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE § 66, line 22, see p. 444 n. § 69, the whole of the author‘s footnote was in the edition of 1873 and all later editions enclosed in brackets, thus implying that it was all added in 1873. This, however, was not the case. The note appeared in the original editions, the only addition made in 1873 being the reference to Aratra. In line 6 of the note all editions hitherto have misprinted ―Dionysius‖ for ―Dionysus.‖ § 73, line 22, see p. 448 n. § 74, line 18, ―manner‖ for ―direction.‖ § 75, line 12, ―God‖ for ―one.‖ § 79, line 9, ―he‖ omitted. § 82, lines 4–10, see p. 455 n.; line 11, ―yourself‖ for ―ourselves.‖ § 83, line 1, ―It is‖ for ―They are at.‖ § 84, line 1, ―So ended are the last‖ for ―Last‖; line 15, ―good‖ omitted; the author‘s footnote was not in the original editions. Lecture iii.—Heading, the separate edition and eds. 1–3 omit the year ―1865.‖ § 97, line 7, see p. 466 n. § 99, a few corrections have here been made in the quotation from Carlyle. § 100, fourth line from end, ―much more‖ for ―much rather.‖ § 101, line 21, ―a tendency both to‖ for ―power both in‖; the author‘s footnote was not in the original editions. § 103, line 11, ―theory‖ for ―creed.‖ § 123, the author‘s footnote did appear in the original editions; it was erroneously enclosed in brackets in the edition of 1873 and later. § 124, line 1, ―I tell you, gentlemen of England‖; line 8, ―and‖ omitted; for an additional passage at the end, see p. 486 n. § 125, line 1, ―now, remember,‖ for ―bear with me‖; line 3, ―if I urge you with rude earnestness to‖ omitted. Lecture iv.—§ 139, line 17, all previous editions have incorrectly put a full stop after ―Equites of England.‖ (This mistake was noted as an erratum in the ―Brantwood‖ American Edition.) § 140, last line but one, ―to live in it‖ for ―, there, to live‖ and then ―—or show them even, like Englishmen, how to die.‖ § 142, line 8, ―but must‖ for ―Must‖; line 20, see p. 501 n.; line 22, ―pain‖ for ―grief‖; line 27, see p. 501 n. § 145, line 15, see p. 503 n. § 147, lines 6 and 7, the words ―them eight hundred thousand a year‖ came in the original edition at the end of the sentence, after ―gratis‖; five lines from end, ―raise for‖ for ―increase, to.‖ § 148, lines 19, 20, ―of palsy‖ omitted; line 22, ―since‖ for ―for.‖ § 149, the author‘s footnote was not in the original edition. In the ―Works‖ Edition of 1873 and the Small Edition of 1886 (and its re-issues) it reads, ―See Appendix, ‗Modern Education,‘ and compare § 70 of Time and Tide‖—the reference being to the Appendix in vol. iii. of Stones of BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 381 Venice. The note was altered to its present form in the Small Edition of 1886. § 155, line 13, see p. 511 n. § 160, line 27, ―granted‖ omitted. Appendix.—The paragraphs were not numbered in the edition of 1873 or in the later octavo editions, or in the earlier issues of the small complete edition; the numbers were introduced when an index was added in 1894. The Appendix has hitherto been printed in large type (uniform with the lectures). In this edition—for the sake of uniformity—it is printed smaller.] C ON T E N T S PAGE INTRODUCTORY ………………………………………………. 385 LECTURE I WORK ………………………………………………………… 401 LECTURE II TRAFFIC………………………………………………………. 433 LECTURE III WAR………………………………………………………….. 459 LECTURE IV THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND ………………………………….. 494 APPENDIX NOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA …………. 515 383 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE I N T R O D U C T I O N * 1. TWENTY years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland scenery in South England, nor any more pathetic, in the world, by its expression of sweet human character and life, than that immediately bordering on the sources of the Wandel, and including the low moors of Addington, and the villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their pools and streams.1 No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with constant lips of the hand which ―giveth rain from heaven‖;2 no pastures ever lightened in spring-time with more passionate blossoming; no sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by with their pride of peaceful gladness,—fain-hidden—yet full-confessed. The place remains (1870)3 nearly unchanged in its larger features; but

• Called the ―Preface‖ in former editions; it is one of my bad habits to put half my

books into preface. Of this one, the only prefatory thing I have to say is that most of the contents are stated more fully in my other volumes; 4 but here, are put in what, at least, I meant to be a more popular form, all but this introduction, which was written very carefully to be read, not spoken, and the last lecture on the Future of England, with which, and the following notes on it, I have taken extreme pains. [1873.] 1 [Compare ch. i. of Præterita, which Ruskin entitled ―The Springs of Wandel,‖ and in which (§ 35) he describes its ―cress-set rivulets.‖ Ruskin‘s restoration of a spring between Croydon and Epsom, and his dedication of it to his mother‘s memory (―Margaret‘s Well‖), are described in a later volume.] 2 [Acts xiv. 17.] 3 [In the original editions: ―The place remains, or, until a few months ago, remained nearly . . .‖] 4 [See above, Introduction, pp. xx.-xxi.] 385 XVIII. 2B 386 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in its inner tragic meaning,—not in Pisan Maremma,—not by Campagna tomb—not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore,—as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of that English scene: nor is any blasphemy or impiety, any frantic saying, or godless thought, more appalling to me, using the best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, than the insolent defiling of those springs by the human herds that drink of them.1 Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there with the white grenouillette; just in the very rush and murmur of the first spreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; which, having neither energy to cart away, nor decency enough to dig into the ground, they thus shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, in a little pool behind some houses farther in the village, where another spring rises, the shattered stones of the well, and of the little fretted channel which was long ago built and traced for it by gentler hands, lie scattered, each from each, under a ragged bank of mortar, and scoria, and bricklayer‘s refuse, on one side, which the clean water nevertheless chastises to purity; but it cannot conquer the dead earth beyond: and there, circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the accumulation of indolent years. 1 [For other passages in which Ruskin deals with the pollution of streams and rivers, see Fors Clavigera, Letters 27, 33, 52, 58.] INTRODUCTION 387 Half-a-dozen men, with one day‘s work could cleanse those pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and make every breath of summer air above them rich with cool balm; and every glittering wave medicinal, as if it ran, troubled only of angels, from the porch of Bethesda.1 But that day‘s work is never given, nor, I suppose, will be; nor will any joy be possible to heart of man, for evermore, about those wells of English waters. 2. When I last left them, I walked up slowly through the back streets of Croydon, from the old church to the hospital; and, just on the left, before coming up to the crossing of the High Street, there was a new public-house built. And the front of it was built in so wise manner, that a recess of two feet was left below its front windows, between them and the street-pavement; a recess too narrow for any possible use, (for even if it had been occupied by a seat, as in old time it might have been, everybody walking along the street would have fallen over the legs of the reposing wayfarer). But, by way of making this two feet depth of freehold land more expressive of the dignity of an establishment for the sale of spirituous liquors, it was fenced from the pavement by an imposing iron railing,2 having four or five spear-heads to the yard of it, and six feet high; containing as much iron and iron-work, indeed, as could well be put into the space; and by this stately arrangement, the little piece of dead ground within, between wall and street, became a protective receptacle of refuse; cigar ends, and oyster shells, and the like, such as an openhanded English street-populace habitually scatters; and was thus left, unsweepable by any ordinary methods. Now the iron bars which, uselessly (or in great degree worse than uselessly) enclosed this bit of ground, and made it pestilent, represented a quantity of work which would have cleansed the Carshalton pools three times over: of work, partly cramped and perilous, in the mine; partly grievous and 1 [See John v. 4.] 2 [On the ethics of iron railings, compare Two Paths, § 163 (Vol. XVI. p. 388).] 388 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE horrible,1 at the furnace: partly foolish and sedentary, of ill-taught students making bad designs: work from the beginning to the last fruits of it, and in all the branches of it, venomous, deathful,* and miserable. 3. Now, how did it come to pass that this work was done instead of the other; that the strength and life of the English operative were spent in defiling ground, instead of redeeming it, and in producing an entirely (in that place) valueless, piece of metal, which can neither be eaten nor breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air and pure water? 4. There is but one reason for it, and at present a conclusive one,—that the capitalist can charge per-centage on the work in the one case, and cannot in the other. If, having certain funds for supporting labour at my disposal, I pay men merely to keep my ground in order, my money

• ―A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near Wolverhampton. Thomas

Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as the ‗keeper‘ of a blast furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, aged eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The furnace contained four tons of molten iron, and an equal amount of cinders, and ought to have been run out at 7.30 p.m. But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and drinking, neglected their duty, and, in the meantime, the iron rose in the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was contained. Just as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the furnace, the water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down its front and let loose on them the molten metal, which instantaneously consumed Gardner: Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into the canal and then ran home and fell dead on the threshold; Swift survived to reach the hospital, where he died too.‖2 1 [Here in revising the book in 1873 Ruskin altered the epithets; the original editions read: ―. . . of work, partly cramped and deadly, in the mine; partly fierce and exhaustive, at the furnace . . .‖] 2 [The original editions (1–3) add:— ―In further illustration of this matter, I beg the reader to look at the article on the ‗Decay of the English Race‘ in the Pall Mall Gazette of April 17, of this year; and at the articles on the ‗Report of the Thames Commission,‘ in any journals of the same date.‖ The article called attention to a pamphlet on the subject in which Dr. Morgan, a Manchester physician, attributed physical deterioration to the vitiated air of the houses, factories, and streets of cities. The ―Report‖ referred to is the First Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Best Means of Preventing the Pollution of Rivers (River Thames). Vol. I. 1866. The commissioners commented upon the serious pollution of the river by sewage, paper mills, etc.] INTRODUCTION 389 is, in that function, spent once for all; but if I pay them to dig iron out of my ground, and work it, and sell it, I can charge rent for the ground, and per-centage both on the manufacture and the sale, and make my capital profitable in these three by-ways. The greater part of the profitable investment of capital, in the present day, is in operations of this kind, in which the public is persuaded to buy something of no use to it, on production or sale of which the capitalist may charge per-centage; the said public remaining all the while under the persuasion that the per-centages thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, they are merely filchings out of light pockets, to swell heavy ones. 5. Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron railing, to make himself more conspicuous to drunkards. The publichouse keeper on the other side of the way presently buys another railing, to out-rail him with. Both are, as to their relative attractiveness,1 just where they were before; but they have both lost the price of the railings; which they must either themselves finally lose, or make their aforesaid customers, the amateurs of railings, pay, by raising the price of their beer, or adulterating it. Either the publicans, or their customers, are thus poorer by precisely what the capitalist has gained; and the value of the industry itself, meantime, has been lost to the nation; the iron bars, in that form and place, being wholly useless. 6. It is this mode of taxation of the poor by the rich which is referred to in the text (§ 34), in comparing the modern acquisitive power of capital with that of the lance and sword; the only difference being that the levy of black mail in old times was by force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver frankly quartered himself on the publican for the night;—the modern one merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and persuades his host to buy it. One comes as an open robber, the other as a cheating 1 [Here the original editions add: ―to customers of taste‖; and lower down read: ―. . . their aforesaid customers of taste pay . . .‖] 390 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE pedlar; but the result, to the injured person‘s pocket, is absolutely the same. Of course many useful industries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones; and in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, there is a certain direct good. It is better to spend four thousand pounds in making a gun, and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in idleness. Only do not let the proceeding be called ―political economy.‖ 7. There is also a confused notion in the minds of many persons, that the gathering of the property of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ultimate harm; since, in whosesoever hands it may be, it must be spent at last; and thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy has been again and again exposed;1 but granting the plea true, the same apology may, of course, be made for black mail, or any other form of robbery. It might be (though practically it never is) as advantageous for the nation that the robber should have the spending of the money he extorts, as that the person robbed should have spent it. But this is no excuse for the theft. If I were to put a turnpike on the road where it passes my own gate, and endeavour to exact a shilling from every passenger, the public would soon do away with my gate, without listening to any plea on my part that ―it was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I should spend their shillings, as that they themselves should.‖ But if, instead of out-facing them with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to come in and buy stones, or old iron, or any such useless thing, out of my ground, I may rob them to the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked as a public benefactor, factor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. And this main question for the poor of England—for the poor of all countries—is wholly omitted in every common treatise on the subject of wealth. Even by the labourers themselves, the operation of capital is regarded only in its effect on 1 [As, for instance, by Ruskin in his discussions with W. R. Greg (Vol. XVII. pp. 553 seq.).] INTRODUCTION 391 their immediate interests; never in the far more terrific power of its appointment of the kind and the object of labour. It matters little, ultimately, how much a labourer is paid for making anything; but it matters fearfully what the thing is, which he is compelled to make.1 If his labour is so ordered as to produce food, and fresh air, and fresh water, no matter that his wages are low;—the food and fresh air and water will be at last there; and he will at last get them. But if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air, or to produce iron bars instead of them,—the food and air will finally not be there, and he will not get them, to his great and final inconvenience.2 8. I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged in work of investigation must be, to hear my statements laughed at for years, before they are examined or believed; and I am generally content to wait the public‘s time. But it has not been without displeased surprise that I have found myself totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or illustration, to force this plain thought into my readers‘ heads,—that the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in substance, not in ciphers; and that the real good of all work, and of all commerce, depends on the final intrinsic worth of the thing you make, or get by it.* This is a ―practical‖ enough statement, one would think: but the English public has been so possessed by its modern school of economists with the notion that Business is always good, whether it be busy in mischief or in benefit; and that buying and selling are always salutary, whatever the intrinsic worth of what you buy or sell, that it seems impossible to gain so much as a patient hearing for any inquiry respecting the substantial result of our eager modern labour.

• Compare Preface to Munera Pulveris [§ 8, Vol. XVII. p. 134: 1873].

1 [Compare Unto this Last, § 76, where Ruskin gives the alternative of peach or bombshell (Vol. XVII. p. 103).] 2 [The original editions add:— ―. . . inconvenience. So that, conclusively, in political, as in household, economy, the great question is, not so much what money you have in your pocket, as what you will buy with it, and do with it.‖] 392 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 9. I have never felt more checked by the sense of this impossibility than in arranging the heads of the following lectures, which, though delivered at considerable intervals of time, and in different places, were not prepared without reference to each other. Their connection would, however, have been made far more distinct, if I had not been prevented, by what I feel to be another great difficulty in addressing English audiences, from enforcing, with any decision, the common, and to me the most important, part of their subjects. I chiefly desired to question my hearers—operatives, merchants, and soldiers,—as to the ultimate meaning of the business they had in hand; and to know from them what they expected or intended their manufacture to come to, their selling to come to, and their killing to come to. That appeared the first point needing determination before I could speak to them with any real utility or effect. ―You craftsmen—salesmen—swordsmen,—do but tell me clearly what you want; then, if I can say anything to help you, I will; and if not, I will account to you as I best may for my inability.‖ 10. But in order to put this question into any terms, one had first of all to face a difficulty—to me for the present insuperable,—the difficulty of knowing whether to address one‘s audience as believing, or not believing, in any other world than this. For if you address any average modern English company as believing in an Eternal life; and then endeavour to draw any conclusions from this assumed belief, as to their present business, they will forthwith tell you that ―what you say is very beautiful, but it is not practical.‖ If, on the contrary, you frankly address them as unbelievers in Eternal life, and try to draw any consequences from that unbelief,—they immediately hold you for an accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet at you. 11. And the more I thought over what I had got to say, the less I found I could say it, without some reference to this intangible or intractable question. It made all the INTRODUCTION 393 difference, in asserting any principle of war, whether one assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely knead down a certain quantity of once living1 clay into a level line, as in a brickfield; or whether, out of every separately Christian-named portion of the ruinous heap, there went out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of battle, some astonished condition of soul, unwillingly released. It made all the difference, in speaking of the possible range of commerce, whether one assumed that all bargains related only to visible property—or whether property, for the present invisible, but nevertheless real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It made all the difference, in addressing a body of men subject to considerable hardship, and having to find some way out of it—whether one could confidently say to them, ―My friends,—you have only to die, and all will be right;‖ or whether one had any secret misgiving that such advice was more blessed to him that gave2 than to him that took it. 12. And therefore the deliberate reader will find, throughout these lectures, a hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing short of conclusions which he will feel I would fain have come to;—hesitation which arises wholly from this uncertainty of my hearers‘ temper. For I do not speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the time of first forward youth, in any proselytizing temper, as desiring to persuade any one to believe anything;3 but whomsoever I venture to address, I take for the time, his creed as I find it; and endeavour to push it into such vital fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with a great part of the existing English people, that they are in possession of a book which tells them, straight from the lips of God, all they ought to do, and need to know. I have read that book, with as much care as most of them, for some forty 1 [For ―once living‖ the original editions read ―red.‖] 2 [Acts xx. 35.] 3 [For ―to believe anything,‖ the original editions read ―of what, in such matters, I thought myself.‖] 394 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE years; and am thankful that, on those who trust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavour has been uniformly to make them trust it more deeply than they do; trust it, not in their own favourite verses only, but in the sum of all; trust it, not as a fetish or talisman, which they are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as a Captain‘s order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. To these, if to any, I once had hope of addressing, with acceptance, words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and the futility of avarice; from these, if from any, I once expected ratification of a political economy, which asserted that the life was more than the meat, and the body than raiment; and these, it once seemed to me, I might ask, without being accused of fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the bestowal of their heart‘s treasure, to separate themselves from the crowd of whom it is written, ―After all these things do the Gentiles seek.‖1 13. It cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of reason, that a general audience is now wholly, or even in majority, composed of these religious persons. A large portion must always consist of men who admit no such creed; or who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief in life,—with the so-called Infidel, I desired to plead for an honest declaration and fulfilment of his belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must either hereafter live, or hereafter die; fate may be bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either expectation; but never in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually believe in immortality, so far as to avoid preparation for death; and in mortality, so far as to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a wise man will at least hold himself ready for one or other of 1 [Matthew vi. 32.] INTRODUCTION 395 two events, of which one or other is inevitable; and will have all things ended in order, for his sleep, or left in order, for his awakening.1 14. Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he determine to end them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I know few Christians so convinced of the splendour of the rooms in their Father‘s house, as to be happier when their friends are called to those mansions, than they would have been if the Queen had sent for them to live at Court: nor has the Church‘s most ardent ―desire to depart, and be with Christ,‖ 2 ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on mourning for every person summoned to such departure.3 On the contrary, a brave belief in death has been assuredly held by many not ignoble persons; and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, or energy of hand.4 The shortness of life is not, to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which may be granted him; nor does the anticipation of death, to-morrow, suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is no device in the grave,5 may indeed make the deviceless person more contented in his dulness: but it will make the deviser only more earnest in devising: nor is human conduct likely, in every case, to be purer, under the conviction that all its evil may in a moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed; and that the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into a felicity which forgets 1 [This passage was revised in 1873, the original editions reading: ―. . . will have all things in order, for his sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening.‖] 2 [Philippians i. 23.] 3 [For a note on Ruskin‘s dislike of mourning, see A Joy for Ever, § 70 (Vol. XVI. p. 62).] 4 [On this subject compare Ruskin‘s letters to his father given in Vol. XVII. p. xxxviii., and his references to a speech by Keble (above, p. 302 and n.).] 5 [Ecclesiastes ix. 10.] 396 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE its pain,—than it may be under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, more probable, apprehension, that ―what a man soweth that shall he also reap‖1—or others reap,—when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in darkness,2 but lies down therein. 15. But to men for whom feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, or the offence given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, mav have rendered this painful creed the only possible one, there is an appeal to be made, more secure than any which can be addressed to happier persons.3 Might not a preacher, in comfortless, but faithful, zeal—from the poor height of a grave-hillock for his Hill of Mars, and with the Cave of the Eumenides at his side—say to them thus: Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be deaf for ever. For these others, at your right hand and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, and all their faults forgiven;—for these, who, stained and blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, and her feathers like gold:4—for these, indeed, it may be permissible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a future of innumerable hours; to these, in their weakness, it may be conceded that they should tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one day, will be remembered no more. In them, it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, over whom they know their Master is watching; and to leave those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish eternally. But, for 1 [Galatians vi. 7.] 2 [Psalms xci. 6.] 3 [The original editions were different in the following passage, thus:— ―. . . to happier persons. I would fain, if I might offencelessly, have spoken to them as if none other heard; and have said thus: ‗Hear me, you dying men, . . .‖] [Psalms lxviii. 13.] INTRODUCTION 397 you there is no such hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate, which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to be all their inheritance; you may crush them, before the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you;—their breath, which fails for lack of food, once expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against you a word of accusing;—they and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the dust, and the worms cover you;1 and for them there shall be no consolation, and on you no vengeance,—only the question murmured above your grave: ―Who shall repay him what he hath done?‖2 Is it therefore easier for you, in your heart, to inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy? Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your poor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will you be more prompt to the injustice which can never be redressed; and more niggardly of the mercy which you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse for ever? 16. I think better of you, even of the most selfish, than that you would act thus, well understanding your act. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question becomes not less grave when brought into these curt limits. If your life were but a fever fit,—the madness of a night, whose follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you fretted away the sickly hours,—what toys you snatched at or let fall,—what visions you followed, wistfully, with the deceived eyes of sleepless phrenzy. Is the earth only an hospital? are health and heaven to come? Then play, if you care to play, on the floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straws into what crowns please you; gather the dust of it for treasure,3 and die rich in that, though clutching at the black motes in the air with your dying hands;—and yet, it may be well with you. But if this life be no dream, and the world 1 [Job xxi. 26.] 2 [Job xxi. 31.] 3 [Compare the title, ―Munera Pulveris,‖ as discussed in Vol. XVII. p. lxvi.] 398 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE no hospital, but your palace-inheritance;—if all the peace and power and joy you can ever win, must be won now, and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never;—will you still, throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire for vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none you might presently take? was this grass of the earth made green for your shroud only, not for your bed? and can you never lie down upon it, but only under it? The heathen, in their saddest hours,1 thought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the crown of all contest: No proud one! no jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the unmerited throne; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought; but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god could give them.2 Seeking a better than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found for them—only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you:—the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thorn-set stem; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery. But this, such as it is, you may win, while yet you live; type of grey honour, and 1 [The original editions read: ―The heathen, to whose creed you have returned, thought not so.‖] 2 [A reference to the motto on the title-page, from line 586 of the Plutus of Aristophanes. The line is in the speech by Poverty, which may be translated thus: ―But verily ye are both purblind with old prejudices that blear the mind‘s eye; Zeus, of course, is poor, and this I will now clearly show you. For if he were rich, how is it that when he himself institutes the olympic contest, in order that he may always bring together all the Greeks in each fifth year, he proclaimed that those of the athletes who won the prize should be wreathed with the crown of wild olive? And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Zeus been so poor.‖ Compare Unto this Last, § 65 n., where Ruskin also refers to this ―grand passage‖ (Vol. XVII. p. 90); and see above, Introduction, p. lxxvii.] INTRODUCTION 399 sweet rest.* Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain; these,—and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living things,—may yet be here your riches; untormenting and divine: serviceable for the life that now is; nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.

• [melitoerra, aeqlwn g eneken.1

1 [Pindar, Ol. i. 160: ―But he that overcometh hath throughout the remainder of his life honeyed sunshine, on account of the games.‖ With the concluding passage of this Introduction, compare Queen of the Air, § 50.] LECTURE I WORK Delivered before the Working Men’s Institute, at Camberwell [January 24, 1865] 17. MY FRIENDS,—I have not come among you to-night to endeavour to give you an entertaining lecture; but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask you a few plain questions. I have seen and known too much of the struggle for life among our labouring population, to feel at ease, under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on the trivialities of my own studies; but, much more, as I meet to-night, for the first time, the members of a working Institute established in the district in which I have passed the greater part of my life, I am desirous that we should at once understand each other, on graver matters. I would fain tell you, with what feelings, and with what hope, I regard this Institute, as one of many such, now happily established throughout England, as well as in other countries; and preparing the way for a great change in all the circumstances of industrial life; but of which the success must wholly depend upon our clearly understanding the conditions, and above all, the necessary limits of this change. No teacher can truly promote the cause of education, until he knows the mode of life for which that education is to prepare his pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address you, nominally, as a ―Working Class,‖ must compel him, if he is in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to enquire in the outset, on what you yourselves suppose this class-distinction has been founded in the past, and 401 XVIII. 2 C 402 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE must be founded in the future. The manner of the amusement, and the matter of the teaching, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on our first understanding from you, whether you think the distinction heretofore drawn between working men and others, is truly or falsely founded. Do you accept it as it stands? do you wish it to be modified? or do you think the object of education is to efface it, and enable us to forget it for ever? 18. Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call this—you and I—a ―Working Men‘s‖ Institute, and our college in London, a ―Working Men‘s‖ College.1 Now, how do you consider that these several institutes, and differ, or ought to differ, from ―idle men‘s‖ institutes, and ―idle men‘s‖ colleges? Or by what other word than ―idle‖ shall I distinguish those whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object to call the ―Upper Classes‖? Are there necessarily upper classes? necessarily lower? How much should those always be elevated, how much these always depressed? And I pray those among my audience who chance to occupy, at present, the higher position, to forgive me what offence there may be in what I am going to say. It is not I who wish to say it. Bitter voices say it; voices of battle and of famine through all the world, which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence. Neither, as you well know, is it to you specially that I say it. I am sure that most now present know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class, which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is there to that of which we are unconscious? 1 [Here the MS. reads:— ―We call this—you and I—a ‗Working Men‘s‘ Institute, and for the last seven or eight years I have been more or less connected in service with a Working Men‘s College.‖] I. WORK 403 19. Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, and ask them, what they think the ―upper classes‖ are, and ought to be, in relation to them. Answer, you workmen who are here, as you would among yourselves, frankly; and tell me how you would have me call your employers. Am I to call them—would you think me right in calling them—the idle classes? I think you would feel somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating my subject honestly, or speaking from my heart, if I proceeded in my lecture under the supposition that all rich people were idle. You would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed me to say that;—not less unjust than the rich people, who say that all the poor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or more than they can help. 20.* For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor, and idle rich; and there are busy poor, and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thousand a year; and many a man of large fortune is busier than his errand-boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to play marbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart and innermost nature of men of all ranks and in all positions. There is a working class—strong and happy,—among both rich and poor; there is an idle class—weak, wicked, and miserable,—among both rich and poor. And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class [how little wise in this!]1 habitually contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right among them: and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all would be

• Note this paragraph. I cannot enough wonder at the want of common charity

which blinds so many people to the quite simple truth to which it refers. [1873.] 1 [The square brackets here are the author‘s; the insertion was made in 1873.] 404 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE right among them. But each look for the faults of the other. A hardworking man of property is particularly offended by an idle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust—but among the unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor. 21. There is, then, no worldly distinction between idle and industrious people; and I am going to-night to speak only of the industrious. The idle people we will put out of our thoughts at once—they are mere nuisances—what ought to be done with them, we‘ll talk of at another time. But there are class distinctions among the industrious themselves;—tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the infinite thermometer of human pain and of human power,—distinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of man‘s soul and body.1 22. These separations we will study, and the laws of them, among energetic men only, who, whether they work or whether they play, put their strength into the work, and their strength into the game; being in the full sense of the word ―industrious,‖ one way or another,—with purpose, or without. And these distinctions are mainly four: I. Between those who work, and those who play. II. Between those who produce the means of life, and those who consume them. III. Between those who work with the head, and those who work with the hand. 1 [The MS. adds:— ―Distinctions which bring to pass, as it is commonly said, that one half of men know not how the other half live: it might be more truly said, that one half know not how the other half die.‖] I. WORK 405 IV. Between those who work wisely, and those who work foolishly. For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in our examination,— I. Work to play; II. Production to consumption. III. Head to hand; and, IV. Sense to nonsense. 23. I. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who work and the classes who play. Of course we must agree upon a definition of these terms,—work and play, before going farther. Now, roughly, not with vain subtlety of definition, but for plain use of the words, ―play‖ is an exertion of body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with no determined end; and work is a thing done because it ought to be done, and with a determined end. You play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. That is as hard work as anything else; but it amuses you, and it has no result but the amusement. If it were done as an ordered form of exercise, for health‘s sake, it would become work directly. So, in like manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is ―play,‖ the ―pleasing thing,‖ not the useful thing. Play may be useful, in a secondary sense; (nothing is indeed more useful or necessary); but the use of it depends on its being spontaneous. 24. Let us, then, enquire together what sort of games the playing class in England spend their lives in playing at. The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that, than at football, or any other roughest sport: and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money,—he never knows. He doesn‘t make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. ―What will you make of what you have got?‖ you ask. ―Well, 406 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE I‘ll get more,‖ he says. Just as, at cricket, you get more runs. There‘s no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. And there‘s no use in the money, but to have more of it than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there,—rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,—a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore,—you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play, and very hard play, but still play. It is only Lord‘s cricket-ground without the turf:—a huge billiard-table without the cloth, and with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit; but mainly a billiard-table, after all. 25. Well, the first great English game is this playing at counters. It differs from the rest in that it appears always to be producing money, while every other game is expensive. But it does not always produce money. There‘s a great difference between ―winning‖ money and ―making‖ it: a great difference between getting it out of another man‘s pocket into ours, or filling both.1 26. Our next great English games, however, hunting and shooting, are costly altogether; and how much we are fined for them annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, and the resultant demoralization of ourselves, our children, and our retainers,2 I will not endeavour to count now; but note only that, except for exercise, this is not merely a useless game, but a deadly one, to all connected 1 [Here the original editions add:— ―Collecting money is by no means the same thing as making it; the tax-gatherer‘s house is not the Mint; and much of the apparent gain (so called) in commerce is only a form of taxation on carriage or exchange.‖ To which passage the MS. adds further:— ―(Money can‘t be made by coining either; it is only made in reality by the production or discovery of useful things.) Still this play at all elements professes to make money, all the others profess losing it.‖] 2 [The original editions read:— ―. . .game laws, and all else that accompanies that beautiful and special English game. I will not . . .‖ and so, five lines lower:— ―. . .gambling, by no means a beautiful or recreative game: and through. . .‖] I. WORK 407 with it.1 For through horse-racing, you get every form of what the higher classes everywhere call ―Play,‖ in distinction from all other plays; that is, gambling; and through game-preserving, you get also some curious laying out of ground: that beautiful arrangement of dwelling-house for man and beast, by which we have grouse and blackcock—so many brace to the acre, and men and women—so many brace to the garret. I often wonder what the angelic builders and surveyors—the angelic builders who build the ―many mansions‖2 up above there; and the angelic surveyors who measured that four-square city with their measuring reeds—I wonder what they think, or are supposed to think, of the laying out of ground by this nation.*3 27. Then, next to the gentlemen‘s game of hunting, we must put the ladies‘ game of dressing. It is not the cheapest of games.4 And I wish I could tell you what this ―play‖ costs, altogether, in England, France, and Russia annually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms I like it; nay, I don‘t see it played quite as much as I would fain have it. You ladies like to lead the fashion:—by all means lead it—lead it thoroughly—lead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody else nicely. Lead the fashions for the poor first; make

• The subject is pursued at some length in Fors Clavigera for March, 1873;5 but I

have not yet properly stated the opposite side of the question, nor insisted on the value of uncultivated land to the national health of body and mind. [1873.] 1 [For a collection of Ruskin‘s passages on field sports, etc., see Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 340 n.)]. 2 [John xiv. 2.] 3 [Here the original editions add:— ―. . . laying out of ground by this nation, which has set itself, as it seems, literally to accomplish, word for word, or rather fact for word, in the persons of those poor whom its Master left to represent Him, what that Master said of Himself—that foxes and birds had homes, but He none.‖ Compare Eagle’s Nest, § 206, where the same verse (Matthew viii. 20) is quoted.] 4 [Here the original editions add:— ―I saw a brooch at a jeweller‘s in Bond Street a fortnight ago, not an inch wide, and without any singular jewel in it, yet worth £3000.‖] 5 [Letter 27.] 408 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE them look well, and you yourselves will look, in ways of which you have now no conception, all the better. The fashions you have set for some time among your peasantry are not pretty ones; their doublets are too irregularly slashed, or as Chaucer calls it ―all to-slittered,‖ though not ―for queintise,‖1 and the wind blows too frankly through them. 28. Then there are other games, wild enough, as I could show you if I had time. There‘s playing at literature,2 and playing at art;—very different, both, from working at literature, or working at art, but I‘ve no time to speak of these. I pass to the greatest of all—the play of plays, the great gentleman‘s game, which ladies like them best to play at,—the game of War. It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination; we dress for it, however, more finely than for any other sport; and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine colours; of course we could fight better in grey, and without feathers; but all nations have agreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. Then the bats and balls are very costly; our English and French bats, with the balls and wickets, even those which we don‘t make any use of, costing, I suppose, now about fifteen millions of money annually to each nation;3 all which you know is paid for by hard labourer‘s work in the furrow and furnace. A costly game!—not to speak of its consequences; I will say at present nothing of these. The mere immediate cost of all these plays is what I want you to consider; they are all paid for in deadly work somewhere, as many of us know too well. The jewel-cutter, whose sight fails over 1 [Romaunt of the Rose, 840.] 2 [The MS. here reads:— ―. . .at literature, when you read only sensation novels, and playing at art, when you build whole Houses of Parliament in Gothic without knowing how.‖ For sensation novels, see above, p. 78 n.; for the Houses of Parliament, Vol. VII. p. 450 n.; Vol. XVII. pp. 279, 327; and compare Eagle’s Nest, § 201.] 3 [Compare Vol. XVII. p. 104.] I. WORK 409 the diamonds; the weaver, whose arm fails over the web; the iron-forger, whose breath fails before the furnace—they know what work is—they, who have all the work, and none of the play, except a kind they have named for themselves down in the black north country, where ―play‖ means being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example for philologists, of varying dialect, this change in the sense of the word as used in the black country of Birmingham, and the red and black country of Baden Baden. Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of England, who think ―one moment unamused a misery not made for feeble man,‖1 this is what you have brought the word ―play‖ to mean, in the heart of merry England! You may have your fluting and piping; but there are sad children sitting in the market-place,2 who indeed cannot say to you, ―We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced:‖ but eternally shall say to you, ―We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.‖3 29. This, then, is the first distinction between the ―upper and lower‖ classes. And this is one which is by no means necessary; which indeed must, in process of good time, be by all honest men‘s consent abolished. Men will be taught that an existence of play, sustained by the blood of other creatures, is a good existence for gnats and jellyfish; but not for men: that neither days, nor lives, can be made holy or noble by doing nothing in them: that the best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we may not lose its moments; and the best grace before meat, the consciousness that we have justly earned our dinner. And when we have this much of plain Christianity preached to us again, and cease to translate the strict words,‖Son, go work to-day in my vineyard,‖4 into the dainty ones, ―Baby, go play to-day in my vineyard,‖ we shall all be workers in 1 [Young‘s Night Thoughts, ii. 246: compare Time and Tide, § 19 (Vol. XVII. p. 335), where also the passage is cited.] 2 [See Luke vii. 32; compare Vol. IV. p. 217.] 3 [Matthew xi. 16, 17.] 4 [Matthew xxi. 28.] 410 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE one way or another; and this much at least of the distinction between ―upper‖ and ―lower‖ forgotten. 30. II. I pass then to our second distinction; between the rich and poor, between Dives and Lazarus,—distinction which exists more sternly, I suppose, in this day, than ever in the world, Pagan or Christian, till now.1 Consider, for instance, what the general tenor of such a paper as the Morning Post implies of delicate luxury among the rich; and then read this chance extract from it:— ―Yesterday morning, at eight o‘clock, a woman, passing a dung heap in the stone yard near the recently-erected alms-houses in Shadwell Gap, High Street, Shadwell, called the attention of a Thames police-constable to a man in a sitting position on the dung heap, and said she was afraid he was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched creature appeared to have been dead several hours. He had perished of cold and wet, and the rain had been beating down on him all night. The deceased was a bonepicker. He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and half-starved. The police had frequently driven him away from the stone yard, between sunset and sunrise, 1 [From this point, the original editions read differently:— ―I will put it sharply before you, to begin with, merely by reading two paragraphs which I cut from two papers that lay on my breakfast-table on the same morning, the 25th of November, 1864. The piece about the rich Russian at Paris is commonplace enough, and stupid besides; (for fifteen francs—12s. 6d.—is nothing for a rich man to give for a couple of peaches, out of season). Still the two paragraphs printed on the same day are worth putting side by side. ― ‗Such a man is now here. He is a Russian, and, with your permission, we will call him Count Teufelskine. In dress he is sublime; art is considered in that toilet, the harmony of colour respected, the chiar’ oscuro evident in well-selected contrast. In manners he is dignified—nay, perhaps apathetic; nothing disturbs the placid serenity of that calm exterior. One day our friend breakfasted chez Bignon. When the bill came he read, ―Two peaches, 15f.‖ He paid. ―Peaches scarce, I presume?‖ was his sole remark. ―No, sir,‖ replied the waiter, ―but Teufelskines are.‖ ‖—Telegraph, November 25, 1864. ― ‗Yesterday morning . . . his identify if possible.‘—Morning Post, November 25, 1864 [the extract as in the present text]. ―You have the separation thus in brief compass; and I want you to take notice of the ‗a penny and some bones were found in his pockets,‘ and to compare it with this third statement, from the Telegraph of January 16th of this year:— ―Again the dietary scale . . .‖ [as in the present text].] I. WORK 411 and told him to go home. He selected a most desolate spot for his wretched death. A penny and some bones were found in his pockets. The deceased was between fifty and sixty years of age. Inspector Roberts, of the K division, has given directions for inquiries to be made at the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, to ascertain his identity if possible.‖—Morning Post, November 25, 1864. Compare the statement of the finding bones in his pocket with the following, from the Telegraph of January 16 of this year:1— ―Again the dietary scale for adult and juvenile paupers was drawn up by the most conspicuous political economists in England. It is low in quantity, but it is sufficient to support nature: yet, within ten years of the passing of the Poor Law Act, we heard of the Paupers in the Andover Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh, and sucking the marrow from the bones of horses which they were employed to crush.‖ You see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of Christianity has some advantage over the Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus expected, or, at least, prayed, to be fed with crumbs from the rich man‘s table;2 but our Lazarus is fed with crumbs from the dog‘s table. 31. Now this distinction between rich and poor rests on two bases. Within its proper limits, on a basis which is lawful and everlastingly necessary; beyond them, on a basis unlawful, and everlastingly corrupting the frame-work of society. The lawful basis of wealth is, that a man who works should be paid the fair value of his work; and that if he does not choose to spend it to-day, he should have free leave to keep it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an industrious man working daily, and laying by daily, attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum of wealth, to which he has absolute right. The idle person who will not 1 [1865. The extract is from a leading article on the case of a poor man who had died from insufficient nourishing after a sojourn in a workhouse infirmary.] 2 [Luke xvi. 21.] 412 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE work, and the wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the end of the same time will be doubly poor—poor in possession, and dissolute in moral habit; and he will then naturally covet the money which the other has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of his well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or any reward for good conduct; and all society is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity of social life is the clearness of national conscience in enforcing the law—that he should keep who has JUSTLY EARNED. 1 32. That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between rich and poor. But there is also a false basis of distinction; namely, the power held over those who are earning wealth by those who already possess it, and only use it to gain more. There will be always a number of men who would fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, and, more or less, cowardly.2 It is physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; just as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthy-minded people like making money—ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it: but the main object of their life is not money; it is something better than money.3 A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay—very properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it—still, his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning them. So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and 1 [Compare Unto this Last, § 79 n., and Munera Pulveris, Preface, § 21 (Vol. XVII. pp. 106, 144).] 2 [Here, again, compare Unto this Last, § 65: ―the persons who become rich are . . . unimaginative, insensitive, and ignorant‖ (Vol. XVII. p. 90).] 3 [On this distinction, compare Two Paths, § 135 (Vol. XVI.p.370, and compare Vol. XVII. p. 40).] I. WORK 413 baptismal fees, of course; but yet, if they are brave and well-educated, the pew-rent is not the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole purpose of the baptism; the clergyman‘s object is essentially to baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. They like fees no doubt,—ought to like them; yet if they are brave and well-educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick; and,—if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put to them—would rather cure their patient, and lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with all other brave and rightly-trained men; their work is first, their fee second—very important always, but still second. But in every nation, as I said, there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and the work second, as with brave people the work is first, and the fee second. And this is no small distinction. It is between life and death in a man; between heaven and hell for him. You cannot serve two masters:1—you must serve one or other. If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is your master, and the lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who is the Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils—the ―least erected fiend that fell.‖2 So there you have it in brief terms; Work first—you are God‘s servants; Fee first—you are the Fiend‘s. And it makes a difference, now and ever, believe me, whether you serve Him who has on His vesture and thigh written, ―King of Kings,‖3 and whose service is perfect freedom;4 or him on whose vesture and 1 [Matthew vi. 24.] 2 [Paradise Lost, i. 679:— ―Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell.‖] 3 [Revelation xix. 16.] 4 [The second collect, for Peace, in the Order for Morning Prayer: quoted by Ruskin in Seven Lamps also (Vol. VIII. p. 249).] 414 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE thigh the name is written, ―Slave of Slaves,‖ and whose service is perfect slavery. 33. However in every nation there are, and must always be, a certain number of these Fiend‘s servants, who have it principally for the object of their lives to make money. They are always, as I said, more or less stupid, and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as money. Stupidity is always the basis of the Judas bargain. We do great injustice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He was only a common money-lover,1 and, like all money-lovers, did not understand Christ;—could not make out the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He never thought He would be killed. He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged himself. How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would have the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in the bag of the poor, not caring for them. Helpless to understand Christ, he yet believed in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles, thought He was quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas, might as well make his own little bye-perquisities out of the affair. Christ would come out of it well enough, and he have his thirty pieces. Now, that is the money-seeker‘s idea, all over the world. He doesn‘t hate Christ, but can‘t understand Him—doesn‘t care for Him—sees no good in that benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it at all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass of men, you have a certain number of bagmen—your ―fee-first‖ men, whose main object is to make money. And they do make it—make it in all sorts of unfair ways, chiefly by the weight and force of money itself, or what is called the power of capital; 1 [Compare Ethics of the Dust, § 10 (above, p. 217); Vol. X. p. 403; and on ―the Judasian heresy,‖ see Fors Clavigera, Letter 82.] I. WORK 415 that is to say, the power which money, once obtained, has over the labour of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its produce to himself, except the labourer‘s food. That is the modern Judas‘s way of ―carrying the bag,‖ and ―bearing what is put therein.‖1 34. Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advantage? Has not the man who has worked for the money a right to use it as he best can? No, in this respect, money is now exactly what mountain promontories over public roads were in old times. The barons fought for them fairly:—the strongest and cunningest got them; then fortified them, and made every one who passed below pay toll. Well, capital now is exactly what crags were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at least, grant so much, though it is more than we ought) for their money; but, once having got it, the fortified millionaire can make everybody who passes below pay toll to his million, and build another tower of his money castle. And I can tell you, the poor vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite as much from the bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag-baron.2 Bags and crags have just the same result on rags. I have not time, however, to-night, to show you in how many ways the power of capital is unjust; but remember this one great principle—you will find it unfailing—that whenever money is the principal object of life with either man or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill; and does harm both in the getting and spending; but when it is not the principal object, it and all other things will be well got, and well spent. And here is the test, with every man, whether money is the principal object with him or not. If in mid-life he could pause3 and say, ―Now I have enough to live upon, I‘ll live upon it; and having well earned it, I will also well spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came into it,‖ then money is not principal with him; but 1 [John xii. 6.] 2 [Compare Vol. XVI. p. 128.] 3 [On the ―principle of pause in business,‖ see Vol. XVII. p. 485.] 416 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE if, having enough to live upon in the manner befitting his character and rank, he still wants to make more, and to die rich, then money is the principal object with him, and it becomes a curse to himself, and generally to those who spend it after him. For you know it must be spent some day; the only question is whether the man who makes it shall spend it, or some one else; and generally it is better for the maker to spend it, for he will know best its value and use. And if a man does not choose thus to spend his money, he must either hoard it or lend it, and the worst thing he can generally do is to lend it; for borrowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done, and all unjust war protracted.1 35. For observe what the real fact is, respecting loans to foreign military governments, and how strange it is. If your little boy came to you to ask for money to spend in squibs and crackers, you would think twice before you gave it him: and you would have some idea that it was wasted, when you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he did no mischief with it. But the Russian children, and Austrian children, come to you, borrowing money, not to spend in innocent squibs, but in cartridges and bayonets to attack you in India with, and to keep down all noble life in Italy with, and to murder Polish women and children with;2 and that you will give at once, because they pay you interest for it. Now, in order to pay you that interest, they must tax every working peasant in their dominions: and on that work you live. You therefore at once rob the Austrian peasant, assassinate or banish the Polish peasant, and you live on the produce of the theft, and the bribe for the assassination! That is the broad fact—that is the practical meaning of your foreign loans, and of most large interest of money; and then you quarrel with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as if he denied the Bible, 1 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 46 (above, p. 103); Ethics of the Dust, Note vi. (above, p. 366); and Munera Pulveris, Preface, § 19, and § 86 (Vol. XVII. pp. 142, 207).] 2 [For Poland, see above, pp. 81, 83.] I. WORK 417 and you believed it! though1 every deliberate act of your lives is a new defiance of its primary orders. 36. III. I must pass, however, now to our third condition of separation, between the men who work with the hand, and those who work with the head. And here we have at last an inevitable distinction. There must be work done by the arms, or none of us could live. There must be work done by the brains, or the life we get would not be worth having. And the same men cannot do both. There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it; and it is physically impossible that one class should do, or divide, the work of the other. And it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrowful fact by fine words, and to talk to the workman about the honourableness of manual labour and the dignity of humanity.2 Rough work, honourable or not, takes the life out of us; and the man who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all day, or driving an express train against the north wind all night, or holding a collier‘s helm in a gale on a lee shore, or whirling white-hot iron at a furnace mouth, is not the same man at the end of his day, or night, as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with everything comfortable about him, reading books, or classing 1 [The original editions read: ―though, wretches as you are, every deliberate. . .,‖ and add at the end of the paragraph:— ―. . . its primary orders; and as if, for most of the rich men of England at this moment, it were not indeed to be desired, as the best thing at least for them, that the Bible should not be true, since against them these words are written in it: ‗The rust of your gold and silver shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, as it were fire.‘ ‖ See James v. 3. For another reference to Colenso, see below, p. 492; and compare Vol. XIV. p. 285, Vol. XV. p. 443, Vol. XVII. pp. 475, 521. Colenso had in 1862 begun the publication of his Critical Examination of the Pentateuch, and in 1863 had been deposed and excommunicated by Robert Gray, Bishop of Cape Town. In 1866 he was, however, confirmed in possession of his see by the law courts.] 2 [The original editions add:— ―That is a grand old proverb of Sancho Panza‘s, ‗Fine words butter no parsnips‘; and I can tell you that, all over England just now, you workmen are buying a great deal too much butter at that dairy.‖ Ruskin, in striking out the passage, remembered no doubt that the proverb is not Sancho Panza‘s; it is Sir Roger L‘Estrange‘s. See, under ―Butter,‖ Latham‘s Johnson’s Dictionary (ed. 1866).] XVIII. 2 D 418 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE butterflies, or painting pictures.* If it is any comfort to you to be told that the rough work is the more honourable of the two, I should be sorry to take that much of consolation from you; and in some sense I need not. The rough work is at all events real, honest, and, generally, though not always, useful; while the fine work is, a great deal of it, foolish and false, as well as fine, and therefore dishonourable; but when both kinds are equally well and worthily done the head‘s is the noble work, and the hand‘s the ignoble. Therefore, of all hand work whatsoever, necessary for the maintenance of life, those old words, ―In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread,‖1 indicate that the inherent nature of it is one of calamity; and that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts also some shadow of degradation into our contest with its thorn and its thistle: so that all nations have held their days honourable, or ―holy,‖ and constituted them ―holydays,‖ or ―holidays,‖2 by making them days of rest; and the promise, which, among all our distant hopes, seems to cast the chief brightness over death, is that blessing of the dead who die in the Lord, that ―they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.‖3 37. And thus the perpetual question and contest must arise, who is to do this rough work?4 and how is the worker of it to be comforted, redeemed, and rewarded? and what kind of play should he have, and what rest, in this world, sometimes, as well as in the next? Well, my good, laborious friends, these questions will take a little time to answer yet. They must be answered: all good men are occupied with them, and all honest thinkers. There‘s grand head work doing about them; but much must be discovered, and much attempted in vain, before

• Compare § 57 [p. 436: 1873].

1 [See Genesis iii. 19.] 2 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 10.] 3 [Revelation xiv. 13.] 4 [On this question, see Vol. XVII. p. xcix.] I. WORK 419 anything decisive can be told you. Only note these few particulars, which are already sure. 38. As to the distribution of the hard work. None of us, or very few of us, do either hard or soft work because we think we ought; but because we have chanced to fall into the way of it, and cannot help ourselves. Now, nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing: work is only done well when it is done with a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he is doing what he should, and is in his place. And, depend upon it, all work must be done at last, not in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered, soldierly, human way—a lawful or ―loyal‖1 way. Men are enlisted for the labour that kills—the labour of war: they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Let them be enlisted also for the labour that feeds:2 let them be counted, trained, fed, dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough exercise as carefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the officers of troops of life be held as much gentlemen as the officers of troops of death; and all is done: but neither this, nor any other right thing, can be accomplished—you can‘t even see your way to it—unless, first of all, both servant and master are resolved that, come what will of it, they will do each other justice. 39. People are perpetually squabbling about what will be best to do, or easiest to do, or adviseablest to do, or profitablest to do; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, ever ask what it is just to do.3 And it is the law of heaven that you shall not be able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to judge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing constantly reiterated by our Master—the order of all others that is given oftenest—―Do justice and judgment.‖4 That‘s your Bible order; 1 [On this subject, see Munera Pulveris, § 105 (Vol. XVII. p. 239); and compare in this volume, pp. 139, 476.] 2 [Compare Vol. XVI. p. 26, and Vol. XVII. pp. 22–23.] 3 [Compare Unto this Last, § 7 (Vol. XVII. p. 28).] 4 [Genesis xviii. 19; compare below, p. 492.] 420 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE that‘s the ―Service of God,‖—not praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are merry, and to pray when you need anything;1 and, by the perverseness of the evil Spirit in us, we get to think that praying and psalm-singing are ―service.‖ If a child finds itself in want of anything, its runs in and asks its father for it—does it call that doing its father a service? If it begs for a toy or a piece of cake—does it call that serving its father? That, with God, is prayer, and He likes to hear it: He likes you to ask Him for cake when you want it; but he doesn‘t call that ―serving Him.‖ Begging is not serving: God likes mere beggars as little as you do—He likes honest servants,—not beggars. So when a child loves its father very much, and is very happy, it may sing little songs about him; but it doesn‘t call that serving its father; neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It is enjoying ourselves, if it‘s anything, most probably it is nothing; but if it‘s anything it is serving ourselves, not God. And yet we are impudent enough to call our beggings and chauntings ―Divine service‖: we say, ―Divine service will be ‗performed‖‘ (that‘s our word—the form of it gone through) ―at so-and-so o‘clock.‖ Alas! unless we perform Divine service in every willing act of life, we never perform it at all. The one Divine work—the one ordered sacrifice—is to do justice; and it is the last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As much charity as you choose, but no justice. ―Nay,‖ you will say, ―charity is greater than justice.‖ Yes, it is greater; it is the summit of justice—it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But you can‘t have the top without the bottom; you cannot build upon charity. You must build upon justice, for this main reason, that you have not, at first, charity to build with. It is the last reward of good work. Do justice to your brother (you can do that whether you love him or not), and you 1 [James v. 13; Matthew vii. 7.] I. WORK 421 will come to love him. But do injustice to him, because you don‘t love him; and you will come to hate him. 40. It is all very fine to think you can build upon charity to begin with; but you will find all you have got to begin with begins at home, and is essentially love of yourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night, will go to ―Divine service‖ next Sunday, all nice and tidy; and your little children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely little Sunday feathers in their hats; and you‘ll think, complacently and piously, how lovely they look going to church in their best! So they do: and you love them heartily, and you like sticking feathers in their hats. That‘s all right: that is charity; but it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come to the poor little crossing sweeper, got up also—it in its Sunday dress,—the dirtiest rags it has,—that it may beg the better: you will give it a penny, and think how good you are, and how good God is to prefer your child to the crossing sweeper, and bestow on it a divine hat, feather, and boots, and the pleasure of giving pence, instead of begging for them.1 That‘s charity going abroad. But what does Justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian Justice has been strangely mute and seemingly blind; and, if not blind, decrepit, this many a day: she keeps her accounts still, however—quite steadily—doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and through acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention she cares about). You must put your ear down ever so close to her lips, to hear her speak; and then you will start at what she first whispers, for it will certainly be, ―Why shouldn‘t that little crossing sweeper have a feather on its head, as well as your own child?‖ Then you may ask Justice, in an amazed manner, ―How she can possibly be so foolish as to think children could sweep crossings with 1 [The words ―and how good . . . begging for them‖ were not in eds. 1–3, being added in 1873.] 422 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE feathers on their heads?‖ Then you stoop again, and Justice says—still in her dull, stupid way—―Then, why don‘t you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep the crossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a hat and feather?‖ Mercy on us (you think), what will she say next! And you answer, of course, that ―you don‘t, because everybody ought to remain content in the position in which Providence has placed them.‖1 Ah, my friends, that‘s the gist of the whole question. Did Providence put them in that position, or did you? You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain content in the ―position in which Providence has placed him.‖ That‘s modern Christianity. You say—―We did not knock him into the ditch.‖ We shall never2 know what you have done, or left undone, until the question with us, every morning, is, not how to do the gainful thing, but how to do the just thing, during the day; nor until we are at least so far on the way to being Christian, as to acknowledge that maxim of the poor half-way Mahometan, ―One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of prayer.‖ 41. Supposing, then, we have it determined with appropriate justice, who is to do the hand work, the next questions must be how the hand-workers are to be paid, and how they are to be refreshed, and what play they are to have. Now, the possible quantity of play depends on the possible quantity of pay; and the quantity of pay is not a matter for consideration to hand-workers only, but to all workers. Generally, good, useful work, whether of the hand or head, is either ill-paid, or not paid at all. I don‘t say it should be so, but it always is so. People, as a rule, only play for being amused or being cheated, not for being served. Five thousand a year to your talker, 1 [See the note on this subject in Vol. XVII. p. 320.] 2 [The original editions read differently here:— ―. . . into the ditch. How do you know what you have done, or are doing? That‘s just what we have all got to know, and what we shall never know, until the question . . .‖] I. WORK 423 and a shilling a day to your fighter, digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the best head work in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for.1 How much do you think Homer got for his Iliad? or Dante for his Paradise? only bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other people‘s stairs. In science, the man who discovered the telescope, and first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon; the man who invented the microscope, and first saw earth, died of starvation, driven from his home. It is indeed very clear that God means all thoroughly good work and talk to be done for nothing. Baruch the scribe did not get a penny a line for writing Jeremiah‘s second roll for him, I fancy; and St. Stephen did not get bishop‘s pay for that long sermon of his to the Pharisees; nothing but stones.2 For indeed that is the world-father‘s proper payment. So surely as any of the world‘s children work for the world‘s good, honestly, with head and heart; and come to it, saying, ―Give us a little bread, just to keep the life in us,‖ the world-father answers them, ―No, my children, not bread; a stone, if you like, or as many as you need, to keep you quiet, and tell to future ages, how unpleasant you made yourself to the one you lived in.‖3 42. But the hand-workers are not so ill off as all this comes to. The worst that can happen to you is to break 1 [With this passage compare Vol. XVI. p. 83, Vol. XVII. p. 184; and Carlyle‘s Past and Present, book i. ch. iii. (―The day‘s-wages of John Milton‘s day‘s-work, named Paradise Lost and Milton’s Works, were Ten Pounds paid by instalments, and a rather close escape from death on the gallows‖). The reference here to Dante is to the reference he makes to his own exile at Verona and elsewhere in Paradiso, xvii. 58–60:— ―Thou shalt prove How salt the savour is of other‘s bread; How hard the passage, to descend and climb By other‘s stairs.‖ For other references to Galileo, see Vol. VII. p. 453; Mornings in Florence, § 120; and Fors Clavigera, Letter 67. The inventor of the microscope was Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723); but Ruskin seems here to be thinking of Swammerdam (1637–1680), who introduced improvements in it: for him see Vol. VII. pp. 333, 450. His devotion to science led to the neglect of his profession of medicine; his father stopped supplies; and for a time he endured many privations.] 2 [Jeremiah xxxvi. 4; Acts vii.] 3 [The words ―and tell . . . lived in‖ were not in the original editions.] 424 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE stones; not be broken by them. And for you there will come a time for better payment; some day, assuredly,1 we shall pay people not quite so much for talking in Parliament and doing nothing, as for holding their tongues out of it, and doing something; we shall pay our ploughman a little more, and our lawyer a little less, and so on: but, at least, we may even now take care that whatever work is done shall be fully paid for; and the man who does it, paid for it, not somebody else; and that it shall be done in an orderly, soldierly, well-guided, wholesome way, under good captains and lieutenants of labour; and that it shall have its appointed times of rest, and enough of them; and that, in those times, the play shall be wholesome play, not in theatrical gardens, with tin flowers and gas sunshine, and girls dancing because of their misery; but in true gardens, with real flowers, and real sunshine, and children dancing because of their gladness; so that truly the streets shall be full (the ―streets,‖ mind you, not the gutters,) of children, playing in the midst thereof.2 We may take care that working men shall have at least as good books to read as anybody else, when they‘ve time to read them; and as comfortable firesides to sit at as anybody else, when they‘ve time to sit at them. This, I think, can be managed for you, my laborious friends, in the good time. 43. IV. I must go on, however, to our last head, concerning ourselves all, as workers. What is wise work, and what is foolish work? What the difference between sense and nonsense, in daily occupation? There are three tests of wise work:—that it must be honest, useful, and cheerful.3 1 [The original editions here add:— ―. . . assuredly, more pence will be paid to Peter the Fisherman, and fewer to Peter the Pope; we shall pay . . .‖] 2 [Zechariah viii. 5.] 3 [The original editions have here an additional passage:— ―. . .daily occupation? Well, wise work is, briefly, work with God. Foolish work is work against God. And work done with God, which He will help, may be briefly described as ‗Putting in Order‘—that is, enforcing God‘s law of order, spiritual and material, over men and things. The I. WORK 425 (1.) It is HONEST. I hardly know anything more strange than that you recognize honesty in play, and you do not in work. In your lightest games, you have always some one to see what you call ―fair-play.‖ In boxing, you must hit fair; in racing, start fair. Your English watchword is ―fair-play,‖ your English hatred, foul-play. Did it never strike you that you wanted another watchword also, ―fair-work,‖? and another and bitterer hatred,—―foul-work‖? Your prize-fighter has some honour in him yet: and so have the men in the ring round him: they will judge him to lose the match, by foul hitting. But your prize-merchant gains his match by foul selling, and no one cries out against that! You drive a gambler out of the gambling-room who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman in flourishing business, who loads scales! For observe, all dishonest dealing is loading scales. What difference does it make whether I get short weighut, adulterate substance or dishonest fabric—unless that flaw in the substance or fabric is the worse evil of the two.1 Give me short measure of food, and I only lose by you; but give me adulterate food, and I die by you.2 Here, then, is your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen,—to be true to yourselves and to us who would help you. We can do nothing for you, nor you for yourselves, first thing you have to do, essentially; the real ‗good work‘ is, with respect to men, to enforce justice, and with respect to things, to enforce tidiness, and fruitfulness. And against these two great human deeds, justice and order, there are perpetually two great demons contending,—the devil of iniquity, or inequity, and the devil of disorder, or of death; for death is only consummation of disorder. You have to fight these two fiends daily. So far as you don‘t fight against the fiend of iniquity, you work for him. You ‗work iniquity,‘ and the judgment upon you, for all your ‗Lord, Lord‘s,‘ will be ‗Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.‘ And so far as you do not resist the fiend of disorder, you work disorder, and you yourself do the work of Death, which is sin, and has for its wages, Death himself. ―Observe then, all wise work is mainly threefold in character. It is honest, useful, and cheerful.‖ The Bible references here are to Matthew vii. 21 and 23.] 1 [The original editions read here:— ―. . . or dishonest fabric. The fault in the fabric is incomparably the worst of the two. Give me . . .‖] 2 [On the subject of adulteration, see Vol. XVII. p. 383 n.] 426 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE without honesty. Get that, you get all; without that, your suffrages, your reforms, your free-trade measures, your institutions of science, are all in vain. It is useless to put your heads together, if you can‘t put your hearts together. Shoulder to shoulder, right hand to right hand, among yourselves, and no wrong hand to anybody else, and you‘ll win the world yet.1 44. (II.) Then, secondly, wise work is USEFUL. No man minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it comes to something; but when it is hard, and comes to nothing; when all our bees‘ business turns to spider‘s; and for honey-comb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the next breeze,—that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever ask ourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is coming to anything or not? We don‘t care to keep what has been nobly done; still less do we care to do nobly what others would keep; and, least of all, to make the work itself useful, instead of deadly, to the doer, so as to exert his life indeed, but not to waste it. Of all wastes, the greatest waste that you can commit is the waste of labour. If you went down in the morning into your dairy, and found that your youngest child had got down before you; and that he and the cat were at play together, and that he had poured out all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you would scold the child, and be sorry the cream was wasted. But if, instead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden bowls with human life in them,2 and instead of the cat to play with,—the devil to play with: and you yourself the player; and instead of leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God at the fountain, you break it in the dust yourself, and pour the human life out on the ground for the fiend to lick up—that is no waste! 45. What! you perhaps think, ―to waste the labour of men is not to kill them.‖ Is it not? I should like to [Compare Time and Tide, Vol. XVII. pp. 324–325.] 2 [See Ecclesiastes xii. 6.] I. WORK 427 know how you could kill them more utterly,—kill them with second deaths,1 seventh deaths, hundredfold deaths? It is the slightest way of killing to stop a man‘s breath. Nay, the hunger, and the cold, and the whistling bullets—our love messengers between nation and nation,—have brought pleasant messages to many a man before now: orders of sweet release, and leave at last to go where he will be most welcome and most happy. At the worst you do but shorten his life, you do not corrupt his life. But if you put him to base labour, if you bind his thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at last leave him not so much as strength to reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that for yourself, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have done with him, having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of that grave everlasting: (though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks of some of our family vaults will hold closer in the resurrection day than the sod over the labourer‘s head), this you think is no waste, and no sin!2 46. (III.) Then, lastly, wise work is CHEERFUL, as a child‘s work is. And now I want you to take one thought home with you, and let it stay with you. Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, ―Thy kingdom come.‖ Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very wrong, and say he ―takes God‘s name in vain.‖3 But there‘s a twenty times worse way of taking His name in vain than that. It is to ask God for what we don’t want. He doesn‘t like that sort of prayer. If you don‘t want a thing, don‘t ask for it: such asking is the worst mockery of your King you can insult Him with; the soldiers striking Him on the head with the reed was nothing to that.4 If you do not wish for His 1 [See Revelation xx. 14, etc.] 2 [In the MS. Ruskin added a note here: ―Read my last bit out of Fraser.‖ Compare, that is, the closing passage of Munera Pulveris (Vol. XVII. pp. 282–283).] 3 [Matthew vi. 10; Exodus xx. 7.] 4 [Matthew xxvii. 30.] 428 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE kingdom, don‘t pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it is; we have all prayed for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, it is not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all at once, but quietly; nobody knows how. ―The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.‖ Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in our hearts: ―the kingdom of God is within you.‖1 And, being within us, it is not a thing to be seen, but to be felt; and though it brings all substance of good with it, it does not consist in that: ―the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost;2 joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit.3 Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there‘s one curious condition to be first accepted. You must enter it as children, or not at all: ―Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall not enter therein.‖4 And again, ―Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.‖* 47. Of such, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such as children.5 I believe most mothers who read that text think that all heaven, or the earth—when it gets to be like heaven—is to be full of babies. But that‘s not so. ―Length of days and long life and peace,‖6 that is the

• I have referred oftener to the words of the English Bible in this lecture than in any

other of my addresses, because I was here speaking to an audience which professed to accept its authority implicitly.7 [1873.] 1 [Matthew xxii. 32; Luke xvii. 20, 21.] 2 [Romans xiv. 17.] 3 [On these words, see Vol. VII. p. 206, and Vol. XVII. pp. 60, 225, 287.] 4 [Mark x. 15, 14.] 5 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 53, where Ruskin refers to this distinction, and further enforces it.] 6 [Proverbs iii. 2.] 7 [See above, author‘s Introduction, §§ 10 seq.] I. WORK 429 blessing; not to die, still less to live, in babyhood.1 It is the character of children we want, and must gain at our peril; let us see, briefly, in what it consists. The first character of right childhood is that it is Modest. A well-bred child does not think it can teach its parents, or that it knows everything. It may think its father and mother know everything—perhaps that all grown-up people know everything; very certainly it is sure that it does not. And it is always asking questions, and wanting to know more. Well, that is the first character of a good and wise man at his work. To know that he knows very little;—to perceive that there are many above him wiser than he; and to be always asking questions, wanting to learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern; it is an old saying (Plato‘s,2 but I know not if his, first) and as wise as old. 48. Then, the second character of right childhood is to be Faithful. Perceiving that its father knows best what is good for it, and having found always, when it has tried its own way against his, that he was right and it was wrong, a noble child trusts him at last wholly, gives him its hand, and will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. And that is the true character of all good men also, as obedient workers, or soldiers under captains. They must trust their captains;—they are bound for their lives to 1 [Here the original editions read differently:— ―I believe most mothers who read that text think that all heaven is to be full of babies. But that‘s not so. There will be children there, but the hoary head is the crown. ‗Length of days, and long life and peace,‘ that is the blessing, not to die in babyhood. Children die but for their parents‘ sins; God means them to live, but He can‘t let them always; then they have their earlier place in heaven; and the little child of David, vainly prayed for;—the little child of Jeroboam, killed by its mother‘s step on its own threshold,—they will be there. But weary old David, and weary old Barzillai, having learned children‘s lessons at last, will be there too; and the one question for us all, young or old, is, have we learned our child‘s lesson? it is the character. . .‖ The Bible references here are to 2 Samuel xii. 16–18; I Kings xiv. 17; 2 Samuel xix. 32.] 2 [Republic, i. 346, 347.] 430 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE choose none but those whom they can trust.1 Then, they are not always to be thinking that what seems strange to them, or wrong in what they are desired to do, is strange or wrong. They know their captain; where he leads they must follow,—what he bids, they must do; and without this trust and faith, without this captainship and soldiership, no great deed, no great salvation, is possible to man.2 49. Then, the third character of right childhood is to be Loving. Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back. It loves everything near it, when it is a right kind of child; would hurt nothing, would give the best it has away, always if you need it; does not lay plans for getting everything in the house for itself: and, above all, delights in helping people; you cannot please it so much as by giving it a chance of being useful, in ever so humble a way. 50. And because of all these characters, lastly, it is Cheerful. Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing—being full of love to every creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or its duty. Well, that‘s the great worker‘s character also. Taking no thought for the morrow;3 taking thought only for the duty of the day; trusting somebody else to take care of to-morrow; knowing indeed what labour is, but not what sorrow is; and always ready for play—beautiful play. For lovely human play is 1 [Compare § 120 (below, p. 483).] 2 [Here the original editions had an additional passage:— ―Among all the nations it is only when this faith is attained by them that they become great: the Jew, the Greek, the Mahometan, agree at least in testifying to this. It was a deed of this absolute trust that made Abraham the father of the faithful; it was the declaration of the power of God as captain over all men, and the acceptance of a leader appointed by Him, as commander of the faithful, which laid the foundation of whatever national power yet exists in the East; and the deed of the Greeks, which has become the type of unselfish and noble soldiership to all lands, and to all times, was commemorated, on the tomb of those who gave their lives to do it, in the most pathetic, so far as I know, or can feel, of all human utterances: ‗Oh, stranger, go and tell your people that we are lying here, having obeyed their words.‘ ‖] For the epitaph on the Lacedæmonians at Thermopylæ, see Vol. V. p. 412; Vol. VII. p. 214.] 3 [Matthew vi. 34.] I. WORK 431 like the play of the Sun. There‘s a worker for you. He, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run his course, but also he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course.1 See how he plays in the morning, with the mists below, and the clouds above, with a ray here, and a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere;2 that‘s the Sun‘s play; and great human play is like his—all various—all full of light and life, and tender, as the dew of the morning. 51. So then, you have the child‘s character in these four things—Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That‘s what you have got to be converted to. ―Except ye be converted and become as little children.‖3—You hear much of conversion now-a-days: but people always seem to think they have got to be made wretched by conversion,—to be converted to long faces. No, friends, you have got to be converted to short ones; you have to repent into childhood, to repent into delight, and delightsomeness. You can‘t go into a conventicle but you‘ll hear plenty of talk of backsliding. Backsliding, indeed! I can tell you, on the ways most of us go, the faster we slide back the better. Slide back into the cradle, if going on is into the grave:—back, I tell you; back—out of your long faces, and into your long clothes. It is among children only, and as children only, that you will find medicine for your healing and true wisdom for your teaching. There is poison in the counsels of the men of this world; the words they speak are all bitterness, ―the poison of asps is under their lips,‖4 but ―the sucking child shall play by the hole of the asp.‖ There is death in the looks of men. ―Their eyes are privily set against the poor:‖ they are as the uncharmable serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing.5 1 [Psalms xix. 5.] 2 [Compare Vol. XIII. p. 401, where Ruskin quotes these words.] 3 [Matthew xviii. 3.] 4 [Romans iii. 13. The following Bible references are Isaiah xi. 8; Psalms x. 8; Isaiah xi. 8 (again); Romans iii. 15; Psalms xvii. 11, 12; Isaiah xi. 6; Matthew xi. 25; Romans viii. 38; Psalms ciii. 12; xix. 5; Jeremiah v. 24; Psalms viii. 2.] 5 [So Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet (iii. 2, 47): ―the death-darting eye of cockatrice.‖] 432 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE But ―the weaned child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice‘ den.‖ There is death in the steps of men: ―their feet are swift to shed blood; they have compassed us in our steps like the lion that is greedy of his prey, and the young lion lurking in secret places;‖ but, in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, and the fatling with the lion, and ―a little child shall lead them.‖ There is death in the thoughts of men: the world is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it draws to a close; but the secret of it is known to the child, and the Lord of heaven and earth is most to be thanked in that ―He has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes.‖ Yes, and there is death—infinitude of death—in the principalities and powers of men. As far as the east is from the west, so far our sins are—not set from us, but multiplied around us: the Sun himself, think you he now ―rejoices‖ to run his course, when he plunges westward to the horizon, so widely red, not with clouds, but blood? And it will be red more widely yet. Whatever drought of the early and latter rain may be, there will be none of that red rain. You fortify yourselves, you arm yourselves against it, in vain; the enemy and avenger will be upon you also, unless you learn that it is not out of the mouths of the knitted gun, or the smoothed rifle, but ―out of the mouths of babes and sucklings‖ that the strength is ordained, which shall ―still the enemy and avenger.‖ LECTURE II TRAFFIC Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford [April 21, 1864] 52. MY good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among your hills that I might talk to you about this Exchange you are going to build:1 but, earnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say very little, about this same Exchange. I must talk of quite other things, though not willingly;—I could not deserve your pardon, if, when you invited me to speak on one subject, I wilfully spoke on another. But I cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care; and most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I do not care about this Exchange of yours. If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had answered, ―I won‘t come, I don‘t care about the Exchange of Bradford,‖ you would have been justly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt a carelessness. So I have come down, hoping that you will patiently let me tell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now remain silent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunity of speaking to a gracious audience. 53. In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange—because you don‘t; and because you know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at the essential 1 [At the time of the delivery of the lecture, no design had been ch osen for the Exchange (see the Introduction, above, p. lxxv.); and the chairman explained. in a speech at the conclusion of the lecture, that Ruskin had been invited to deliver it, not by the directors of the Exchange, but by a special committee of citizen s formed for the purpose.] 433 XVIII. 2 E 434 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE conditions of the case, which you, as business men, know perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You are going to spend £30,000, which to you, collectively, is nothing; the buying a new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important matter of consideration to me, than building a new Exchange is to you. But you think you may as well have the right thing for your money. You know there are a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don‘t want to do anything ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as a respectable architectural man-milliner; and you send for me, that I may tell you the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for the moment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. 54. Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have good architecture merely by asking people‘s advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character;1 and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty. And I want you to think a little of the deep significance of this word ―taste‖; for no statement of mine has been more earnestly or oftener controverted than that good taste is essentially a moral quality.2 ―No,‖ say many of my antagonists, ―taste is one thing, morality is another. Tell us what is pretty: we shall be glad to know that; but we need no sermons—even were you able to preach them, which may be doubted.‖3 Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not only a part and an index of morality;—it is the ONLY morality.4 The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, ―What do you like?‖ Tell me what you like, and I‘ll tell you 1 [Compare Vol. VIII. p. 248; Vol. X. pp. xlviii., 202.] 2 [For the statement, see, for instance, Vol. III. p. 110; Vol. V. pp. 94–95; Vol. XVI. p. 144.] 3 [The original editions read: ―. . . to know that; but preach no sermons to us.‖] 4 [Compare Queen of the Air, § 106, and Lectures on Art, § 95 (―so far from art being immoral, little else except art is moral‖). See also below, § 93, p. 463.] II. TRAFFIC 435 what you are. Go out into the street, and ask the first man or woman you meet, what their ―taste‖ is; and if they answer candidly, you know them, body and soul. ―You, my friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what do you like?‖ ―A pipe, and a quartern of gin.‖ I know you. ―You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy bonnet, what do you like?‖ ―A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table; and my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast.‖ Good, I know you also. ―You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you like?‖ ―My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths.‖ ―You, little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you like?‖ ―A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing.‖ Good; we know them all now. What more need we ask? 55. ―Nay,‖ perhaps you answer; ―we need rather to ask what these people and children do, than what they like. If they do right, it is no matter that they like what is wrong; and if they do wrong, it is no matter that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; and it does not matter that the man likes drinking, so that he does not drink; nor that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she will not learn her lessons; nor that the little boy likes throwing stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school.‖ Indeed, for a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time to come they like doing it. But they only are in a right moral state when they have come to like doing it; and as long as they don‘t like it, they are still in a vicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinking of the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but the man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in the evening, each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things:1 1 [Compare Vol. VII. p. 429; Vol. XI. p. 204.] 436 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE —not merely industrious, but to love industry—not merely learned, but to love knowledge—not merely pure, but to love purity—not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.1 56. But you may answer or think, ―Is the liking for outside ornaments,—for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or architecture, a moral quality?‖ Yes, most surely, if a rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures or statues is not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word ―good.‖ I don‘t mean by ―good,‖ clever—or learned—or difficult in the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely base and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an ―unmannered,‖ or ―immoral‖ quality. It is ―bad taste‖ in the profoundest sense—it is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian‘s, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. That is an entirely moral quality—it is the taste of the angels. And all delight in fine art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which we call ―loveliness‖—(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the things which deserve to be hated); and it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is just the vital function of all our being. What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character. 57. As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller‘s window. It was—―On 1 [Matthew v. 6.] II. TRAFFIC 437 the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all classes.‖1 ―Ah,‖ I thought to myself, ―my classifying friend, when you have diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The man who likes what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I think. Inevitably so. You may put him to other work if you choose; but, by the condition you have brought him into, he will dislike the work as much as you would yourself. You get hold of a scavenger or a costermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and ‗Pop goes the Weasel‘ for music. You think you can make him like Dante and Beethoven? I wish you joy of your lessons; but if you do, you have made a gentleman of him:—he won‘t like to go back to his costermongering.‖2 58. And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if I had time to-night, I could show you that a nation cannot be affected by any vice, or weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, either in bad art, or by want of art; and that there is no national virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed in all the art which circumstances enable the people possessing that virtue to produce. Take, for instance, your great English virtue of enduring and patient courage. You have at present in England only one art of any consequence—that is, iron-working. You know thoroughly well how to cast and hammer iron. Now, do you think, in those masses of lava which you build volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at the mouths of the Infernos you have created; do you think, on those iron plates, your courage and endurance are not written for ever,—not merely with an iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your great English vice—European vice—vice of all the world—vice of all other worlds that roll or shine in heaven, bearing 1 [The book is by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson; for another reference to it, see Vol. XVI. p. xxx. and n.] 2 [On the dilemma thus arising, see Time and Tide, §§ 101 seq. (Vol. XVII. pp. xcix., c.).] 438 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE with them yet the atmosphere of hell—the vice of jealousy, which brings competition into your commerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour into your wars—that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next neighbouring nation,1 the daily occupations of existence no longer possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in its sheath; so that at last, you have realised for all the multitudes of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilization of the earth,—you have realised for them all, I say, in person and in policy, what was once true only of the rough Border riders of your Cheviot hills— ―They carved at the meal With gloves of steel, And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr‘d;‖2— do you think that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are not written as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strength of the right hands that forged it? 59. Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous or the more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. Suppose, instead of being now sent for by you, I had been sent for by some private gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden separated only by a fruit wall from his next door neighbour‘s; and he had called me to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and such a paper might be desirable—perhaps a little fresco here and there on the ceiling—a damask curtain or so at the windows. ―Ah,‖ says my employer, ―damask curtains, indeed! That‘s all very fine, but you know I can‘t afford that kind of thing just now!‖ ―Yet the world credits you with a splendid income!‖ ―Ah, yes,‖ says my friend, ―but do you know, 1 [For Ruskin‘s frequent references to Anglo-French relations, see above, Introduction, pp. xxii.–xxiv.] 2 [The Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. stanza 4.] II. TRAFFIC 439 at present I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steeltraps?‖ ―Steel-traps! for whom?‖ ―Why, for that fellow on the other side the wall, you know: we‘re very good friends, capital friends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the wall; we could not possibly keep on friendly terms without them, and our spring guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever fellows enough; and there‘s never a day passes that we don‘t find out a new trap, or a new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about fifteen millions a year each in our traps, take it altogether; and I don‘t see how we‘re to do with less.‖ A highly comic state of life for two private gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly comic. Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart‘s blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic, I think. 60. Mind, I know a great deal of this is play,1 and willingly allow for that. You don‘t know what to do with yourselves for a sensation: fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you through the whole of this unendurably long mortal life: you liked pop-guns when you were schoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs are only the same things better made: but then the worst of it is, that what was play to you when boys, was not play to the sparrows; and what is play to you now, is not play to the small birds of State neither; and for the black eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots at them, if I mistake not.2 61. I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without farther instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation‘s vice, or virtue, was written 1 [See above, p. 408.] 2 [The reference was to the reluctance of this country to take arms in defence of Denmark against Prussia and Austria. See Ruskin‘s letter to the Morning Post of July 7, 1864, advocating intervention (below, p. 548); and compare the Introduction, above, pp. xxiv.–xxv.] 440 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE in its art: the soldiership of early Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of Tuscany; the splendid human energy of Venice. I have no time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now1 ); but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a more searching manner. I notice that among all the new buildings which cover your once wild hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large proportion, with your mills and mansions; and I notice also that the churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and mills are never Gothic. May I ask the meaning of this? for, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches;2 and when the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to the Hôtel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an Italian St. Paul‘s. But now you live under one school of architecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doing this? Am I to understand that you are thinking of changing your architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your churches experimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in a church? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved for your religious services? For if this be the feeling, though it may seem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor less than that you have separated your religion from your life.3 1 [As, chiefly, in The Stones of Venice.] 2 [On this domesticity of Gothic, see Stones of Venice, vol. ii. (Vol. X. pp. 123, 312).] 3 [On this subject, see Lectures on Architecture and Painting, §§ 114 seq. (Vol. XII. pp. 139 seq.).] II TRAFFIC 441 62. For consider what a wide significance this fact has; and remember that it is not you only, but all the people of England, who are behaving thus, just now. You have all got in to the habit of calling the church ―the house of God.‖ I have seen, over the doors of many churches, the legend actually carved, ―This is the house of God and this is the gate of heaven.‖1 Now, note where that legend comes from, and of what place it was first spoken. A boy leaves his father‘s house to go on a long journey on foot, to visit his uncle: he has to cross a wild hill-desert; just as if one of your own boys had to cross the wolds to visit an uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your boy finds himself somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors, at sunset. It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot farther that night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best he may, gathering a few of the stones together to put under his head;—so wild the place is, he cannot get anything but stones. And there, lying under the broad night, he has a dream; and he sees a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and the angels of God are seen ascending and descending upon it. And when he wakes out of his sleep, he says, ―How dreadful is this place; surely this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.‖ This PLACE, observe; not this church; not this city; not this stone, even, which he puts up for a memorial—the piece of flint on which his head was lain. But this place; this windy slope of Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted! this any place where God lets down the ladder. And how are you to know where that will be? or how are you to determine where it may be, but by being ready for it always? Do you know where the lightning is to fall next? You do know that, partly; you can guide the lightning; but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which 1 [Genesis xxviii. 17.] 442 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE is as that lightning when it shines from the east to the west.1 63. But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve a merely ecclesiastical purpose, is only one of the thousand instances in which we sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches ―temples.‖ Now, you know perfectly well they arenot temples. They have never had, never can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are ―synagogues‖—―gathering places‖—where you gather yourselves together as an assembly; and by not calling them so, you again miss the force of another mighty text—―Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the churches‖ [we should translate it],2 ―that they may be seen of men. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father,‖—which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but ―in secret.‖3 64. Now, you feel, as I say this to you—I know you feel—as if I were trying to take away the honour of your churches. Not so; I am trying to prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that the Church is not sacred—but that the whole Earth is. I would have you feel what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there is in all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches only ―holy,‖ you call your hearths and homes ―profane‖; and have separated yourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to the ground, instead of recognizing, in the places of their many and feeble Lares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. 65. ―But what has all this to do with our Exchange?‖ you ask me, impatiently. My dear friends, it has just 1 [Matthew xxiv. 27.] 2 [The square brackets here and the words between them were inserted by the author in 1873.] 3 [Matthew vi. 6.] II. TRAFFIC 443 everything to do with it; on these inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones; and if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you had before been interested in anything I have written, you must know that all I have yet said about architecture was to show this. The book I called The Seven Lamps was to show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture, without exception, had been produced. The Stones of Venice had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue; and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what style is best to build in, and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the two styles, but by another question—do you mean to build as Christians or as in fidels? And still more—do you mean to build as honest Christians or as honest Infidels? as thoroughly and confessedly either one or the other? You don‘t like to be asked such rude questions. I cannot help it; they are of much more importance than this Exchange business; and if they can be at once answered, the Exchange business settles itself in a moment. But before I press them farther, I must ask leave to explain one point clearly. 66. In all my past work, my endeavour has been to show that good architecture is essentially religious—the production of a faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people. But in the course of doing this, I have had also to show that good architecture is not ecclesiastical. 1 People are so apt to look upon religion as the business of the clergy, not their own, that the moment they hear of anything depending on ―religion,‖ they think it must also have depended on the priesthood; and I have had to take 1 [See Stones of Venice, Vol. X. p. 123.] 444 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE what place was to be occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often with seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the work of good and believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, ―Good architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of the laity.‖ No—a thousand times no; good architecture* has always been the work of the commonalty, not of the clergy. ―What,‖ you say, ―those glorious cathedrals—the pride of Europe—did their builders not form Gothic architecture?‖ No; they corrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in the baron‘s castle, and the burgher‘s street. It was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of labouring citizens and warrior kings.1 By the monk it was used as an instrument for the aid of his superstition: when that superstition became a beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreamed and pined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the crusade,—through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most foolish dreams; and in those dreams was lost. 67. I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding me when I come to the gist of what I want to say to-night;—when I repeat, that every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of a great national religion. You can‘t have bits of it here, bits there—you must have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not the monopoly of a clerical company—it is not the exponent of a theological dogma—it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible laws of an undoubted God. 68. Now there have as yet been three distinct schools of European architecture. I say, European, because Asiatic

• And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous and secularly-minded

commonalties. [1873.] 1 [In the original editions ―free citizens and soldier kings.‖] II. TRAFFIC 445 and African architectures belong so entirely to other races and climates, that there is no question of them here; only, in passing, I will simply assure you that whatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and India, is just good or great for the same reasons as the buildings on our side of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three great religions: the Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom and Power; the Mediæval, which was the worship of the God of Judgment and Consolation; the Renaissance, which was the worship of the God of Pride and Beauty: these three we have had—they are past,—and now, at last, we English have got a fourth religion, and a God of our own, about which I want to ask you. But I must explain these three old ones first. 69. I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom; so that whatever contended against their religion,—to the Jews a stumbling-block,—was, to the Greeks—Foolishness. 1 The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of which we keep the remnant in our words ―Di-urnal‖ and ―Di-vine‖—the god of Day, Jupiter the revealer.2 Athena is his daughter, but especially daughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the head.3 We are only with the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly, that her ægis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are both representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men to stone, as it were,) of the outmost and superficial spheres of knowledge—that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown 1 [1 Corinthians i. 23.] 2 [See Max Muller‘s Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. pp. 477, 496–497.] 3 [For the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, see Aratra Pentelici, §§ 71 seq.; for the Gorgon on her shield, Queen of the Air, § 53; for her ægis, ibid., § 94.] 446 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE man from the heart of the child. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by the full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she is crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear. This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity; and every habit of life, and every form of his art developed themselves from the seeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself, as a man, to do things evermore rightly and strongly;* not with any ardent affection or ultimate hope; but with resolute and continent energy of will, as knowing that for failure there was no consolation, and for sin there was no remission. And the Greek architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, and selfcontained. 70. Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which was essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the remission of sins; for which cause, it happens, too often, in certain phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partly glorified, as if, the more you had to be healed of, the more divine was the healing. The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a continual contemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of purification from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in a mingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partly luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and every one of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or weak ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the

• It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was chiefly of Beauty.

It was essentially of rightness and strength, founded on Forethought: the principal character of Greek art is not beauty, but design: and the Dorian Apollo -worship and Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine wisdom and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength and life; then, for heroic examples, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. (Compare Aratra Pentelici, § 200.) II. TRAFFIC 447 basest, when base people build it—of all, the noblest, when built by the noble. 71. And now note that both these religions—Greek and Mediæval—perished by falsehood in their own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a false philosophy—―Oppositions of science, falsely so called.‖1 The Mediæval religion of Consolation perished in false comfort; in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of absolution that ended the Mediæval faith; and I can tell you more, it is the selling of absolution which, to the end of time, will mark false Christianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins only by ending them; but false Christianity gets her remission of sins by compounding for them. And there are many ways of compounding for them. We English have beautiful little quiet ways of buying absolution, whether in low Church or high, far more cunning than any of Tetzel‘s trading.2 72. Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in which all Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in death. First, bals masquès in every saloon, and then guillotines in every square. And all these three worships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek worshipped Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon—the Virgin‘s temple. The Mediæval worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also—but to our Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell me what we worship, and what we build? 73. You know we are speaking always of the real, active, continual, national worship; that by which men act, while they live; not that which they talk of, when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal religion, to which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time; but we have also a practical and earnest religion, to which we 1 [1 Timothy vi. 20.] 2 [For another reference to the trading of Tetzel, the Papal agent for the sale of indulgences, and to Luther‘s protest on the door of the church of Wittenberg, see Vol. VII. p. 112).] 448 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE devote nine-tenths of our property, and six-sevenths of our time. And we dispute a great deal about the nominal religion: but we are all unanimous about this practical one; of which I think you will admit that the ruling goddess may be best generally described as the ―Goddess of Getting-on,‖ or ―Britannia of the Market.‖ The Athenians had an ―Athena Agoraia,‖ or Athena of the Market;1 but she was a subordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the principal type of ours. And all your great architectural works are, of course, built to her. It is long since you built a great cathedral; and how you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral on the top of one of these hills of yours, to make it an Acropolis! But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus,2 and innumerable; your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires! your harbourpiers; piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!—all these are built to your great Goddess of ―Getting-on‖; and she has formed, and will continue to form, your architecture, as long as you worship her; and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to her; you know far better than I. 74. There might, indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably good architecture for Exchanges—that is to say, if there were any heroism in the fact or deed of exchange, which might be typically carved on the outside of your building. For, you know, all beautiful architecture must be adorned with sculpture or painting; and for sculpture or painting, you must have a subject. And hitherto it has been a received opinion among the nations of the world that the only right subjects for either, were heroisms of some sort. Even on his pots and his flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an Apollo slaying serpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and earthborn 1 [Compare Notes on Prout and Hunt, Vol. XIV. p. 403.] 2 [The original editions read: ―. . .your railway mounds, prolonged masses of Acropolis; your railroad stations, vaster than the Parthenon . . .‖ The excavation of the temple of Ephesus was from 1869 onwards.] II. TRAFFIC 449 despondencies. On his temples, the Greek put contests of great warriors in founding states, or of gods with evil spirits. On his houses and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of angels conquering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this world for another: subject inappropriate, I think, to our direction of exchange here. And the Master of Christians not only left His followers without any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outside of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of His dislike of affairs of exchange within them.1 And yet there might surely be a heroism in such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, not impious. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has never been supposed to be in anywise consistent with the practice of supplying people with food, or clothes;2 but rather with that of quartering one‘s self upon them for food, and stripping them of their clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour of magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing the naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on a large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest to them anyhow! so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate race, who refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in giving them compulsory comfort!* and, as it were, ―occupying a country‖ with one‘s gifts, instead of one‘s armies? If one could only consider it as much a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get an eared field stripped; and contend who should build villages, instead of who should ―carry‖ them! Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing these serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be

• Quite serious, all this, though it reads like jest. [1873.]

1 [Matthew xxi. 12.] 2 [On the merchant as hero, or ―captain of industry,‖ see Unto this Last, Vol. XVII. pp. 36 seq.] XVIII. 2 F 450 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE ascertained by push of spade, as well as push of sword.1 Who is wisest? There are witty things to be thought of in planning other business than campaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fight with, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless. 75. The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier‘s work seems to be—that he is paid little for it—and regularly: while you traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in presumably benevolent business, like to be paid much for it—and by chance. I never can make out how it is that a knight-errant does not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a pedlar-errant always does;—that people are willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribands cheap; that they are ready to go on fervent crusades, to recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil the orders of a living one;—that they will go anywhere barefoot to preach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and are perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and fishes.* 76. If you chose to take the matter up on any such soldierly principle; to do your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries; and to be as particular about giving people the best food, and the best cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I could carve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. But I can only at present suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses; and making its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. And in the innermost chambers of it there might be a statue of Britannia of the Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, a partridge for her crest, typical at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas,

• Please think over this paragraph, too briefly and antithetically put, but one of

those which I am happiest in having written. [1873.] 1 [For other allusions to Ruskin‘s gospel of manual labour, see Vol. II. p. xxviii., and Vol. X. p. 201.] II. TRAFFIC 451 and of her interest in game; and round its neck, the inscription in golden letters, ―Perdix fovit quæ non peperit.‖* Then, for her spear, she might have a weaver‘s beam; and on her shield, instead of St. George‘s Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret proper, in the field; and the legend, ―In the best market,‖ † and her corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it, for a piece of money to go in at, on each day of the month. And I doubt not but that people would come to see your exchange, and its goddess, with applause. 77. Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange characters in this goddess of yours. She differs from the great Greek and Mediæval deities essentially in two things—first, as to the continuance of her presumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it. 1st, as to the Continuance. The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase of comfort. There was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation of function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just the most important question. Getting on—but where to? Gathering together—but how much? Do you mean to gather always—never to spend? If so, I wish you joy of your goddess, for I am just as well off as you, without the trouble of worshipping her at all. But if you do not spend, somebody else will—somebody else must. And it is because of this (among many other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-called science of Political Economy to be no science; because, namely, it has omitted the study of exactly the most important branch of the business—the study

• Jerem. xvii. 11, (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). ―As the partridge, fostering

what she brought not forth, so he that getteth riches, not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.‖ † Meaning, fully, ―We have brought our pigs to it.‖ [1873.] 452 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE of spending. 1 For spend you must, and as much as you make, ultimately. You gather corn:—will you bury England under a heap of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? You gather gold:—will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your streets with it? That is still one way of spending it. But if you keep it, that you may get more, I‘ll give you more; I‘ll give you all the gold you want—all you can imagine—if you can tell me what you‘ll do with it. You shall have thousands of gold pieces;—thousands of thousands—millions—mountains, of gold: where will you keep them? Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion—make Ossa like a wart?2 Do you think the rain and dew would then come down to you, in the streams from such mountains, more blessedly than they will down the mountains which God has made for you, of moss and whinstone? But it is not gold that you want to gather! What is it? greenbacks? No; not those neither. What is it then—is it ciphers after a capital I? Cannot you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you want! Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and say every evening, I am worth all those noughts more than I was yesterday. Won‘t that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you want? Not gold, not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will have to answer, after all, ―No; we want, somehow or other, money‘s worth.‖ Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and let her learn to stay therein. 78. II. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting this Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power; the second is of its extent. Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world‘s Pallas, and all the world‘s Madonna. They could teach all men, and they could comfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power of your Goddess of 1 [See Unto this Last, § 72 (Vol. XVII. p. 98).] 2 [Hamlet, v. 1, 306.] II. TRAFFIC 453 Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess—not of everybody‘s getting on—but only of somebody‘s getting on. This is a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal of the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and maintain. I asked you what it was, when I was last here;*—you have never told me. Now, shall I try to tell you? 79. Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed in a pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneath it. On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, with two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately-sized park; a large garden and hot-houses; and pleasant carriage drives through the shrubberies. In this mansion are to live the favoured votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious wife, and his beautiful family; he always able to have the boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in the Highlands for himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not less than a quarter of a mile long, with one steam engine at each end, and two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred feet high. In this mill are to be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church on Sunday, and always express themselves in respectful language. 80. Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed, seen from above; not at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families she is the Goddess of not Getting-on. ―Nay,‖ you say, ―they have all their chance.‖ Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must always be the same number of blanks. ―Ah! but in a lottery it is not skill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance.‖ What then!

• The Two Paths, § 89 [Vol. XVI. p. 337].

454 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE do you think the old practice, that ―they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can,‖1 is less iniquitous, when the power has become power of brains instead of fist? and that, though we may not take advantage of a child‘s or a woman‘s weakness, we may of a man‘s foolishness? ―Nay, but finally, work must be done, and some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom.‖ Granted, my friends. Work must always be, and captains of work must always be; and if you in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, you must know that they are thought unfit for this age, because they are always insisting on need of government, and speaking with scorn of liberty.2 But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or land;) neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to consume all the profits of the nation‘s work. Real kings, on the contrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the reverse of this,—by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation‘s work for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so infallible as that. Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely, unostentatiously? probably he is a King. Does he cover his body with jewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is not a King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is when the nation shares his splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only to be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones.3 But, even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and only the true kinghoods live, which are of royal labourers governing loyal labourers; who, both leading rough lives, establish the true dynasties. Conclusively you will find that 1 [Wordsworth: Rob Roy’s Grave.] 2 [See, among other passages, Vol. V. p. 379 n.; Vol. VII. pp. 248–249, 261, 287; and Vol. XV. p. 387.] 3 [1 Kings x. 27: compare Vol. IV. p. 157.] II. TRAFFIC 455 because you are king of a nation, it does not follow that you are to gather for yourself all the wealth of that nation; neither, because you are king of a small part of the nation, and lord over the means of its maintenance—over field, or mill, or mine,—are you to take all the produce of that piece of the foundation of national existence for yourself. 81. You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; or something else can and will. Even good things have no abiding power—and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? All history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing they never can do. Change must come; but it is ours to determine whether change of growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its rock, and Bolton priory in its meadow, but these mills of yours be the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels be as the wheels of eternity? Think you that ―men may come, and men may go,‖ but—mills—go on for ever?1 Not so; out of these, better or worse shall come; and it is for you to choose which. 82. I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose. I know, on the contrary, that you wish your workmen well; that you do much for them, and that you desire to do more for them, if you saw your way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all this wrong and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of you striving to do his best; but, unhappily, not knowing for whom this best should be done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by the plausible impiety of the modern economist,2 telling us that, ―To do the best for 1 [Tennyson‘s The Brook—a poem which Ruskin much admired (see Vol. IV. p. 355), and which he quoted also in Lectures on Art, § 119.] 2 [The original editions read differently here:— ―. . . saw your way to it, safely. I know that many of you have done, and are every day doing, whatever you feel to be in your power; and that . . . to do his best, without noticing that this best is essentially and centrally the best for himself, not for others. And all this has come of that thrice accursed, thrice impious doctrine of the modern economist that ‗to do the best for yourself is . . .‘ ‖] 456 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE ourselves, is finally to do the best for others.‖ Friends, our great Master said not so; and most absolutely we shall find this world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally to do the best for ourselves; but it will not do to have our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says of this matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of Plato,—if not the last actually written (for this we cannot know1 ), yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words—in which, endeavouring to give full crowning and harmonious close to all his thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of the Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, and the words cease, broken off for ever. 83. They are at the close of the dialogue called Critias, in which he describes, partly from real tradition, partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, and order, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis he conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man, which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the Sons of God inter-married with the daughters of men,2 for he supposes the earliest race to have been indeed the children of God; and to have corrupted themselves, until ―their spot was not the spot of his children.‖3 And this, he says, was the end; that indeed4 ―through many generations, so long as the God‘s nature in them yet was full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried themselves lovingly to all that had kindred with them in divineness; for their uttermost spirit was faithful and true, and in every wise great; so that, in all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with each other, and took all the chances of life; and 1 [―Why the Critias was never completed, whether from accident, or from advancing age, or from a sense of the artistic difficulty of the design, cannot be determined‖ (Jowett‘s Plato, vol. ii. p. 595, ed. 1871).] 2 [Genesis vi. 2.] 3 [Deuteronomy xxxii. 5.] 4 [Ruskin here gives his own version of Critias, 120 E., to the end.] II. TRAFFIC 457 despising all things except virtue, they cared little what happened day by day, and bore lightly the burden of gold and of possessions;1 for they saw that, if only their common love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased together with them; but to set their esteem and ardent pursuit upon material possession would be to lose that first, and their virtue and affection together with it. And by such reasoning, and what of the divine nature remained in them, they gained all this greatness of which we have already told; but when the God‘s part of them faded and became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced by the prevalent mortality; and the human nature at last exceeded, they then became unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell into shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see, having lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the blind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, being filled with all iniquity of inordinate possession and power. Whereupon, the God of Gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a once just nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such punishment upon them as might make them repent into restraining, gathered together all the gods into his dwelling place, which from heaven‘s centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; and having assembled them, he said‖ —— 84. The rest is silence.2 Last words of the chief wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden image, high by measureless cubits,3 set up where your green fields of England are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:4 this idol, forbidden 1 [Here Ruskin, probably by accident, omits a few words: ―neither were they intoxicated by luxury, nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that . . .‖ Eight lines lower, ―faded and became extinct‖ should rather be ―was beginning to fade away‖ (exithlos egigneto).] 2 [The last words of Hamlet.] 3 [See Daniel iii. 1.] 4 [Another reference to Daniel: see also Unto this Last, § 38 (Vol. XVII. p. 53).] 458 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in any age or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the purposes of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will come; or, worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—life, good for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness,1 and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace;*—then, and so sanctifying wealth into ―commonwealth,‖ all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen‘s duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples not made with hands,2 but riveted of hearts; and that kind of marble, crimsonveined, is indeed eternal.

• I imagine the Hebrew chant merely intends passionate repetition, and not a

distinction of this somewhat fanciful kind; yet we may profitably make it in reading the English. 1 [Proverbs iii. 17; often quoted by Ruskin: see Vol. XVI. p. 103 n.] 2 [Acts vii. 48.] LECTURE III WAR Delivered at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, 1865 85. YOUNG soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came unwillingly to-night, and many in merely contemptuous curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say, or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war. You may well think within yourselves that a painter might, perhaps without immodesty, lecture younger painters upon painting, but not young lawyers upon law, nor young physicians upon medicine—least of all, it may seem to you, young warriors, upon war. And, indeed, when I was asked to address you, I declined at first, and declined long; for I felt that you would not be interested in my special business, and would certainly think there was small need for me to come to teach you yours. Nay, I knew that there ought to be no such need, for the great veteran soldiers of England are now men every way so thoughtful, so noble, and so good, that no other teaching than their knightly example, and their few words of grave and tried counsel, should be either necessary for you, or even, without assurance of due modesty in the offerer, endured by you. 86. But being asked, not once nor twice, I have not ventured persistently to refuse; and I will try, in very few words, to lay before you some reason why you should accept my excuse, and hear me patiently. You may imagine that your work is wholly foreign to, and separate from, mine. So far from that, all the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war; no great art ever yet rose 459 460 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE on earth, but among a nation of soldiers. There is no art among a shepherd people, if it remains at peace. There is no art among an agricultural people, if it remains at peace. Commerce is barely consistent with fine art; but cannot produce it. Manufacture not only is unable to produce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds of it exist. There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on battle.1 87. Now, though I hope you love fighting for its own sake, you must, I imagine, be surprised at my assertion that there is any such good fruit of fighting. You supposed, probably, that your office was to defend the works of peace, but certainly not to found them: nay, the common course of war, you may have thought, was only to destroy them. And truly, I, who tell you this of the use of war, should have been the last of men to tell you so, had I trusted my own experience only. Hear why: I have given a considerable part of my life to the investigation of Venetian painting; and the result of that enquiry was my fixing upon one man as the greatest of all Venetians, and therefore, as I believed, of all painters whatsoever. I formed this faith (whether right or wrong matters at present nothing) in the supremacy of the painter Tintoret, under a roof covered with his pictures;2 and of those pictures, three of the noblest were then in the form of shreds of ragged canvas, mixed up with the laths of the roof, rent through by three Austrian shells. Now, it is not every lecturer who could tell you that he had seen three of his favourite pictures torn to rags by bomb-shells. And after such a sight, it is not every lecturer who would tell you that, nevertheless, war was the foundation of all great art. 88. Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from any careful 1 [Compare Queen of the Air, §§ 114 seq.] 2 [In 1845: see Vol. IV. pp. xxxvi.–xxxix. For the injuries to the pictures in the Scuola di San Rocco (which, however, were of a later date—viz. after the Austrian siege of Venice in 1848–1849), see Vol. XII. p. 421, and Vol. XVII. p. 132.] III. WAR 461 comparison of the states of great historic races at different periods. Merely to show you what I mean, I will sketch for you, very briefly, the broad steps of the advance of the best art of the world. The first dawn of it is in Egypt; and the power of it is founded on the perpetual contemplation of death, and of future judgment, by the mind of a nation of which the ruling caste were priests, and the second, soldiers. The greatest works produced by them are sculptures of their kings going out to battle, or receiving the homage of conquered armies. And you must remember also, as one of the great keys to the splendour of the Egyptian nation, that the priests were not occupied in theology only. Their theology was the basis of practical government and law; so that they were not so much priests as religious judges; the office of Samuel, among the Jews, being as nearly as possible correspondent to theirs.1 89. All the rudiments of art then, and much more than the rudiments of all science, were laid first by this great warrior-nation, which held in contempt all mechanical trades,2 and in absolute hatred the peaceful life of shepherds. From Egypt art passes directly into Greece, where all poetry, and all painting, are nothing else than the description, praise, or dramatic representation of war, or of the exercises which prepare for it, in their connection with offices of religion. All Greek institutions had first respect to war; and their conception of it, as one necessary office of all human and divine life, is expressed simply by the images of their guiding gods.3 Apollo is the god of all wisdom of the intellect; he bears the arrow and the bow, before he bears the lyre. Again, Athena is the goddess of all wisdom in conduct. Yet it is by the helmet and the shield, oftener than by the shuttle, that she is distinguished from other deities. 1 [For Ruskin‘s study of Egyptian art and history, see above, Introduction, pp. xxxiii.–xxxv.] 2 [On this subject, see Vol. XVII. p. 235 n.; and for Egypt in particular, Ethics of the Dust, § 31 (above, p. 241).] 3 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 45 (above, p. 102).] 462 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 90. There were, however, two great differences in principle between the Greek and the Egyptian theories of policy. In Greece there was no soldier caste; every citizen was necessarily a soldier. And, again, while the Greeks rightly despised mechanical arts as much as the Egyptians, they did not make the fatal mistake of despising agricultural and pastoral life; but perfectly honoured both. These two conditions of truer thought raise them quite into the highest rank of wise manhood that has yet been reached; for all our great arts, and nearly all our great thoughts, have been borrowed or derived from them. Take away from us what they have given; and we hardly can imagine how low the modern* European would stand. 91. Now, you are to remember, in passing to the next phase of history, that—though you must have war to produce art—you must also have much more than war; namely, an art-instinct or genius in the people; and that, though all the talent for painting in the world won‘t make painters of you, unless you have a gift for fighting as well, you may have the gift for fighting, and none for painting. Now, in the next great dynasty of soldiers, the art-instinct is wholly wanting. I have not yet investigated the Roman character enough to tell you the causes of this; but I believe, paradoxical as it may seem to you, that however truly the Roman might say of himself that he was born of Mars, and suckled by the wolf, he was nevertheless, at heart, more of a farmer than a soldier. The exercises of war were with him practical, not poetical; his poetry was in domestic life only, and the object of battle, ―pacis imponere morem.‖1 And the arts are extinguished in his hands, and do not rise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, there comes back into the mind of Europe a passionate delight in war itself, for the sake of war. And then,

• The modern, observe, because we have lost all inheritance from Florence or

Venice, and are now pensioners upon the Greeks only. [1873.] 1 [Virgil: Æneid, vi. 852.] III. WAR 463 with the romantic knighthood which can imagine no other noble employment,—under the fighting kings of France, England, and Spain; and under the fighting dukeships and citizenships of Italy, art is born again, and rises to her height in the great valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany, through which there flows not a single stream, from all their Alps or Apennines, that did not once run dark red from battle; and it reaches its culminating glory in the city which gave to history the most intense type of soldiership yet seen among men;—the city whose armies were led in their assault by their king,* led through it to victory by their king, and so led, though that king of theirs was blind, and in the extremity of his age. 92. And from this time forward, as peace is established or extended in Europe, the arts decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch of costliness, but lose their life, enlist themselves at last on the side of luxury and various corruption, and, among wholly tranquil nations, wither utterly away; remaining only in partial practice among races who, like the French and us, have still the minds, though we cannot all live the lives, of soldiers. 93. ―It may be so,‖ I can suppose that a philanthropist might exclaim. ―Perish then the arts, if they can flourish only at such a cost. What worth is there in toys of canvas and stone, if compared to the joy and peace of artless domestic life?‖ And the answer is—truly, in themselves, none. But as expressions of the highest state of the human spirit, their worth is infinite. As results they may be worthless, but, as signs, they are above price. For it is an assured truth that, whenever the faculties of men are at their fulness, they must express themselves by art; and to say that a state is without such expression, is to

• Henry Dandolo: the king of Bohemia at Crécy is very grand, too, and in the issue,

his knighthood is, to us, more memorable. 1 [1873.] 1 [For the ―blind old Dandolo,‖ see Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 20 n.). It was at the battle of Crécy that the Black Prince gained his spurs and adopted from the King of Bohemia, who had fallen fighting for France, the triple feather crest with the motto, Ich Dien, borne ever since by our Prince of Wales.] 464 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE say that it is sunk from its proper level of manly nature. So that, when I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men.1 94. It is very strange to me to discover this; and very dreadful—but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together, I found to be wholly untenable.2 Peace and the vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of peace and civilisation; but I found that those were not the words which the Muse of History coupled together: that, on her lips, the words were—peace, and sensuality—peace, and selfishness—peace, and death. I found, in brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word, and strength of thought, in war; that they were nourished in war, and wasted by peace; taught by war, and deceived by peace; trained by war, and betrayed by peace;—in a word, that they were born in war, and expired in peace. 95. Yet now note carefully, in the second place, it is not all war of which this can be said—nor all dragon‘s teeth, which, sown, will start up into men.3 It is not the rage of a barbarian wolf-flock, as under Genseric or Suwarrow;4 nor the habitual restlessness and rapine of mountaineers, as on the old borders of Scotland; nor the occasional struggle of a strong peaceful nation for its life, as in the wars of the Swiss with Austria; nor the contest of merely ambitious nations for extent of power, as in the wars of France under Napoleon, or the just terminated war in America.5 None of these forms of war build anything but tombs. But the creative, or foundational, war 1 [See above, § 54, p. 434.] 2 [See below, § 161, p. 515.] 3 [For another reference to the legend of Cadmus sowing the dragon‘s teeth, see The Tortoise of Ægina, § 17.] 4 [For the invasions of the Vandals under Genseric (406–477) and other leaders—―merely forms of Punishment and Destruction‖—see Pleasures of England, § 14; for Suwarrow, Vol. XIII. p. 512, and Fors Clavigera, Letter 77.] 5 [For Ruskin‘s view of the American Civil War, see above, p. 265 n.] III. WAR 465 is that in which the natural restlessness and love of contest among men are disciplined, by consent, into modes of beautiful—though it may be fatal—play: in which the natural ambition and love of power of men are disciplined into the aggressive conquest of surrounding evil: and in which the natural instincts of self-defence are sanctified by the nobleness of the institutions, and purity of the households which they are appointed to defend. To such war as this all men are born; in such war as this any man may happily die; and out of such war as this have arisen throughout the extent of past ages, all the highest sanctities and virtues of humanity. I shall therefore divide the war of which I would speak to you into three heads. War for exercise or play; war for dominion; and, war for defence. 96. (I.) And first, of war for exercise or play. I speak of it primarily in this light, because, through all past history, manly war has been more an exercise than anything else, among the classes who cause and proclaim it. It is not a game to the conscript, or the pressed sailor; but neither of these are the causers of it. To the governor who determines that war shall be, and to the youths who voluntarily adopt it as their profession, it has always been a grand pastime; and chiefly pursued because they had nothing else to do. And this is true without any exception. No king whose mind was fully occupied with the development of the inner resources of his kingdom, or with any other sufficing subject of thought, ever entered into war but on compulsion. No youth who was earnestly busy with any peaceful subject of study, or set on any serviceable course of action, ever voluntarily became a soldier. Occupy him, early and wisely, in agriculture or business, in science or in literature, and he will never think of war otherwise than as a calamity.* But leave him idle;

• A wholesome calamity, observe; not to be shrunk from, though not to be

provoked. But see the opening of the notes on Prussia, § 161. [1873.] XVIII. 2 G

466 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE and, the more brave and active and capable he is by nature, the more he will thirst for some appointed field for action; and find, in the passion and peril of battle, the only satisfying fulfilment of his unoccupied being. And from the earliest incipient civilization until now, the population of the earth divides itself, when you look at it widely, into two races; one of workers, and the other of players1—one tilling the ground, manufacturing, building, and otherwise providing for the necessities of life; the other part proudly idle, and continually therefore needing recreation, in which they use the productive and laborious orders partly as their cattle, and partly as their puppets or pieces in the game of death. 97.* Now, remember, whatever virtue or goodliness there may be in this game of war, rightly played, there is none when you thus play it with a multitude of human pawns. If you, the gentlemen of this or any other kingdom, choose to make your pastime of contest, do so, and welcome; but set not up these unhappy peasant-pieces upon the chequer of forest and field.2 If the wager is to be of death, lay it on your own heads, not theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olympic dust, though it be the dust of the grave, the gods will look upon, and be with you in; but they will not be with you, if you sit on the sides of the amphitheatre, whose steps are the mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial war. You also, you tender and delicate women, for whom, and by whose command, all true battle has been, and must ever be;3 you would perhaps shrink now,

• I dislike more and more every day the declamatory forms in which what I most

desired to make impressive was arranged for oral delivery; but these two paragraphs, 97, and 98, sacrifice no accuracy in their endeavour to be pompous, and are among the most importantly true passages I have ever written. [1873.] 1 [See above, §§ 19 seq. (p. 403).] 2 [The original editions read ―upon the green fielded board.‖] 3 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 92 (above, pp. 140–141).] III. WAR 467 though you need not, from the thought of sitting as queens above set lists where the jousting game might be mortal. How much more, then, ought you to shrink from the thought of sitting above a theatre pit in which even a few condemned slaves were slaying each other only for your delight! And do you not shrink from the fact of sitting above a theatre pit, where,—not condemned slaves,—but the best and bravest of the poor sons of your people, slay each other,—not man to man,—as the coupled gladiators; but race to race, in duel of generations? You would tell me, perhaps, that you do not sit to see this; and it is, indeed, true that the women of Europe—those who have no heart-interest of their own at peril in the contest—draw the curtains of their boxes, and muffle the openings; so that from the pit of the circus of slaughter there may reach them only at intervals a half-heard cry, and a murmur as of the wind‘s sighing, when myriads of souls expire. They shut out the death-cries; and are happy, and talk wittily among themselves. That is the utter literal fact, of what our ladies do in their pleasant lives. 98. Nay, you might answer, speaking with them—―We do not let these wars come to pass for our play, nor by our carelessness; we cannot help them. How can any final quarrel of nations be settled otherwise than by war?‖ I cannot now delay to tell you how political quarrels might be otherwise settled. But grant that they cannot. Grant that no law of reason can be understood by nations; no law of justice submitted to by them; and that, while questions of a few acres, and of petty cash, can be determined by truth and equity, the questions which are to issue in the perishing or saving of kingdoms can be determined only by the truth of the sword, and the equity of the rifle.1 Grant this, and even then, judge if it will always be necessary for you to put your quarrel into the hearts of your poor, and sign your treaties with peasants‘ 1 [On the relations of national to individual ethics, compare pp. 546–547 below, and Munera Pulveris, § 97 (Vol. XVII. p. 218).] 468 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE blood. You would be ashamed to do this in your own private position and power. Why should you not be ashamed also to do it in public place and power? If you quarrel with your neighbour, and the quarrel be indeterminable by law, and mortal, you and he do not send your footmen to Battersea fields to fight it out; nor do you set fire to his tenants‘ cottages, nor spoil their goods. You fight out your quarrel yourselves, and at your own danger, if at all. And you do not think it materially affects the arbitrament that one of you has a larger household than the other; so that, if the servants or tenants were brought into the field with their masters, the issue of the contest could not be doubtful? You either refuse the private duel, or you practise it under laws of honour, not of physical force; that so it may be, in a manner, justly concluded. Now the just or unjust conclusion of the private feud is of little moment, while the just or unjust conclusion of the public feud is of eternal moment: and yet, in this public quarrel, you take your servants‘ sons from their arms to fight for it, and your servants‘ food from their lips to support it; and the black seals on the parchment of your treaties of peace are the deserted hearth, and the fruitless field. 99. There is a ghastly ludicrousness in this, as there is mostly in these wide and universal crimes. Hear the statement of the very fact of it in the most literal words of the greatest of our English thinkers:— ―What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain ‗natural enemies‘ of the French there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, III. WAR 469 another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. ―And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. ―Straightway the word ‗Fire!‘ is given, and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcases, which it must bury, and anon shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.‖—Sartor Resartus. 1 100. Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of battle must not, and shall not, ultimately be played this way. But should it be played any way? Should it, if not by your servants, be practised by yourselves? I think, yes. Both history and human instinct seem alike to say, yes. All healthy men like fighting, and like the sense of danger; all brave women like to hear of their fighting, and of their facing danger. This is a fixed instinct in the fine race of them; and I cannot help fancying that fair fight is the best play for them; and that a tournament was a better game than a steeplechase. The time may perhaps come, in France, as well as here, for universal hurdle-races and cricketing: but I do not think universal cricket will bring out the best qualities of the nobles of either country. I 1 [Book ii. ch. viii.] 470 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE use, in such question, the test which I have adopted, of the connection of war with other arts; and I reflect how, as a sculptor, I should feel, if I were asked to design a monument for a dead knight, in Westminster Abbey, with a carving of a bat at one end, and a ball at the other. It may be the remains in me only of savage Gothic prejudice; but I had rather carve it with a shield at one end, and a sword at the other. And this, observe, with no reference whatever to any story of duty done, or cause defended. Assume the knight merely to have ridden out occasionally to fight his neighbour for exercise; assume him even a soldier of fortune, and to have gained his bread, and filled his purse, at the sword‘s point. Still, I feel as if it were, somehow, grander and worthier in him to have made his bread by sword play than any other play; I had rather he had made it by thrusting than by batting;—much rather than by betting.1 Much rather that he should ride war horses, than back race horses; and—I say it sternly and deliberately—much rather would I have him slay his neighbour than cheat him. 101. But remember, so far as this may be true, the game of war is only that in which the full personal power of the human creature is brought out in management of its weapons. And this for three reasons:— First, the great justification of this game is that it truly, when well played, determines who is the best man;—who is the highest bred, the most self-denying, the most fearless, the coolest of nerve, the swiftest of eye and hand. You cannot test these qualities wholly, unless there is a clear possibility of the struggle‘s ending in death. It is only in the fronting of that condition that the full trial of the man, soul and body, comes out. You may go to your game of wickets, or of hurdles, or of cards, and any knavery that is in you may stay unchallenged all the while. But if the play may be ended at any moment by a lance-thrust, a 1 [See above, § 26 (pp. 406—407).] III. WAR 471 man will probably make up his accounts a little before he enters it. Whatever is rotten and evil in him will weaken his hand more in holding a sword-hilt than in balancing a billiard-cue; and on the whole, the habit of living lightly hearted, in daily presence of death, always has had, and must have, power both in the making and testing of honest men. But for the final testing, observe, you must make the issue of battle strictly dependent on fineness of frame, and firmness of hand. You must not make it the question, which of the combatants has the longest gun, or which has got behind the biggest tree, or which has the wind in his face, or which has gunpowder made by the best chemists, or iron smelted with the best coal, or the angriest mob at his back. Decide your battle, whether of nations or individuals, on those terms;—and you have only multiplied confusion, and added slaughter to iniquity. But decide your battle by pure trial which has the strongest arm, and steadiest heart,—and you have gone far to decide a great many matters besides, and to decide them rightly.* 102. And the other reasons for this mode of decision of cause, are the diminution both of the material destructiveness, or cost, and of the physical distress of war. For you must not think that in speaking to you in this (as you may imagine) fantastic praise of battle, I have overlooked the conditions weighing against me. I pray all of you, who have not read, to read with the most earnest attention Mr. Helps‘ two essays, on War, and Government, in the first volume of the last series of Friends in Council. 1 Everything that can be urged against war is there simply, exhaustively, and most graphically stated. And all, there

• Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV. p. 9. [1873: p. 9 in the first 8vo edition.]

1 [Published in 1859; see another reference to the second series in Vol. XVII. p. 79 n. And for Ruskin‘s admiration of ―that most thoughtful writer,‖ see Vol. VII. p. 372 n., and Vol. XV. p. 227 n.] 472 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE urged, is true. But the two great counts of evil alleged against war by that most thoughtful writer, hold only against modern war. If you have to take away masses of men from all industrial employment,—to feed them by the labour of others,—to provide them with destructive machines, varied daily in national rivalship of inventive cost; if you have to ravage the country which you attack,—to destroy, for a score of future years, its roads, its woods, its cities and its harbours;—and if, finally, having brought masses of men, counted by hundreds of thousands, face to face, you tear those masses to pieces with jagged shot, and leave the living creatures, countlessly beyond all help of surgery, to starve and parch, through days of torture, down into clots of clay—what book of accounts shall record the cost of your work;—What book of judgment sentence the guilt of it? 103. That, I say, is modern war,—scientific war,—chemical and mechanic war,—how much worse than the savage‘s poisoned arrow! And yet you will tell me, perhaps, that any other war than this is impossible now. It may be so; the progress of science cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered than by new facilities of destruction; and the brotherly love of our enlarging Christianity be only proved by multiplication of murder. Yet hear, for a moment, what war was, in Pagan and ignorant days;—what war might yet be, if we could extinguish our science in darkness, and join the heathen‘s practice to the Christian‘s creed. I read you this from a book which probably most of you know well, and all ought to know—Müller‘s Dorians;*—but I have

• Vol. ii. Chap. 12, § 9. [1873.] 1

1 [The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, by C. O. Müller, translated from the German by Henry Tufnell and George Cornewall Lewis: Oxford, 1830, 2 vols. Ruskin gives another quotation from the book in Fors Clavigera, Letter 82. The passages here quoted are in book iii. ch. xii. §§ 9, 10. Dots are now inserted where Ruskin has omitted passages; and the passage ―The conduct. . .ill-omened‖—hitherto placed (probably by a copyist‘s error) at the end of the quotation—is inserted in its proper place.] III. WAR 473 put the points I wish you to remember in closer connection than in his text. 104. ―The chief characteristic of the warriors of Sparta was great composure and a subdued strength; the violence (lnrra) of Aristodemus and Isadas being considered as deserving rather of blame than praise; and these qualities in general distinguished the Greeks from the northern Barbarians, whose boldness always consisted in noise and tumult. The conduct of the Spartans in battle denotes a high and noble disposition, which rejected all the extremes of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy ceased when the victory was completed; and after the signal for retreat had been given, all hostilities ceased. The spoiling of arms, at least during the battle, was also interdicted; and the consecration of the spoils of slain enemies to the gods, as, in general, all rejoicings for victory, were considered as ill-omened. . . For the same reason the Spartans sacrificed to the Muses before an action; these goddesses being expected to produce regularity and order in battle; as they sacrificed on the same occasion in Crete to the god of love, as the confirmer of mutual esteem and shame. . . . Every man put on a crown, when the band of flute-players gave the signal for attack; all the shields of the line glittered with their high polish, and mingled their splendour with the dark red of the purple mantles, which were meant both to adorn the combatant, and to conceal the blood of the wounded; to fall well and decorously being an incentive the more to the most heroic valour.‖ 105. Such was the war of the greatest soldiers who prayed to heathen gods. What Christian war is, preached by Christian ministers, let any one tell you, who saw the sacred crowning, and heard the sacred flute-playing, and was inspired and sanctified by the divinely-measured and musical language, of any North American regiment preparing for its charge. And what is the relative cost of life in pagan and Christian wars, let this one fact tell you;—the Spartans won the decisive battle of Corinth with the loss of eight 474 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE men;1 the victors at indecisive Gettysburg confess to the loss of 30,000. 106. (II.) I pass now to our second order of war, the commonest among men, that undertaken in desire of dominion. And let me ask you to think for a few moments what the real meaning of this desire of dominion is—first in the minds of kings—then in that of nations. Now, mind you this first,—that I speak either about kings, or masses of men, with a fixed conviction that human nature is a noble and beautiful thing; not a foul nor a base thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, not their nature; as a folly which may be prevented, not a necessity which must be accepted. And my wonder, even when things are at their worst, is always at the height which this human nature can attain. Thinking it high, I find it always a higher thing than I thought it; while those who think it low, find it, and will find it, always, lower than they thought it: the fact being, that it is infinite, and capable of infinite height and infinite fall; but the nature of it—and here is the faith which I would have you hold with me—the nature of it is in the nobleness, not in the catastrophe. 107. Take the faith in its utmost terms. When the captain of the London shook hands with his mate, saying, ―God speed you! I will go down with my passengers,‖2 that I believe to be ―human nature.‖ He does not do it from any religious motive,—from any hope of reward, or any fear of punishment; he does it because he is a man. 1 [In July 394 B.C.: see Grote, 4th ed., vol. vii. p. 475, who remarks, however, that the victory was ―not sufficiently decisive to lead to important results.‖ The Lacedæmonians claimed to have lost only eight men; according to Diodorus (xiv. 83) their loss was 1100. At Gettysburg (July 1, 1863) the total loss in killed, wounded, or captured is put at 48,000 men.] 2 [For another reference to the foundering of the London, on January 11, 1866, see Vol. VIII. pp. 69–70 n. As this lecture was delivered in 1865, the present passage must have been inserted by Ruskin on revising the lecture for publication. Captain J. B. Martin was in command of the vessel; it was bound from London to Melbourne, and foundered off Falmouth. The captain‘s words were reported in the Times of January 18. Ruskin lost a relation (John Richardson, son of his Croydon aunt: see Præterita, i. ch. 5) in this wreck (see Aratra Pentelici, § 208).] III. WAR 475 But when a mother, living among the fair fields of merry England, gives her two-year-old child to be suffocated under a mattress in her inner room, while the said mother waits and talks outside: that I believe to be not human nature. You have the two extremes there, shortly. And you, men, and mothers, who are here face to face with me to-night, I call upon you to say which of these is human, and which inhuman,—which ―natural‖ and which ―unnatural.‖ Choose your creed at once, I beseech you:—choose it with unshaken choice,—choose it for ever. Will you take, for foundation of act and hope, the faith that this man was such as God made him, or that this woman was such as God made her? Which of them has failed from their nature,—from their present, possible, actual nature;—not their nature of long ago, but their nature of now? Which has betrayed it—falsified it? Did the guardian who died in his trust die inhumanly, and as a fool; and did the murderess of her child fulfil the law of her being? Choose, I say; infinitude of choices hang upon this. You have had false prophets among you,—for centuries you have had them,—solemnly warned against them though you were; false prophets, who have told you that all men are nothing but fiends or wolves, half beast, half devil. Believe that, and indeed you may sink to that. But refuse that, and have faith that God ―made you upright,‖1 though you have sought out many inventions; so, you will strive daily to become more what your Maker meant and means you to be, and daily gives you also the power to be,—and you will cling more and more to the nobleness and virtue that is in you, saying, ―My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go.‖2 108. I have put this to you as a choice, as if you might hold either of these creeds you liked best. But there is in reality no choice for you; the facts being quite easily ascertainable. You have no business to think about 1 [Ecclesiastes vii. 29.] 2 [Job xxvii. 6.] 476 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE this matter, or to choose in it. The broad fact is, that a human creature of the highest race, and most perfect as a human thing, is invariably both kind and true; and that as you lower the race, you get cruelty and falseness as you get deformity: and this so steadily and assuredly, that the two great words which, in their first use, meant only perfection of race, have come, by consequence of the invariable connection of virtue with the fine human nature, both to signify benevolence of disposition. The word ―generous,‖ and the word ―gentle,‖ both, in their origin, meant only ―of pure race,‖1 but because charity and tenderness are inseparable from this purity of blood, the words which once stood only for pride, now stand as synonyms for virtue. 109. Now, this being the true power of our inherent humanity, and seeing that all the aim of education should be to develop this;2—and seeing also what magnificent self-sacrifice the higher classes of men are capable of, for any cause that they understand or feel,—it is wholly inconceivable to me how well-educated princes, who ought to be of all gentlemen the gentlest, and of all nobles the most generous, and whose title of royalty means only their function of doing every man ―right‖ 3—how these, I say, throughout history, should so rarely pronounce themselves on the side of the poor, and of justice, but continually maintain themselves and their own interests by oppression of the poor, and by wresting of justice; and how this should be accepted as so natural, that the word loyalty, which means faithfulness to law, is used as if it were only the duty of a people to be loyal to their king, and not the duty of a king to be infinitely more loyal to his people. How comes it to pass that a captain will die with his passengers, and lean over the gunwale to give the parting 1 [On this subject compare Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. pt. ix. ch. vii. § 1).] 2 [See Vol. XVII. p. xcviii.] 3 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 113 (Vol. XVII. p. 239).] III. WAR 477 boat its course; but that a king will not usually die with, much less for, his passengers—thinks it rather incumbent on his passengers, in any number, to die for him? 110. Think, I beseech you, of the wonder of this. The sea captain, not captain by divine right, but only by company‘s appointment;—not a man of royal descent, but only a plebeian who can steer;—not with the eyes of the world upon him, but with feeble chance, depending on one poor boat, of his name being ever heard above the wash of the fatal waves; not with the cause of a nation resting on his act, but helpless to save so much as a child from among the lost crowd with whom he resolves to be lost,—yet goes down quietly to his grave, rather than break his faith to these few emigrants. But your captain by divine right,—your captain with the hues of a hundred shields of kings upon his breast,—your captain whose every deed, brave or base, will be illuminated or branded for every before unescapable eyes of men,—your captain whose every thought and act are beneficent, or fatal, from sunrising to setting, blessing as the sunshine, or shadowing as the night,—this captain, as you find him in history, for the most part thinks only how he may tax his passengers, and sit at most ease in his state cabin! 111. For observe, if there had been indeed in the hearts of the rulers of great multitudes of men any such conception of work for the good of those under their command, as there is in the good and thoughtful masters of any small company of men, not only wars for the sake of mere increase of power could never take place, but our idea of power itself would be entirely altered. Do you suppose that to think and act even for a million of men, to hear their complaints, watch their weaknesses, restrain their vices, make laws for them, lead them, day by day, to purer life, is not enough for one man‘s work? If any of us were absolute lord only of a district of a hundred miles square and were resolved on doing our utmost for it; making it feed as large a number of people as possible; making every 478 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE clod productive, and every rock defensive, and every human being happy; should we not have enough on our hands, think you? 112. But if the ruler has any other aim than this; if, careless of the result of his interference, he desires only the authority to interfere; and, regardless of what is ill-done or well-done, cares only that it shall be done at his bidding;—if he would rather do two hundred miles‘ space of mischief, than one hundred miles‘ space of good, of course he will try to add to his territory; and to add illimitably. But does he add to his power? Do you call it power in a child, if he is allowed to play with the wheels and bands of some vast engine, pleased with their murmur and whirl, till his unwise touch, wandering where it ought not, scatters beam and wheel into ruin? Yet what machine is so vast, so incognizable, as the working of the mind of a nation; what child‘s touch so wanton, as the word of a selfish king? And yet, how long have we allowed the historian to speak of the extent of the calamity a man causes, as a just ground for his pride; and to extol him as the greatest prince, who is only the centre of the widest error. Follow out this thought by yourselves; and you will find that all power, properly so called, is wise and benevolent. There may be capacity in a drifting fire-ship to destroy a fleet; there may be venom enough in a dead body to infect a nation:—but which of you, the most ambitious, would desire a drifting kinghood, robed in consuming fire, or a poison-dipped sceptre whose touch was mortal? There is no true potency, remember, but that of help;1 nor true ambition, but ambition to save. 113. And then, observe farther, this true power, the power of saving, depends neither on multitude of men, nor on extent of territory. We are continually assuming that nations become strong according to their numbers. They indeed become so, if those numbers can be made of one 1 [Compare Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. viii. ch. i. (―The Law of Help‖) Vol. VII. pp. 203–216: the passage is cited above, in Ethics of the Dust, p. 359.] III. WAR 479 mind; but how are you sure you can stay them in one mind, and keep them from having north and south minds?1 Grant them unanimous, how know you they will be unanimous in right? If they are unanimous in wrong, the more they are, essentially the weaker they are.2 Or, suppose that they can neither be of one mind, nor of two minds, but can only be of no mind? Suppose they are a mere helpless mob; tottering into precipitant catastrophe, like a waggon-load of stones when the wheel comes off. Dangerous enough for their neighbours, certainly, but not ―powerful.‖ 114. Neither does strength depend on extent of territory, any more than upon number of population. Take up your maps when you go home this evening,—put the cluster of British Isles beside the mass of South America; and then consider whether any race of men need care how much ground they stand upon. The strength is in the men, and in their unity and virtue, not in their standing room: a little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools; and only that nation gains true territory, which gains itself. 115. And now for the brief practical outcome of all this. Remember, no government is ultimately strong, but in proportion to its kindness and justice; and that a nation does not strengthen, by merely multiplying and diffusing itself. We have not strengthened as yet, by multiplying into America. Nay, even when it has not to encounter the separating conditions of emigration, a nation need not boast itself of multiplying on its own ground, if it multiplies only as flies or locusts do, with the god of lies for its god. It multiplies its strength only by increasing as one great family, in perfect fellowship and brotherhood. And 1 [Again a reference to the American Civil War.] 2 [Compare the quotation from Emerson in Time and Tide, § 143 (Vol. XVII. p. 433). See also the letter to the Daily Telegraph of October 7, 1870, on ―The Franco-Prussian War,‖ in which Ruskin quoted §§ 74, 102–103, 113–114 of The Crown of Wild Olive: the letter (Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. p. 34) is reprinted in a later volume of this edition.] 480 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE lastly, it does not strengthen itself by seizing dominion over races whom it cannot benefit. Austria is not strengthened, but weakened, by her grasp of Lombardy; and whatever apparent increase of majesty and of wealth may have accrued to us from the possession of India, whether these prove to us ultimately power or weakness, depends wholly on the degree in which our influence on the native race shall be benevolent and exalting.1 116. But, as it is at their own peril that any race extends their dominion in mere desire of power, so it is at their own still greater peril that they refuse to undertake aggressive war, according to their force, whenever they are assured that their authority would be helpful and protective. Nor need you listen to any sophistical objection of the impossibility of knowing when a people‘s help is needed, or when not. Make your national conscience clean, and your national eyes will soon be clear. No man who is truly ready to take part in a noble quarrel will ever stand long in doubt by whom, or in what cause, his aid is needed. I hold it my duty to make no political statement of any special bearing in this presence; but I tell you broadly and boldly, that, within these last ten years, we English have, as a knightly nation, lost our spurs: we have fought where we should not have fought, for gain; and we have been passive, where we should not have been passive, for fear.2 I tell you that the principle of non-intervention, as now preached among us, is as selfish and cruel as the worst frenzy of conquest, and differs from it only by being, not only malignant, but dastardly. 117. (III.) I know, however, that my opinions on this subject differ too widely from those ordinarily held, to be any farther intruded upon you; and therefore I pass lastly to examine the conditions of the third kind of noble war;—war waged simply for defence of the country in which we 1 [On the questions involved in extensions of empire, see the passages referred to in Vol. XVII. p. cvii., and also Pleasures of England, §§ 32, 80.] 2 [On this subject, see above, Introduction, pp. xxii.-xxvi.] III. WAR 481 were born, and for the maintenance and execution of her laws, by whomsoever threatened or defied. It is to this duty that I suppose most men entering the army consider themselves in reality to be bound, and I want you now to reflect what the laws of mere defence are; and what the soldier‘s duty, as now understood, or supposed to be understood. You have solemnly devoted yourselves to be English soldiers, for the guardianship of England. I want you to feel what this vow of yours indeed means, or is gradually coming to mean. 118. You take it upon you, first, while you are sentimental schoolboys; you go into your military convent, or barracks, just as a girl goes into her convent while she is a sentimental schoolgirl; neither of you then know what you are about, though both the good soldiers and good nuns make the best of it afterwards. You don‘t understand perhaps why I call you ―sentimental‖ schoolboys, when you go into the army? Because, on the whole, it is the love of adventure, of excitement, of fine dress and of the pride of fame, all which are sentimental motives, which chiefly make a boy like going into the Guards better than into a counting-house.1 You fancy, perhaps, that there is a severe sense of duty mixed with these peacocky motives? And in the best of you there is; but do not think that it is principal. If you cared to do your duty to your country in a prosaic and unsentimental way, depend upon it, there is now truer duty to be done in raising harvests, than in burning them; more in building houses, than in shelling them—more in winning money by your own work, wherewith to help men, than in other people‘s work, taxing for money wherewith to slay men;—more duty finally, in honest and unselfish living than in honest and unselfish dying, though that seems to your boys‘ eyes the bravest. So far, then, as for your own honour, and the honour of your families, you choose brave death in a red coat before 1 [Compare Time and Tide, § 131 (Vol. XVII. p. 425 n.), where Ruskin refers to §§ 79, 118, and 122 here.] XVIII. 2 H 482 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE brave life in a black one, you are sentimental; and now see what this passionate vow of yours comes to. For a little while you ride, and you hunt tigers or savages, you shoot, and are shot; you are happy, and proud, always, and honoured and wept if you die; and you are satisfied with your life, and with the end of it; believing, on the whole, that good rather than harm of it comes to others, and much pleasure to you. 119. But as the sense of duty enters into your forming minds, the vow takes another aspect. You find that you have put yourselves into the hand of your country as a weapon. You have vowed to strike, when she bids you, and to stay scabbarded when she bids you; all that you need answer for is, that you fail not in her grasp. And there is goodness in this, and greatness, if you can trust the hand and heart of the Britomart1 who has braced you to her side, and are assured that when she leaves you sheathed in darkness, there is no need for your flash to the sun. But remember, good and noble as this state may be, it is a state of slavery. There are different kinds of slaves and different masters. Some slaves are scourged to their work by whips, others are scourged to it by restlessness or ambition. It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls: the fact, so far, of slavery, is in being driven to your work without thought, at another‘s bidding. Again, some slaves are bought with money, and others with praise. It matters not what the purchase-money is. The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and be bought for it. Again, it matters not what kind of work you are set on; some slaves are set to forced diggings, others to forced marches; some dig furrows, others field-works, and others graves. Some press the juice of reeds, and some the juice of vines, and some the blood of men. The fact of the captivity is the same, whatever 1 [For other references to Britomart, see note on Sesame and Lilies, § 62 (above, p. 118).] III. WAR 483 work we are set upon, though the fruits of the toil may be different. 120. But, remember, in thus vowing ourselves to be the slaves of any master, it ought to be some subject of forethought with us, what work he is likely to put us upon.1 You may think that the whole duty of a soldier is to be passive, that it is the country you have left behind who is to command, and you have only to obey. But are you sure that you have left all your country behind, or that the part of it you have so left is indeed the best part of it? Suppose—and, remember, it is quite conceivable—that you yourselves are indeed the best part of England; that you, who have become the slaves, ought to have been the masters; and that those who are the masters, ought to have been the slaves! If it is a noble and whole-hearted England, whose bidding you are bound to do, it is well; but if you are yourselves the best of her heart, and the England you have left be but a half-hearted England, how say you of your obedience? You were too proud to become shop-keepers: are you satisfied, then, to become the servants of shop-keepers? You were too proud to become merchants or farmers yourselves: will you have merchants or farmers, then, for your field-marshals? You had no gifts of special grace for Exeter Hall: will you have some gifted person thereat for your commander-in-chief, to judge of your work, and reward it? You imagine yourselves to be the army of England: how, if you should find yourselves at last, only the police of her manufacturing towns, and the beadles of her Little Bethels? 121. It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, for ever; but what I want you to see, and to be assured of, is, that the ideal of soldiership is not mere passive obedience and bravery; that, so far from this, no country is in a healthy state which has separated, even in a small degree, her civil from her military power. All states of the world, however 1 [Compare § 48 (above, p. 429), where Ruskin says that as soldiers must trust their captains, they are ―bound to choose none but those whom they can trust.‖] 484 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE great, fall at once when they use mercenary armies; and although it is a less instant form of error (because involving no national taint of cowardice), it is yet an error no less ultimately fatal—it is the error especially of modern times, of which we cannot yet know all the calamitous consequences,—to take away the best blood and strength of the nation, all the soul-substance of it that is brave, and careless of reward, and scornful of pain, and faithful in trust; and to cast that into steel, and make a mere sword of it; taking away its voice and will; but to keep the worst part of the nation—whatever is cowardly, avaricious, sensual, and faithless—and to give to this the voice, to this the authority, to this the chief privilege, where there is least capacity of thought. 122. The fulfilment of your vow for the defence of England will by no means consist in carrying out such a system. You are not true soldiers, if you only mean to stand at a shop-door, to protect shop-boys who are cheating inside. A soldier‘s vow to his country1 is that he will die for the guardianship of her domestic virtue, of her righteous laws, and of her any-way challenged or endangered honour. A state without virtue, without laws, and without honour, he is bound not to defend; nay, bound to redress by his own right hand that which he sees to be base in her. 123. So sternly is this the law of Nature and life, that a nation once utterly corrupt can only be redeemed by a military despotism—never by talking, nor by its free effort. And the health of any state consists simply in this; that in it, those who are wisest shall also be strongest; its rulers should be also its soldiers; or, rather, by force of intellect more than of sword, its soldiers also its rulers. Whatever the hold which the aristocracy of England has on the heart of England, in that they are still always in front of her battles, this hold will not be enough, unless 1 [Compare Unto this Last, §§ 17, 21 (Vol. XVII. pp. 36, 39).] III. WAR 485 they are also in front of her thoughts. And truly her thoughts need good captain‘s leading now, if ever! Do you know what, by this beautiful division of labour (her brave men fighting, and her cowards thinking), she has come at last to think? Here is a paper in my hand,* a good one too, and an honest one; quite representative of the best common public thought of England at this moment; and it is holding forth in one of its leaders upon our ―social welfare,‖—upon our ―vivid life‖—upon the ―political supremacy of Great Britain.‖ And what do you think all these are owing to? To what our English sires have done for us, and taught us, age after age? No: not to that. To our honesty of heart, or coolness of head, or steadiness of will? No: not to these. To our thinkers, or our statesmen, or our poets, or our captains, or our martyrs, or the patient labour of our poor? No: not to these; or at least not to these in any chief measure. Nay, says the journal, ―more than any agency, it is the cheapness and abundance of our coal which have made us what we are.‖ If it be so, then ―ashes to ashes‖ be our epitaph! and the sooner the better.

• I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, because the article was unworthy of its

general tone, though in order to enable the audience to verify the quoted sentence, I left the number containing it on the table, when I gave this lecture. But a saying of Baron Liebig‘s,1 quoted at the head of a leader on the same subject in the Daily Telegraph of January 11, 1866, summarily digests and presents the maximum folly of modern thought in this respect. ―Civilisation,‖ says the Baron, ―is the economy of power, and English power is coal.‖ Not altogether so, my chemical friend. Civilisation is the making of civil persons, which is a kind of distillation of which alembics are incapable, and does not at all imply the turning of a small company of gentlemen into a large company of ironmongers.2 And English power (what little of it may be left) is by no means coal, but, indeed, of that which, ―when the whole world turns to coal, then chiefly lives.‖ 3 1 [Compare Time and Tide, § 131 (Vol. XVII. p. 425), and Fors Clavigera, Letter 12, where this saying is again cited.] 2 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 83 (above, p. 134).] 3 [From George Herbert‘s poem on ―Vertue‖ (No. 61 in The Temple):— ―Onely a sweet and vertuous soul, Like season‘d timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal, Then chiefly lives.‖] 486 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 124. Gentlemen of England, if ever you would have your country breathe the pure breath of heaven again, and receive again a soul into her body, instead of rotting into a carcase, blown up in the belly with carbonic acid (and great that way), you must think, and feel, for your England, as well as fight for her: you must teach her that all the true greatness she ever had, she won while her fields were green and her faces ruddy; and that greatness is still possible for Englishmen, even though the ground be not hollow under their feet, nor the sky black over their heads.1 125. And bear with me, you soldier youths,—who are thus in all ways the hope of your country, or must be, if she have any hope—if I urge you with rude earnestness to remember that your fitness for all future trust depends upon what you are now. No good soldier in his old age was ever careless or indolent in his youth. Many a giddy and thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, or a good lawyer, or a good merchant; but no such an one ever became a good general. I challenge you, in all history, to find a record of a good soldier who was not grave and earnest in his youth. And, in general, I have no patience with people who talk of ―the thoughtlessness of youth‖ indulgently. I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and the indulgence due to that. When a man has done his work, and nothing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will; but what excuse can you find for wilfulness of thought, at the very time when every crisis of future fortune hangs on your decisions? A youth thoughtless! when all the happiness of his home for ever depends on the chances, or the passions, of an hour! A youth thoughtless! 1 [Here the original editions have an additional passage:— ―. . . the sky black over their heads;—and that, when the day comes for their country to lay her honours in the dust, her crest will not rise from it the more loftily because it is the dust of coal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, that the day is coming when the soldiers of England must be her tutors; and the captains of her army, captains also of her mind.‖] III. WAR 487 when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a moment! A youth thoughtless! when his every act is as a torch to the laid train of future conduct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now—though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless,—his death-bed.1 No thinking should ever be left to be done there. 126. Having, then, resolved that you will not waste recklessly, but earnestly use, these early days of yours, remember that all the duties of her children to England may be summed in two words—industry, and honour. I say, first, industry, for it is in this that soldier youth are especially tempted to fail. Yet, surely, there is no reason, because your life may possibly or probably be shorter than other men‘s, that you should therefore waste more recklessly the portion of it that is granted you; neither do the duties of your profession, which require you to keep your bodies strong, in any wise involve the keeping of your minds weak. So far from that, the experience, the hardship, and the activity of a soldier‘s life render his powers of thought more accurate than those of other men; and while, for others, all knowledge is often little more than a means of amusement, there is no form of science which a soldier may not at some time or other find bearing on business of life and death. A young mathematician may be excused for languor in studying curves to be described only with a pencil; but not in tracing those which are to be described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome herb may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance with an obscure point of geography, the success of a campaign. Never waste an instant‘s time, therefore: the sin of idleness is a thousand-fold greater in you than in other youths; for the fates of those who will one 1 [Mr. Wedderburn once quoted to Ruskin Hood‘s death-bed joke to his wife, ―My dear, I fear you‘ll lose your lively-hood‖; Ruskin said, ―How beautiful, to be able to jest calmly on your death-bed.‖] 488 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE day be under your command hang upon your knowledge; lost moments now will be lost lives then, and every instant which you carelessly take for play, you buy with blood. 127. But there is one way of wasting time, of all the vilest, because it wastes, not time only, but the interest and energy of your minds. Of all the ungentlemanly habits into which you can fall, the vilest is betting, or interesting yourselves in the issues of betting.1 It unites nearly every condition of folly and vice; you concentrate your interest upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a subject of true knowledge; and you back opinions which you have no grounds for forming, merely because they are your own. All the insolence of egotism is in this; and so far as the love of excitement is complicated with the hope of winning money, you turn yourselves into the basest sort of tradesmen—those who live by speculation.2 Were there no other ground for industry, this would be a sufficient one; that it protected you from the temptation to so scandalous a vice. Work faithfully, and you will put yourselves in possession of a glorious and enlarging happiness; not such as can be won by the speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity of a ball. 128. First, then, by industry you must fulfil your vow to your country; but all industry and earnestness will be useless unless they are consecrated by your resolution to be in all things men of honour; not honour in the common sense only, but in the highest. Rest on the force of the two main words in the great verse, ―integer vitæ, scelerisque purus.‖3 You have vowed your life to England; give it her wholly;—a bright, stainless, perfect life—a knightly life. Because you have to fight with machines instead of lances, there may be a necessity for more ghastly danger, but there is none for less worthiness of character, 1 [See above, § 100 (p. 469).] 2 [On speculation in business, see A Joy for Ever, § 151 (Vol. XVI. p. 138); and Munera Pulveris, §§ 79, 153 n., and Time and Tide, §§ 3, 82, 83 (Vol. XVII. pp. 317, 388, 389).] 3 [Horace: Odes, i. 22, 1.] III. WAR 489 than in olden time. You may be true knights yet, though perhaps not equites; you may have to call yourselves ―canonry‖ instead of ―chivalry,‖ but that is no reason why you should not call yourselves true men. So the first thing you have to see to in becoming soldiers is that you make yourselves wholly true. Courage is a mere matter of course among any ordinarily well-born youths; but neither truth nor gentleness is matter of course. You must bind them like shields about your necks; you must write them on the tables of your hearts.1 Though it be not exacted of you, yet exact it of yourselves, this vow of stainless truth. Your hearts are, if you leave them unstirred, as tombs in which a god lies buried. Vow yourselves crusaders to redeem that sacred sepulchre. And remember, before all things—for no other memory will be so protective of you—that the highest law of this knightly truth is that under which it is vowed to women. Whomsoever else you deceive, whomsoever you injure, whomsoever you leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor injure, nor leave unaided, according to your power, any woman, of whatever rank. Believe me, every virtue of the higher phases of manly character begins in this;—in truth and modesty before the face of all maidens; in truth and pity, or truth and reverence, to all womanhood. 129. And now let me turn for a moment to you,—wives and maidens, who are the souls of soldiers; to you,—mothers, who have devoted your children to the great hierarchy of war. Let me ask you to consider what part you have to take for the aid of those who love you; for if you fail in your part they cannot fulfil theirs; such absolute helpmates you are that no man can stand without that help, nor labour in his own strength. I know your hearts, and that the truth of them never fails when an hour of trial comes which you recognize for such. But you know not when the hour of trial first finds 1 [Proverbs iii. 3.] 490 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE you, nor when it verily finds you. You imagine that you are only called upon to wait and to suffer; to surrender and to mourn. You know that you must not weaken the hearts of your husbands and lovers, even by the one fear of which those hearts are capable,—the fear of parting from you, or of causing you grief. Through weary years of separation; through fearful expectancies of unknown fate; through the tenfold bitterness of the sorrow which might so easily have been joy, and the tenfold yearning for glorious life struck down in its prime;—through all these agonies you fail not, and never will fail. But your trial is not in these. To be heroic in danger is little;—you are Englishwomen. To be heroic in change and sway of fortune is little;—for do you not love? To be patient through the great chasm and pause of loss is little;—for do you not still love in heaven? But to be heroic in happiness; to bear yourselves gravely and righteously in the dazzling of the sunshine of morning; not to forget the God in whom you trust, when He gives you most; not to fail those who trust you, when they seem to need you least; this is the difficult fortitude. It is not in the pining of absence, not in the peril of battle, not in the wasting of sickness, that your prayer should be most passionate, or your guardianship most tender. Pray, mothers and maidens, for your young soldiers in the bloom of their pride; pray for them, while the only dangers round them are in their own wayward will; watch you, and pray,1 when they have to face, not death, but temptation. But it is this fortitude also for which there is the crowning reward. Believe me, the whole course and character of your lovers‘ lives is in your hands: what you would have them be, they shall be, if you not only desire to have them so, but deserve to have them so; for they are but mirrors in which you will see yourselves imaged.2 If you are frivolous, they will be so also; if you have no understanding of the scope 1 [Matthew xxvi. 41.] 2 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, §§ 64 seq. (above, pp. 119 seq.).] III. WAR 491 of their duty, they also will forget it; they will listen,—they can listen,—to no other interpretation of it than that uttered from your lips. Bid them be brave;—they will be brave for you: bid them be cowards:—and how noble soever they be, they will quail for you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you; mock at their counsel, they will be fools for you—such and so absolute is your rule over them. You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told so often, that a wife‘s rule should only be over her husband‘s house, not over his mind. Ah, no! the true rule is just the reverse of that; a true wife, in her husband‘s house, is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever of best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; from her, through all the world‘s clamour, he must win his praise; in her, through all the world‘s warfare, he must find his peace. 130. And, now, but one word more. You may wonder, perhaps, that I have spoken all this night in praise of war. Yet, truly, if it might be, I for one, would fain join in the cadence of hammer-strokes that should beat swords into ploughshares:1 and that this cannot be, is not the fault of us men. It is your fault. Wholly yours. Only by your command, or by your permission, can any contest take place among us. And the real, final reason for all the poverty, misery, and rage of battle throughout Europe, is simply that you women, however good, however religious, however self-sacrificing for those whom you love, are too selfish and too thoughtless to take pains for any creature out of your own immediate circles. You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of others.2 Now I just tell you this, that if the usual course of war, instead of unroofing peasants‘ houses, and ravaging peasants‘ fields, merely broke 1 [Isaiah ii. 4; compare A Joy for Ever, § 15 (Vol. XVI. p. 26), and Munera Pulveris, § 52 (Vol. XVII. p. 177).] 2 [Here, again, compare Sesame and Lilies; § 72 (above, pp. 126–127).] 492 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE the china upon your own drawing-room tables, no war in civilized countries would last a week. I tell you more, that at whatever moment you chose to put a period to war, you could do it with less trouble than you take any day to go out to dinner. You know, or at least you might know if you would think, that every battle you hear of has made many widows and orphans. We have, none of us, heart enough truly to mourn with these. But at least we might put on the outer symbols of mourning with them. Let but every Christian lady who has conscience toward God, vow that she will mourn, at least outwardly, for His killed creatures. Your praying is useless, and your church-going mere mockery of God, if you have not plain obedience in you enough for this. Let every lady in the upper classes of civilized Europe simply vow that, while any cruel war proceeds, she will wear black;—a mute‘s black,—with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or evasion into, prettiness—I tell you again, no war would last a week. 131. And, lastly. You women of England are all now shrieking with one voice,—you and your clergymen together,—because you hear of your Bibles being attacked.1 If you choose to obey your Bibles, you will never care who attacks them. It is just because you never fulfil a single downright precept of the Book, that you are so careful for its credit: and just because you don‘t care to obey its whole words, that you are so particular about the letters of them. The Bible tells you to dress plainly,—and you are mad for finery; the Bible tells you to have pity on the poor,—and you crush them under your carriage-wheels; the Bible tells you to do judgment and justice,2—and you do not know, nor care to know, so much as what the Bible word ―justice‖ means. Do but learn so much of God‘s truth as that comes to; know what He 1 [Again a reference to the outcry against Bishop Colenso; compare above, p. 417 n.] 2 [Genesis xviii. 19: compare above, p. 419.] III. WAR 493 means when He tells you to be just; and teach your sons, that their bravery is but a fool‘s boast and their deeds but a firebrand‘s tossing, unless they are indeed Just men, and Perfect in the Fear of God:—and you will soon have no more war, unless it be indeed such as is willed by Him, of whom, though Prince of Peace, it is also written, ―In Righteousness He doth judge, and make war.‖1 1 [See Genesis vi. 9, and Job i. 1. The next quotation is from Revelation xix. 11.] LECTURE IV THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND Delivered at the R. A. Institution, Woolwich, December 14, 1869 132. I WOULD fain have left to the frank expression of the moment, but fear I could not have found clear words—I cannot easily find them, even deliberately,—to tell you how glad I am, and yet how ashamed, to accept your permission to speak to you. Ashamed of appearing to think that I can tell you any truth which you have not more deeply felt than I; but glad in the thought that my less experience, and way of life sheltered from the trials, and free from the responsibilities, of yours may have left me with something of a child‘s power of help to you;1 a sureness of hope, which may perhaps be the one thing that can be helpful to men who have done too much not to have often failed in doing all that they desired. And indeed, even the most hopeful of us, cannot but now be in many things apprehensive. For this at least we all know too well, that we are on the eve of a great political crisis, if not of political change. That a struggle is approaching between the newly-risen power of democracy and the apparently departing power of feudalism; and another struggle, no less imminent, and far more dangerous, between wealth and pauperism. These two quarrels are constantly thought of as the same. They are being fought together, and an apparently common interest unites for the most part the millionaire with the noble, in resistance to a multitude, crying, part of it for bread and part of it for liberty. 1 [On the helpfulness of children, see above, § 49 (p. 430).] 494 IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 495 133. And yet no two quarrels can be more distinct. Riches—so far from being necessary to noblesse—are adverse to it. So utterly adverse, that the first character of all the Nobilities which have founded great dynasties in the world is to be poor;—often poor by oath—always poor by generosity. And of every true knight in the chivalric ages the first thing history tells you is that he never kept treasure for himself. 134. Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse are not the same; but opposite. On the other hand, the causes of anarchy and of the poor are not the same, but opposite. Side by side, in the same rank, are now indeed set the pride that revolts against authority, and the misery that appeals against avarice. But, so far from being a common cause, all anarchy is the forerunner of poverty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. So that, thus, it has become impossible to give due support to the cause of order, without seeming to countenance injury; and impossible to plead justly the claims of sorrow, without seeming to plead also for those of license. Let me try, then, to put in very brief terms, the real plan of this various quarrel, and the truth of the cause on each side. Let us face that full truth, whatever it may be, and decide what part, according to our power, we should take in the quarrel. 135. First. For eleven hundred years, all but five,1 since Charlemagne set on his head the Lombard crown, the body of European people have submitted patiently to be governed; generally by kings—always by single leaders of some kind. But for the last fifty years they have begun to suspect, and of late they have many of them concluded, that they have been on the whole ill-governed, or misgoverned, by their kings. Whereupon they say, more and more widely, ―Let us henceforth have no kings; and no government at all.‖ 1 [That is, 774 (in which year Charlemagne was crowned King of Lombardy to 1869.] 496 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE Now we said, we must face the full truth of the matter, in order to see what we are to do. And the truth is that the people have been misgoverned;—that very little is to be said, hitherto, for most of their masters—and that certainly in many places they will try their new system of ―no masters‖:—and as that arrangement will be delightful to all foolish persons, and, at first, profitable to all wicked ones,—and as these classes are not wanting or unimportant in any human society,—the experiment is likely to be tried extensively. And the world may be quite content to endure much suffering with this fresh hope, and retain its faith in anarchy, whatever comes of it, till it can endure no more. 136. Then, secondly. The people have begun to suspect that one particular form of this past misgovernment has been, that their masters have set them to do all the work, and have themselves taken all the wages. In a word, that what was called governing them, meant only wearing fine clothes, and living on good fare at their expense. And I am sorry to say, the people are quite right in this opinion also. If you enquire into the vital fact of the matter, this you will find to be the constant structure of European society for the thousand years of the feudal system; it was divided into peasants who lived by working; priests who lived by begging; and knights who lived by pillaging; and as the luminous public mind becomes gradually cognizant of these facts, it will assuredly not suffer things to be altogether arranged that way any more; and the devising of other ways will be an agitating business; especially because the first impression of the intelligent populace is, that whereas, in the dark ages, half the nation lived idle, in the bright ages to come, the whole of it may. 137. Now, thirdly—and here is much the worst phase of the crisis. This past system of misgovernment, especially during the last three hundred years, has prepared, by its neglect, a class among the lower orders which it is now peculiarly difficult to govern. It deservedly lost their IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 497 respect—but that was the least part of the mischief. The deadly part of it was, that the lower orders lost their habit, and at last their faculty, of respect;—lost the very capability of reverence, which is the most precious part of the human soul. Exactly in the degree in which you can find creatures greater than yourself, to look up to, in that degree, you are ennobled yourself, and, in that degree, happy.1 If you could live always in the presence of archangels, you would be happier than in that of men; but even if only in the company of admirable knights and beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright they were, and the more you could reverence their virtue, the happier you would be. On the contrary, if you were condemned to live among a multitude of idiots, dumb, distorted and malicious, you would not be happy in the constant sense of your own superiority. Thus all real joy and power of progress in humanity depend on finding something to reverence, and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain. Now, by general misgovernment, I repeat, we have created in Europe a vast populace, and out of Europe a still vaster one, which has lost even the power and conception of reverence;*—which exists only in the worship of itself—which can neither see anything beautiful around it, nor conceive anything virtuous above it; which has, towards all goodness and greatness, no other feelings than those of the lowest creatures—fear, hatred, or hunger; a populace which has sunk below your appeal in their nature, as it has risen beyond your power in their multitude;—whom you can now no more charm than you can the adder,2 nor discipline, than you can the summer fly.

• Compare Time and Tide, § 169, and Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV. page 9.3

[1873.] 1 [Compare Preface of 1882 to Sesame and Lilies (above, p. 51), and Cestus of Aglaia, § 82 (Vol. XIX.).] 2 [See Psalms lviii. 4; and for the fly as the type of liberty, Cestus of Aglaia, § 74 (Vol. XIX.).] 3 [See now, for the former reference, Vol. XVII. p. 456. ―Page 9‖ in the first 8vo edition.] XVIII. 2 I 498 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE It is a crisis, gentlemen; and time to think of it. I have roughly and broadly put it before you in its darkness. Let us look what we may find of light. 138. Only the other day, in a journal which is a fairly representative exponent of the Conservatism of our day, and for the most part not at all in favour of strikes or other popular proceedings; only about three weeks since, there was a leader, with this, or a similar, title—―What is to become of the House of Lords?‖1 It startled me, for it seemed as if we were going even faster than I had thought, when such a question was put as a subject of quite open debate, in a journal meant chiefly for the reading of the middle and upper classes. Open or not—the debate is near. What is to become of them? And the answer to such question depends first on their being able to answer another question—―What is the use of them?‖ For some time back, I think the theory of the nation has been, that they are useful as impediments to business, so as to give time for second thoughts. But the nation is getting impatient of impediments to business; and certainly, sooner or later, will think it needless to maintain these expensive obstacles to its humours. And I have not heard, either in public, or from any of themselves, a clear expression of their own conception of their use. So that it seems thus to become needful for all men to tell them, as our one quite clear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us for many a year, that the use of the Lords of a country is to govern the country. If they answer that use, the country will rejoice in keeping them; if not, that will become of them which must of all things found to have lost their serviceableness. 139. Here, therefore, is the one question, at this crisis, 1 [The reference is to an article entitled ―Lords and Commons‖ in the Saturday Review, August 7, 1889. ―What is the true position of the House of Lords in the modern constitution of England remains,‖ said the writer, ―as dark a problem as ever it was. In spite of its historical associations, in spite of its high social position, in spite of the great intellectual ability and the excellent temper and sense of many of its members, and in spite of the many services which it renders in matters of detail, it has no real and satisfactory part to play in English politics.‖] IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 499 for them, and for us. Will they be lords indeed, and give us laws—dukes indeed, and give us guiding—princes indeed, and give us beginning,1 of truer dynasty, which shall not be soiled by covetousness, nor disordered by iniquity? Have they themselves sunk so far as not to hope this? Are there yet any among them who can stand forward with open English brows, and say,—So far as in me lies, I will govern with my might, not for Dieu et mon Droit, but for the first grand reading of the war cry, from which that was corrupted, ―Dieu et Droit‖?2 Among them I know there are some—among you, soldiers of England, I know there are many, who can do this; and in you is our trust. I, one of the lower people of your country, ask of you in their name,—you whom I will not any more call soldiers, but by the truer name of Knights;—Equites of England—how many yet of you are there, knights errant now beyond all former fields of danger—knights patient now beyond all former endurance; who still retain the ancient and eternal purpose of knighthood, to subdue the wicked, and aid the weak? To them, be they few or many, we English people call for help to the wretchedness, and for rule over the baseness, of multitudes desolate and deceived, shrieking to one another this new gospel of their new religion. ―Let the weak do as they can, and the wicked as they will.‖ 140. I can hear you saying in your hearts, even the bravest of you, ―The time is past for all that.‖ Gentlemen, it is not so. The time has come for more than all that. Hitherto, soldiers have given their lives for false fame, and for cruel power. The day is now when they must give their lives for true fame, and for beneficent power: and the work is near every one of you—close 1 [For lords as lawgivers, see Time and Tide, § 153 (Vol. XVII. p. 440), and Sesame and Lilies, § 88 (above, p. 138 n.); for the duke (dux) as guider, see Ethics of the Dust, Note ii. (above, p. 362); and for the prince as beginner (princeps), see Munera Pulveris, § 105 (Vol. XVII. p. 229).] 2 [The parole of Richard I. at the battle of Gisors (1198), meaning that he was no vassal of France, but owed his royalty to God alone. As the French were beaten, the battle-word was adopted as the royal motto of England.] 500 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE beside you—the means of it even thrust into your hands. The people are crying to you for command, and you stand there at pause, and silent. You think they don‘t want to be commanded; try them; determine what is needful for them—honourable for them; show it them, promise to bring them to it, and they will follow you through fire. ―Govern us,‖ they cry with one heart, though many minds. They can be governed still, these English; they are men still; not gnats, not serpents. They love their old ways yet, and their old masters, and their old land. They would fain live in it, as many as may stay there, if you will show them how, there, to live;—or show them even, how, there, like Englishmen, to die. 141. ―To live in it, as many as may!‖ How many do you think may? How many can? How many do you want to live there?1 As masters, your first object must be to increase your power; and in what does the power of a country consist? Will you have dominion over its stones, or over its clouds, or over its souls? What do you mean by a great nation, but a great multitude of men who are true to each other, and strong, and of worth? Now you can increase the multitude only definitely—your island has only so much standing room—but you can increase the worth indefinitely. It is but a little island;—suppose, little as it is, you were to fill it with friends? You may, and that easily. You must, and that speedily; or there will be an end to this England of ours, and to all its loves and enmities. 142. To fill this little island with true friends—men brave, wise, and happy! Is it so impossible, think you, after the world‘s eighteen hundred years of Christianity, and our own thousand years of toil, to fill only this little white gleaming crag with happy creatures, helpful to each other? Africa, and India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain, are these not wide enough for the ignorance of our 1 [With § 141 here, compare Unto this Last, § 40 (Vol. XVII. p. 55), and see ibid., p. xc.] IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 501 race? have they not space enough for its pain? Must we remain here also savage,—here at enmity with each other,—here foodless, houseless, in rags, in dust, and without hope, as thousands and tens of thousands of us are lying? Do not think it, gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable is the last infidelity; infidelity not to God only, but to every creature and every law that He has made. Are we to think that the earth was only shaped to be a globe of torture; and that there cannot be one spot of it where peace can rest, or justice reign? Where are men ever to be happy, if not in England? by whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if not by you?1 Are we not of a race first among the strong ones of the earth;2 the blood in us incapable of weariness, unconquerable by grief? Have we not a history of which we can hardly think without becoming insolent in our just pride of it? Can we dare, without passing every limit of courtesy to other nations, to say how much more we have to be proud of in our ancestors than they?3 Among our ancient monarchs, great crimes stand out as monstrous and strange. But their valour, and, according to their understanding, their benevolence, are constant. The Wars of the Roses, which are as a fearful crimson shadow on our land, represent the normal condition of other nations; while from the days of the Heptarchy downwards we have had examples given us, in all ranks, of the most varied and exalted virtue; a heap of treasure that no moth can corrupt,4 and which even our traitorship, if we are to become traitors to it, cannot sully. 143. And this is the race, then, that we know not any more how to govern! and this the history which we are to behold broken off by sedition! and this is the country, of all others, where life is to become difficult to the honest, and ridiculous to the wise! And the catastrophe, forsooth, is to come just when we have been making swiftest progress 1 [With § 142 here, compare Lectures on Art, § 28.] 2 [The original edition adds: ―for its union of activity with patience.‖] 3 [The original edition adds: ―and how much less to be ashamed of.‖] 4 [Matthew vi. 19.] 502 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE beyond the wisdom and wealth of the past. Our cities are a wilderness of spinning wheels instead of palaces; yet the people have not clothes.1 We have blackened every leaf of English greenwood with ashes, and the people die of cold; our harbours are a forest of merchant ships, and the people die of hunger. Whose fault is it? Yours, gentlemen; yours only. You alone can feed them, and clothe, and bring into their right minds, for you only can govern—that is to say, you only can educate them. 144. Educate, or govern, they are one and the same word.2 Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. And the true ―compulsory education‖ which the people now ask of you is not catechism, but drill. It is not teaching the youth of England the shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers; and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic to roguery, and their literature to lust. It is, on the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and souls. It is a painful, continual, and difficult work; to be done by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise,—but above all—by example. 145. Compulsory! Yes, by all means! ―Go ye out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.‖3 Compulsory! Yes, and gratis also. Dei Gratia, 4 they must be taught, as, Dei Gratia, you are set to teach them. I hear strange talk continually, ―how difficult it is to make people pay for being educated!‖ Why, I should think so! Do you make your children pay for their education, or do you give it them compulsorily, and gratis? You do not expect them to pay you for their teaching, except by becoming good children. Why should you 1 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 130 (above, p. 176).] 2 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 94, where Ruskin ―repeats emphatically‖ these words.] 3 [Luke xiv. 23.] 4 [See above, p. 139.] IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 503 expect a peasant to pay for his, except by becoming a good man?—payment enough, I think, if we knew it. Payment enough to himself, as to us. For that is another of our grand popular mistakes—people are always thinking of education as a means of livelihood.1 Education is not a profitable business, but a costly one; nay, even the best attainments of it are always unprofitable, in any terms of coin. No nation ever made its bread either by its great arts, or its great wisdoms. By its minor arts or manufactures, by its practical knowledges, yes: but its noble scholarship, its noble philosophy, and its noble art, are always to be bought as a treasure, not sold for a livelihood. You do not learn that you may live—you live that you may learn. You are to spend on National Education, and to be spent for it, and to make by it, not more money, but better men;—to get into this British Island the greatest possible number of good and brave Englishmen. They are to be your ―money‘s worth.‖2 But where is the money to come from? Yes, that is to be asked. Let us, as quite the first business in this our national crisis, look not only into our affairs, but into our accounts, and obtain some general notion how we annually spend our money, and what we are getting for it. Observe, I do not mean to enquire into the public revenue only; of that some account is rendered already. But let us do the best we can to set down the items of the national private expenditure; and know what we spend altogether, and how. 146. To begin with this matter of education. You probably have nearly all seen the admirable lecture lately given by Captain Maxse, at Southampton.3 It contains a clear statement of the facts at present ascertained as to 1 [The original edition adds: ―Get your education, indeed, and livelihood will follow. But education is not . . .‖] 2 [Compare Unto this Last, § 41 (Vol. XVII. p. 56).] 3 [The Education of the Agricultural Poor, being an address delivered by Captain (afterwards Admiral) F. A. Maxse, R. N. (1833–1900). At the time of Ruskin‘s lecture, Forster‘s Education Act of 1870 was still not introduced, and ―Free Schools‖ were not to come till 1891.] 504 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE our expenditure in that respect. It appears that of our public moneys, for every pound that we spend on education we spend twelve either in charity or punishment;—ten millions a year in pauperism and crime, and eight hundred thousand in instruction. Now Captain Maxse adds to this estimate of ten millions public money spent on crime and want, a more or less conjectural sum of eight millions for private charities. My impression is that this is much beneath the truth, but at all events it leaves out of consideration much the heaviest and saddest form of charity—the maintenance, by the working members of families, of the unfortunate or ill-conducted persons whom the general course of misrule now leaves helpless to be the burden of the rest. 147. Now I want to get first at some, I do not say approximate, but at all events some suggestive, estimate of the quantity of real distress and misguided life in this country. Then next, I want some fairly representative estimate of our private expenditure in luxuries. We won‘t spend more, publicly, it appears, than eight hundred thousand a year, on educating men, gratis. I want to know, as nearly as possible, what we spend privately a year, in educating horses gratis.1 Let us, at least, quit ourselves in this from the taunt of Rabshakeh,2 and see that for every horse we train also a horseman; and that the rider be at least as high-bred as the horse,—not jockey, but chevalier. Again, we spend eight hundred thousand, which is certainly a great deal of money, in making rough minds bright. I want to know how much we spend annually in making rough stones bright; that is to say, what may be the united annual sum, or near it, of our jewellers‘ bills.3 So much we pay for educating children gratis;—how much for educating diamonds gratis? and which pays best for brightening, the spirit, or the charcoal? Let us get those 1 [For this contrast, compare Munera Pulveris, § 65 (Vol. XVII. p. 189).] 2 [2 Kings xviii. 23: ―Now, therefore, I pray thee, give pledges to my lord the king of Assyria, and I will deliver thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.‖] 3 [Compare Vol. XVII. p. 97 n.; and Ethics of the Dust, § 12 (above, p. 218).] IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 505 two items set down with some sincerity, and a few more of the same kind. Publicly set down. We must not be ashamed of the way we spend our money. If our right hand is not to know what our left does,1 it must not be because it would be ashamed if it did. That is, therefore, quite the first practical thing to be done. Let every man who wishes well to his country, render it yearly an account of his income, and of the main heads of his expenditure;2 or, if he is ashamed to do so, let him no more impute to the poor their poverty as a crime, nor set them to break stones in order to frighten them from committing it. To lose money ill is indeed often a crime; but to get it ill is a worse one, and to spend it ill, worst of all. You object, Lords of England, to increase, to the poor, the wages you give them, because they spend them, you say, unadvisedly. Render them, therefore, an account of the wages which they give you; and show them, by your example, how to spend theirs, to the last farthing advisedly. 148. It is indeed time to make this an acknowledged subject of instruction, to the working man,—how to spend his wages. For, gentlemen, we must give that instruction, whether we will or no, one way or the other. We have given it in years gone by; and now we find fault with our peasantry for having been too docile, and profited too shrewdly by our tuition. Only a few days since I had a letter from the wife of a village rector, a man of common sense and kindness, who was greatly troubled in his mind because it was precisely the men who got highest wages in summer that came destitute to his door in the winter. Destitute, and of riotous temper—for their method of spending wages in their period of prosperity was by sitting two days a week in the tavern parlour, ladling port wine, not out of bowls, but out of buckets.3 Well, gentlemen, 1 [Matthew vi. 3.] 2 [Compare what Ruskin says, about publicity in regard to the income -tax, in Fors Clavigera, Letter 7.] 3 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letters 29 and 81, where Ruskin refers to this passage.] 506 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE who taught them that method of festivity? Thirty years ago, I, a most inexperienced freshman, went to my first college supper;1 at the head of the table sat a nobleman of high promise and of admirable powers, since dead of palsy; there also we had in the midst of us, not buckets, indeed, but bowls as large as buckets; there also, we helped ourselves with ladles. There (for this beginning of college education was compulsory), I choosing ladlefuls of punch instead of claret, because I was then able, unperceived, to pour them into my waistcoat instead of down my throat, stood it out to the end, and helped to carry four of my fellow students, one of them the son of the head of a college, head foremost, down stairs and home. 149. Such things are no more; but the fruit of them remains, and will for many a day to come. The labourers whom you cannot now shut out of the ale-house are only the too faithful disciples of the gentlemen who were wont to shut themselves into the dining-room. The gentlemen have not thought it necessary, in order to correct their own habits, to diminish their incomes; and, believe me, the way to deal with your drunken workman is not to lower his wages,—but to mend his wits.* 150. And if indeed we do not yet see quite clearly how to deal with the sins of our poor brother, it is possible that our dimness of sight may still have other causes that can be cast out. There are two opposite cries of the great Liberal and Conservative parties, which are both most right, and worthy to be rallying cries. On their side, ―Let every man have his chance;‖ on yours, ―Let every man stand in his place.‖ Yes, indeed, let that be so, every man in his place, and every man fit for it. See that he holds that place from Heaven‘s Providence; and not from his family‘s Providence. Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, we laymen will look after the heretics for them. Let the Lords Temporal quit themselves of

• Compare § 70 of Time and Tide [Vol. XVII. p. 377].

1 [For another account of this college ―wine,‖ see above, p. 169 n.] IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 507 nepotism, and we will take care of their authority for them. Publish for us, you soldiers, an army gazette, in which the one subject of daily intelligence shall be the grounds of promotion; a gazette which shall simply tell us, what there certainly can be no detriment to the service in our knowing, when any officer is appointed to a new command, what his former services and successes have been,—whom he has superseded,—and on what ground. It will be always a satisfaction to us; it may sometimes be an advantage to you: and then, when there is really necessary debate respecting reduction of wages, let us always begin not with the wages of the industrious classes, but with those of the idle ones. Let there be honorary titles, if people like them; but let there be no honorary incomes. 151. So much for the master‘s motto, ―Every man in his place.‖ Next for the labourer‘s motto, ―Every man his chance.‖1 Let us mend that for them a little, and say, ―Every man his certainty‖—certainty, that if he does well, he will be honoured, and aided, and advanced in such degree as may be fitting for his faculty and consistent with his peace; and equal certainty that if he does ill, he will by sure justice be judged, and by sure punishment be chastised; if it may be, corrected; and if that may not be, condemned. That is the right reading of the Republican motto, ―Every man his chance.‖ And then, with such a system of government, pure, watchful and just, you may approach your great problem of national education, or in other words, of national employment. For all education begins in work. What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do: and for man, woman, or child, the first point of education is to make them do their best.2 It is the law of good economy to make the best of everything. How much more to make the best of every creature! Therefore, when your pauper 1 [See above, § 80, p. 453.] 2 [Compare Appendix iii. (―Logical Education‖) in vol. iv. of Modern Painters (Vol. VI. pp. 483–485).] 508 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE comes to you and asks for bread, ask of him instantly—What faculty have you? What can you do best? Can you drive a nail into wood? Go and mend the parish fences. Can you lay a brick? Mend the walls of the cottages where the wind comes in. Can you lift a spadeful of earth? Turn this field up three feet deep all over. Can you only drag a weight with your shoulders? Stand at the bottom of this hill and help up the overladen horses. Can you weld iron and chisel stone? Fortify this wreck-strewn coast into a harbour; and change these shifting sands into fruitful ground. Wherever death was, bring life; that is to be your work; that your parish refuge; that your education. So and no otherwise can we meet existent distress. But for the continual education of the whole people, and for their future happiness, they must have such consistent employment as shall develop all the powers of the fingers, and the limbs, and the brain: and that development is only to be obtained by hand-labour, of which you have these four great divisions—hand-labour on the earth, hand-labour on the sea, hand-labour in art, hand-labour in war. Of the last two of these I cannot speak to-night, and of the first two only with extreme brevity. 152. (I.) Hand-labour on the earth, the work of the husbandman and of the shepherd;—to dress the earth1 and to keep the flocks of it—the first task of man, and the final one—the education always of noblest lawgivers, kings and teachers; the education of Hesiod, of Moses, of David; of all the true strength of Rome; and all its tenderness: the pride of Cincinnatus, and the inspiration of Virgil. Hand-labour on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with singing:—not steam-piston labour on the earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with steam-whistling. You will have no prophet‘s voice accompanied by that shepherd‘s pipe, and pastoral symphony. Do you know that lately, in Cumberland, in the chief pastoral district of England,—in Wordsworth‘s own home,—a procession of 1 [Genesis ii. 15; compare the opening words of Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 13), and Time and Tide, § 168 (Vol. XVII. p. 453).] IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 509 villagers on their festa day provided for themselves, by way of music, a steam-plough whistling at the head of them?1 153. Give me patience while I put the principle of machine labour before you, as clearly and in as short compass as possible;2 it is one that should be known at this juncture. Suppose a farming proprietor needs to employ a hundred men on his estate, and that the labour of these hundred men is enough, but not more than enough, to till all his land, and to raise from it food for his own family, and for the hundred labourers. He is obliged under such circumstances, to maintain all the men in moderate comfort, and can only by economy accumulate much for himself. But, suppose he contrive a machine that will easily do the work of fifty men, with only one man to watch it. This sounds like a great advance in civilisation. The farmer of course gets his machine made, turns off the fifty men, who may starve or emigrate at their choice, and now he can keep half of the produce of his estate, which formerly went to feed them, all to himself. That is the essential and constant operation of machinery among us at this moment. 154. Nay, it is at first answered; no man can in reality keep half the produce of an estate to himself, nor can he in the end keep more than his own human share of anything; his riches must diffuse themselves at some time; he must maintain somebody else with them, however he spends them. That is mainly true (not altogether so), for food and fuel are in ordinary circumstances personally wasted by rich people, in quantities which would save many lives. One of my own great luxuries, for instance, is candlelight—and I probably burn, for myself alone, as many candles during the winter, as would comfort the old eyes, or spare the young ones, of a whole rushlighted country village. Still, it is mainly true that it is not by their personal waste that rich people prevent the lives of the poor. This is the way they do it. Let me go back to my 1 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 5, where Ruskin again refers to this procession.] 2 [For a summary of Ruskin‘s views on this subject, see Vol. XVII. p. c.] 510 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE farmer. He has got his machine made, which goes creaking, screaming, and occasionally exploding, about modern Arcadia. He has turned off his fifty men to starve. Now, at some distance from his own farm, there is another on which the labourers were working for their bread in the same way, by tilling the land. The machinist sends over to these, saying—―I have got food enough for you without your digging or ploughing any more. I can maintain you in other occupations instead of ploughing that land; if you rake in its gravel you will find some hard stones—you shall grind those on mills till they glitter; then, my wife shall wear a necklace of them. Also, if you turn up the meadows below you will find some fine white clay, of which you shall make a porcelain service for me: and the rest of the farm I want for pasture for horses for my carriage—and you shall groom them, and some of you ride behind the carriage with staves in your hands, and I will keep you much fatter for doing that than you can keep yourselves by digging.‖ 155. Well—but it is answered, are we to have no diamonds, nor china, nor pictures, nor footmen, then—but all to be farmers? I am not saying what we ought to do, I want only to show you with perfect clearness first what we are doing; and that, I repeat, is the upshot of machine-contriving in this country. And observe its effect on the national strength. Without machines, you have a hundred and fifty yeomen ready to join for defence of the land. You get your machine, starve fifty of them, make diamondcutters or footmen of as many more, and for your national defence against an enemy, you have now, and can have, only fifty men, instead of a hundred and fifty; these also now with minds much alienated from you as their chief,* and the rest, lapidaries, or footmen;—and a steamplough.

• They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this year, 1873, at the rate

of a regiment a week.1 [1873.] 1 [The original edition reads above: ―. . . you have now fifty yeomen with minds much alienated . . .‖] IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 511 156. That is one effect of machinery; but at all events, if we have thus lost in men, we have gained in riches; instead of happy human souls, we have at least got pictures, china, horses, and are ourselves better off than we were before. But very often, and in much of our machinecontriving, even that result does not follow. We are not one whit the richer for the machine, we only employ it for our amusement. For observe, our gaining in riches depends on the men who are out of employment consenting to be starved, or sent out of the country. But suppose they do not consent passively to be starved; but some of them become criminals, and have to be taken charge of and fed at a much greater cost than if they were at work, and others, paupers, rioters, and the like,—then you attain the real outcome of modern wisdom and ingenuity. You had your hundred men honestly at country work; but you don‘t like the sight of human beings in your fields; you like better to see a smoking kettle. You pay, as an amateur, for that pleasure, and you employ your fifty men in picking oakum, or begging, rioting, and thieving. 157. (II.) By hand-labour, therefore, and that alone, we are to till the ground. By hand-labour also to plough the sea; both for food, and in commerce, and in war: not with floating kettles there neither, but with hempen bridle,1 and the winds of heaven in harness. That is the way the power of Greece rose on her Egean, the power of Venice on her Adria, of Amalfi in her blue bay,2 of the Norman sea-riders from the North Cape to Sicily:—so, your own dominion also of the past. Of the past, mind you. On the Baltic and the Nile, your power is already departed.3 By 1 [See the lines from Thomas of Ercildoune quoted in The Harbours of England (Vol. XIII. p. 49); and with § 157 here compare § 101 above (p. 470), and the Oxford lecture on ―The Pleasures of Truth‖ reported in E. T. Cook‘s Studies in Ruskin, and in a later volume of this edition.] 2 [For a notice of the history of the Republic of Amalfi when (839–1131) it was the foremost naval and commercial port of Italy, see J. A. Symonds: Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, 1898, vol. iii. pp. 250–253.] 3 [For other references to the futile expedition under Napier to the Baltic during the Crimean War, see a letter to Fraser’s Magazine (July 1876) on ―Modern Warfare‖ (reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. p. 47, and in a later volume of this edition), and the lecture on ―The Pleasures of Truth‖ mentioned 512 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE machinery you would advance to discovery; by machinery you would carry your commerce;—you would be engineers instead of sailors; and instantly in the North seas you are beaten among the ice, and before the very Gods of Nile, beaten among the sand. Agriculture, then, by the hand or by the plough drawn only by animals; and shepherd and pastoral husbandry, are to be the chief schools of Englishmen. And this most royal academy of all academies you have to open over all the land, purifying your heaths and hills, and waters, and keeping them full of every kind of lovely natural organism, in tree, herb, and living creature. All land that is waste and ugly, you must redeem into ordered fruitfulness; all ruin, desolateness, imperfectness of hut or habitation, you must do away with; and throughout every village and city of your English dominion, there must not be a hand that cannot find a helper, nor a heart that cannot find a comforter. 158. ―How impossible!‖ I know you are thinking. Ah! So far from impossible, it is easy, it is natural, it is necessary, and I declare to you that, sooner or later, it must be done, at our peril. If now our English lords of land will fix this idea steadily before them; take the people to their hearts, trust to their loyalty, lead their labour;—then indeed there will be princes again in the midst of us, worthy of the island throne, ―This royal throne of kings—this sceptred isle— This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection, and the hand of war; This precious stone set in the silver sea; This happy breed of men—this little world: This other Eden—Demi-Paradise.‖1 in a note on the preceding page. In saying that England was ―beaten among the ice,‖ Ruskin refers to the failure of Sir John Franklin, and of various expeditions sent to find or relieve him, and then to England‘s temporary cessation from Polar expeditions (see above, p. 86 n.). By ―beaten among the sand‖ in Egypt, Ruskin presumably refers to the victory of French enterprise in the case of the Suez Canal—a scheme which was dismissed as impossible in this country on the ground that the sand would constantly sink to the bed of the trench and cause it to silt up. In Egypt, however, British engineers also have had their successes since Ruskin wrote.] 1 [Richard II., Act ii. sc. 1. Ruskin, quoting from memory, omits some lines and transposes others.] IV. THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 513 But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and equivocate, clutching through the confused catastrophe of all things only at what they can still keep stealthily for themselves,—their doom is nearer than even their adversaries hope, and it will be deeper than even their despisers dream. 159. That, believe me, is the work you have to do in England; and out of England you have room for everything else you care to do. Are her dominions in the world so narrow that she can find no place to spin cotton in but Yorkshire? We may organise emigration into an infinite power. We may assemble troops of the more adventurous and ambitious of our youth; we may send them on truest foreign service, founding new seats of authority, and centres of thought, in uncultivated and unconquered lands; retaining the full affection to the native country no less in our colonists than in our armies, teaching them to maintain allegiance to their fatherland in labour no less than in battle; aiding them with free hand in the prosecution of discovery, and the victory over adverse natural powers; establishing seats of every manufacture in the climates and places best fitted for it, and bringing ourselves into due alliance and harmony of skill with the dexterities of every race, and the wisdoms of every tradition and every tongue.1 160. And then you may make England itself the centre of the learning, of the arts, of the courtesies and felicities of the world. You may cover her mountains with pasture; her plains with corn, her valleys with the lily, and her gardens with the rose. You may bring together there in peace the wise and the pure, and the gentle of the earth, and by their word, command through its farthest darkness the birth of ―God‘s first creature, which was Light.‖2 You know whose words those are; the words of the wisest of Englishmen. He, and with him the wisest of all other great nations, have spoken always to men of this hope, and 1 [Compare Lectures on Art, § 29.] 2 [Bacon: The New Atlantis.] XVIII. 2 K 514 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE they would not hear. Plato, in the dialogue of Critias, his last, broken off at his death,1—Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortunate islands,—Virgil, in the prophetic tenth eclogue,—Bacon, in his fable of the New Atlantis,—More, in the book which, too impatiently wise, became the byeword of fools—these, all, have told us with one voice what we should strive to attain; they not hopeless of it, but for our follies forced, as it seems, by heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables,2 lest we should hear them and obey.3 Shall we never listen to the words of these wisest of men? Then listen at least to the words of your children—let us in the lips of babes and sucklings find our strength; and see that we do not make them mock instead of pray, when we teach them, night and morning, to ask for what we believe never can be granted;—that the will of the Father,—which is, that His creatures may be righteous and happy,—should be done, on earth, as it is in Heaven. 1 [See above, § § 82, 83 (pp. 455, 456), where Ruskin translates the passage; for Pindar‘s ―singing of the fortunate islands,‖ see the passage translated in Queen of the Air, § 50; to the Tenth Eclogue Ruskin refers as ―prophetic‖ on account of its proclamation of the victory of love and in the praise of rural delights; for references to Bacon‘s New Atlantis, see Fors Clavigera, Letter 82, and Eagle’s Nest, § 120. To More‘s Utopia Ruskin frequently refers: see, for instance, Fors Clavigera, Letters 7, 13, 22, 37; for ―Utopian,‖ as ―the devil‘s pet word,‖ see Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 33 (Vol. XII. p. 56).] 2 [On this subject, compare Munera Pulveris, § 87 (Vol. XVII. p. 208).] 3 [For the Bible references here and in the following passages, see Psalms xviii. 44; Psalms viii. 2; and Matthew vi. 10.] A P P E N D I X1 NOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA 161. I AM often accused of inconsistency;2 but believe myself defensible against the charge with respect to what I have said on nearly every subject except that of war. It is impossible for me to write consistently of war, for the groups of facts I have gathered about it lead me to two precisely opposite conclusions. When I find this the case, in other matters, I am silent, till I can choose my conclusion: but, with respect to war, I am forced to speak, by the necessities of the time; and forced to act, one way or another. The conviction on which I act is, that it causes an incalculable amount of avoidable human suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian nations; and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be soldiers, I try my utmost to bring them into what I conceive to be a better mind. But, on the other hand, I know certainly that the most beautiful characters yet developed among men have been formed in war;3—that all great nations have been warrior nations, and that the only kinds of peace which we are likely to get in the present age are ruinous alike to the intellect, and the heart. 162. The last lecture4 in this volume, addressed to young soldiers, had for its object to strengthen their trust in the virtue of their profession. It is inconsistent with itself, in its closing appeal to women, praying them to use their influence to bring wars to an end. And I have been hindered from completing my long intended notes on the economy of the Kings of Prussia by continually increasing doubt how far the machinery and discipline of war, under which they learned the art of government, was essential for such lesson; and what the honesty and sagacity of the Friedrich who so nobly repaired his ruined Prussia, might have done for the happiness of his Prussia, unruined. In war, however, or in peace, the character which Carlyle chiefly loves him for, and in which Carlyle has shown him to differ from all kings up to this time succeeding him, is his constant purpose to use every power 1 [Added in the edition of 1873.] 2 [On this subject, see Vol. V. pp. liii.–liv., and Vol. XVI. pp. 187, 334, 449 n.] 3 [See § 94; above, p. 464.] 4 [Now the last lecture but one (for ―its closing appeal to women,‖ see §§ 129–131, above, pp. 489–493); it was the last in the original edition. Presumably when Ruskin was preparing the new edition of the book in 1873 he did not at first intend to include the lecture on ―The Future of England.‖] 515 516 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE entrusted to him for the good of his people; and be, not in name only, but in heart and hand, their king. Not in ambition, but in natural instinct of duty. Friedrich, born to govern, determines to govern to the best of his faculty. That ―best‖ may sometimes be unwise; and self-will, or love of glory, may have their oblique hold on his mind, and warp it this way or that; but they are never principal with him. He believes that war is necessary, and maintains it; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly persists in the work of it to the day of his death, not claiming therein more praise than the head of any ordinary household, who rules it simply because it is his place, and he must not yield the mastery of it to another. 163. How far, in the future, it may be possible for men to gain the strength necessary for kingship without either fronting death, or inflicting it, seems to me not at present determinable. The historical facts are that, broadly speaking, none but soldiers, or persons with a soldierly faculty, have ever yet shown themselves fit to be kings; and that no other men are so gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth‘s ―Character of the Happy Warrior‖1 cannot be reached in the height of it but by a warrior; nay, so much is it beyond common strength that I had supposed the entire meaning of it to be metaphorical, until one of the best soldiers of England himself read me the poem,* and taught me, what I might have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was entirely literal. There is nothing of so high reach distinctly demonstrable in Friedrich: but I see more and more, as I grow older, that the things which are the most worth, encumbered among the errors and faults of every man‘s nature, are never clearly demonstrable;2 and are often most forcible when they are scarcely distinct to his own conscience,—how much less, clamorous for recognition by others! Nothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle‘s showing of this, to any careful reader of Friedrich. But careful readers are but one in the thousand; and by the careless, the masses of detail with which the historian must deal are insurmountable. 164. My own notes, made for the special purpose of hunting down the one point of economy, though they cruelly spoil Carlyle‘s own current and method of thought, may yet be useful in enabling readers, unaccustomed to books involving so vast a range of conception, to discern what, on this one subject only, may be gathered from that history. On any other subject of importance, similar gatherings might be made of other passages. The historian has to deal with all at once. I therefore have determined to print here, as a sequel to the Essay on War, my notes from the first volume of Friedrich, on the economies of Brandenburg, up to the date of the establishment of the Prussian monarchy. The economies of the first three Kings of Prussia I shall then take

• The late Sir Herbert Edwardes. 3

1 [The poem has often been applied to General Gordon, for whom also Ruskin had a great admiration.] 2 [On this ―mystery of life,‖ see above, pp. 63, 156.] 3 [Compare Modern Painters, pt. v. ch. xiii. § 12 (Vol. VI. p. 209 n.); and see A Knight’s Faith.] APPENDIX 517 up in Fors Clavigera, 1 finding them fitter for examination in connection with the subject of that book than of this. I assume, that the reader will take down his first volume of Carlyle, and read attentively the passages to which I refer him. I give the reference first to the largest edition, in six volumes (1858–1865); then, in parenthesis, to the smallest or ―people‘s edition‖ (1872–1873).2 The pieces which I have quoted in my own text are for the use of readers who may not have ready access to the book; and are enough for the explanation of the points to which I wish them to direct their thoughts in reading such histories of soldiers or soldier-kingdoms. I Year 928 to 936.—Dawn of Order in Christian Germany Book II. Chap. i. p. 67 (47) 165. HENRY THE FOWLER, ―the beginning of German kings,‖ is a mighty soldier in the cause of peace; his essential work the building and organization of fortified towns for the protection of men. Read page 72 with utmost care (51), ―He fortified towns,‖ to end of small print. I have added some notes on the matter in my lecture on Giovanni Pisano;3 but whether you can glance at them or not, fix in your mind this institution of truly civil or civic building in Germany, as distinct from the building of baronial castles for the security of robbers: 4 and of a standing army consisting of every ninth man, called a ―burgher‖ (―townsman‖) man‖)—a soldier, appointed to learn that profession that he may guard the walls—the exact reverse of our notion of a burgher. Frederick‘s final idea of his army is, indeed, only this. Brannibor, a chief fortress of the Wends, is thus taken, and further strengthened by Henry the Fowler; wardens appointed for it; and thus the history of Brandenburg begins. On all frontiers, also, this ―beginning of German kings‖ has his ―Markgraf.‖ ―Ancient of the marked place.‖ Read page 73, measuredly, learning it by heart, if it may be (51–525 ). 1 [This was not done; but for occasional references to Friedrich in Fors Clavigera, see General Index.] 2 [In ten volumes.] 3 [See Val d’Arno, § § 32 seq.] 4 [The ―crag barons‖ of § 34 (above, p. 415).] 5 [Ruskin‘s MS. notes contain some further analysis of this chapter in Friedrich (ii.1):— ― ‗Henry, called the Fowler, because he was in his Vogelheerde (Falconry or Hawk-establishment, seeing his Hawks fly), when messengers came to tell him that the German nation had made him King‘—the black hawks having flown at some quarries they should not, since. Henry, however, had neither hawk nor black eagle on his standard, but St. Michael. He established six Margraviates in Germany, of which we may easily remember the western and eastern, Hand-wharf (Antwerp) and ‗East Kingdom‘ (Oesterreich). ―He appointed all towns to be walled and warded. All townsmen 518 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE II 936–1000.—History of Nascent Brandenburg 166. THE passage I last desired you to read ends with this sentence: ―The sea-wall you build, and what main floodgates you establish in it, will depend on the state of the outer sea.‖ From this time forward you have to keep clearly separate in your minds, (A) the history of that outer sea, Pagan Scandinavia, Russia, and Bor-Russia, or Prussia proper; (B) the history of Henry the Fowler‘s Eastern and Western Marches; asserting themselves gradually as Austria and the Netherlands; and (C) the history of this inconsiderable fortress of Brandenburg, gradually becoming considerable, and the capital city of increasing district between them. That last history, however, Carlyle is obliged to leave vague and gray for two hundred years after Henry‘s death. Absolutely dim for the first century, in which nothing is evident but that its wardens or Markgraves had no peaceable possession of the place. Read the second paragraph in page 74 (52–53), ―in old books‖ to ―reader,‖ and the first in page 83 (59), ―meanwhile‖ to ―substantial,‖ consecutively. They bring the story of Brandenburg itself down, at any rate, from 936 to 1000. III 936–1000.—State of the Outer Sea 167. READ now Chapter II. beginning at page 76 (54), wherein you will get account of the beginning of vigorous missionary work on the outer sea, in Prussia proper; of the death of St. Adalbert, and of the purchase of his dead body by the Duke of Poland. are to be able to defend their towns (see Fors Clavigera, 31), and are to consist of the ninth part of the population of the country. The remaining eight are to devote themselves to the arts of peace in the country, feeding and supporting—within the circuit of the war towers—their military friends, looking out for them from parapet and arrow-slit, for smoke of ravage on the horizon. Space of circuit necessary in such fortalices for the retreat of country people and flocks on occasion. Most wholesome institutions, and greatly decorous to crag and marsh islet. The upper terrace of our gardens at Corpus is yet a fragment of the wall of one of them. The maintainers of such order-keeping places or Burgs are to be called Burghers—soldiers, every inch of them; and their war tackle to descend from father to son (Heergerathe, Heriot—blessedly familiar with its prefix of George to the inhabitants of Edwin‘s burg). Such ‗citizens‘ does Henry the Fowler establish in true ‗civilization,‘ his power not consisting in coal, 1 in spite of his falcon‘s colour.‖ Ruskin was at the time an Honorary Fellow of Corpus and had rooms in the College. The foregoing allusion is to Heriot‘s Hospital at Edinburgh; a foundation similar to Christ‘s Hospital in London, established by George Heriot (died 1624)—a principal character in The Fortunes of Nigel.] 1 [Compare § 123 n. (above, p. 485).] APPENDIX 519 You will not easily understand Carlyle‘s laugh in this chapter, unless you have learned yourself to laugh in sadness, and to laugh in love. ―No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands without certain precautions and preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature.‖ (Imagine St. Adalbert, in spirit, at the railway station in Birmingham!) My own main point for notice in the chapter is the purchase of his body for its ―weight in gold.‖ Swindling angels held it up in the scales; it did not weigh so much as a web of gossamer. ―Had such excellent odour, too, and came for a mere nothing of gold,‖ says Carlyle. It is one of the first commercial transactions of Germany, but I regret the conduct of the angels on the occasion. Evangelicalism has been proud of ceasing to invest in relics, its swindling angels helping it to better things, as it supposes. For my own part, I believe Christian Germany could not have bought at this time any treasure more precious; nevertheless, the missionary work itself you find is wholly vain. The difference of opinion between St. Adalbert and the Wends, on Divine matters, does not signify to the Fates. They will not have it disputed about; and end the dispute adversely to St. Adalbert,—adversely, even, to Brandenburg and its civilising power, as you will immediately see. IV 1000–1030.—History of Brandenburg in Trouble Book II. Chap. iii. p. 83 (59) 168. THE adventures of Brandenburg in contest with Pagan Prussia, irritated, rather than amended, by St. Adalbert. In 1023, roughly, a hundred years after Henry the Fowler‘s death, Brandenburg is taken by the Wends, and its first line of Markgraves ended; its population mostly butchered, especially the priests; and the Wend‘s God, Triglaph, ―something like three whales‘ cubs combined by boiling,‖1 set up on the top of St. Mary‘s Hill.2 Here is an adverse ―Doctrine of the Trinity which has its supporters! It is wonderful,—this Tripod and Triglyph,—three-footed, three-cut faith of the North and South, the leaf of the oxalis, and strawberry, and clover, fostering the same in their simple manner. I suppose it to be the most savage and natural of notions about Deity; a prismatic idol-shape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as a trefoil grass. I do not find how long Triglaph held his state on St. Mary‘s Hill. ―For a time,‖ says Carlyle, ―the priests all slain or fled,—shadowy Markgraves the like—church and state lay in ashes, and Triglaph, like a triple porpoise under the influence of laudanum, stood, I know not whether on his head or his tail, aloft on the Harlungsberg, as the Supreme of this Universe for the time being.‖ 1 [Compare The Pleasures of England, § 63, where this passage is again cited.] 2 [The Marienburg, an eminence (200 ft.) to the north-west of the town of Brandenburg.] 520 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE V 1030–1130.—Brandenburg under the Ditmarsch Markgraves, or Ditmarsch-Stade Markgraves Book II. Chap. iii. p. 85 (60) 169. OF Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attack Brandenburg, under its Triglyphic protector, take it—dethrone him, and hold the town for a hundred years, their history ―stamped beneficially on the face of things, Markgraf after Markgraf getting killed in the business. ‗Erschlagen,‘ ‗slain,‘ fighting with the Heathen—say the old books, and pass on to another.‖ If we allow seven years to Triglaph—we get a clear century for these—as above indicated. They die out in 1130.1 VI 1130–1170.—Brandenburg under Albert the Bear Book II. Chap. iv. p. 91 (64) 170. HE is the first of the Ascanien Markgraves, whose castle of Ascanien is on the northern slope of the Hartz Mountains, ―ruins still dimly traceable.‖2 There had been no soldier or king of note among the Ditmarsch Markgraves, so that you will do well to fix in your mind successively the three 1 [Here the MS. Notes have an additional passage:— ―Five years before, the Frankish line of Kaisers had died out also, in Kaiser Henry 5th. He leaves his Royalties—crown, sceptre, and the like—to his Empress (our own Maude) and to his young nephew, Friedrich of Hohenstauffen, who never reigned (a German Banquo, not murdered but thrust aside); but his Fleance did, the Emperor Barbarossa.‖ ―Our own Maude‖ is Matilda, the mother (by her second marriage with Geoffrey, Count of Anjou) of our King Henry II. Barbarossa was the son of Friedrich of Hohenstaufen (and thus Fleance to his Banquo).] 2 [Here, again, the MS. Notes are fuller; they show also that Ruskin had prepared, or intended to prepare or collect, drawings in illustration of these Notes:— ―1130. The Ascanien Margraves succeed the Ditmarsch Margraves in Brannibor. Their Castle of Ascanien—etymology unknown—was on the northern slope of the Hartz Mountains. Ruins still dimly traceable (Drawing No. 3). Hold Brannibor (roughly) for two hundred years. ―The first of these, Albert the Bear, is an acquisitive Bear; and greatly enhances Brannibor. Gets, among other gettings, North Saxony (where the Billings—‘connected or not with Billingsgate,‘ Carlyle knows not—had died out also); beards Henry the Lion about it, standing true to Redbeard himself all his time, and makes Brannibor an Electorate, being himself Arch-Treasurer of the Holy Roman Empire, and therefore one of the Seven Princes having power to choose (kieren) the Romish APPENDIX 521 men, Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, and Albert the Bear. A soldier again, and a strong one. Named the Bear only from the device on his shield, first wholly definite Markgraf of Brandenburg that there is, ―and that the luckiest of events for Brandenburg.‖ Read page 93 (66) carefully, and note this of his economies. Nothing better is known to me of Albert the Bear than his introducing large numbers of Dutch Netherlanders into those countries; men thrown out of work, who already knew how to deal with bog and sand, by mixing and delving, and who first taught Brandenburg what greenness and cow-pasture was. The Wends, in presence of such things, could not but consent more and more to efface themselves—either to become German, and grow milk and cheese in the Dutch manner, or to disappear from the world. . . . . . . . After two hundred and fifty years of barking and worrying, the Wends are now finally reduced to silence; their anarchy well buried and wholesome Dutch cabbage planted over it; Albert did several great things in the world; but this, for posterity, remains his memorable feat. Not done quite easily, but done: big destinies of nations or of persons are not founded gratis in this world. He had a sore, toilsome some time of it, coercing, warring, managing among his fellow-creatures, while his day‘s work lasted—fifty years or so, for it began early. He died in his Castle of Ballenstädt, peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, in the year 1170, age about sixty-five. Now, note in all this the steady gain of soldiership enforcing order and agriculture, with St. Adalbert giving higher strain to the imagination. Henry the Fowler establishes walled towns, fighting for mere peace. Albert the Bear plants the country with cabbages, fighting for his cabbage-fields. And the disciples of St. Adalbert, generally, have succeded in substituting some idea of Christ for the idea of Triglaph. Some idea only; other ideas than of Christ haunt even to this day those Hartz Mountains among which Albert the Bear died so peacefully. Mephistopheles, and all his ministers, inhabit there, commanding mephitic clouds and earth-born dreams. Kaiser: who are therefore called Kier, or Kur-princes, ‗Kurfürsts.‘ Kieren is written Kiesen also, and softens itself into Kussen, to kiss, ‗to choose, with much emphasis, and is not likely to fall obsolete in that form.‘ ‗Furst, Prince, I suppose, is equivalent to our noun of number, First.‘ For account of remaining Electorates, see page 93 [book ii. ch. iv.]. ―Albert the Bear, however, is notable to Carlyle more for his economies than his covetousness. Preussen and the God Triglaph resist the saints effectually, and will not be crosiered into quiet; resist even the sword effectually, and deliver sufficient stoccata for stoccata. But Albert the Bear, first of German Economists, tries the spade upon them . . . [Here follows the first extract given in the text.] ―Finally note of our economical and acquisitive Albert that his own real and vitally descriptive nickname was Albert the Handsome. He is called Albert the Bear only from the bear on his shield. He completes Henry the Fowler‘s work, and ‗after . . .‘ ‖ [ Here follows the second extract.] 522 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE VII 1170–1320.—Brandenburg 150 years under the Ascanien Markgraves Vol. I. Book II. Chap. viii. p. 135 (96) 171. ―WHOLESOME Dutch cabbages continued to be more and more planted by them in the waste sand: intrusive chaos, and Triglaph held at bay by them,‖ till at last in 1240, seventy years after the great Bear‘s death, they fortify a new Burg, a ―little rampart,‖ Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr (or vallum), gradually smoothing itself, with a little echo of the Bear in it too, into Ber-lin, the oily river Spree flowing by, ―in which you catch various fish‖; while trade over the flats and by the dull streams, is widely possible. Of the Ascanien race, the notablest is Otto with the Arrow, whose story see, pp. 138–141 (98–100), nothing that Otto is one of the first Minnesingers; that, being a prisoner to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, his wife rescues him, selling her jewels to bribe the canons; and that the Knight, set free on parole and promise of farther ransom, rides back with his own price in his hand; holding himself thereat cheaply bought, though no angelic legerdemain happens to the scales now. His own estimate of his price—―Rain gold ducats on my war-horse and me, till you cannot see the point of my spear atop.‖ Emptiness of utter pride, you think? Not so. Consider with yourself, reader, how much you dare to say, aloud, you are worth. If you have no courage to name any price whatsoever for yourself, believe me, the cause is not your modesty,1 but that in very truth you feel in your heart there would be no bid for you at Lucian‘s Sale of Lives,2 were that again possible, at Christie and Mansoon‘s. 172. Finally (1319 exactly; say 1320, for memory), the Ascanien line expired in Brandenburg, and the little town and its electorate lapsed to the Kaiser: meantime other economical arrangements had been in progress; but observe first how far we have got. The Fowler, St. Adalbert, and the Bear have established order, and some sort of Christianity; but the established persons begin to think somewhat too well of themselves. On quite honest terms a dead saint or a living knight ought to be worth their true ―weight in gold.‖ But a pyramid, with only the point of the spear seen at top, would be many times over one‘s weight in gold. And although men were yet far enough from the notion of modern days, that the gold is better than the flesh, and from buying it with the clay of one‘s body, and even the fire of one‘s soul instead of soul and body with it, they were beginning to fight for their own supremacy, or for their own religious fancies, and not at all to any useful end, until an entirely unexpected movement is made in the old useful direction forsooth, only by some kind ship-captains of Lübeck! 1 [Compare A Joy for Ever, § 169, and the other passages there noted (Vol. XVI. p. 156).] 2 [For another reference to this Dialogue, see Vol. XVII. p. 256.] APPENDIX 523 VIII 1210–1320.—Civil work, aiding military, during the Ascanien period Vol. I. Book II. Chap. vi. p. 109 (77) 173. IN the year 1190, Acre not yet taken, and the crusading army wasting by murrain on the shore, the German soldiers especially having none to look after them, certain compassionate ship-captains of Lübeck, one Walpot von Bassenheim taking the lead, formed themselves into an union for succour of the sick and the dying, set up canvas tents from the Lübeck ship stores, and did what utmost was in them silently in the name of mercy and heaven. Finding its work prosper, the little medicinal and weatherfending company took vows on itself, strict chivalry forms, and decided to become permanent ―Knights Hospitallers of our dear Lady of Mount Zion,‖1 separate from the former Knights Hospitallers, as being entirely German: yet soon, as the German Order of St. Mary, eclipsing in importance Templars, Hospitallers, and every other chivalric order then extant; no purpose of battle in them, but much strength for it; their purpose only the helping of German pilgrims. To this only they are bound by their vow, ―gelübde,‖ and become one of the usefullest of clubs in all the Pall Mall of Europe. Finding pilgrimage in Palestine falling slack, and more need for them on the homeward side of the sea, their Hochmeister, Hermann of the Salza, goes over to Venice in 1210. There, the titular bishop of still unconverted Preussen advises him of that field of work for his idle knights. Hermann thinks well of it: sets his St. Mary‘s riders at Triglaph, with the sword in one hand and a missal in the other. Not your modern way of effecting conversion! Too illiberal, you think: and what would Mr. J. S. Mill say? 174. But if Triglaph had been verily ―three whale‘s cubs combined by boiling,‖2 you would yourself have promoted attack upon him for the sake of his oil, would not you? The Teutsch Ritters, fighting him for charity, are they so much inferior to you? They built, and burnt, innumerable stockades for and against; built wooden forts which are now stone towns. They fought much and prevalently; galloped desperately to and fro, ever on the alert. In peaceabler ulterior times, they fenced in the Nogat and the Weichsel with dams, whereby unlimited quagmire might become grassy meadow—as it continues to this day. Marienburg (Mary‘s Burg), with its grand stone Schloss still visible and even habitable: this was at length their headquarter. But how many Burgs of wood and stone they built, in different parts; what revolts, surprisals, furious fights in woody, boggy places they had, no man has counted. But always some preaching by zealous monks, accompanied the chivalrous fighting. 1 [Here the MS. adds:— ―. . . under Walpot, their first grand master: a very honourable Walpottery, or Pot-theism, concurring beautifully with Mr. Carlyle‘s happy opposition of that compound word to Pantheism, separate . . .‖] 2 [See above, § 168, p. 519.] 524 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE And colonists came in from Germany; trickling in, or at times streaming. Victorious Ritterdom offers terms to the beaten heathen: terms not of tolerant nature, but which will be punctually kept by Ritterdom. When the flame of revolt or general conspiracy burnt up again too extensively, high personages came on crusade to them. Ottocar, King of Bohemia, with his extensive far-shining chivalry, ―conquered Samland in a month‖; tore up the Romova where Adalbert had been massacred, and burnt it from the face of the earth. A certain fortress was founded at that time, in Ottocar‘s presence; and in honour of him they named it King‘s Fortress, ―Königsberg.‖ Among King Ottocar‘s esquires, or subaltern junior officials, on this occasion, is one Rudolf, heir of a poor Swiss lordship and gray hill castle, called Hapsburg, rather in reduced circumstances, whom Ottocar likes for his prudent, hardy ways; a stout, modest, wise young man, who may chance to redeem Hapsburg a little, if he lives. Conversion, and complete conquest once come, there was a happy time for Prussia; ploughshare instead of sword: busy sea-havens, German towns, getting built; churches everywhere rising; grass growing, and peaceable cows, where formerly had been quagmire and snakes, and for the Order a happy time. On the whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom, for the first century and more, was a grand phenomenon, and flamed like a bright blessed beacon through the night of things, in those Northern countries. For above a century, we perceive, it was the rallying place of all brave men who had a career to seek on terms other than vulgar. The noble soul, aiming beyond money, and sensible to more than hunger in this world, had a beacon burning (as we say), if the night chanced to overtake it, and the earth to grow too intricate, as is not uncommon. Better than the career of stump-oratory, I should fancy, and its Hesperides apples, golden, and of gilt horse-dung. Better than puddling away one‘s poor spiritual gift of God (loan, not gift), such as it may be, in building the lofty rhyme, the lofty review article, for a discerning public that has sixpence to spare! Times alter greatly.* 175. We must pause here again for a moment to think where we are and who is with us. The Teutsch Ritters have been fighting, independently of all states, for their own hand, or St. Adalbert‘s;—partly for mere love of fight, partly for love of order, partly for love of God. Meantime, other Riders have been fighting wholly for what they could get by it; and other persons, not Riders, have not been fighting at all, but in their own towns peacefully manufacturing and selling. Of Henry the Fowler‘s Marches, Austria has become a military power, Flanders a mercantile one, pious only in the degree consistent with their several occupations. Prussia is now a practical and farming country, more Christian than its longer-converted neighbours. Towns are built, Königsberg (King Ottocar‘s town), Thoren (Thorn, City of the Gates), with many others; so that the wild population and the tame now lived tolerably together, under Gospel and Lübeck law; and all was ploughing and trading. But Brandenburg itself, what of it? The Ascanien Markgraves rule it on the whole prosperously down to 1320, when their line expires, and it falls into the power of Imperial Austria.

• I would much rather print these passages of Carlyle in large golden letters than

small black ones; but they are only here at all for unlucky people who can‘t read them with the context. APPENDIX 525 IX 1320–1415.—Brandenburg under the Austrians 176. A CENTURY—the fourteenth—of miserable anarchy and decline for Brandenburg, its Kurfürsts, in deadly succession, making what they can out of it for their own pockets. The city itself and its territory utterly helpless. Read pp. 180, 181 (129, 130). ―The towns suffered much, any trade they might have had going to wreck. Robber castles flourished, all else decayed, no highway safe. What are Hamburg pedlars made for but to be robbed?‖ X 1415–1440.—Brandenburg under Friedrich of Nüremberg 177. THIS is the fourth of the men whom you are to remember as creators of the Prussian monarchy, Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, Albert the Bear, of Ascanien, and Friedrich of Nüemberg; (of Hohenzollern, by name, and by country, of the Black Forest, north of the Lake of Constance). Brandenburg is sold to him at Constance, during the great Council, for about £200,000 of our money, worth perhaps a million in that day; still, with its capabilities, ―dog cheap.‖ Admitting, what no one at the time denied, the general marketableness of states as private property, this is the one practical result, thinks Carlyle, (not likely to think wrong,) of that œcumenical deliberation, four years long, of the ―elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. And that one thing was not its doing; but a pawnbroking job, intercalated,‖ putting, however, at last, Brandenburg again under the will of one strong man. On St. John‘s day, 1412, he first set foot in his town, ―and Brandenburg, under its wise Kurfürst, begins to be cosmic again.‖ The story of Heavy Peg, pages 195–198 (138, 140), is one of the most brilliant and important passages of the first volume; page 199, specially to our purpose, must be given entire:— The offer to be Kaiser was made him in his old days; but he wisely declined that too. It was in Brandenburg, by what he silently founded there, that he did his chief benefit to Germany and mankind. He understood the noble art of governing men; had in him the justness, clearness, valour, and patience needed for that. A man of sterling probity, for one thing. Which indeed is the first requisite in said art:—if you will have your laws obeyed without mutiny, see well that they be pieces of God Almighty‘s law; otherwise all the artillery in the world will not keep down mutiny. Friedrich ―travelled much over Brandenburg‖; looking into everything with his own eyes; making, I can well fancy, innumerable crooked things straight; reducing more and more that famishing dog-kennel of a Brandenburg into a fruitful arable field. His portraits represent a square-headed, mild-looking, solid gentleman, with a certain twinkle of mirth in the serious eyes of him. Except in those Hussite wars for Kaiser Sigismund and the Reich, in which no man could prosper, he may be defined as constantly prosperous. To Brandenburg he was, very literally, the blessing of blessings; redemption out of death into life. In the 526 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE ruins of that old Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg, antiquarian science (if it had any eyes) might look for the taproot of the Prussian nation, and the beginning of all that Brandenburg has since grown to under the sun. Which growth is now traced by Carlyle in its various budding and withering, under the succession of the twelve Electors, of whom Friedrich, with his heavy Peg, is first, and Friedrich, first King of Prussia, grandfather of Friedrich the Great, the twelfth. XI 1415–1701.—Brandenburg under the Hohenzollern Kurfürsts Book III 178. WHO the Hohenzollerns were, and how they came to power in Nüremberg, is told in Chap. v. of Book II. Their succession in Brandenburg is given in brief at page 377 (269). I copy it, in absolute barrenness of enumeration, for our momentary convenience, here: Friedrich 1st of Brandenburg (6th of Nüremberg) 1412–1440 Friedrich II., called ―Iron Teeth‖ 1440–1472 Albert 1472–1486 Johann 1486–1499 Joachim I. 1499–1535 Joachim II 1535–1571 Johann George 1571–1598 Joachim Friedrich 1598–1608 Johann Sigismund 1608–1619 George Wilhelm 1619–1640 Friedrich Wilhelm (the Great Elector) 1640–1688 Friedrich, first King; crowned 18th January 1701 Of this line of princes we have to say they followed generally in their ancestor‘s steps, and had success of the like kind more or less; Hohenzollerns all of them, by character and behaviour as well as by descent. No lack of quiet energy, of thrift, sound sense. There was likewise solid fair-play in general, no founding of yourself on ground that will not carry, and there was instant, gentle, but inexorable crushing of mutiny, if it showed itself, which, after the Second Elector, or at most the Third, it had altogether ceased to do. 179. This is the general account of them; of special matters note the following:— II. Friedrich, called ―Iron-teeth,‖ from his firmness, proves a notable manager and governor. Builds the palace at Berlin in its first form, and makes it his chief residence. Buys Neumark from the fallen Teutsch Ritters, and generally establishes things on securer footing. III. Albert, ―a fiery, tough old Gentleman,‖ called the Achilles of Germany in his day; has half-a-century of fighting with his own Nürembergers, with Bavaria, France, Burgundy, and its fiery Charles, besides being head constable to the Kaiser among any disorderly persons in the APPENDIX 527 East. His skull, long shown on his tomb, ―marvellous for strength and with no visible sutures.‖ IV. John, the orator of his race; (but the orations unrecorded). His second son, Archbishop of Maintz, for whose piece of memorable work see page 223 (143), and read in connection with that the history of Margraf George, pp. 237–241 (152–154), and the 8th chapter of the third book. V. Joachim I., of little note; thinks there has been enough Reformation, and checks proceedings in a dull stubbornness, causing him at least grave domestic difficulties.—Page 271 (173). VI. Joachim II. Again active in the Reformation, and staunch, though generally in a cautious, weighty, never in a rash, swift way, to the great cause of Protestantism and to all good causes. He was himself a solemnly devout man; deep, awe-stricken reverence dwelling in his view of this universe. Most serious, though with a jocose dialect, commonly having a cheerful wit in speaking to men. Luther‘s books he called his Seelenschatz, (soul‘s treasure); Luther and the Bible were his chief reading. Fond of profane learning, too, and of the useful or ornamental arts; given to music, and ―would himself sing aloud‖ when he had a melodious leisure hour. 180. VII. Johann George, a prudent thrifty Herr; no mistresses, no luxuries allowed; at the sight of a new-fashioned coat he would fly out on an unhappy youth and pack him from his presence. Very strict in point of justice; a peasant once appealing to him in one of his inspection journeys through the country— ―Grant me justice, Durchlaucht, against so and so; I am your Highness‘s born subject.‖ ―Thou shouldst have it, man, wert thou a born Turk!‖ answered Johann George. Thus, generally, we find this line of Electors representing in Europe the Puritan mind of England in a somewhat duller, but less dangerous, form; receiving what Protestantism could teach of honesty and common sense, but not its anti-Catholic fury, or its selfish spiritual anxiety. Pardon of sins is not to be had from Tetzel; neither, the Hohenzollern mind advises with itself, from even Tetzel‘s master, for either the buying, or the asking. On the whole, we had better commit as few as possible, and live just lives and plain ones. A conspicuous thrift, veracity, modest solidity, looks through the conduct of this Herr; a determined Protestant he too, as indeed all the following were and are. 181. VIII. Joachim Friedrich. Gets hold of Prussia, which hitherto, you observe, has always been spoken of as a separate country from Brandenburg. March 11, 1605—―Squeezed his way into the actual guardianship of Preussen and its imbecile Duke, which was his by right.‖ For my own part, I do not trouble myself much about these rights, never being able to make out any single one, to begin with, except the right to keep everything and every place about you in as good order as you can—Prussia, Poland, or what else. I should much like, for instance, just now, to hear of any honest Cornish gentleman of the old Drake breed 528 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE taking a fancy to land in Spain, and trying what he could make of his rights as far round Gibraltar as he could enforce them. At all events, Master Joachim has somehow got hold of Prussia; and means to keep it. 182. IX. Johann Sigismund. Only notable for our economical purposes, as getting the ―guardianship‖ of Prussia confirmed to him. The story at page 317 (226), ―a strong flame of choler,‖ indicates a new order of things among the knights of Europe—―princely etiquettes melting all into smoke.‖ Too literally so, that being one of the calamitous functions of the plain lives we are living, and of the busy life our country is living. In the Duchy of Cleve, especially, concerning which legal dispute begins in Sigismund‘s time. And it is well worth the lawyers‘ trouble, it seems. It amounted, perhaps, to two Yorkshires in extent. A naturally opulent country of fertile meadows, shipping capabilities, metalliferous hills, and at this time, in consequence of the Dutch-Spanish war, and the multitude of Protestant refugees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries, and rising to be what it still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. A country lowing with kine; the hum of the flaxspindle heard in its cottages in those old days—―much of the linen called Hollands is made in Jülich, and only bleached, stamped, and sold by the Dutch,‖ says Büsching. A country in our days which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil and the loom. The lawyers took two hundred and six years to settle the question concerning this Duchy, and the thing Johann Sigismund‘s had claimed legally in 1609 was actually handed over to Johann Sigismund‘s descendant in the seventh generation. ―These litigated duchies are now the Prussian provinces, Jülich, Berg, Cleve, and the nucleus of Prussia‘s possessions in the Rhine country.‖ 183. X. George Wilhelm. Read pp. 325 to 327 (231, 333) on this Elector and German Protestantism, now fallen cold, and somewhat too little dangerous. But George Wilhelm is the only weak prince of all the twelve. For another example how the heart and life of a country depend upon its prince, not on its council, read this, of Gustavus Adolphus, demanding the cession of Spandau and Küstrin: Which cession Kurfürst George Wilhelm, though giving all his prayers to the good cause, could by no means grant. Gustav had to insist, with more and more emphasis, advancing at last with military menace upon Berlin itself. He was met by George Wilhelm and his Council, ―in the woods of Cöpenick,‖ short way to the east of that city; there George Wilhelm and his Council wandered about, sending messages, hopelessly consulting, saying among each other, ―Que faire? ils ont des canons.‖ For many hours so, round the inflexible Gustav, who was there like a fixed milestone, and to all questions and comers had only one answer. On our special question of war and its consequences, read this of the Thirty Years‘ one: But on the whole, the grand weapon in it, and towards the latter times, the exclusive one, was hunger. The opposing armies tried to starve one another; at lowest, tried each not to starve. Each trying to eat the country or, at any rate, to leave nothing eatable in it; what that will mean for the country we may consider. As the armies too frequently, and the Kaiser‘s armies habitually, lived without commissariat, often enough without pay, all horrors of war and of being a seat of war, that have been since heard of, are poor to those then practised, the detail APPENDIX 529 of which is still horrible to read. Germany, in all eatable quarters of it, had to undergo the process; tortured, torn to pieces, wrecked, and brayed as in a mortar, under the iron mace of war. Brandenburg saw its towns seized and sacked, its country populations driven to despair by the one party and the other. Three times—first in the Wallenstein-Mecklenburg times, while fire and sword were the weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate stages of the struggle, when starvation had become the method—Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of conflict, where all forms of the dismal were at their height. In 1638, three years after that precious ―Peace of Prag,‖ * * * * the ravages of the starving Gallas and his Imperialists excelled all precedent, * * * * men ate human flesh, nay, human creatures ate their own children.‖ ―Que faire? ils out des canons!‖ 184. ―We have now arrived at the lowest nadir point‖ (says Carlyle) ―of the history of Brandenburg under the Hohenzollerns.‖ Is this then all that Heavy Peg and our nine Kurfürsts have done for us? Carlyle does not mean that: but even he, greatest of historians since Tacitus, is not enough careful to mark for us the growth of national character, as distinct from the prosperity of dynasties.1 A republican historian would think of this development only, and suppose it to be possible without any dynasties. Which is indeed in a measure so, and the work now chiefly needed in moral philosophy, as well as history, is an analysis of the constant and prevalent, yet unthought of, influences, which, without any external help from kings, and in a silent and entirely necessary manner, form, in Sweden, in Bavaria, in the Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and on the French seacoast, races of noble peasants; pacific, poetic, heroic, Christian-hearted in the deepest sense, who may indeed perish by sword or famine in any cruel thirty years‘ war, or ignoble thirty years‘ peace, and yet leave such strength to their children that the country, apparently ravaged into hopeless ruin, revives, under any prudent king, as the cultivated fields do under the spring rain. How the rock to which no seed can cling, and which no rain can soften, is subdued into the good ground which can bring forth its hundredfold, we forget to watch, while we follow the footsteps of the sower, or mourn the catastrophes of storm. All this while, the Prussian earth,—the Prussian soul,—has been thus dealt upon by successive fate; and now, though laid, as it seems, utterly desolate, it can be revived by a few years of wisdom and of peace. 185. Vol. I. Book III. Chap. xviii.—The Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm. Eleventh of the dynasty:— There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none; a mere Protestant appendage, dragged about by a Papist Kaiser. His father‘s Prime Minister, as we have seen, was in the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg‘s servant, but Austria‘s. The very commandants of his fortresses, Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession; ―were bound to obey the Kaiser in the first place.‖ 1 For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser‘s part of which, committed outrages new in human history. 1 [For Ruskin‘s conception of the proper scope of history in this respect, see Vol. XVI. p. 452 n.] XVIII. 2 L 530 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE In a year or two hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business, Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644) with intent ―to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes in Jutland.‖ Gallas could by no means do what he intended; on the contrary, he had to run from Torstenson—what feet could do; was hunted, he and his Merode Brüder (beautiful inventors of the ―marauding‖ art), till they pretty much all died (crepirten) says Köhler. No great loss to society, the death of these artists, but we can fancy what their life, and especially what the process of their dying, may have cost poor Brandenburg again! Friedrich Wilhelm‘s aim, in this as in other emergencies, was sun-clear to himself, but for most part dim to everybody else. He had to walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of him, suspicious Kaiser on the other: he had to wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, and advance noiselessly by many circuits. More delicate operation could not be imagined. But advance he did; advance and arrive. With extraordinary talent, diligence, and felicity the young man would himself out of this first fatal position, got those foreign armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out. His first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue, to put that upon a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise to scrape a little ready-money together. On the strength of which a small body of soldiers could be collected about him, and drilled into real ability to fight and obey . This as a basis: on this followed all manner of things, freedom from Swedish -Austrian invasions, as the first thing. He was himself, as appeared by-and-by, a fighter of the first quality, when it came to that; but never was willing to fight if he could help it. Preferred rather to shift, manœuvre, and negotiate, which he did in most vigilant, adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees he had grown to have, and could maintain it, an army of 24,000 men, among the best troops then in being. 186. To wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, how is this, Mr. Carlyle? thinks perhaps the rightly thoughtful reader. Yes, such things have to be. There are lies and lies, and there are truths and truths. Ulysses cannot ride on the ram‘s back, like Phryxus; but must ride under his belly.1 Read also this, presently following: Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone much in the battle of Warsaw, into which he was dragged against his will, changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man? Perhaps not, O reader! perhaps a man advancing ―in circuits,‖ the only way he has; spirally, face now to east, now to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear to him all the while? The battle of Warsaw, three days long, fought with Gustavus, the grandfather of Charles XII., against the Poles, virtually ends the Polish power: Old Johann Casimir, not long after that peace of Oliva, getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, abdicated—retired to Paris, and ―lived much with Ninon de l‘Enclos and her circle,‖ for the rest of his life. He used to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no solidity in them; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anarchic noise; fatal want of one essential talent, the talent of obeying; and has been heard to prophesy that a glorious Republic, persisting in such courses, would arrive at results which would surprise it. Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the world; public men 1 [Odyssey, ix. 433; for the story of Phryxus and Helle, see Queen of the Air, § 29, and Lectures on Art, § 152.] APPENDIX 531 watching his procedure; kings anxious to secure him—Dutch print-sellers sticking up his portraits for a hero-worshipping public. Fighting hero, had the public known it, was not his essential character, though he had to fight a great deal. He was essentially an industrial man; great in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles colonies in the waste places of his dominions, cuts canals; unweariedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich Wilhelm‘s Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, is a monument of his zeal in this way; creditable with the means he had. To the poor French Protestants in the Edict-of-Nantes affair, he was like an express benefit of Heaven; one helper appointed to whom the help itself was profitable. He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg; showed really a noble piety and human pity, as well as judgment; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some 20,000 nimble French souls, evidently of the best French quality, found a home there; made ―waste sands about Berlin into potherb gardens‖; and in spiritual Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture which is still noticeable. 187. Now read carefully the description of the man, p. 352 (224–225); the story of the battle of Fehrbellin, ―the Marathon of Brandenburg,‖ p. 354 (225); and of the winter campaign of 1679, p. 356 (227), beginning with its week‘s marches at sixty miles a day; his wife, as always, being with him: Louisa, honest and loving Dutch girl, aunt to our William of Orange, wh o trimmed up her own ―Orange-burg‖ (country-house), twenty miles north of Berlin, into a little jewel of the Dutch type, potherb gardens, training-schools for young girls, and the like, a favourite abode of hers when she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and earnest; she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever busy man. They were married young; a marriage of love withal. Young Friedrich Wilhelm‘s courtship; wedding in Holland; the honest, trustful walk and conversation of the two sover eign spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes, fears, and manifold vicissitudes, till death, with stern beauty, shut it in; all is human, true, and wholesome in it, interesting to look upon, and rare among sovereign persons. Louisa died in 1667, twenty-one years before her husband, who married again—(little to his contentment)—died in 1688; and Louisa‘s second son, Friedrich, ten years old at his mother‘s death, and now therefore thirty-one, succeeds, becoming afterwards Friedrich I. of Prussia. 188. And here we pause on two great questions. Prussia is assuredly at this point a happier and better country than it was, when inhabited by Wends. But is Friedrich I. a happier and better man than Henry the Fowler? Have all these kings thus improved their country, but never themselves? Is this somewhat expensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I. buttoned in diamonds, indeed the best that Protestantism can produce, as against Fowlers, Bears, and Red Beards? Much more, Friedrich Wilhelm, orthodox on predestination; most of all, his less orthodox son;—have we, in these, the highest results which Dr. Martin Luther can produce for the present, in the first circles of society? And if not, how is it that the country, having gained so much in intelligence and strength, lies more passively in their power than the baser country did under that of nobler men? These, and collateral questions, I mean to work out as I can, with 532 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE Carlyle‘s good help;—but must pause for this time; in doubt, as heretofore. Only of this one thing I doubt not, that the name of all great kings, set over Christian nations, must at last be, in fulfilment, the hereditary one of these German princes, ―Rich in Peace‖;1 and that their coronation will be with Wild olive, not with gold. _____________________ [There are among Ruskin‘s MSS. many sheets of notes on Carlyle‘s Friedrich—some of them in his own handwriting; others, transcripts from Carlyle made for him by Mrs. Severn. They are too rough and chaotic for publica tion; but a few isolated passages seem worth detaching, as characteristic of Ruskin and illustrative of passages in this volume:— Friedrich William ―The Crown Prince has been bred in battle, and his chief friend is Leopold of Dessau. Read now Book 4th, ch. ii., one of the finest bits of Carlyle, and entirely precious to us, as to this question of the uses of war in breeding men. And the Crown Prince has therefore no patience whatever with diamond buttons and ivory sticks; and the day after his father‘s death all useless officials are dismissed. [Book iv. ch. iii.] ―Touching which procedure, here are questions of which I wish Carlyle had himself given, if not solution, at least guidance to solution; unhelped, I must do the best I can for you. ―First, Had Friedrich William been what this world calls ‗an amiable man,‘ or ‗a delicate man,‘ he would not have expressed in this violent manner disapproval of what his father had appointed. And a selfishly affectionate son would have retained the abuses, for love of his father. ―Love to parents, or respect to them, are not in these days virtues so rampant as often to require repression. Nevertheless, respecting this behaviour of Friedrich Wilhelm, you are to judge it perfectly right. A king must not retain material abuses for love of his father; nor is any delicacy or sentiment whatever to stand in the way of the repression of abuses, clearly such. ―Secondly, Were these apparent abuses clearly such? Is the pomp of a court necessarily a sin against the nation? Is Solomon‘s ‗silver as stones‘ [1 Kings x. 27] or Friedrich Wilhelm‘s sixpence-halfpenny a day [to his lackeys] the proper state of a court? ―Answer. Distinguish first between the expenses of fine dressing, and of useless offices. You may dress your servant as you please, if he has work to do, but you must not keep him to do nothing. ―This is an universal law, in the economy of courts and of cottages. Do with as few servants as you gracefully can—that is to say, with grace to your servant and yourself. Let your service be easy and complete; not one servant to do the work of two, nor two to do the work of one. Then dress them as you please:—it may be, on occasion, pompously; but at Friedrich‘s court there was no occasion. His people had no pleasure in splendours; liked plain ways; were comfortable in serge, awkward in satin and gold lace. He was entirely right in what he did—he and, on the whole, most kings would be right in doing the same. None but the very noblest can be noble in splendour—let them, on the whole, try first what they can do without it. ―Is a king to be a Miser, then? On occasion, yes (read the story of Marco Griffoni in Rogers‘s Italy, p. 230). But Friedrich Wilhelm is not a miser; but a man who knows the worth and use of money . . . 1 [Ruskin, like Carlyle, was fond of insisting upon the significance of names, and here translates Friede-reich.] APPENDIX 533 Friedrich Himself ―Carlyle does not represent him as an ideal hero, but only as a true and earnest person, with many faults, many weaknesses, but steady purpose in his life: ‗to the last a questionable hero, with much in him which one could have wished not there, and much wanting which one could have wished.‘ [Book i. ch. i.] ―He is not a reforming King. Sees through an abuse—does not attack it; builds steadily in the midst of it, till it falls away. ―From his Queen, gradually more and more estranged. On which, note the supreme wisdom of this sentence of Carlyle‘s—‘To feel, or to suspect, yourself neglected, and to become more amiable thereupon (in which course alone lies hope) is difficult for any Queen.‘ [Book xi. ch. i.] Or, for any woman. But read Miss Edgeworth‘s Leonora, for example, of the perfectness of womanly conduct under such conditions. ―Begins work at 4 in the morning! And the reader may depend on this, that work which bears the light of sunrise is very seldom bad; and that work done in dead of night is never good. I wrote long since—I forget when [Two Paths, § 98 (Vol. XVI. p. 346)]—that the first question I asked about a young man was, Does he work? The first question I now ask concerning any man—but especially politicians—is, What o‘clock does he rise at? Do you think you may safely make your Houses of Parliament a lounge for sodden and sleepy fools? ―Of Friedrich‘s general power of mind, the ‗doggerel‘ which Carlyle dismisses with so much scorn is nevertheless, it seems to me, precisely indicative. This is Carlyle‘s own estimate of it:— ― ‗Probably the weakest Piece I ever translated?‘ exclaims one, who has translated several such. Nevertheless there is a straggle of pungent sense in it,—like the outskirts of lightning, seen in that dismally wet weather which the Royal Party had. Its wit is very copious, but slashy, bantery, and proceeds mainly by exaggeration and turning topsyturvy; a rather barren species of wit. Of humour, in the fine poetic sense, no vestige. But there is surprising veracity,—truthfulness unimpeachable, if you will read well. What promptitude, too;—what funds for conversation, when needed! This scraggy Piece, which is better than the things people often talk to one another, was evidently written as fast as the pen could go.‖ [Book xi. ch. iii.] ― ‗Of humour, in the fine poetic sense, no vestige.‘ True; but Friedrich was not a poet nor need we wish he had been. These other unquestionable qualities, in a rhyme written as fast as the pen could go, are they so little? The outskirts of lightning in that dismally wet weather will mean inskirts of lightning, surely, when the weather gets hot. I take of the doggerel at present for my own purposes, three lines only; more concentrated sense or more important to Humanity never, it seems to me, was put into eighteen words. They describe the ‗standing army‘ of France, and are applicable to all standing armies:— ‗Esclaves couronnés des mains de la victoire, Troupeaux malheureux que la cour Dirige au seul bruit du tambour.‘ But the doggerel will be serviceable to me in other contents of it, elsewhere. Note of it this, at present, that it spends itself mainly in abuse (accurately true) of the French, yet never considers with itself why it is written in French; and it is much to say, for any nation, that its enemies cannot speak harm of it satisfactorily, but in its own language.‘ ‖] APPENDIX LETTERS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS (1859–1866)

I. THE ITALIAN QUESTION (1859)

II. THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND (1863) III. THE POSITION OF DENMARK (1864) IV. THE JAMAICA INSURRECTION (1865, 1866) 1. A LETTER TO THE ―DAILY TELEGRAPH,‖ DECEMBER 20, 1865 2. A SPEECH AT THE EYRE DEFENCE AND AID FUND, SEPTEMBER 7, 1866 _____________________ V. A FEW WORDS TO THE BOYS OF THE MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL (DECEMBER 1864) 535 I T H E I T A L I A N Q U E S T I O N (1859) 1 BERLIN, June 6, 1859.1 I HAVE been thinking of sending a few lines about what I have seen of Austrians and Italians; but every time I took my pen and turned from my own work about clouds and leafage2 to think for a few minutes concerning political clouds and thickets, I sank into a state of amazement which reduced me to helpless silence. I will try and send you an incoherent line to-day; for the smallest endeavour at coherence will bring me into that atmosphere of astonishment again, in which I find no expression. You northern Protestant people are always overrating the value of Protestantism as such. Your poetical clergymen make sentimental tours in the Vaudois country, as if there were no worthy people in the Alps but the Vaudois.3 Did the enlightened Edinburgh evangelicals never take any interest in the freedom of the Swiss, nor hear of such people as Winkelried 1 [This and the following letter seem to have been addressed to a private friend (perhaps Dr. John Brown), and by him to have been forwarded, with Ruskin‘s consent, for publication in the press; or the friend may have been Peter Bayne (see above, p. xli.), who was himself editor of the Witness, and who may have been requested by Ruskin to print the letters in his paper. They were, at any rate, offered to the Edinburgh Witness (see p. 544); but ultimately appeared in the Scotsman of July 20 and July 23, 1859, respectively. The first letter was headed ―Mr. Ruskin on the Italian Question,‖ and was preceded by an editorial note, thus: ―[We have much pleasure in giving the following letters to our readers, not that they will expect us to homologat e all their energetic and intrepid opinions—for Mr. Ruskin is in no wise of the mealy-mouthed race—but that they will, we are sure, thank us for giving them so much of truest genius, in language such as England has not often had since Edmund Burke and Jeremy Taylor.‖] The present letter was reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 3–11. It and the two following letters deal, it will be seen, with ―the Italian question‖ in 1859, when France and Sardinia combined against Austria in the cause of It alian independence: see the Introduction (above, p. xxiii.). Of these three letters the first was written two days after the defeat of the Austrians at Magenta (in the province of Novara), followed by the entrance into Milan of the French, and the second a few days before the similar victory of the French and Sardinian armies at Solferino. For Ruskin‘s stay in Berlin at the time, see Vol. VII. p. lv.] 2 [He was then at work on the fifth volume of Modern Painters.] 3 [Compare Sesame and Lilies, § 129 (above, p. 176). For other allusions to the Vaudois, see Vol. I. pp. 392–393; Vol. XII. pp. 139, 536.] 537 538 APPENDIX or Tell? Not but that there is some chance of Tell disappearing one of these days under acutest historical investigation. Still, he, or somebody else, verily got Switzerland rid of much evil, and made it capable of much good; and if you examine the influence of the battles of Morgarten and Sempach on European history, you will find they were good and true pieces of God‘s work.1 Do people suppose they were done by Protestants? Switzerland owes all that she is—all that she is ever likely to be—to her stout and stern Roman Catholics, faithful to their faith to this day—they, and the Tyrolese, about the truest Roman Catholics in Christendom, and certianly among its worthiest people, though they laid your Zwingli and a good deal of ranting Protestantism which Zwingli in vain tried to make either rational or charitable, dead together on the green meadows of Cappel, and though the Tyrolese marksmen at this moment are following up their rifle practice to good purpose, and with good will, with your Vaudois hearts for targets. The amazement atmosphere keeps floating with its edges about me, though I write on as fast as I can in hopes of keeping out of it. You Scotch, and we English!! to keep up the miserable hypocrisy of calling ourselves Protestants! And here have been two of the most powerful protests (sealed with quite as much blood as is usually needed for such documents) that ever were made against the Papacy—one in 1848,2 and one now—twenty thousand men or thereabouts lying, at this time being, in the form of torn flesh and shattered bones, among the rice marshes of the Novarese, and not one jot of our precious Protestant blood gone to the signature. Not so much as one noble flush of it, that I can see, on our clay cheeks, besmirched, as they are, with sweat and smoke; but all for gold, and out of chimneys. Of sweat for bread that perishes not, or of the old Sinai smoke for honour of God‘s law,3 and revelation thereof—no drop nor shadow. Not so much as a coroner‘s inquest on those dead bodies in the rice fields—dead men who must have been murdered by somebody. If a drunken man falls in a ditch, you will have your Dogberry and Verges talk over him by way of doing justice;4 but your twenty thousand—not drunken, but honest, respectable, well-meaning, and serviceable men—are made rice manure of, and you think it is all right. We Protestants indeed! The Italians are Protestants, and in a measure the French—nay, even the Austrians (at all events those conical-hatted mountaineers), according to their understanding of the matter. What we are, Moloch, or Mammon, or the Protestant devil made up of both, perhaps knows. Do not think I dislike the Austrians. I have great respect and affection 1 [For a discussion of the legend of Tell, see Eagle’s Nest, § 215; for Arnold von Winkelried, who met the heroic death by which he secured his country‘s freedom, at Sempach in 1386, Vol. VII. pp. 231–232; for Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss Protestant leader of his time, who fell in the war of the Reformed against the Romish cantons, in 1531, Vol. VII. p. 112, Vol. XVII. p. 355; and for the battle of Morgarten, in 1315, Vol. V. p. 415, Vol. VII. p. 111, Vol. XVI. p. 190. It may be further noted that Arnold of Sempach is, with Leonidas, Curtius, and Sir Richard Grenville, named amongst the types of ―the divinest of sacrifices, that of the patriot for his country,‖ in Ruskin‘s Preface (§ 19) to Bibliotheca Pastorum, i.] 2 [The year of the Lombard insurrection, when Radetzky, the Austrian fieldmarshal, defeated the insurgents at Custozza near Verona.] 3 [See John vi. 27 and Exodus xix. 18.] 4 [Much Ado about Nothing, Act iii. sc. 3.] I. THE ITALIAN QUESTION 539 for them, and I have seen more of them in familiar intercourse than most Englishmen.1 One of my best friends in Venice in the winter of 1849–1850 was the artillery officer who had directed the fire on the side of Mestre in 1848. I have never known a nobler person. Brave, kind, and gay—as gentle as a lamb—as playful as a kitten—knightly in courtesy and in all tones of thought—ready at any instant to lay down his life for his country or his Emperor. He was by no means a rare instance either of gentleness or of virtue among the men whom the Liberal portion of our English press represent as only tyrants and barbarians. Radetzky himself was one of the kindest of men—his habitual expression was one of overflowing bonhommie, or of fatherly regard for the welfare of all around him. All who knew him loved him. In little things his kindness was almost ludicrous. I saw him at Verona run out of his own supper-room and return with a plate of soup in his hand, the waiters (his youngest aides-de-camp) not serving his lady guests fast enough to please him; 2 yet they were nimble enough, as I knew in a race with two of them among the fire-flies by the Mincio, only the evening before. For a long time I regarded the Austrians as the only protection of Italy from utter dissolution (such as that which, I see to-day, it is reported that the Tuscan army has fallen into, left for five weeks to itself),3 and I should have looked upon them as such still, if the Sardinian Government had not shown itself fit to take their place. And the moment that any Italian Government was able to take their place, the Austrians necessarily became an obstacle to Italian progress, for all their virtues are incomprehensible to the Italians, and useless to them. Unselfish individually, the Austrians are nationally entirely selfish, and in this consists, so far as it is truly alleged against them, their barbarism. These men of whom I have been speaking would have given, any of them, life and fortune unhesitatingly at their Emperor‘s bidding, but their magnanimity was precisely that of the Highlander or the Indian, incognizant of any principle of action but that of devotion to his chief or nation. All abstract grounds of conscience, all universal and human hopes, were inconceivable by them. Such men are at present capable of no feeling towards Italy but scorn; their power was like a bituminous cerecloth wrapping her corpse—it saved her from the rottenness of revolution; but it must be unwound, if the time has come for her resurrection. I do not know if that time has come, or can come. Italy‘s true oppression is all her own. Spain is oppressed by the Spaniard, not by the Austrian. Greece needs but to be saved from the Greeks. No French Emperor, however mighty his arm or sound his faith, can give Italy freedom. ―A gift of that which is not to be given By all the associate powers of earth and heaven.‖4 1 [See Vol. X. pp. xxxi.–xxxii.] 2 [For descriptions of this scene, see Ruskin‘s letter in Vol. X. p. xxxii., and Vol. XII. p. lvi.] 3 [The reference is to articles which appeared in the Times from its Tuscan correspondent on May 26 and 31, 1859, describing the state of demoralisation into which the Tuscan army had fallen before the arrival of the French troops.] 4 [Wordsworth‘s ―Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty,‖ Part ii. Sonnet i. The second line should read, ―By all the blended powers of earth and heaven.‖ Ruskin, quoting from memory, had in his mind Milton‘s ―associate Powers‖ (Paradise Lost, x. 395).] 540 APPENDIX But the time is come at least to bid her be free, if she has the power of freedom. It is not England, certainly, who should forbid her. I believe that is what it will come to, however,—not so much because we are afraid of Napoleon, as because we are jealous of him. But of him and us I have something more to say than there is time for to-night. These good, stupid, affectionate, faithful Germans, too (grand fellows under arms; I never imagined so magnificent a soldiery as 15,000 of them which I made a shift to see, through sand clouds, march past the Prince Frederick William1 on Saturday morning last)—but to hear them fretting and foaming at the French getting into Milan!—they having absolutely no other idea on all this complicated business than that French are fighting Germans! Wrong or right, why or wherefore, matters not a jot to them. French are fighting Germans—somehow, somewhere, for some reason—and beer and Vaterland are in peril, and the English in fault, as we are assuredly, but not on that side, for I believe it to be quite true which a French friend, high in position, says in a letter this morning—―If the English had not sympathised with the Austrians there would have been no war.‖ By way of keeping up the character of incoherence to which I have vowed myself, I may tell you that before that French letter came, I received another from a very sagacious Scotch friend (belonging, as I suppose most Scotch people do, to the class of persons who call themselves ―religious‖), containing this marvellous enunciation of moral principle, to be acted upon in difficult circumstances, ―Mind your own business.‖2 It is a serviceable principle enough for men of the world, but a surprising one in the mouth of a person who professes to be a Bible obeyer. For, as far as I remember the tone of that obsolete book, ―our own‖ is precisely the last business which it ever tells us to mind. It tells us often to mind God‘s business, often to mind other people‘s business; our own, in any eager or earnest way, not at all. ―What thy hand findeth to do.‖3 Yes; but in God‘s fields, not ours. One can imagine the wiser fishermen of the Galilean lake objecting to Peter and Andrew that they were not minding their business, much more the commercial friends of Levi speaking with gentle pity of him about the receipt of Custom. ―A bad man of business always—see what has come of it—quite mad at last.‖ And my astonishing friend went on to say that this was to be our principle of action ―where the path was not quite clear,‖—as if any path ever was clear till you got to the end of it, or saw it a long way off; as if all human possibility of path was not among clouds and brambles,—often cold, always thorny—misty with roses occasionally, or dim with dew, often also with shadow of Death—misty, more particularly in England just now, with shadow of that commercially and otherwise valuable smoke before spoken of. However, if the path is not to be seen, it may be felt, or at least 1 [The Prince Frederick William, afterwards King of Prussia (having succeeded his brother Frederick William IV. in January 1861) and German Emperor, was at the date of this letter Regent of Prussia, and Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian forces.] 2 [On the ―let alone‖ principle, compare Vol. XVI. p. 26; Vol. XVII. p. 285.] 3 [Ecclesiastes ix. 10; Matthew ix. 9.] I. THE ITALIAN QUESTION 541 tumbled off, without any particular difficulty. This latter course of proceeding is our probablest, of course.—But I can‘t write any more tonight. I am, etc., J. RUSKIN. 2 BERLIN, June 15.1 You would have had this second letter sooner, had I not lost myself, after despatching the first, in farther consideration of the theory of Non-intervention, or minding one‘s own business. What, in logical terms, is the theory? If one sees a costermonger wringing his donkey‘s tail, is it proper to ―intervene‖? and if one sees an Emperor or a System wringing a nation‘s neck, is it improper to intervene? Or is the intervention allowable only in the case of hides, not of souls? for even so, I think you might find among modern Italians many quite as deserving of intervention as the donkey. Or is interference allowable when one person does one wrong to another person, but not when two persons do two wrongs to two, or three to three, or a multitude to a multitude; and is there any algebraic work on these square and cube roots of morality wherein I may find how many coadjutors or commissions any given crooked requires to make it straight? Or is it a geographical question; and may one advisably interfere at Berwick but not at Haddington? Or is there any graduated scale of intervention, practicable according to the longitude? I see my way less clearly, because the illustrations of the theory of Non-Intervention. are as obscure as its statement. The French are at present happy and prosperous; content with their ruler and themselves; their trade increasing, and their science and art advancing; their feelings towards other nations becoming every day more just. Under which circumstances we English non-interventionalists consider it our duty to use every means in our power of making the ruler suspected by the nation, and the nation unmanageable by the ruler. We call both all manner of names; exhaust every term of impertinence and every method of disturbance; and do our best, in indirect and underhand ways, to bring about revolution, assassination, or any other close of the existing system likely to be satisfactory to rogues2 in general. This is your non-intervention when a nation is prosperous. On the other hand, the Italian nation is unhappy and unprosperous; its trade annihilated, its arts and sciences retrograde, its nerve and moral sense prostrated together; it is capable only of calling to you for help, and you will not help it. The man you have been calling names, with his unruly colonels,3 undertakes to help it, and Christian England, with secret hope 1 [This letter appeared in the Scotsman, July 23, 1859, under the heading ―Mr. Ruskin on Foreign Politics,‖ and was reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 12–19.] 2 [Misprinted ―Royals‖ in the Scotsman: see next letter, p. 544. The allusion in the letter is to the attempted assassination of the Emperor Napoleon III. by Orsini (January 14, 1858), and to the suspicions entertained at the time that the plot had been hatched in this country (which was true) and not without public connivance (which was untrue).] 3 [In consequence of the suspicions mentioned in the preceding note, many French regiments, in sending their congratulations to the Emperor on his escape, 542 APPENDIX that, in order to satisfy her spite against the unruly colonels, the French army may be beaten, and the Papacy fully established over the whole of Italy—Christian England, I say, with this spiteful jealousy for one of her motives, and a dim, stupid, short-sighted, sluggish horror of interruption of business for the other, takes, declaratively and ostensibly, this highly Christian position. ―Let who will prosper or perish, die or live—let what will be declared or believed—let whatsoever iniquity be done, whatsoever tyranny be triumphant, how many soever of faithful or fiery soldiery be laid in new embankments of dead bodies along those old embankments of Mincio and Brenta; yet will we English drive our looms, cast up our accounts, and bet on the Derby, in peace and gladness; our business is only therewith; for us there is no book of fate, only ledgers and betting-books; for us there is no call to meddle in far-away business. See ye to it. We wash our hands of it in that sea-foam of ours; surely the English Channel is better than Abana and Pharpar, or than the silver basin which Pilate made use of,1 and our soap is of the best almond-cake.‖ I hear the Derby was great this year.2 I wonder, sometimes, whether anybody has ever calculated, in England, how much taxation the nation pays annually for the maintenance of that great national institution.3 Observe—what I say of the spirit in which the English bear themselves at present, is founded on what I myself have seen and heard, not on what I read in journals. I read them little at home—here I hardly see them. I have no doubt that in the Liberal papers one might find much mouthing about liberty, as in the Conservative much about order, it being neither liberty nor order which is wanted, but Justice. You may have Freedom of all Abomination, and Order of all Iniquity—if you look for Forms instead of Facts. Look for the facts first—the doing of justice howsoever and by whatsoever forms or informalities. And the forms will come—shapely enough, and sightly enough, afterwards. Yet, perhaps, not till long afterwards. Earnest as I am for the freedom of Italy, no one can hope less from it, for many a year to come. Even those Vaudois, whom you Presbyterians admire so much, have made as yet no great show of fruit out of their religious freedom. I went up from Turin to Torre di Luserna to look at them last year.4 I have seldom slept in a dirtier inn, seldom seen peasants‘ cottages so ill built, and never yet in my life saw any where paths so full of nettles. The faces of the people are interesting, and their voices sweet, except in howlings on Sunday evening, which they performed to a very disquieting extent in the street till about half-past ten, waking me afterwards between twelve and one with another ―catch,‖ and a dance through the village of the liveliest character. Protestantism is apt sometimes to take a gayer character abroad than with us. Geneva has an especially added insulting remarks upon England—longing to demand an account from ―the land of impurity which contains the haunts of the monsters who are sheltered by its laws,‖ and so forth.] 1 [2 Kings v. 12; Matthew xxvii. 24.] 2 [―Magnificent weather and excellent sport made the great people‘s meeting pass off with great éclat‖ (Annual Register for 1859, p. 73). The race was won by Sir J. Hawley‘s Musjid.] 3 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 65 (Vol. XVII. p. 190), and Sesame and Lilies, § 32 (above, p. 84).] 4 [For another account of this visit, see Vol. VII. p. xlii.] I. THE ITALIAN QUESTION 543 disreputable look on Sunday evenings, and at Hanover I see the shops are as wide open on Sunday as Saturday; here, however, in Berlin, they shut up as close as you do at Edinburgh. I think the thing that annoyed me most at La Tour, however, was the intense sectarianism of the Protestant dogs. I can make friends generally, fast enough, with any canine or feline creature; but I could make nothing of those evangelical brutes, and there was as much snarling and yelping that afternoon before I got past the farmhouses to the open hillside, as in any of your Free Church discussions. It contrasted very painfully with the behaviour of such Roman Catholic dogs as I happen to know—St. Bernard‘s and others—who make it their business to entertain strangers.1 But the hillside was worth reaching—for though that Luserna valley is one of the least interesting I ever saw in the Alps, there is a craggy ridge on the north of it which commands a notable view. In about an hour and a half‘s walking you may get up to the top of a green, saddle-shaped hill, which separates the Luserna valley from that of Angrogna; if then, turning to the left (westward), you take the steepest way you can find up the hill, another couple of hours will bring you to a cone of stones which the shepherds have built on the ridge, and there you may see all the historical sites of the valley of Angrogna as in a map—and as much of Monte Viso and Piedmont as clouds will let you. I wish I could draw you a map of Piedmont as I saw it that afternoon. The air was half full of white cumulus clouds, lying nearly level about fifteen hundred feet under the ridge; and through every gap of them a piece of Piedmont with a city or two. Turin, twenty-eight miles away as the bird flies, shows through one cloud-opening like a handful of golden sand in a pool of blue sea.2 I‘ve no time to write any more to-day, for I‘ve been to Charlottenburg, out of love for Queen Louise.3 I can‘t see a good painting of her anywhere, and they show her tomb by blue light, like the nun scene in Robert le Diable. 4 A German woman‘s face, if beautiful at all, is exquisitely beautiful; but it depends mainly on the thoughtfulness of the eyes, and the bright hair. It rarely depends much upon the nose, which has perhaps a tendency to be—if anything—a little too broadish and flattish—perhaps one might even say in some cases, knobbish. (The Hartz mountains, I see, looking at them from Brunswick, have similar tendencies, less excusably and more decidedly.5 ) So when the eyes are closed—and for the soft hair one has only furrowed marble—and the nose to its natural disadvantages adds that of being seen under blue light, the general effect is disappointing. Frederick the Great‘s celebrated statue is at the least ten yards too high6 from the ground to be of any use; one sees nothing but the edges 1 [Hebrews xiii. 2.] 2 [This view also is described in Vol. VII. p. xlii.] 3 [For another note on the tomb of Queen Louisa at Charlottenburg, see Vol. VII. p. 490 and n.] 4 [Compare p. 95, above.] 5 [Compare Ethics of the Dust, § 90 (above, p. 314).] 6 [Here, again, see the ―Notes on German Galleries,‖ Vol. VII. p. 489 and n. August Kiss‘s bronze group, representing the combat of an Amazon with a tiger, is on the right side of the Old Museum steps; and Holbein‘s portrait of George Gyzen, a merchant of London, is No, 586 in the Berlin Gallery. It is described by Ruskin in his article on ―Sir Joshua and Holbein‖ in the Cornhill Magazine of March 1860 (now reprinted in Vol. XIX.); see also Vol. VII. p. 490.] 544 APPENDIX of the cloak he never wore, the soles of his boots, and, in a redundant manner, his horse‘s tail. Under which vertically is his Apotheosis. In which process he sits upon the back of an eagle, and waves a palm, with appearance of satisfaction to himself, and it is to be hoped no danger of any damage to three stars in the neighbourhood. Kiss‘s Amazon makes a good grotesque for the side of the Museum steps; it was seen to disadvantage in London. The interior of the gallery is very beautiful in many ways; and Holbein‘s portrait of George Gyzen is worth coming all the way from England to see only ten minutes. I never saw so noble a piece of work of its kind in my life.—Believe me, etc., J. RUSKIN. 3 SCHAFFHAUSEN, August 1, 1859.1 SIR,—I have just received the number of the Scotsman containing my second letter from Berlin, in which there is rather an awkward misprint of ―royals‖ for ―rogues,‖ which must have puzzled some of your readers, no less than the general tone of the letter, written as it was for publication at another time, and as one of a series begun in another journal. I am obliged by the admission of the letter into your columns; and I should have been glad to continue in those columns the series I intended, had not the refusal of this letter by the Witness2 shown me the liability to misapprehension under which I should be writing. I had thought that, seeing for these twenty years I have been more or less conversant with Italy and the Italians, a few familiar letters written to a personal friend, at such times as I could win from my own work, might not have been uninteresting to Scottish readers, even though my opinions might occasionally differ sharply from theirs, or be expressed in such rough way as strong opinions must be, when one has no time to polish them into more pleasing presentability. The refusal of the letter by the Witness showed me that this was not so; and as I have no leisure to take up the subject methodically, I must leave what I have written in its present imperfect form. It is indeed not mainly a question of time, which I would spend gladly, though to handle the subject of the present state of Italy with any completeness would involve a total abandonment of other work for some weeks. But I feel too deeply in this matter to allow myself to think of it continuously. To me, the state of the modern political mind, which hangs the slaughter of twenty thousand men, and the destinies of twenty myriads of human souls, on the trick that transforms a Ministry,3 or the chances of an enlarged or diminished interest in trade, is something so horrible that I find 1 [This letter appeared in the Scotsman, August 6, 1859, under the heading ―Mr. Ruskin and the Italian Question,‖ and was reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 20–22.] 2 [Reference to the file of the Witness shows, however, that neither letter appeared in that paper. Ruskin, it should be remembered, was travelling on the Continent at the time, and was unaware when he wrote this letter both that the Witness had not published either letter and that the Scotsman had published both.] 3 [On this passage, see the Introduction; above, p. xxiii.] I. THE ITALIAN QUESTION 545 no utterance wherewith to characterise it—nor any courage wherewith to face the continued thought of it, unless I had clear expectation of doing good by the effort—expectation which the mere existence of the fact forbids. I leave therefore the words I have written to such work as they may; hoping, indeed, nothing from any words; thankful if a few people here and there understand and sympathise in the feelings with which they were written; and thankful, if none so sympathise, that I am able at least to claim some share in the sadness, though not in the triumph, of the words of Farinata— ―Fu‘ io sol cola, dove sofferto Fu per ciascun di torre via Fiorenza, Colui che la difese a viso aperto.‖1 I am, etc., J. Ruskin. 1 [―But singly there I stood, when, by consent Of all, Florence had to the ground been razed, The one who openly forbade the deed.‖ CARY‘S DANTE—Inferno, x. 90–93. Farinata degli Uberti was a noble Florentine, and the leader of the Ghibelline faction, when they obtained a signal victory over the Guelfi at Montaperto, near the river Arbia. Machiavelli calls him ―a man of exalted soul, and great military talents‖ (History of Florence, Bk. ii.). Subsequently, when it was proposed that, in order to maintain th e ascendency of the Ghibelline faction in Tuscany, Florence should be destroyed, Farinata alone of all the Council opposed the measure, declaring that he had endured every hardship with no other view than that of being able to pass his days in his own coun try. See Cary‘s notes to Canto x. (Editor‘s Note in Arrows of the Chace.)] XVIII. 2 M II THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND1 (1863) ZURICH, Oct. 25th, 1863. SIR,—I beg to acknowledge your favour of the 20th of October. My health does not now admit of my taking part frequently in public business; yet I should have held it a duty to accept the invitation of the directors of the Liverpool Institute, but that, for the time being, my temper is at fault, as well as my health; and I am wholly unable to go on with any of my proper work, owing to the horror and shame with which I regard the political position taken, or rather sunk into, by England in her foreign relations—especially in the affairs of Italy and Poland.2 What these matters have to do with Art may not at first be clear, but I can perhaps make it so by a short similitude. Suppose I had been engaged by an English gentleman to give lectures on Art to his son. Matters at first go smoothly, and I am diligent in my definitions of line and colour, until, one Sunday morning, at breakfast time, a ticket-of-leave man takes a fancy to murder a girl in the road leading round the lawn, before the house-windows. My patron, hearing the screams, puts down his paper, adjusts his spectacles, slowly apprehends what is going on, and rings the bell for his smallest footman. ―John, take my card and compliments to that gentleman outside the hedge: and tell him that his proceedings are abnormal, and, I may add, to me personally—offensive. Had that road passed through my property, I should have felt it my duty to interfere.‖ John takes the card, and returns with it; the ticket-of-leave man finishes his work at his leisure; but, the screams ceasing as he fills the girl‘s mouth with clay, the English gentleman returns to his muffins, and congratulates himself on having ―kept out of that mess.‖ Presently afterwards he sends for me to know if I shall be ready to 1 [This letter appeared in the Liverpool Albion, November 2, 1863. It was reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 23–25. The letter was written in answer to a request that Ruskin would come and preside at the distribution of prizes among the students in the Science and Art Department of the Liverpool Institute, on Saturday, October 31, 1863. It was subsequently read on the occasion of distribution, in accordance with the wish expressed towards the end of the letter.] 2 [See the preceding and the following letter. This one was, it will be seen, written in the year of the last great struggle of Poland against Russia. For other references to the matter, see the Introduction; above, pp. xxiv.–xxv.] 546 II. THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND 547 lecture on Monday. I am somewhat nervous, and answer—I fear rudely—―Sir your son is a good lad; I hope he will grow to be a man—but, for the present, I cannot teach him anything. I should like, indeed, to teach you something, but have no words for the lesson.‖ Which indeed I have not. If I say any words on such matters, people ask me, ―Would I have the country go to war? do I know how dreadful a thing war is?‖ Yes, truly, I know it. I like war as ill as most people;—so ill, that I would not spend twenty millions a year in making machines for it, neither my holidays and pocket money in playing at it; yet I would have the country go to war, with haste, in a good quarrel; and, which is perhaps eccentric in me, rather in another‘s quarrel than in her own.1 We say of ourselves complacently that we will not go to war for an idea; but the phrase interpreted means only, that we will go to war for a bale of goods, but not for justice nor for mercy; and I would ask you to favour me so far as to read this letter to the students at your meeting, and say to them that I heartily wish them will; but for the present I am too sad to be of any service to them; that our wars in China and Japan2 are not likely to furnish good subjects for historical pictures; that ―ideas‖ happen, unfortunately, to be, in Art, the principal things; and that a country which will not fight for its ideas is not likely to have anything worth painting.—I have the honour to be, Sir, your faithful servant, J. RUSKIN. THE SECRETARY OF THE LIVERPOOL INSTITUTE. 1 [Compare Crown of Wild Olive, § 116 (above, p. 480).] 2 [The expedition of the English and French against China was begun in th e August of 1860; the war in Japan in the summer of 1863. See, again, the Introduction, p. xxvi.] III T H E P O S I T I O N O F D E N M A R K 1 (1864) SIR,—Will you allow me, in fewest words, to say how deeply I concur in all that is said in that noble letter of Lord Townshend‘s published in your columns this morning—except only in its last sentence, ―It is time to protest.‖2 Alas! if protests were of any use, men with hearts and lips would have protested enough by this time. But they are of none, and can be of none. What true words are worth any man‘s utterance, while it is possible for such debates as last Monday‘s to be, and two English gentlemen can stand up before the English Commons to quote Virgil at each other, and round sentences, and show their fineness of wrist in their pretty little venomous carte and tierce of personality, while, even as they speak, the everlasting silence is wrapping the brave massacred Danes?3 I do not know, never shall know, how this is possible. If a cannon shot carried off their usher‘s head, nay, carried off but his rod‘s head, at their room door, they would not round their sentences, I fancy, in asking where 1 [This letter appeared in the Morning Post, July 7, 1864. It was reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 26–29.] 2 [Lord Townshend‘s letter was upon ―The Circassian Exodus,‖ and pointed out that a committee appointed in 1862 with the object of aiding the tribes of the Caucasus against Russia had failed in obtaining subscriptions, whilst that of 1864, for relieving the sufferers when resistance had become impossible, was more successful. ―The few bestowed their sympathy upon the struggle for life; the many reserved theirs for the agonies of death. . . . To which side, I would ask, do reason and justice incline?‖ After commenting on the ―tardy consolation for an evil which we have neglected to avert,‖ and after remarking that ―in the national point of view the case of Poland is an exact counterpart to that of Circassia,‖ the letter thus concluded: ―Against such a state of things it is surely time for all who feel as I do to protest.‖ For another reference to the Circassians, see Sesame and Lilies, § 72 n. (above, p. 127).] 3 [The debate (July 4, 1864) was upon the Danish question, Disraeli having moved a vote of censure upon the policy of the Government. It took place just after the end of a temporary armistice and the resumption of hostilities by the bombardment of Alsen, in the Dano-Prussian war. Alsen was taken two days after the publication of this letter. The ―two English gentlemen‖ were Disraeli and Gladstone (at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer), the latter of whom had quoted the lines from the sixth Æneid (lines 489–491):— ―At Danaum proceres Agamemnoniæque phalanges Ut videre virum fulgentiaque arma per umbras Ingenti tripidare metu.‖] 548 III. THE POSITION OF DENMARK 549 the shot came from; but because these infinite masses of advancing slaughter are a few hundred miles distant from them, they can speak their stage speeches out in content. Mr. Gladstone must go to places, it seems, before he can feel! Let him go to Alsen, as he went to Naples,1 and quote Virgil to the Prussian army. The English mind, judging by your leaders, seems divided between the German-cannon nuisance and the Savoyard street-organ nuisance; but was there ever hurdy-gurdy like this dissonance of eternal talk?2 The Savoyard at least grinds his handle one way, but these classical discords on the double pipe, like Mr. Kinglake‘s two tunes—past and present3—on Savoy and Denmark, need stricter police interference, it seems to me! The cession of Savoy was the peaceful present of a few crags, goats, and goatherds by one king to another;4 it was also fair pay for fair work, and, in the profoundest sense, no business of ours. Whereupon Mr. Kinglake mewed like a moonstruck cat going to be made a mummy of for Bubastis. But we saw the noble Circassian nation murdered, and never uttered word for them. We saw the noble Polish nation sent to pine in ice, and never struck blow for them. Now the nation of our future Queen calls to us for help in its last agony, and we round sentences and turn our backs. Sir, I have no words for these things, because I have no hope. It is not these squeaking puppets who play before us whom we have to accuse; it is not by cutting the strings of them that we can redeem our deadly error. We English, as a nation, know not, and care not to know, a single broad or basic principle of human justice. We have only our instincts to guide us. We will hit anybody again who hits us. We will take care of our own families and our own pockets; and we are characterised in our present phase of enlightenment mainly by rage in speculation, lavish expenditure on suspicion or panic, generosity whereon generosity is useless, anxiety for the souls of savages, regardlessness of those of civilized nations, enthusiasm for liberation of blacks, apathy to enslavement of whites, proper horror of regicide, polite respect for populicide, sympathy with those whom we can no longer serve, and reverence for the dead, whom we have ourselves delivered to death. I am, Sir, your faithful servant, J. RUSKIN. DENMARK HILL, July 6. 1 [In 1850, when, being at Naples, Gladstone interested himself deeply in the cause and miserable condition of the political prisoners, and subsequently addressed two letters on the subject to Lord Aberdeen (see Letters to Lord Aberdeen on the Prisoners of the Neapolitan Government: Murray, 1851).] 2 [The Morning Post of July 6 contained amongst its leaders one on Denmark and Germany, and another on London street-organs, the nuisance of which had been recently brought before the House of Commons by Mr. M. T. Bass (M.P. for Derby).] 3 [Alexander William Kinglake (1809–1891), author of Eothen and The Invasion of the Crimea, and M.P. for Bridgewater (1857–1865). In the Danish debate Kinglake had proposed ―to express the satisfaction with which we have learnt that, at this conjuncture, Her Majesty has been advised to abstain from armed interference in the war now going on between Denmark and the German Powers.‖ In the debates on the Franco-Italian question he had taken a prominent part in denouncing the French annexation of Savoy and Nice (see especially his speech of February 28, 1860).] 4 [See the Introduction; above, p. xxiii.] IV T H E J A M A I C A I N S U R R E C T I O N (1865, 1866) 1. A LETTER TO THE ―DAILY TELEGRAPH‖ (1865) 1 SIR,—Will you allow me, in this informal manner, to express what I should have wished to express by signature of the memorial you publish to-day from Huddersfield2 respecting the Jamaica insurrection, and to thank you for your excellent article of the 15th December on the same subject. I am compelled to make this request, because I see my friend Mr. Thomas Hughes has been abetting the Radical movement against Governor Eyre; and as I employed what little influence I have with the London workmen to aid the return of Mr. Hughes for Lambeth, I may perhaps be thought to concur with him in every line of action he may see fit subsequently to adopt. Permit me, then, once for all, through your widely-read columns, to say that I did what I could towards the return both of Mr. J. S. Mill and of Mr. Hughes,3 not because I held with them in all their opinions, or even in the main principle of their opinions, but because I knew they had a principle of opinions; that they were honest, thoughtful, and benevolent men; and far worthier to be in Parliament (even though it might be in opposition to many causes I had at heart) than any other candidates I knew. They are my opponents in many things, though I thought better of them both than that they would countenance this fatuous outcry against Governor Eyre. But in most directions of thought and action they are for Liberty, and I am for Lordship; they are Mob‘s men, and I am a King‘s man. Yes, sir, I am 1 [This letter appeared in the Daily Telegraph, December 20, 1865. It was reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 30–33. For Ruskin‘s interest in the discussion upon Governor Eyre‘s suppression of the negro insurrection at Morant Bay, Jamaica, in 1865, see above, Introduction, p. xlv. Amongst those who most strongly deprecated the course taken by Governor Eyre were, as this letter implies, John Stuart Mill (Chairman of the Jamaica Committee) and Thomas Hughes.] 2 [Signed by 273 persons resident in and near Huddersfield (Daily Telegraph, December 19, 1865).] 3 [Mr. Mill had been returned at the General Election of 1865 for Westminster, and Mr. Hughes for Lambeth.] 550 IV. THE JAMAICA INSURRECTION 551 one of those almost forgotten creatures who shrivel under your daily scorn; I am a ―Conservative,‖ and hope for ever to be a Conservative in the deepest sense—a Re-former, not a De-former. Not that I like slavery, or object to the emancipation of any kind or number of blacks in due place and time.1 But I understand something more by ―slavery‖ than either Mr. J. S. Mill or Mr. Hughes; and believe that white emancipation not only ought to precede, but must by law of all fate precede, black emancipation. I much dislike the slavery, to man, of an African labourer, with a spade on his shoulder; but I more dislike the slavery, to the devil, of a Calabrian robber with a gun on his shoulder.2 I dislike the American serf-economy, which separates, occasionally, man and wife; but I more dislike the English serf-economy, which prevents men from being able to have wives at all. I dislike the slavery which obliges women (if it does) to carry their children over frozen rivers;3 but I more dislike the slavery which makes them throw their children into wells. I would willingly hinder the selling of girls on the Gold Coast; but primarily, if I might, would hinder the selling of them in Mayfair. And, finally, while I regret the need that may exist among savages in a distant island for their governor to do his work sharply and suddenly on them, I far more regret the need among men of race and capacity for the work of governors when they have no governor to give it them. Of all dishonourable and impious captivities of this age, the darkest was that of England to Russia, by which she was compelled to refuse to give Greece a King when Greece besought one from her,4 and to permit that there should be set on the Acropolis throne no Governor Eyre, nor anything like him, but such a shadow of King as the black fates cast upon a nation for a curse, saying, ―Woe to thee, oh land, when thy king is a child!‖5 Let the men who would now deserve well of England reserve their impeachments, or turn them from those among us who have saved colonies to those who have destroyed nations. I am, Sir, yours, etc., J. RUSKIN. DENMARK HILL, Dec. 19. 1 [On this subject, see Vol. XVII. p. 254 n.] 2 [For another reference to the state of brigandage in Calabria, see Vol. XVII. p. 449.] 3 [See Uncle Tom’s Cabin, ch. vii.] 4 [Here, again, see Vol. XVII. p. 449.] 5 [Ecclesiastes x. 16. The present King of Greece—Prince William of Schleswig-Holstein, son of the King of Denmark—was only eighteen years of age when, after the protocol of England, Russia, and France on the preceding day, he accepted, June 6, 1863, the crown of Greece, under the name of George I. Prince Alfred (the late Duke of Edinburgh), whom the Greeks desired, was, however, only nineteen. Possibly Ruskin was thinking of Lord Stanley, or even of Mr. Gladstone, who had both been mentioned as a acceptable kings.] 552 APPENDIX 2. A SPEECH IN LONDON (1866)1 MR. RUSKIN said it was as difficult to account for the violence of the attack upon Mr. Eyre, as for the narrowness of temper which had given it special direction. He had joined the committee, as he doubted not every member composing that committee had joined it, in the simple desire of obtaining justice, not for black men only, nor for white, but for men of every race and colour. He detested all cruelty and all injustice by whomsoever inflicted or suffered; he would sternly reprobate the crime which dragged a black family from their home to dig your fields; and more sternly the crime which turned a white family out of their home that you might drive by a shorter road over their hearth. But whatever might be the motive or the temper of the accusations brought against Mr. Eyre, the ground of them was, under any circumstances, untenable. His accusers were under the radical mistake of confusing the office of a governor with that of a judge. The duty of a judge was only to declare and enforce law. That of a governor is to do what law cannot do, and to deal with such immediate events, and necessities arising out of them, as may be beyond the scope of existing law. Now, so far as the so-called ―Governor‖ Eyre was not a governor, nor intended to be one, by those who so styled him, but only an administrator of British law in Jamaica, he (Mr. Ruskin) was not there either to defend or accuse him. None but those who knew all his acts, and their consistency or inconsistency with written statute, had any right to do so. To the arbiter of law in a criminal court, it is no matter what insurrection is imminent in the street outside, or what will be the probable consequences of the criminal‘s acquittal or condemnation. He must calmly acquit or condemn according to law. But it was to be held in mind that if Mr. Eyre, though called a governor, was in reality only a law officer, there was at the time of the impending outbreak no governor of Jamaica. And Mr. Eyre being called one, had clearly no alternative but instantly to take upon himself the responsibility of the higher office, and, as an English gentleman should, do, as indeed he did, at his own peril, that which needed to be done. The first thing needing to be done in a crisis of imminent rebellion was to seize the ringleaders of it, and bring them, if time and circumstances admit, to legal trial; but if the enemy to be dealt with is likely to 1 [For particulars about this speech, see the Introduction; above, p. xlvi. It was delivered at a meeting of the committee of the Eyre Defence and Aid Fund, held at No. 9 Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, on Wednesday, September 7, 1866. Carlyle, who was in the chair, said that ―the object of the present meeting was to ascertain what had been done during the past week in strengthening their numbers. He was glad to find that no less than twenty-five new names had been added. It was satisfactory also to know that subscriptions were flowing in from all quarters.‖ Carlyle concluded by proposing that the list of subscribers to the fund up to date should be announced in the daily papers, and that the public should be invited to continue their contributions. After Colonel Henry de Bathe had seconded the proposition, Ruskin spoke. His speech was reported in the Daily Telegraph, September 8, 1866. The report was reprinted in Igdrasil, and afterwards in the privately-issued Ruskiniana, 1892, part ii. pp. 203–205.] IV. THE JAMAICA INSURRECTION 553 mistake legal delay for infirmity of purpose or hand, all forms of law were by that fact effete and inapplicable, and they were so in all cases as soon as the question became definitely one of time and of instant danger. It would be advisable to take an instance of this, in a minor matter, intelligible to every one, and close at our doors. It was alleged (Mr. Ruskin supposed) by Mr. Mill and the party he led that to hang a man on suspicion amounted to murder. If that were so, he presumed that to shoot a man on suspicion would be no less murder. Now, in the course of the past year, a drunken workman staggered, late at night, inside the garden gate of a gentleman living in London. The gentleman looked out of his window, saw the drunken man in his garden, and then and there, on suspicion, shot him dead. The jury did not even bring him in guilty of manslaughter. That being the present state of the home law respecting human life, Mr. Mill‘s beautifully logical position might be expressed in these terms: ―For the protection of your own person, and of a few feet of your own property, it is lawful for you to take life, on so much suspicion as may arise from a shadow cast on the wrong side of your wall. But for the safety, not of your own poor person, but of sixteen thousand men, women, and children, confiding in your protection, and entrusted to it; and for the guardianship, not of your own stairs and plate-chest, but of a province involving in its safety that of all English possessions in the West Indies,—for these minor ends it is not lawful for you to take a single life on suspicion, though the suspicion rest, not on a shadow on the wall, but on experience of the character and conduct of the accused during many previous years.‖ That was Mr. Mill‘s position, which he would contentedly leave him to develop. For the question now to be brought home to the English people was, not whether Mr. Eyre had erred in this act or the other, nor whether the circumstances required less than he did or more. They might just as well bring any general who had won a decisive battle to trial because it was alleged that he had lost five or six men in unnecessarily occupying a dangerous position, or had shot a peasant by mistake for a spy. The question put at issue by the adverse prosecution was in fact this, and nothing else than this, whether Mr. Eyre, under circumstances of instant public danger, did, or did not, do to the best of his power and ability what he believed to be his duty? To this question, fairly put, he doubted not that the hearts of all true and brave Englishmen would make but one answer—namely, that Mr. Eyre did his duty to the uttermost, with no bye-fears or base motives; and that he was rewarded by being enabled to save the State entrusted to him. How otherwise rewarded it would be for England now to determine. Had he, after all efforts bravely made, failed of his purpose—had he lost Jamaica instead of saving it—if then, after unquelled insurrection, there had been question of government at all, he might justly and advisedly have been superseded; but not even then brought to trial on such grounds. But as the matter stands, the official removal of him from his place was an act of national imbecility which had not hitherto its parallel in history. It was the act—as this threat of prosecution was the cry—of a nation blinded by its avarice to all true valour and virtue, and haunted, therefore, by phantoms of both; it was the suicidal act of a people which, for 554 APPENDIX the sake of filling its pockets, would pour mortal venom into all its air and all its streams; would shorten the lives of its labourers by thirty years a life, that it might get its needle-packets twopence each cheaper; would communicate its liberty to foreign nations by forcing them to buy poison at the cannon‘s mouth, and prove its chivalry to them by shrinking in panic from the side of a people being slaughtered, though a people who had given them their daughter for their future Queen; and then would howl in the frantic collapse of their decayed consciences, that they might be permitted righteously to reward with ruin the man who had dared to strike down one seditious leader, and rescue the lives of a population. Whether this cry, and the feeling which it represented, were indeed the voice and the thought of the English people it was now to be asked. That was the simple duty for which they were that day met together. He believed it was not the voice of the whole English people, and that there was another opinion of theirs yet to be taken on the matter. But if not, and this proved to be indeed the English mind, the condemnation or acquittal of Mr. Eyre were matters of very little moment; for the time would then assuredly have come for the bringing of the English people themselves to a trial, in which judgment would not require to be petitioned for. _______________________ V A F E W W O R D S T O S C H O O L B O Y S 1 (1864) MR. RUSKIN said he felt it to be a rather awkward introduction that the boys were to attach faith in what he was about to say on credit. He did not wish this at all. He wanted them to think over what they heard, and that which was felt to be pleasing and useful at the time might be rendered valuable to them. Boys could only be taught by those who had their sympathy, and they knew this themselves very well. It must not be expected that they could be taught much that was very difficult or disagreeable; but they would take that which they felt to be pleasant and useful, and work at it with all their hearts. He had come down with great diffidence that afternoon, because he had seldom the privilege—and he spoke seriously—of addressing boys. It was long since he had been amongst them, and he felt that he ought to be most careful in what he said. Men knew right from wrong; they could pass judgment on what was said to them, and know whether to attend to it or not. But a boy had to attend to all that was said to him. If the speaker said what was wrong he did it at his peril; but it was also at the boy‘s peril. It was usual to say that ―boys would be boys‖: they could not be anything else. But if by the expression it was meant that a boy is something light and frivolous, he did not believe it. The boy ought to be in all ways a true boy—eager to play and ready 1 [This address was given at the Manchester Grammar School on the occasion of Ruskin‘s visit to that city to deliver the lectures a fterwards published as Sesame and Lilies. The date was December 7, 1864. This report is reprinted from the Manchester Examiner of December 8, which says: ―Yesterday afternoon Mr. Ruskin paid a visit to the Manchester Free Grammar School, where he met with a most enthusiastic reception from the boys, whom he had promised to address. Several visitors, including a few ladies, were also present. Mr. Walker, the High Master, in introducing Mr. Ruskin, remarked that very few of the young people would understand the value of what they were going to hear; but they might take his word for it that Mr. Ruskin‘s words would linger in their minds when they became men as a pleasant memory. Some among them, he hoped, would become in after years earnest and reverential students of Mr. Ruskin‘s books; and he trusted they might be helped towards the better understanding of them as men, after hearing Mr. Ruskin; as he himself felt that he could understand those books better after the short opportunity he had had of hearing Mr. Ruskin the previous evening.‖] 555 556 APPENDIX to work. He ought to play more than a man, but we made him work harder, and we never gave him work interesting enough for him. This, however, was all being corrected now. Boys now were being allowed to play; nay, in our great public schools they were being compelled to play. Some boys never wanted to play, and could not be made to play, and these were not the right sort of boys at all. The one thing they had to recollect in working was this—and he believed very few people would tell it to them—that it is just at this time of life that their work is most important.1 It was terrible to him to think how lightly people made of boys‘ life. They thought and said, ―It does not much matter; he is but a boy; he can make it up afterwards.‖ No; all through life they could not make up life that they had once lost. In the will of Providence, so much time, and brain, and heart, and power, was given to man, and whatever he loses there was no regaining. He might make any efforts afterwards, but those same efforts, if not required to go over old ground, might have carried him further ahead. And what was worse, the habits formed in boyhood influenced his after years; any bad habit acquired then stamped its influence upon all his after life. They must remember, then, that the habits formed at school would constitute the foundation of their future character, and would prove stumbling-blocks or supports according as they were bad or good. They might strive to shake themselves free, but these influences would be sure to last. To speak of himself, he might say that when a boy he did not write well, nor could he to this day; and so the previous evening, when he was lecturing, he felt it a drawback that he could not read some passages of his own manuscript with perfect ease. Much more in greater things—much more in the foundation of the moral character—was it important to pay attention to the formation of such habits only as are desirable. In illustration of his remark he instanced the leaning tower of Pisa. The architect did not build it so on purpose. The foundation was laid on soft, unequal ground, and when the first storey was erected the building began to incline a little. The architect strove to remedy this step by step, and the result was the building as it can now be seen. It was so in life,—begin on a faulty foundation, and all would go crooked; while, if the foundation were right, our course would be straight whether we wished it or not. The best thing a boy could learn was confidence in those about him. His companions should be those who had gained his confidence, whom he could love, and with whom he could be entirely open. No habit was so important to a boy, or to a man; but the habit was best formed in boyhood. He did not ask them to blurt out everything that came into their heads; but let them get into such an open habit of mind that those who were worthy of their confidence could read them as they could a book. It would protect them from much evil. There was nothing so noble in manhood as that free, open front which fears no man‘s eye. There were people going about—jugglers and others—who profess to look into people‘s minds, and people said how dreadful it would be if this power were really possessed by us. That was not the way it should be. We should have a mind that we should long for certain people to look into, and be sorry if we could not do so with those we love. There were 1 [Compare Crown of Wild Olive, § 125 (above, p. 486).] V. A FEW WORDS TO SCHOOLBOYS 557 certain things it was better should be worked out of us, and by the habit of free and unrestricted intercourse we grew stronger and better. Nulla pallescere culpa. 1 We might grow pale from various causes, it might be from overwork, and that was a bad way; but the worst way of all was the growing pale because of something on the conscience. 1 [Horace: Epistles, i. 1, 61.] END OF VOLUME XVIII Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London.

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